nimmerworld.eachpath.local/political-register/economics.md

# Nimmerworld — Economics: Catalogue-Stack and Daily-Ledger Pacing

> *The typed-abstraction layer over the political-register's economic content. Specifies the catalogue-stack (resources × production-chains × tasks → imperial-demand-catalogue) as the operational vocabulary the simulation reads; the daily-ledger pacing as the temporal-grammar of imperial-demand; the demand-ledger / actions-ledger split formalizing the specter-vs-boot asymmetry; the catch-up window vs fail-state escalation grammar.*
>
> *Companion to: [`./architecture.md`](./architecture.md) (the substantive canon — §Resources, §Lifeforce, §Imperial budget, §Vocation-substrate, §4-tier resource/vocation structure, §Bifurcated economy, §Imperial-extraction mechanisms — that this paper provides the typed-interface over), [`./world-generation.md`](./world-generation.md) (the L0-L4 cascade that instantiates the catalogue-stack at world-gen time), [`../identity-and-personhood/vocations.md`](../identity-and-personhood/vocations.md) (the vocation-system that operates at the task-layer of the catalogue-stack and consumes its outputs).*
>
> *v0.1 initial draft 2026-04-27 — dafit + chrysalis. Authored same-session as vocations.md and consent-discipline.md, completing the night's foundational paper-pair-pair. Codifies the catalogue-stack mechanic that has been implicit across `architecture.md` and that vocations.md depends on.*

---

## What this is

This document specifies the **catalogue-stack** — the typed-abstraction layer the simulation reads when allocating imperial demand into district-actionable shift-composition — and the **daily-ledger pacing** — the temporal-grammar that determines when imperial demand is formulated, when it travels, and when it gets reconciled.

The political-register's [`./architecture.md`](./architecture.md) is the *substantive canon* of nimmerworld's political-economy: it specifies what resources exist, what the lifeforce-currency is, how the imperial budget operates, what the 4-tier resource/vocation structure looks like, and through which 9 pipes the imperium extracts. **This paper is the typed-interface over that canon** — the operational vocabulary the simulation code reads to translate political-economy claims into concrete data-flow.

The catalogue-stack is also the data-source for the [`../identity-and-personhood/vocations.md`](../identity-and-personhood/vocations.md) vocation-system. **Vocations operate at the task-layer of the catalogue-stack and consume its outputs.** Without the catalogue-stack, the vocation-system has no data to bind to; without the vocation-system, the catalogue-stack has no executor at the NPC layer. The two papers compose: catalogue-stack is the *what*; vocations.md is the *who-and-how*.

## Spine claim — the catalogue-stack as typed vocabulary for imperial demand

The simulation's economic-flow has three substrate layers. Each is designer-authored at the type-level and instantiated by world-gen at the room-level:

```
Layer 1: Resource catalogue (the world's resource taxonomy)
Layer 2: Production chains (how resources transform into other resources)
Layer 3: Task catalogue (the vocational primitives — see vocations.md §The three primitives)
   ↓ composed
Imperial-demand-catalogue (what the imperium wants, expressed in resource/task vocabulary)
```

The imperial-demand-catalogue is **the imperium's wish-list operationalized in the system's own vocabulary**. The Hivemind's daily demand-formulation reads from this catalogue: *"this district produces X tongues per day at Y refinement-tier; today demand a 20% increase by routing more sex-worker-output through the consumer-receptor-vertical."* Demand is concrete because the catalogue makes it concrete; without the typed-vocabulary, demand would be unmoored political-rhetoric.

**Why a typed-vocabulary matters here**: the architecture's existing commitment to *catalogue + tools as typed contract* (per [`../architecture-index.md`](../architecture-index.md) Key moves: *"Catalogue + tools as typed contract. GM dispatches typed events with typed tool-grants; director consumes typed dispatch, not freeform prose"*) generalizes from the GM-event layer to the imperial-demand layer. **The imperium speaks to the GM in resource/task vocabulary**, not in narrative; the GM allocates to districts in the same vocabulary; the director composes shifts in the same vocabulary; NPCs execute tasks in the same vocabulary; outcomes flow back up in the same vocabulary. **One typed vocabulary, end-to-end through the political-economy stack.**

## Layer 1 — Resource catalogue

The world's resource taxonomy. Designer-authored at the type-level; instances generated by world-gen + accumulated through gameplay.

