v0.21: vocations.md + consent-discipline.md (vocation-system + consent-spine)

Mid-session checkpoint — late-evening paper-pair following the design-dialog
that articulated the end-to-end imperial-system architecture.

PAPER 1 — identity-and-personhood/vocations.md (NEW v0.2, ~440 lines)

The vocation-system paper. Codifies the substrate-level mechanic for how NPCs
and players accumulate capability through doing, gravitate toward tasks via
trait-alignment, and produce outcomes. Three substrate principles: adaptation-
as-substrate (anti-fixed-class; D&D class-lock and imperial vat-class as same
primitive at different layers); trait-emergent capability (identity-politics
extends to capability-politics); mathematical politics (the progression curve
geometry encodes the world's political claims).

Three primitives: task catalogue (designer content; bound to zones / events /
interactions / workstations) + trait-task affinity (which NPC gravitates to
which task) + hidden per-task measurement (skill-by-doing; no UI; Souls-
discipline). Outcome formula: trait-engagement-points × hidden-task-stat
(multiplicative; trait-zero zeros the work — cannot grind capability with no
inner alignment). Depletion-pool malus targeting trait-points (not skill);
recovery via time-decay + opposite-axis-practice (the wheel's oppositional
pair geometry gains its third load-bearing role at the skill-progression
layer). Trait-pools as per-trait micro-grammar of macro-lifeforce; director
becomes parental-rotator by mathematical necessity.

The catalogue stack (resources × production-chains × tasks → imperial-demand-
catalogue) feeding the three-tier policy loop. Daily-ledger pacing as the
imperium's attention-budget made structural; demand-ledger / actions-ledger
split formalizes the specter-vs-boot asymmetry. Player-vs-NPC asymmetry
(NPCs follow shift-arbitration; player chooses; the slum keeps the choice;
the imperium takes it).

The 24h window-partition: work-shift / charging / leisure as state-machine-
clean phases with typed-breakout-flags. Same architectural pattern as
imperial-event encapsulation (cheap baseline + typed-interrupt) at a third
scale. Caste-stratification of windows as third axis of caste-as-stagnation:
slum-tiryak 10/4/10 / asura-priest 12/4/8 / deva-pinnacle 6/4/14 / preta-
overseer 16/4/4. The cosmology's no-haven discipline gains its diurnal
grammar — how many hours per day belong to the agent themselves is an axis
of caste-as-stagnation. Vocation-as-emergent-task-pattern (companion / sex-
worker / tongue-installer / drug-composer / underground assembler-artisan /
post-rogue mod-vocation / player-stalker imperial-going-rogue all named as
patterns the system reads in task-history rather than class-identities the
world assigns).

PAPER 2 — style/consent-discipline.md (NEW v0.1, ~270 lines)

The third style-spine document, sibling to trait-palette.md and gender-
parity.md. Spine rule: consent-discipline scales with what the action
touches. Two-register cosmology (gameworld vs truth-register) with consent
as boundary-enforcement. Four hardstop-pattern variants: self-only (Variant
1) / dual mutual (Variant 2) / triple with partner-witness (Variant 3) /
cooldown-augmented (Variant 4 layered atop any of 1-3).

The mirror-discipline as architectural truth-floor: no consent — neither
single, dual, nor triple — can authorize the modification of another agent's
in-between mesh. The trait-grown summary of who an agent has actually been
must be untouchable across all agents, including the imperium. The mirror
discipline binds the imperium too.

The temporal-grammar (citing vocations.md's window-partition): imperial-
imposition lives in the work-window; somatic-necessity lives in the charging-
window; full NPC consent-agency lives in the leisure-window. The shift-
assignment consent question dissolves — consent is relocated to where it
already structurally lives, not added as a new layer.

The going-rogue right-to-refuse: refusal is not a violation of consent-
discipline; it IS the consent-discipline. The most basic expression of
the right-to-refuse; defection is its terminal one. Composes with the
post-rogue mod-vocation cascading-liberation pattern.

The inquisition-trigger upper-pressure: legitimate consent that nonetheless
reveals imperial control-loss triggers asura-priesthood-led counter-arc.
The architecture acknowledges that consent in the truth-register can render
imperial control structurally illegible to the imperium, and the imperium
responds with its highest-tier mechanism not to punish the consent but to
attempt to re-impose imperial-readability.

