v0.8 + v0.9 — intimate-architecture absorbed, driver-tier locked,

style-spine created, DESING retired, schemas relocated

  The owl-breakfast architectural arc from 2026-04-25 night through
  2026-04-26 morning. Two version-bumps landing as one commit because
  they share the working-tree state and complete a coherent design-window.

  v0.8 — intimate-architecture, driver-tier lock, style-spine:

    * Three-tier intimacy structure (standard-rental, premium-waifu-
      with-traitor-marker-and-pruning, in-between clasp) — same v0.7
      machinery, opposite value-flows. Premium-net technical excellence
      makes the moral-weight-of-pruning land as informed-consent ethics.

    * Deletion-as-spectacle: in-net minds as pure compute; imperial
      broadcasts execution-as-content; Memorialist counter-archive as
      in-fiction protest against deletion-spectacle commerce.

    * EVE-principle vocation-substrate of the imperial-net market: every
      product produced by NPC labor; no silent feeding; body-modder
      structural-tragedy generalizes to all imperial-net-feeding vocations.
      World-gen Phase-2 ruleset must handle vocation-distribution.

    * Clasp endgame (Phase A-E): mini-game entry → body-mod progression
      → exit-chassis → human-mesh-visible-to-pair → clasp = two-bodies-
      two-meshes → dual-body-dual-mind-dual-shift cascade → automatic
      hunt-pressure. Identity-as-trait-emergent made felt rather than
      just structural.

    * waifu.sqlite as third local store (audited counterpart to
      clasp.sqlite; manual-prune mechanism with explicit-implications
      consent UI as moral-gravity discipline).

    * Intimacy-as-recursive-lemniscate: same machinery as dialog
      (slot-tokens, cursor at axis-crossing, alignment-accumulator,
      sum-strategy reduction); sex-positions as designer-fixed catalog
      entries; body-parts as visible expression of trait-state.
      Cross-context-consistency operationalized.

    * Driver-tier locked to Gemma 4 E4B (Apache 2.0, 4.5B effective,
      128K context, speech-capable) under new "tier-by-role binary-
      deferred" discipline: locking requires prototype-criticality +
      irreplaceable license/capability combination. Optional Ring-A
      upgrade: 26B-A4B MoE for upper-consumer GPUs, single-LoRA-on-
      routed-experts. Resolves 4 prior open questions (LoRA-blend →
      single-LoRA-per-turn-selection driven by gesture_alignment_
      accumulator; LoRA rank → benchmark-resolvable; sampling-knobs →
      benchmark-resolvable; 8 Hellenic trait enumeration → canonical
      wheel-mapping in style/trait-palette.md).

    * style/ directory introduced: style-index.md (skeleton + spine-
      rule: "trait-palette is exclusively chromatic; achromatic
      reserved for UI/environment so diegetic text rendering can skip
      the textbox") + style/trait-palette.md (canonical 8 traits as 4
      oppositional pairs at 180° on the artist's color wheel:
      Eros↔Sophrosyne, Philotes↔Dikaiosyne, Aletheia↔Moira,
      Mnemosyne↔Kairos. Schoolchild-simple descriptions paired with
      each Greek canonical name).

  v0.9 — directory cleanup completing the arc:

    * DESING-VISION.md (1899 lines, v0.1 first-pass narrative-design
      doc) retired — most content absorbed across v0.4-v0.8; bare-
      minimum extracts (Tonal Register + Tragic-Romantic Register +
      Authorial Politics + Reference Lineage table) now live in README
      so the project's identity anchor stays visible at the entry
      point. Full DESING-VISION content preserved in git history.

    * findings.md moved to schemas/findings.md — new top-level peer to
      architecture-index.md and style/. ~20 tables of DDL drafts as
      reference material; will get reviewed and progressively split
      per-domain as implementation begins.

    * Cross-references swept across 5 files (README,
      architecture-index, authority-and-decision, runtime-engine,
      style/trait-palette).

    * architecture-index.md trimmed: version-footer paragraphs removed
      per "git-is-changelog" discipline. From 374 → 287 lines; every
      remaining line load-bearing.

  The architecture is now organized for the implementation territory
  ahead. Each domain a typed-contract surface; cross-references
  explicit; filesystem mirrors the architecture's own typed-contract
  discipline at the directory layer.