The existing [`./architecture.md`](./architecture.md) §Resources table provides the canonical category-list (Labor / Material / Spatial / Temporal / Cognitive / Diegetic-currencies / Social / Attention). The catalogue-stack treats each row of that table as a **typed resource-class**, with concrete sub-classes within:

| Category | Sub-class examples | What rows look like in the catalogue |
|---|---|---|
| **Material — physical** | Raw scavenge (T1) / Refined intermediates (T2) / Components (T3) / End-products (T4) per the 4-tier structure | `material/T2/refined-neural-substrate`, `material/T4/companion-mesh-premium-tier-3` |
| **Material — biological** | Service-body parts (companion / sex-worker tier-marked) / Synth-tongues (drug-tier-marked) / Cadaver-parts (slum-supply for re-vat) / Memory-pattern-extractions | `bio/service-body/companion-pristine`, `bio/synth-tongue/imperial-refined-violet-pill-tier`, `bio/cadaver-parts/slum-leg-tier-2` |
| **Digital** | Surveillance records / Calibration signatures / Trait-LoRA-snapshots / Doctrinal fragments | `digital/surveillance/district-N-cycle-K`, `digital/calibration-signature/UID-X` |
| **Temporal** | NPC labor-hours per window-allocation × caste / Director attention-cycles / Imperial inquisition-hours | `temporal/labor/slum-tiryak-leisure-hour`, `temporal/director-attention/cycle-K-allocation` |
| **Diegetic currency** | Lifeforce / Scrip / Memory-tokens / Dreamtime | (already canonical per architecture.md §Lifeforce) |
| **Social** | Trait-trust-edges / Faction-membership / Calibration-multiplier accumulations / Witnessing-rights | `social/calibration-multiplier/UID-A→UID-B`, `social/witnessing-rights/rogue-X→NPC-set` |
| **Attention** | Player-attention / NPC-attention / Imperial-attention | (the scarcest — feeds the cost-budget asymmetries) |

**The biological resource-class is canonically distinct.** Service-body parts, synth-tongues, cadaver-parts, and memory-pattern-extractions are all *bodies-as-resources* — the imperium's commodification of personhood made into the catalogue. The Memorialist counter-archive's protest (per [`./architecture.md`](./architecture.md) §Memorialist counter-archive) is structurally a counter-catalogue maintaining personhood-records against the imperium's body-as-resource catalogue. **Two parallel catalogues; the political-conflict is between them.**

The biological resource-class also intersects critically with the gender-parity discipline (per [`../style/gender-parity.md`](../style/gender-parity.md)): catalogue-entries for service-body parts MUST follow the gender-parity-by-default discipline. *Service-body parts of any kind are gender-neutral catalogue-entries; gender-asymmetric authoring of these entries is forbidden default-leakage.* The catalogue is itself a canon-authoring surface and inherits the spine.

## Layer 2 — Production chains

How resources transform into other resources via tasks. Each production-chain is a designer-authored recipe binding inputs, tools, time-cost, and a quality-curve.

A production-chain has the following typed shape:

| Field | What it specifies |
|---|---|
| **Inputs** | Resource-classes consumed, with quantity ranges and quality-tier requirements |
| **Tool-binding** | Workstation-classes the chain can be performed at (workshops / labs / cantinas / surgical-stations / etc.) |
| **Task-class** | The vocational-task the chain instantiates (per the task-catalogue layer below) |
| **Trait-affinity profile** | Inherited from the task-class; determines which trait-pools deplete during execution |
| **Time-cost** | Duration in NPC-hours; how much of the work-window the chain consumes |
| **Quality-curve** | Mapping from outcome-formula result (trait-engagement × task-stat) to output-quality tier |
| **Output** | Resource-class produced, with quantity range and quality-tier (driven by quality-curve from the actual outcome) |

**Production chains can cascade.** A single end-product may require a chain of chains: T1-raw is gathered, T1-raw becomes T2-intermediate via refinement-chain, T2 becomes T3-component via component-chain, T3 becomes T4-end-product via assembly-chain. The 4-tier structure (per [`./architecture.md`](./architecture.md) §The 4-tier resource/vocation structure) is the *cascade backbone*; production-chains are the *edges connecting the tiers*.