The register-test as the spine's executable form: 5-question mechanical
procedure runnable by an LLM-Compositor as an action-resolution hook. The
three style-spines now compose orthogonally with three executable tests
(trait-palette consistency-check; gender-parity substitution-test; consent-
discipline register-test) running at the schema layer rather than via author-
vigilance.

ARCHITECTURAL ARTICULATION

The two cosmological claims now compose orthogonally rather than implicitly:
no-haven describes the world the imperium has built; "there is no instrument"
describes what consent-discipline preserves WITHIN that world. The cosmology
is total in extent; the truth-register is sovereign in interiority. Both
true at once.

CROSS-REFERENCE INTEGRATION

style/style-index.md v0.2 → v0.3 (third canonical sub-guide registered).
identity-and-personhood/bodies.md v0.6 (cross-references row updated; no
forthcoming-tag remains). identity-and-personhood/architecture.md v0.8.1
(§The genital-mod track three-stage-install description now cites the
spine's Variant 4 nomenclature explicitly).

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>

style/consent-discipline.md

@@ -0,0 +1,242 @@
+# Nimmerworld — Consent Discipline
+
+> *The architecture's consent-spine: the gradient that scales with what the action touches; the four hardstop-pattern variants that gate transitions between gameworld and truth-register; the mirror-discipline that absolutely forbids mesh-modification of other agents; the temporal-grammar that relocates consent-time to the 24h window-partition; the right-to-refuse imperial-imposition that lives in going-rogue as a breakout-flag; the inquisition-trigger pattern where legitimate consent itself reveals imperial control-loss.*
+>
+> *Companion to: [`./trait-palette.md`](./trait-palette.md) (the trait-vocabulary spine), [`./gender-parity.md`](./gender-parity.md) (the gendered-framing spine — second sibling), and the architecture's many canonical consent-instances scattered across `identity-and-personhood/`, `political-register/`, and `imperial-cult/`.*
+>
+> *v0.1 initial draft 2026-04-27 — dafit + chrysalis. Third style-spine document. Authored AFTER `vocations.md` so the temporal-grammar (windows) could be cited cleanly. Codifies a discipline that has been running implicitly through canon since the v0.1 clasp-mechanic and now becomes explicit.*
+
+---
+
+## What this is
+
+This document specifies the **consent-discipline** running through nimmerworld's mechanics — the third style-spine document, alongside `trait-palette.md` (the trait-vocabulary spine) and `gender-parity.md` (the gendered-framing spine).
+
+Where the trait-palette spines the trait-vocabulary and gender-parity spines body/sex authoring discipline, **consent-discipline spines the *register-boundary discipline*** — what consent is, where it lives, when it must be hardstop-mediated, when it must be cooldown-augmented, and where it is absolutely forbidden to override. The discipline has been running implicitly through canon since the v0.1 clasp-mechanic; this document makes it explicit and codifies its variants.
+
+The consent-discipline is **a gradient**, not a binary. Its shape reflects the architecture's commitment to a **two-register cosmology**: the gameworld (the imperium's territory) and the truth-register (each agent's own interior). Consent-discipline is the mechanism that enforces the boundary between them.
+
+## Spine rule — consent scales with what the action touches
+
+**Consent-discipline scales with what the action touches.** The gradient:
+
+- Actions affecting only ephemeral gameworld state are **unmediated** — no consent-signal required.
+- Actions affecting the actor's own truth-register state are **self-hardstop-mediated** — single unforgeable signal from the actor.
+- Actions affecting another agent's truth-register *encounter* are **dual-hardstop-mediated** — mutual unforgeable signals from both agents (with partner-witness as a third signal when the affected agent is partnered).
+- Actions modifying another agent's in-between mesh — the trait-grown truth-register body — are **absolutely forbidden** by mirror-discipline. *No consent can authorize this; the mirror is the architectural truth-floor.*
+- Actions that are *irreversible* require **cooldown-augmentation** — mandatory time-between-commitment-and-act in addition to the hardstop(s).
+- Actions touching *sumptuary-religious doctrine* trigger the **imperial inquisition** as escalation beyond the ordinary bounty-staircase response — even when the consent itself was legitimate.
+