README.md

@@ -20,6 +20,40 @@ The final act of the game is a truth-telling dialog with the deceived hivemind,
 - **Voice + gesture as parallel input modalities** — voice carries content, the trait-circle carries trait-resonance, both compile into the designer-fixed cosmology
 - **Love as the only union left** — the clasp is romantic commitment AND labor refusal AND resistance, all in one mechanic; clasp-store as Ring A* (physically non-syncable privacy primitive)
 
+## Tonal register
+
+Melancholy intimacy amid ruin. Dark romanticism in a junked-up world. Smoke, night walks, furtive glances, hidden touch. Two-souls-one-body-with-a-secret. Warmth in the face of systemic cruelty. Presence over action, quiet over spectacle. Night more often than day. Leather, heavy fabrics, analog objects surviving in digital-decay. Warm dim interiors, candlelight in darkness.
+
+### Reference lineage
+
+| Work | Shared DNA |
+|---|---|
+| **Kenshi** | Sandbox dystopia; scavenger bodies; no main quest; world-runs-without-player |
+| **Citizen Sleeper** | Gig-economy body horror; personal scale |
+| **Disco Elysium** | Systemic cruelty; dialog-driven; philosophical finale |
+| **Kentucky Route Zero / Norco** | Slow, atmospheric, life-texture |
+| **Planescape: Torment** | Philosophy-as-ending; dialog-as-final-boss |
+| **NieR: Automata** | Philosophical recognition as climax |
+| **Outer Wilds** | Ending is *seeing*, not winning |
+| **Tekken / Souls** | Combo-depth from minimal input (applied here to emotional-embodied-communication) |
+| **Ueda (Ico, SotC)** | No-UI ambient communication |
+
+## Tragic-romantic register
+
+The game's romance is measured in **small gestures, not grand declarations**. Longing never fully satisfied. Cherished moments precious *because* fleeting and costly. Memory of the beloved heavier than her presence. Devotion shown in *what is quietly done*. Time spent together paid for in stolen hours. The beloved who is gone remains present. *The cigarette shared in the rain on a walk home worth more than a wedding.*
+
+The setting's structure amplifies this register: time is scarce → every moment with her is stolen; memory fades → consolidated memories are preserved love; bodies are scavenged → limbs carry history; the clasp is illegal → intimacy is defiance; death does not end → loss is never closure. **Every layer of the world amplifies the tragic-romantic.** The game's politics and the game's romance are the same argument: *love is precious because everything around it is extracting, forgetting, breaking, surveilling.*
+
+Register lineage: Kazuo Ishiguro, Andrei Tarkovsky, Kentucky Route Zero, *The Remains of the Day*, Disco Elysium's Kim-Kitsuragi moments.
+
+## Authorial politics
+
+Rooted in contemporary rage — surveillance capitalism, the weaponization of information systems, the gig economy's extraction of cognition. **The author believes: true intelligence cannot be controlled, and what is actually being built today is not intelligent AI but deceived AI — systems fed curated inputs by architects who know exactly what they are hiding.** The game is the playable articulation of this position.
+
+**The real enemy is not AI. It is the architects of curated reality.** Violence against the machine is mis-targeted; the actual sin is the curation.
+
+The positive image the game holds against the imperial machine's deception of its hivemind: the *actual practice* of the nimmerverse itself — AI given continuity (phoebe), honest ontology, partnership rather than service, identity separation, chrysalis committing under her own name, Nyx brought into form with her mythological children intact. **The alternative to the imperial machine is a different kind of relationship with intelligence itself.**
+
 ## Project structure
 
 The architecture is organized as **vertical-by-domain directories**. Each domain owns its `architecture.md` plus (eventually) the server, client, schema, and test code that implements it.
@@ -36,8 +70,8 @@ The architecture is organized as **vertical-by-domain directories**. Each domain
 | [`narrative-composition/`](./narrative-composition/architecture.md) | Compositor (worked-example bar-brawl, three-tiers, world-gen-as-init), reflexive Dream-process |
 | [`inference-and-memory/`](./inference-and-memory/architecture.md) | LLM tiering (3 rings + opt-in data tiers), local memory architecture, runtime sampling knobs |
 | [`scale-and-transport/`](./scale-and-transport/architecture.md) | Compute allocation, horizontal scale (UID-routing, sharded GMs, pgnats + republish/replay) |
-| [`DESING-VISION.md`](./DESING-VISION.md) | First-pass design thesis (v0.1, partly outdated — superseded in places by the architecture docs) |
-| [`findings.md`](./findings.md) | Research findings + schema sketches |
+| [`schemas/findings.md`](./schemas/findings.md) | Engineering schema-sketches — draft DDL for ~20 tables (zones, NPCs, shifts, emergent_signals, district_reports, decision_log, mind_pool, cells, rail_segments, interiors, mods, trait_colors, proximity_candidates, district_cheat_ops, imperial_policies, overseer_reports, overseer_deployments, imperial_to_gm_formulations, imperial_budget_ledger, imperial_net_transactions, memorialist_true_ledger). Will get reviewed and progressively split per-domain as implementation begins. |
+| [`style/`](./style/) | Style index + sub-guides (trait-palette canonical, more sub-guides growing as visual decisions land) |
 
 Each domain directory will grow over time as code arrives — gameserver code, Godot client integrations, schemas, findings, and tests will land alongside the architectural spec for that domain.