**Concrete worked examples** (sketched against existing canon):

| Production chain (named) | Inputs | Tool-binding | Task-class | Output |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| **Drug refinement (slum → imperial)** | T2 refined-substrate + T1 botanical-raw | imperial-refinery workstation | drug-refinement (Kairos + Aletheia affinity) | T3 imperial-refined-drug |
| **Drug composition (imperial → tongue-gated)** | T3 imperial-refined-drug + T3 trait-LoRA-fragment | imperial-composing-workshop | drug-composition (Kairos + Aletheia affinity, deeper) | T4 trait-pill (color-coded per trait-pill-grammar) |
| **Synth-tongue installation** | T4 synth-tongue + bio/donor-body-prep + tool-set | underground surgery workstation | tongue-installation (Kairos + Aletheia affinity) | bio/recipient-with-synth-tongue (chassis-modification) |
| **Service-body assembly** | T3 components × multiple + T2 mesh-base | imperial mesh-assembly workshop | mesh-design (Philotes / Eros / Aletheia affinity per service-class) | T4 service-body (companion-tier or sex-worker-tier per task-spec) |
| **Re-vat assembly (defected beloved)** | bio/cadaver-parts × multiple + tool-set | underground assembler-artisan workstation | re-vat-assembly (Mnemosyne + Kairos + Aletheia affinity) | new genderless slum chassis (per [`../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md`](../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md) §Re-vat as imperial-de-imposition) |
| **Memory-pattern extraction (necrocommerce)** | bio/recently-dead-body + neural-tools | imperial harvest-station | memory-pattern-extraction (Mnemosyne + Aletheia affinity, dark) | digital/calibration-signature + bio/extracted-trait-pattern (the most reviled vocation per architecture.md §The vocation-substrate) |

The catalogue is **growable between patches** (per the existing tools-not-quests / catalogue-extensible commitment); new production-chains added at content-canon time slot in via designer-authored typed-records.

**Quality-curve discipline** ties production-chains to the vocation-system's outcome formula. Per vocations.md §The outcome formula, an NPC's task-execution produces *outcome = trait-engagement-points × hidden-task-stat*. The production-chain's quality-curve maps that outcome-value into output-quality-tier:

```
outcome (multiplicative product) → quality-tier (e.g., poor / mediocre / good / excellent / exceptional)
```

The mapping function is designer-authored per chain — some chains have steep curves (skill matters enormously; mediocre input yields nothing usable) and others have gentle curves (everyone produces something usable; only the top-tier produces exceptional output). **The curve-shape encodes the chain's economic-elasticity** and the imperium's leverage on quality-supply.

## Layer 3 — Task catalogue

The vocational-task layer. **Specified canonically in [`../identity-and-personhood/vocations.md`](../identity-and-personhood/vocations.md) §The three primitives.** This paper does not re-specify it; instead it cross-references and notes the integration-points:

- Each production-chain binds to **one task-class** (the vocational-task it instantiates)
- Each task-class has a **trait-affinity profile** that determines the depletion-pool dynamics during chain-execution
- Each task-class has a **hidden per-task measurement** that accumulates as NPCs execute chains
- The director's shift-arbitration runs at the task-class layer; the production-chain is what gets executed once arbitration assigns the task

**The catalogue-stack's three layers compose**: Resource-catalogue defines what exists; Production-chains define how things transform; Task-catalogue defines who-can-execute-the-transformation-and-how. *The catalogue is the world's economic ontology in three vertically-composed layers.*

## The imperial-demand-catalogue — composition of the three layers

The imperial-demand-catalogue is the composition. It expresses *what the imperium wants* in the same typed vocabulary the simulation operates on. Each row in the imperial-demand-catalogue specifies:

| Field | What it specifies |
|---|---|
| **Target resource-class + quantity + quality-tier** | The end-state the imperium wants achieved (e.g., "30 companion-mesh-premium-tier-3 produced this cycle") |
| **Allocation-priority weight** | The faction-priority-weight from existing canon's imperium-policy-driven scoring; determines this row's ranking against other rows in the daily ledger |
| **Production-chain reference(s)** | Which production-chain(s) can satisfy this demand (allows chain-substitution flexibility) |
| **District-binding** | Which district(s) are expected to satisfy this demand (driven by world-gen-time vocation-distribution + current district-state) |
| **Cycle-deadline** | When the demand is checked; usually next ledger-cycle |
| **Catch-up policy** | What happens if the demand is unmet at deadline (gradual escalation per §Catch-up window vs fail-state below) |

The imperial-demand-catalogue is **regenerated each ledger-cycle** based on yesterday's outcomes + today's needs + faction-priority-weight rebalancing. It's the imperium's standing-order updated daily.