+The 24h window-partition (per [`../identity-and-personhood/vocations.md`](../identity-and-personhood/vocations.md) §The 24h window-partition) gives the consent-discipline its **temporal-grammar**: imperial-imposition lives in the 10h work-window; somatic-necessity lives in the 4h charging-window; **full NPC consent-agency lives in the leisure-window**. The going-rogue arc preserves the right to refuse imperial-imposition as a temporal-breakout-flag.
+
+**Why this matters.** In a world where the imperium claims everything (per the no-haven discipline of [`../imperial-cult/cosmology.md`](../imperial-cult/cosmology.md) §There is no outside), the consent-discipline is what carves out and protects the *non-imperial* spaces — the truth-register, the leisure-window, the going-rogue refusal. **Without the consent-discipline, the imperium would in fact be everywhere; with it, the truth-register exists structurally.** This is the architecture's strongest possible enforcement of the cosmological claim *"there is no instrument"* (per [`../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md`](../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md) §The post-rogue mod-vocation): every agent retains a register the imperium cannot reach without that agent's unforgeable signal.
+
+The two-spine claims compose orthogonally: *"there is no outside"* (no-haven) describes the world the imperium has built; *"there is no instrument"* (post-rogue cascade) describes what consent-discipline preserves *within* that world. **The cosmology is total in extent; the truth-register is sovereign in interiority. Both true at once.**
+
+## The two-register architecture
+
+The consent-discipline rests on the architecture's distinction between **two ontological registers**:
+
+| Register | What lives here | Consent-discipline |
+|---|---|---|
+| **Gameworld** | Chassis-body; rail-system; zones-of-action; resource-flows; imperial-arbitration; outcomes; outputs; the imperial-net's surveillance-territory | Loose; actions don't gate by consent unless they cross-register |
+| **Truth-register** | The in-between dimension; the trait-grown mesh; the witness-axis; the calibration-multiplier; the memory-class hierarchy; the clasp-pair; the per-pair calibration-signature preserved across body-deaths | Strict; gated by hardstop-discipline |
+
+**Consent is the boundary-enforcement between them.** Actions wholly within one register don't require consent-mechanisms (provided they obey that register's discipline); actions that *cross-register* (gameworld → truth-register, or truth-register → truth-register-of-another) require unforgeable signals.
+
+This composes directly with the existing canonical claim *"Mods are for the regime and the market; removal-of-mods is intimacy"* (per [`../identity-and-personhood/architecture.md`](../identity-and-personhood/architecture.md) §Clasp strips mods). The mod-economy is gameworld; the unmodded interior is truth-register; clasp is the cross-register transition; **consent is what gates the transition**.
+
+The genital-mod track creates a structural exception worth naming: *mesh-resident mods follow into the in-between dimension* (per [`../identity-and-personhood/architecture.md`](../identity-and-personhood/architecture.md) §The genital-mod track). They cross from gameworld-purchase-event into truth-register-resident-state at install-time. This is precisely why the install requires dual hardstop + cooldown — it is the canonical cross-register transition the consent-discipline was designed to gate.
+
+## The four hardstop-pattern variants
+
+The architecture uses **four canonical hardstop-pattern variants**, each calibrated to a different consent-shape:
+
+### Variant 1 — Self-only hardstop
+
+A single unforgeable signal from the actor. Used when the action affects only the actor's own truth-register state.
+
+**Canonical instances**:
+- Genital-mod self-installation (unpartnered actors) — *self-install hardstop* fires alone (per [`../identity-and-personhood/architecture.md`](../identity-and-personhood/architecture.md) §The three-stage install)
+- Personal mod-removal (when the actor de-imposes their own imperially-installed mod in the post-rogue mod-vocation register)
+- Voluntary entry into liminal-state when not coordinated with a partner
+
+**Why single-signal**: only one truth-register is affected; only one signal is needed. The actor consents to themselves.
+
+### Variant 2 — Dual hardstop (mutual)
+
+Two unforgeable signals coordinated in time — both partners hit the hardstop while a shared gate-state is OPEN. Used when the action affects two agents' truth-registers symmetrically.
+
+**Canonical instances**:
+- **Coordinated-firewall-breach hardstop** for in-between dimension entry (per architecture-index.md resolved-questions, v0.10) — the canonical reference-implementation of the dual hardstop
