KFD-7

KFD-7: Real-world action must keep state, occurrence, and action coordinates distinct

• Status: active
• Number: 7
• Kind: principle
• Applies to: any adopting product, repository, agent workflow, or participant-facing interface that represents consequential real-world action

One sentence

Real-world action must preserve admitted state and realized occurrence while keeping direction, perspective, and authority independently addressable.

Action begins from fact-bound direction, perspective, and authority, encounters reality, and returns as independently replayable causal experience.

Status and gate

KFD-7 is an active numbered decision promoted from the cross-domain action candidate. Its activation binds the exact cross-product evidence cut in evidence/kfd-7/activation-record.json and the independent KFD-level review recorded there.

The current model has enough theoretical closure to become an active standard decision: state and occurrence are not interchangeable, and direction, perspective, and authority can change safe action independently. The retained Buildchain and Kungfu Domain Profiles show that this separation transfers between release transactions and durable agent work while preserving a low-complexity session projection. Future Domain Profiles still qualify their own mapping, runtime behavior, product fitness, and residual risks.

Fact-Episode Ontology

KFD-7 distinguishes two complementary categories in the Fact-Episode Ontology:

Fact      Admitted state at a declared evidence boundary
Episode   Replayable causal record between Fact cuts

These are canonical explanatory subtitles, not aliases or additional formal types. A Fact Cut is the independently addressable formal carrier of Fact: an instance of admitted state at a declared source, authority, evidence, and time or version boundary. A Fact is therefore not absolute truth, and a Fact Cut is not a third ontology binding.

Facts define admitted state. Episodes preserve replayable evidence of realized causal occurrence. Together they form the ontology over which Action Responsibility Geometry operates. This is an ontology of KFD’s contract world, not a claim to enumerate all of reality.

An Episode preserves action, consequence, cost, failure, retry, authority use, and causal order rather than only before-and-after state. Equal endpoints do not imply equal experience. Fact cuts and Episodes remain independently addressable. An Episode does not silently admit its endpoint as current fact, and a state transition does not erase the path that produced it.

Action coordinates

Consequential action requires three independently addressable coordinates:

Atlas     Declared perspective over admitted facts
Pursuit   Continuing direction and progress relation
Warrant   Bounded authority for admissible transitions

The names Atlas, Pursuit, and Warrant identify the reference action coordinates used by this decision. KFD-7 standardizes their coordinate roles and independence. Their complete draft responsibilities are allocated separately by KFD-8, KFD-9, and KFD-10. Their semantics over the Fact-Episode Ontology are:

• perspective states from where, from which accepted facts, and at which cut action is judged;
• direction states which continuing change and consequences matter;
• authority states which transition may be performed, by whom, and under which constraints.

None may be silently derived from another. Intention does not grant authority. Available perspective is not complete reality. Permission or planning does not prove an Episode occurred. An Episode does not prove progress, completion, or authorization.

Action Responsibility Geometry and Domain Profiles

KFD-7 calls the cross-domain responsibility structure the Action Responsibility Geometry, the cross-domain responsibility model for real-world action:

Fact-Episode Ontology
  -> independently addressable direction, perspective, and authority
  -> cross-component invariants and conservative session projection

The subtitle “cross-domain responsibility model” explains Action Responsibility Geometry in plain language; it does not name another layer or interface. Action Responsibility Geometry defines three coordinates and their constraints over the Fact-Episode Ontology. It does not define one business domain’s fields, workflow labels, success policy, presentation, or storage layout. Atlas, Pursuit, and Warrant are reference action coordinates in this geometry. Fact and Episode are its ontology bindings. None is itself a Profile.

A Domain Profile is a versioned adopter declaration that explains how one domain inhabits the Action Responsibility Geometry. It maps domain objects and fields to the two ontology bindings and three action-coordinate mappings, and owns domain lifecycle vocabulary, validation, defaults, success policy, presentation, and qualification evidence. A Domain Profile may refine or progressively disclose the geometry, but it must not semantically fuse the mappings, redefine their meaning, or establish a second Fact or Episode authority.

This distinction is normative terminology, not a requirement for separate physical stores, records, APIs, processes, or user-facing configuration steps:

Action Responsibility Geometry  defines the cross-domain coordinates
Domain Profile   defines how a domain inhabits them

Several semantic components may share one physical record or interface. They remain independently addressable when their source, cut or version, applicable authority, and derivation remain inspectable; when one can change, expire, revoke, or become stale without silently changing another; and when prohibited cross-component inferences fail visibly. “Must not fuse” refers to this semantic distinguishability and traceability, not to a required count of data structures, endpoints, screens, or services.

Terminology authority

New decisions, adoption guides, and product documentation use one canonical language:

The machine declaration is schemas/kfd-7/domain-profile.schema.json, with contract kfd-7-domain-profile and schema version 1. It expresses the current structure directly:

ontologyBindings[]    Fact + Episode
actionCoordinates[]   Atlas + Pursuit + Warrant

The repository-wide terminology contract is the authority for canonical names, qualified first use, and prohibited ambiguous names.