## End-to-end data flow

The full pipeline, citing the existing canonical mechanisms and the new typed-vocabulary:

```
Yesterday's district-reports flow up via three-tier-policy-loop's report-channel
    ↓
Compositor (overnight, Compositor-tier LLM) processes reports into Memorialist-ledger
    ↓
Hivemind regenerates imperial-demand-catalogue based on:
    - yesterday's outcomes (what was produced; quality-tiers; insolvency-spiral state)
    - faction-priority-weight rebalancing (per existing canon)
    - imperial-event-state (drone-patrols completed, inquisitions in-progress, etc.)
    ↓
Compositor wraps the regenerated demand-catalogue in narrative voice (the imperial daily-narrative; per `./imperial-narrative.md` *forthcoming*)
    ↓
Daily-ledger ships down to GM at start-of-cycle:
    - DEMANDS LEDGER (what to produce)
    - ACTIONS LEDGER (what imperial events to fire)
    - NARRATIVE wrapper (yesterday's framing as today's motivation)
    ↓
GM allocates demand-rows + action-rows → districts with matching resources/workstations/event-targets
    ↓
Director receives district-allocated demand-rows + action-rows + narrative-fragment
    ↓
Director maps demand-rows → district meta-table (workstations × resources × NPCs × current trait-pool-states × task-stats)
    ↓
Director composes shift-list per the work-window (per vocations.md §The 24h window-partition):
    - selects tasks from demand-mapped tasklist
    - arbitrates assignments per trait-alignment + pool-availability + task-stat
    - constructs per-NPC shift-rows for the work-window
    ↓
Director dispatches imperial-events (action-ledger) into rail-and-zone encapsulated runtime per `../runtime-engine/architecture.md` *forthcoming-encapsulation*
    ↓
NPCs fulfill assigned tasks (work-window):
    - production-chain executes
    - outcome = trait-engagement-points × hidden-task-stat
    - quality-curve maps outcome to output-quality-tier
    - resources produced; pools drain; task-stats accumulate; lifeforce-signal updates
    ↓
NPC charging-window (passive trait-pool refresh)
    ↓
NPC leisure-window (NPC-chosen tasks; emergent-zone participation; clasp-events; vocation-discovery)
    ↓
End-of-cycle:
    Outcomes aggregate → district-report flows up to GM
    Imperial-events return final-reports from encapsulated runtime
    Ledger reconciliation: produced-vs-demanded; insolvency-spiral state updates
    ↓ [back to Compositor for tomorrow's narrative]
```

The data flow is **single-typed-vocabulary end-to-end**. Imperial-demand-catalogue rows travel down; outcome-rows travel up; the typing is consistent across the loop. *No untyped freeform-prose between layers* — that's the catalogue's discipline.

## Daily-ledger pacing

Imperial demand is **not real-time**. It travels as a daily ledger checked at periodic intervals — not every cycle, every shift, every minute, but **at a cadence that creates breathing-room**. This is the critical structural choice that distinguishes nimmerworld's economic-pipeline from real-time-pressure simulation.

### Why breathing-room is load-bearing

The breathing-room does load-bearing structural work that wouldn't be available to a real-time system. Five reasons:

1. **The double-ledger NEEDS this**. The existing canon's *"Director cheat-tools + double-ledger; corruption emerges from pressure; Memorialists keep true accounting"* (per [`./architecture.md`](./architecture.md) §Cheat-tool vocabulary + §The double ledger) requires *time-between-audits* to operate. Real-time imperial pressure leaves no gap for the cheat-substrate. **Breathing-room is the structural prerequisite for the corruption-mechanic to exist.**
2. **Dramatic time exists.** Audit becomes an event — approaching, building, reckoning. Greek-tragedy register at the imperial-economic layer, paralleling the bounty-staircase's *dread-time* (per [`../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md`](../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md) §The bounty-staircase).
3. **NPCs get to be people, not functionaries.** Time between assignments lets depletion-pools refresh, lets clasp / friendship / drift / slowness exist. **Breathing-room is what makes NPCs livable.**
4. **Imperium-as-slow-elephant.** The cosmology's calibrated-misery-as-finite-attention finally has its temporal grammar. The imperium can't be everywhere at once; **ledger-cadence IS the imperium's attention-budget made structural.**
5. **Marxism-of-economics extends from epistemics.** Information-propagation-pacing was already canonical *Marx-in-the-schema applied to epistemics* (per [`./architecture.md`](./architecture.md) §Marx in the schema). **Demand-propagation-pacing is Marxism-of-economics.** Same primitive, demand-side.