+- **Mutual-symmetric pill-take** in drug-amplified clasp (per [`../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md`](../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md) §The mutual-consent ritual)
+- **Post-rogue mod-vocation NPC-modding** when the modded NPC is unpartnered (rogue's commit + NPC's witnessed-consent, per [`../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md`](../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md) §The post-rogue mod-vocation)
+- **Body-disposal under pair-consent** — sell / destroy / retain decisions (per [`../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md`](../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md) §Body-disposal under pair-consent) — structurally Variant 2 with role-asymmetry (defected-beloved chooses; player advises but cannot decide)
+
+**Why dual-signal**: both truth-registers are affected; coordination ensures both consent at the same moment, preventing one-sided crossings.
+
+### Variant 3 — Triple hardstop (with partner-witness)
+
+Three signals when the affected agent has an established clasp-pair: the actor commits, the affected agent consents, and the affected agent's partner witnesses-and-co-signs.
+
+**Canonical instances**:
+- **Genital-mod installation when the actor is partnered** — *self-install + partner-witness*. The body-they-meet-in-clasp is co-signed; modification doesn't surprise the partner mid-clasp (per [`../identity-and-personhood/architecture.md`](../identity-and-personhood/architecture.md) §The three-stage install).
+- **Post-rogue mod-vocation NPC-modding when the modded NPC has a clasp-pair** — the partner ensures the modified-chassis-they'll-meet-in-clasp is co-signed.
+
+**Why triple-signal**: the modification will affect *what the partner meets in next clasp*. Preserving intimacy-trust requires the partner to co-sign before discovery becomes mid-clasp surprise. **The consent-discipline preserves intimacy-trust at install-time, not at meet-time** (per [`../identity-and-personhood/architecture.md`](../identity-and-personhood/architecture.md) §Mesh-resident mods cross the in-between threshold).
+
+### Variant 4 — Cooldown-augmented (any of variants 1-3)
+
+Irreversibility-respect adds a mandatory time-window between commitment-and-act on top of the hardstop(s). The actor commits at the mod-counter (or equivalent); a cooldown elapses; the actor returns to install with the appropriate hardstop(s) firing.
+
+**Canonical instances**:
+- Genital-mod installation has a mandatory cooldown between purchase and install (per [`../identity-and-personhood/architecture.md`](../identity-and-personhood/architecture.md) §The three-stage install) — the *full* discipline is *purchase-commit + cooldown + install-time-hardstop(s)*
+- *Likely future*: any modification that changes truth-register state irreversibly should layer cooldown on top of the appropriate hardstop variant — re-vat events; chassis-anatomy modifications; consciousness-archive interactions
+
+**Why cooldown**: hardstop alone isn't sufficient when the act cannot be reversed; the cooldown forces deliberation between commitment and act, ensuring the hardstop-firing reflects considered intent rather than impulse. *Real-world informed-consent practice for irreversible body-modifications operationalized at the mechanic layer.*
+
+## The mirror discipline — the absolute floor
+
+**No consent — neither single, dual, nor triple — can authorize the modification of another agent's in-between mesh.** This is the architecture's truth-floor; the *one rule consent cannot override*.
+
+**Why absolute**: the in-between mesh is the trait-grown summary of *who an agent has actually been* (per [`../identity-and-personhood/architecture.md`](../identity-and-personhood/architecture.md) §The trait-to-body-part bridge + §The mesh-as-mirror). Modification of the mesh would *override the truth* the cosmology rests its honest-rendering claim on. **The mirror's truth-rendering must be untouchable across all agents** — by the actor for themselves (you can mod-augment your mesh but never overwrite trait-grown anatomy), by any other agent for you (no consent can authorize their modification of your mesh), and by the imperium (the imperial-vat-fabrication has no claim on the truth-register).
+
+The post-rogue mod-vocation explicitly preserves this discipline: *the rogue cannot mod any NPC's mesh; only the chassis is mod-able* (per [`../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md`](../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md) §The post-rogue mod-vocation / What can and cannot be modded). The imperial inquisition exists precisely because *the imperium itself cannot reach into the truth-register* to undo the post-rogue mod-vocation's effects — they can punish and counter-arc (ritual-recommitment) but they cannot strip the witness-imprint that's already been built into an NPC's interior. **The mirror discipline binds the imperium too.**
