Protocols

Doctrine defines what must be true. Principles define how systems must behave. Protocols define what must happen.

Protocols operationalize principles. Where principles translate doctrine into behavioral commitments, protocols translate those commitments into binding operational procedures. Each protocol defines a specific sequence of actions that must occur — and must be recorded — for a governed execution event to be constitutionally complete.

Protocols are binding. They are not best practices. They are not recommended procedures. They are the minimum operational requirements for compliance with the constitutional articles and principles they implement. A system that skips a protocol step is not a system with an incomplete process. It is a non-compliant system.

Each protocol violation invalidates the execution legitimacy of the event it governs. An escalation that bypasses the Threat Escalation Protocol is not an escalation with procedural gaps — it is an unauthorized escalation. A state mutation that occurs without the State Dump Protocol is not a mutation with incomplete documentation — it is a mutation without governance record.

The Seven Protocols

#	Protocol	One-Line Statement
1	State Dump Protocol	Any governance mutation must regenerate authoritative state — version, mode, threat posture, authority, protocol set, and artifact index
2	Mode Transition Protocol	All operational mode transitions must be explicit, logged, and authority-bound — silent transitions are invalid
3	Threat Escalation Protocol	Escalation requires explicit request, reclassification, approval, isolation assessment, and audit preparation — escalation by inference is prohibited
4	Constraint Declaration Protocol	Before action, scope and tool boundaries must be declared — execution without declared constraints is denied
5	Authority Binding Protocol	All artifacts must include authority context, threat level, version reference, and scope declaration — unbound output is non-canonical
6	Audit Integrity Protocol	Execution must produce durable trace artifacts including mode, threat, authority, tools invoked, state delta, and artifact references
7	Isolation Protocol	Level 5 operations require physical or network isolation and operator presence