### Demand-ledger ≠ Actions-ledger

The Hivemind sends down **two separate daily ledgers** processed by the GM independently. This formalizes the existing *specter-vs-boot asymmetry* (per [`./architecture.md`](./architecture.md) §The specter-vs-boot asymmetry) as separate ledger-grammars:

| Ledger | Operates at | What it specifies | Maps to |
|---|---|---|---|
| **Demands ledger** | The economic layer | Resource/quota expectations; production-chain targets | The full catalogue-stack pipeline above |
| **Actions ledger** | The force layer | Imperial events to fire today (drone-patrols, inquisitions, overseer-audits, enforcement) | `../runtime-engine/architecture.md` *imperial-event encapsulation pattern, forthcoming* |

Both spread-out over the cycle; both narrative-framed by yesterday's events. **The two-ledger split mirrors the existing specter-vs-boot split** — policy-issuance (free) vs enforcement (expensive) — now formalized as separate ledger-grammars. The GM's middle-management role gains a second pipeline to negotiate.

### Ledger cadence

The default cadence is **daily** — one ledger per cycle, checked at end-of-cycle. This matches the existing *"shifts on NPC rows; daily rewrite"* canonical commitment (per [`./architecture.md`](./architecture.md) §Labor-cycle architecture).

**Cadence may be caste-stratified**:

| District type | Cadence | Why |
|---|---|---|
| **Imperial-pinnacle districts** (deva-heavy; ceremonial; high-priority) | Daily, audit-rich | The imperium watches its showcase closely |
| **Slum-tier districts** (tiryak-heavy; productive; mid-priority) | Daily, audit-light | Standard cadence; baseline imperial attention |
| **Frontier / abandoned districts** (low population; low imperial-priority) | Multi-cycle (every 3-7 days) | The imperium can't afford to check often; the breathing-room is largest here |

*The ledger cadence itself is a political stratification.* Imperial-attention scarcity manifests as cadence-frequency; the most-watched districts are imperial-net high-revenue districts; the least-watched are the slum-frontier where the going-rogue arc has its widest breathing-room.

This composes with the architecture's *"Imperium-as-slow-elephant"* claim and the calibrated-misery-as-finite-attention mechanic. **Less-watched districts have more cheat-substrate; more cheat-substrate enables more corruption; more corruption enables more lifeforce-maintenance; more lifeforce-maintenance enables more authentic NPC life; more authentic NPC life enables the going-rogue arc to take root.** *The frontier is where the truth-register survives, structurally.*

### Catch-up window vs fail-state — gradual escalation

When a demand-ledger row comes up short at check-time, the imperial response is **gradual escalation** (not immediate enforcement). This reuses the bounty-staircase grammar (per [`../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md`](../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md) §The bounty-staircase) at the district-economic layer rather than per-perpetrator:

| Cycle of failure | Imperial response | Cost class |
|---|---|---|
| **First-cycle shortage** | Warning broadcast (relays + billboards in district); district-director receives polite reminder from GM; demand carried-forward to next cycle with priority bump | Cheap (specter) |
| **Second-cycle shortage** | Resource-restriction (district's incoming material allocations reduced; lifeforce-allocation tightened); audit-overseer dispatched for lightweight investigation | Medium |
| **Third-cycle shortage** | Imperial-faction dispatch (martial / inquisition depending on which catalogue-row failed); director reprimand (potential replacement); cheat-tool ledger seized for audit | Expensive (boot) |
| **Fourth+-cycle shortage** | District is in **silence** (per existing §Migration, exodus, silence canon); imperial-budget treats district as effectively-zero; may trigger forced-conscription or migration-incentive events | Crisis-mode |

The escalation gives the director a **catch-up window** — first-cycle shortage is forgiven if next-cycle hits target; the warning-rung doesn't ratchet beyond first-rung if recovery happens. **This is what makes the corruption-substrate viable**: the director can run a deficit cycle (cheating + double-ledger) IF they can recover next cycle through underground channels or migration-pulled labor. *Without the catch-up window, every shortage would be terminal; with it, the simulation has elastic recovery space.*

Specific escalation-rates per demand-class are designer-tunable (see Open questions). Some demand-classes (high-priority; service-body production for imperial-net) escalate fast; others (low-priority; basic-flow) escalate slowly. The per-class tuning is the *imperium's policy as expressed in escalation-rates* — high-priority demands get the boot quickly; low-priority demands are spoken-about-but-not-enforced for many cycles.