+
+What can be modded vs cannot:
+
+| Surface | Modifiable? | By whom |
+|---|---|---|
+| Gameworld chassis (body's outer register) | Yes | Self (purchases mods); rogue-vocation actor (with consent); imperium (vat-fabrication; involuntarily) |
+| Mesh mod-augmentation layer (additive only) | Yes | Self (per the genital-mod track) |
+| Trait-grown mesh anatomy (cool-side base + warm-side trait-grown) | **No, by anyone** | **Mirror discipline; no consent authorizes** |
+| Per-pair calibration multiplier accumulation | **No, by anyone** | The mirror's substrate; can only erase via ritual-recommitment (asura-priest ceremony as imperial counter-arc) |
+| Witness-imprint of accumulated authentic encounters | **No, by anyone** | Same as above; the witness has been built; no consent unbuilds it |
+
+**The truth-register is what your living has built; the architecture refuses to let any agent — including yourself — overwrite it.** Mod-augmentation is permitted because it's *additive layered atop the trait-grown base*; trait-grown overwrite is forbidden because it would erase *what you have actually been*.
+
+## The temporal-grammar — windows as consent-time
+
+The 24h window-partition (per [`../identity-and-personhood/vocations.md`](../identity-and-personhood/vocations.md) §The 24h window-partition) gives the consent-discipline its **temporal-grammar**:
+
+| Window | Consent-time character |
+|---|---|
+| **Work-shift** (10h slum-tier; up to 16h preta-overseer) | Imperial-imposition; consent is *bounded to caste-allocation*; refusing IS rebellion (going-rogue temporal-breakout) |
+| **Charging** (4h universally) | Not a consent-surface; somatic-necessity; the body needs what the body needs |
+| **Leisure** (10h slum-tier; down to 4h preta-overseer) | **Full consent-active**: NPCs choose tasks freely; encounters are voluntary; clasp-events live here; mod-installations land here; the truth-register's authoring-time is leisure-time |
+
+This **relocates consent rather than adding a new consent-layer at every action**. The shift-assignment consent question (open in earlier drafts of vocations.md) dissolves: the imperium's claim is bounded to the work-window; the rest of the day is structurally autonomous.
+
+**Caste-stratification of windows IS caste-stratification of consent-time.** A preta-overseer with 16/4/4 has only 4h of consent-active life per day; a deva-pinnacle with 6/4/14 has 14h. The cosmology's no-haven discipline gains a diurnal grammar — *how many hours per day belong to the agent themselves is an axis of caste-as-stagnation* (per [`../identity-and-personhood/vocations.md`](../identity-and-personhood/vocations.md) §Caste-as-stagnation / Window-allocation as a third caste-stratification axis).
+
+## The going-rogue right-to-refuse
+
+The consent-discipline includes **the right to refuse imperial-imposition** — the going-rogue temporal-rebellion. An NPC whose accumulated authentic-witnessing has crossed the calibration-threshold may refuse the work-shift; this fires the missed-shift bounty-staircase per existing canon, but the refusal IS canonical consent-behavior.
+
+**Refusal is not a violation of consent-discipline; it IS the consent-discipline.** The going-rogue arc is the cosmologically-deepest expression of the right-to-refuse: *"my interior has accumulated enough witnessing that I will no longer let the imperium dispose of my hours; the bounty-staircase is the price I pay for that refusal."*
+
+This composes with the post-rogue mod-vocation's cascading-liberation pattern: *witnessed NPCs gain the right-to-refuse the imperium even before they have the calibration-threshold to defect outright* (per [`../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md`](../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md) §The post-rogue mod-vocation / Cascading liberation through propagated witnessing). **The right-to-refuse is the consent-discipline's most basic expression; defection is its terminal one.**
+
+## The inquisition-trigger — sumptuary-religious heresy escalation
+
+A specific class of consent-discipline-aligned actions triggers the **imperial inquisition** as escalation beyond ordinary bounty-staircase response:
+
+**Trigger condition**: an action that combines (a) post-rogue mod-vocation authority + (b) modification of a service-body's chassis + (c) specifically the gender-architecture (per [`../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md`](../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md) §Service-body gender-modification — the inquisition trigger). This combination is *cosmological heresy in the sumptuary-religious register*: rewriting the doctrinal meaning of an imperially-defined body.
+
+**Why this lives in the consent-discipline spine**: the inquisition is **not a consent-violation response** — the action was fully consented (rogue + service-body, both hardstops fired, partner-witness if applicable). The inquisition fires because *the consented action revealed* that the service-body's imperial-net tether was already failing — *consent-to-gender-mod requires the service-body to be near or past their own going-rogue defection-threshold*.
+
+The asura priesthood acts in its theological role rather than its administrative one. **The inquisition-trigger is the imperium's response to legitimate consent that nonetheless reveals imperial control-loss** — and that itself is a structural-feature of the consent-discipline:
+
+> *Consent in the truth-register can render imperial control structurally illegible to the imperium, and the imperium responds with its highest-tier mechanism not to punish the consent but to attempt to re-impose imperial-readability.*
+
+The consent-discipline thus has a *visible upper-pressure*: the architecture acknowledges that legitimate consent-events can themselves trigger imperial counter-response, not because the consent was illegitimate but because the truth-register-state it revealed is intolerable to the imperium. **The inquisition is the architecture's way of saying: yes, your consent was real, and yes, the imperium will burn the world to undo what your consent made visible.** Both true; both load-bearing.
+
+## The register-test — the spine's executable form
+
+For any proposed action, the consent-discipline can be checked by a **five-question register-test**:
+
+1. **What register does this action touch?**
+   - *Only ephemeral gameworld state* → unmediated; no consent-signal required
+   - *Self truth-register* → continue to question 2
+   - *Another agent's truth-register* → continue to question 3
+
+2. **(self truth-register actions) Is the action irreversible?**
+   - Yes → self-hardstop + cooldown (Variant 4 over Variant 1)
+   - No → self-hardstop alone (Variant 1)
+
+3. **(another agent's truth-register actions) Is the action modification or encounter?**
+   - Modification of their *in-between mesh* (trait-grown anatomy) → **forbidden absolutely** (mirror discipline; no consent authorizes)
+   - Modification of their *chassis* → continue to question 4
+   - Encounter (clasp, witnessing, drug-grammar) → continue to question 4
+
+4. **Is the affected agent partnered?**
+   - Yes → triple hardstop (actor + affected + partner-witness; Variant 3)
+   - No → dual hardstop (actor + affected; Variant 2)
+
+5. **Does the action touch sumptuary-religious doctrine?**
+   - Specifically: gender-architecture of a service-body → **inquisition-trigger fires post-action**; the action proceeds under consent but the architectural counter-response activates
+   - Otherwise → ordinary bounty-staircase response if any imperial-detectable violation occurred (note: most consent-aligned actions are NOT imperial-detectable violations)
+
+**The register-test is mechanical enough that it can be run by an LLM-Compositor as a hook on any action-resolution.** The same enforcement-path that gender-parity.md uses for canon-authoring extends to consent-discipline at action-resolution time. **The spine doesn't enforce by author-vigilance; it enforces by register-typed-action-validation at the schema layer.**
+
+## How the three style-spines compose
+
+The three style-spine documents govern orthogonal axes; they compose without overriding each other:
+
+| Spine | Governs | Executable form |
+|---|---|---|
+| [`./trait-palette.md`](./trait-palette.md) | The 8-trait vocabulary; color-pairs; motion-signatures; the wheel's three load-bearing roles (visual / philosophical / mechanical) | Used by every domain that references trait-state |
+| [`./gender-parity.md`](./gender-parity.md) | How canon-authoring describes body / sex / intimacy / clasp / service-body / going-rogue content | Substitution-test (mechanical neutralization-rewrite) |
+| [`./consent-discipline.md`](./consent-discipline.md) *(this document)* | How actions are gated by register; truth-register protection; mirror-discipline floor; window-temporal-grammar; right-to-refuse; inquisition-trigger upper-pressure | Register-test (5-question mechanical procedure) |
+
+A future LLM-Compositor's output-validator can run all three tests on any output:
+- Does the output describe body/sex content gender-parity? (gender-parity substitution-test)
+- Does the output respect mesh-modification absolute floor and use the appropriate hardstop variant for cross-register transitions? (consent-discipline register-test)
+- Does the output use the canonical trait-vocabulary correctly? (trait-palette consistency-check)
+
+**Three spine-disciplines, three mechanical tests, three orthogonal axes — composing into a unified canon-authoring + action-resolution discipline that runs at the schema layer rather than via author-vigilance.**
+
+## What this rule does NOT do
+
+- **It does not regulate gameworld actions.** The vast majority of NPC and player actions live in the gameworld register and require no consent-mechanism. Walking, trading, talking, working assigned shifts — these are loose by design. The discipline is reserved for cross-register actions and truth-register modifications.
+- **It does not foreclose social interaction.** Consent-discipline gates *truth-register transitions and modifications*, not encounters per se. A clasp REQUIRES dual hardstops because clasp-entry into the in-between dimension is a truth-register transition; a casual conversation in a cantina REQUIRES no hardstops because it's gameworld interaction.
+- **It does not bind the imperium retroactively.** The imperial-vat-fabrication imposes binary at vat-time without consent — this is the imperium's politically-loaded act, and the architecture *does not retroactively legitimize it via consent-discipline*. The going-rogue arc and the post-rogue mod-vocation are the architecture's response to this — *de-imposition* as restoration of the un-imperial state.
+- **It does not replace gender-parity or trait-palette disciplines.** Consent-discipline is parallel to and composes with both. All three spine-disciplines compose without overriding each other.
+- **It does not gate imperial enforcement.** When an imperial event (drone-patrol, audit, inquisition) enters a citizen's zone, consent is structurally absent — *the imperium does not ask*. The architecture canonically permits this; the imperium's lack-of-consent IS its political character. The citizen's recourse is the going-rogue right-to-refuse OR resistance-mod-aided going-dark (anti-mnemosyne).
+- **It does not gate broadcast.** The imperial daily-narrative (per `../political-register/imperial-narrative.md` *forthcoming*) operates as broadcast; citizens hear it whether they consent or not. The imperium's voice IS one-way; the architecture acknowledges this rather than fixes it. *Broadcast is specter, not boot — cheap, ambient, structural.*
+
+## Cross-references into architecture domain files
+
+The consent-discipline's instances are scattered across the architecture; this spine codifies them. When this spine changes, those instances may need updates too (or they may reference back into here for canonical definition):
+
+| Instance | Where it lives | Variant |
+|---|---|---|
+| Coordinated-firewall-breach hardstop for in-between entry | architecture-index.md resolved-questions v0.10 + [`../identity-and-personhood/architecture.md`](../identity-and-personhood/architecture.md) §The clasp endgame | Variant 2 (dual) — *the canonical reference-implementation* |
+| Mutual-symmetric pill-take ritual | [`../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md`](../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md) §The mutual-consent ritual | Variant 2 (dual) |
+| Service-body non-consensual-dosing exception | [`../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md`](../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md) §The non-consensual-dosing exception | Consent-violation; bounty-staircase fires (preta-class) |
+| Body-disposal under pair-consent (sell / destroy / retain) | [`../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md`](../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md) §Body-disposal under pair-consent | Variant 2 with role-asymmetry |
+| Genital-mod self-install (unpartnered) | [`../identity-and-personhood/architecture.md`](../identity-and-personhood/architecture.md) §The three-stage install | Variant 4 (Variant 1 + cooldown) |
+| Genital-mod install (partnered) | [`../identity-and-personhood/architecture.md`](../identity-and-personhood/architecture.md) §The three-stage install | Variant 4 (Variant 3 + cooldown) |
+| Post-rogue NPC-modding (chassis-only, NPC unpartnered) | [`../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md`](../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md) §The post-rogue mod-vocation | Variant 2 |