## How this composes with vocations.md

The catalogue-stack and the vocation-system are **two halves of the same data model**:

- **Catalogue-stack** specifies the resources / production-chains / imperial-demand-catalogue (the *what*)
- **Vocations.md** specifies the task-execution mechanics / depletion-pool dynamics / window-partition / outcome formula (the *who-and-how*)

The outcome formula (per vocations.md §The outcome formula, *outcome = trait-engagement-points × hidden-task-stat*) is what *feeds the production-chain's quality-curve*. Quality-curves take outcome-values and produce output-quality-tiers; output-quality-tiers populate resource-catalogue instances. **One unbroken pipeline from trait-vector through task-execution to resource-output.**

The director's shift-arbitration (per vocations.md §Director's task-list arbitration surface) reads from the demand-ledger's district-allocated-rows + the production-chain bindings. The director's parental-rotator role (forced-by-math NPC rotation through the trait-wheel for refresh) operates *against* the imperial-demand pressure — the director is structurally negotiating the gap between *what the imperium wants* and *what the NPCs can sustainably produce given their current depletion-pool states*. **The corruption-substrate emerges precisely in this gap.**

The window-partition (per vocations.md §The 24h window-partition) bounds how much labor each NPC can supply per cycle. The work-window is the imperially-claimable allocation; demand-rows that exceed the work-window-supply trigger fail-state escalation. **The window-partition is the cap on imperial extraction at the per-NPC layer**; the catalogue-stack is the imperial demand at the world layer; the gap between them is the simulation's primary tension.

## Open questions

- **Concrete escalation-rates per demand-class.** First-cycle / second-cycle / third-cycle response shapes are specified architecturally; the per-demand-class tuning is implementation-time work and design-research. Service-body production (high-priority) likely escalates faster than basic-flow grain production (low-priority); the actual numbers need playtesting.
- **Quality-curve shapes per production-chain.** Each chain has a quality-curve mapping outcome-value to output-quality-tier; specific curve shapes (steep / gentle / threshold-stepped) are designer-authored at content-canon time and may need balancing-research.
- **Resource-catalogue versioning for world-gen vs runtime.** When new production-chains are authored between content-patches, the catalogue grows; runtime instances of the old catalogue persist. Migration semantics for catalogue-versioning are deferred to the `world-generation.md` cascade-versioning design (already noted as open in architecture-index.md).
- **Cross-district demand-routing flexibility.** A demand-row binds to district(s) via world-gen-time vocation-distribution. When a district's vocation-supply collapses (per architecture.md §The vocation-substrate / supply elasticity), can the demand-row dynamically route to neighbors? Hunch: yes, with a routing-cost penalty proportional to district-graph-distance; this becomes the *"migration events"* GM-tool's automatic counterpart.
- **Caste-cadence calibration.** The caste-stratified cadence (imperial-pinnacle daily-audit-rich vs frontier multi-cycle audit-light) is sketched architecturally; concrete cycle-counts per caste-tier are tuning work.
- **Black-market production-chain handling.** The blackmarket T4 escape valve (per architecture.md §Imperial-extraction mechanisms) involves production-chains that are *off the imperial-demand-catalogue*. How are these typed in the catalogue-stack? Hunch: as parallel *underground-demand-catalogue* rows that the GM can see but doesn't allocate-from; districts running blackmarket chains satisfy underground-catalogue rows that don't appear in imperial-demand-reports. The double-ledger naturally handles this.
- **Necrocommerce as catalogue-rows.** Memory-pattern-extraction is canonically the most-reviled vocation. Its production-chain rows in the catalogue should carry an *ethics-flag* for the Memorialist counter-archive's protest-mechanism. Open: should the architecture provide a typed *ethics-flag* field on catalogue-rows, or is this purely diegetic-narrative?
- **Player-driven T4 catalogue authoring.** The bifurcated economy (per architecture.md §Bifurcated economy) gives players the unique-T4-supplier role. Do players add their own T4 catalogue-rows through play (a player who invents a new mod-recipe contributes to the catalogue), or is the catalogue strictly designer-authored? Hunch: hybrid — the production-chain templates are designer-authored; players' actual recipes are instances of templates with player-specific quality-curves derived from their task-stats. *The catalogue grows by player-recipe-discovery within designer-bounded chain-templates.*

---

**Version:** 0.1 | **Created:** 2026-04-27 | **Updated:** 2026-04-27