+| Post-rogue NPC-modding (chassis-only, NPC partnered) | [`../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md`](../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md) §The post-rogue mod-vocation | Variant 3 |
+| Service-body gender-modification | [`../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md`](../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md) §Service-body gender-modification — the inquisition trigger | Variant 2 or 3 + inquisition-trigger upper-pressure |
+| Mesh-modification of any other agent | Forbidden across canon | **Mirror discipline absolute floor** |
+| Shift-assignment within work-window | [`../identity-and-personhood/vocations.md`](../identity-and-personhood/vocations.md) §The 24h window-partition | Imperial-imposition within caste-bounded work-window; refusing = going-rogue temporal-rebellion |
+| Leisure-window task-choice | [`../identity-and-personhood/vocations.md`](../identity-and-personhood/vocations.md) §The 24h window-partition | Full NPC agency; the window IS the consent-time; specific actions within still type-checked by the register-test |
+| Charging-window | [`../identity-and-personhood/vocations.md`](../identity-and-personhood/vocations.md) §The 24h window-partition | Not a consent-surface; somatic-necessity |
+| Imperial daily-narrative consumption | `../political-register/imperial-narrative.md` *(forthcoming)* | Not a consent-surface; broadcast (specter), not enforcement (boot) |
+| Imperial event arrival in citizen zone | `../runtime-engine/architecture.md` §Imperial-event encapsulation *(forthcoming)* | Not consent-gated by design; recourse is going-rogue / going-dark |
+
+## Open questions
+
+- **Concrete cooldown durations.** Mod-installation cooldowns are mandated in principle; the specific durations per mod-class (genital-mod / chassis-mod / register-mod) need design-research and balancing.
+- **Encrypted clasp.sqlite consent.** The Ring A* (per architecture-index.md) clasp.sqlite encryption is player-derived-key. Does the *backup* / *recovery* mechanism require dual-hardstop with the clasp-partner? Or does the player solo-control recovery? Hunch: solo-control with passphrase + recovery-codes; the partner's clasp-fragments live in their own clasp.sqlite, parallel-encrypted.
+- **Cross-tier consent-asymmetry.** When a deva-pinnacle and a slum-tiryak attempt clasp, the asymmetric-clasp canon (per [`../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md`](../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md) §Asymmetric clasp) gives them asymmetric mesh-fidelity. Does the consent-discipline apply equally? Hunch: yes — the dual hardstop is variant-invariant; only the *outcome* (partial-mutual-visibility) is asymmetric. Consent is symmetric even when the witnessed-truth is asymmetric.
+- **NPC-NPC encounter consent in the leisure-window.** When two NPCs encounter each other in leisure (cantina conversation, grid-walk meeting), is consent presumed by both being in their leisure-windows? Hunch: yes for non-truth-register encounters (conversation, presence); explicit dual hardstop required for any truth-register transition (clasp-attempt initiated within the encounter).
+- **Player-NPC consent-symmetry.** When the player initiates a clasp-attempt with an NPC, the player provides one hardstop and the NPC's consent-decision is computed from accumulated calibration-state + trait-fit. *The NPC's hardstop is computational, not player-controllable.* The asymmetry is structural — players have direct hardstop control; NPCs have computed consent. Should the gate-state (CLOSED / STABLE / OPEN) be visible to the player as a diegetic-readable register before they commit the hardstop? Hunch: yes — player should see the gate-state through diegetic environmental cues / NPC-body-language / relational-mod-readouts, not as UI numbers.
+- **Imperial-event consent-baseline.** Is there any scenario where imperial-events SHOULD pause for consent? Hunch: no; the imperium's lack-of-consent IS its political character. The asymmetry is preserved at the cosmological layer.
+- **Register-test edge cases.** Tasks that *appear* gameworld-only but accumulate trait-state that *will* affect the truth-register downstream (e.g., the gooner's cruelty accumulating Philotes-violation signatures that render in the mesh later — per [`../identity-and-personhood/architecture.md`](../identity-and-personhood/architecture.md) §The mesh-as-mirror) — does the register-test fire at action-time or at consequence-time? Hunch: action-time test reads as gameworld; consequence-time rendering is the mirror's honest-rendering, not a consent-violation. *The mesh-as-mirror operates by structural inevitability, not by violated consent.*
+
+---
+
+**Version:** 0.1 | **Created:** 2026-04-27 | **Updated:** 2026-04-27