Action closure

The normative closure is:

declared Fact cut
  -> independently addressable direction, perspective, and authority
  -> bounded action encounters reality
  -> independently replayable causal record
  -> claims, review, correction, and explicit admission
  -> successor Fact cut

The order is semantic, not a mandatory interface sequence. Low-consequence work may use inspectable defaults and progressive disclosure. Simplification may reduce ceremony but must not fuse responsibility or fabricate a missing role from another one.

Conservative session limit

KFD-7 is a conservative extension of ordinary agent sessions. When work has one local direction, one adequate bounded context, one stable authority grant, one contiguous execution, and sparse Fact change, an implementation must be able to project:

Pursuit  -> goal
Atlas    -> context
Warrant  -> tool permissions
Episode  -> session, run, or transcript
Fact     -> input state and result

The participant need not manage five explicit objects in this limit. The session-compatible surface is conforming when it preserves the relevant direction, perspective boundary, effective authority, realized occurrence, and admitted result, and keeps its defaults inspectable.

The formal reference defines this as a conditional round-trip theorem: expanding a session-compressible session into two ontology bindings and three action-coordinate mappings, then projecting it back, must preserve five decision observations. A product does not re-prove the abstract theorem; it proves that its concrete expansion, projection, and compressibility boundary refine it.

This compression is conditional. The independent responsibilities must become addressable when work crosses directions, perspectives or freshness cuts, authority states, causal Episodes, or material Fact branches. A session therefore remains a valid local interaction and runtime object; it is not the sole model of consequential real-world work.

Context is likewise not sufficient by itself. The same visible context can support different valid action sets when the Pursuit, Warrant, or Atlas cut and freshness differ. One physical session record may still conform, but only when it preserves those responsibilities rather than treating context as their substitute.

Gate

KFD-7 applies when an action has durable, cross-participant, cross-tool, authority-bearing, safety-relevant, or materially costly consequences. A purely local reversible operation may rely on defaults when the defaults and their consequence boundary remain inspectable.

A conforming claim:

• binds action to a declared fact cut and perspective;
• preserves continuing direction independently of one execution;
• identifies applicable authority and its constraints;
• records realized occurrence independently of planned or expected state;
• preserves causal boundaries and composition across successor cuts;
• keeps missing, defaulted, derived, expired, revoked, or degraded coordinates and bindings visible;
• does not infer completion, success, permission, or reality completeness from the wrong object.

Domain Profile adoption contract

KFD publishes schemas/kfd-7/domain-profile.schema.json as the version 1 Domain Profile Declaration against the Action Responsibility Geometry. It does not prescribe a universal product object model. It gives products and release systems one machine-readable place to declare:

• the Fact and Episode ontology bindings;
• the Pursuit, Atlas, and Warrant action-coordinate mappings;
• Domain Profile-owned lifecycle vocabulary and implementation coordinates;
• supported transitions with preconditions, effects, receipts, evidence, denial reasons, and residual risks;
• prohibited cross-component inferences and retained evidence obligations;
• extension ownership, non-claims, qualification state, and activation verdict;
• the standard session round-trip and context-insufficiency references, plus the evidence categories used to qualify a concrete implementation.

All five mapping declarations remain required even when a product uses one physical record or a low-complexity session projection. The declaration explains the binding, mapping, or inspectable default; it does not require five stores, objects, types, APIs, forms, commands, or interface components. Structural verification checks declaration closure, exact mappings, prohibited inferences, and evidence references. Product qualification checks semantic distinguishability through traceability, counterfactual variation, invalidation or revocation, and fail-visible negative evidence. Neither gate may infer conformance or failure from physical component count. Schema conformance alone does not prove component necessity, runtime behavior, product fitness, or activation.

Activation

KFD-7 activation is grounded in retained product evidence that:

• demonstrates counterfactual independence by holding two action coordinates fixed while varying the third;
• transfers the model across non-isomorphic work domains;
• distinguishes equal-endpoint but causally different Episodes;
• represents concurrency, compensation, failure, and retry without hidden reconstruction;
• demonstrates a low-complexity session round trip without semantic loss or manual object ceremony;
• shows that complexity breakpoints expose the required independent roles;
• proves that the implementation refines the standard round-trip theorem and retains same-payload counterexamples where valid action differs;
• compares task, goal, workflow, session, approval, capability, and fused alternatives;
• demonstrates lower total lifecycle cost or materially safer action.

The activate verdict binds two qualified Domain Profiles, exact implementation and availability cuts, independent product and KFD-level reviews, retained runtime witnesses, and no planned or failed evidence obligation. Missing evidence remains visible; it is never projected as pass.

Failure is evidence for revision, simplification, or rejection of the proposed Domain Profiles. It is not permission to infer one responsibility from another.

Relation to KFD-1 through KFD-6

KFD-1 keeps Fact cuts and Episodes from drifting. KFD-2 makes claims about them assessable. KFD-3 lets participants exchange trusted value without hidden pressure. KFD-4 supplies declared reference frames and inspectable transformations. KFD-5 separates the genesis of KFD Primitive Candidates from their qualification. KFD-6 asks whether causal experience can sustain autonomous discovery. KFD-7 turns those foundations back toward action:

non-drifting facts
  -> bounded trust
  -> transparent cooperation
  -> declared perspective
  -> qualified Primitives
  -> grounded discovery
  -> fact-bound real-world action

Verification

The non-normative reference semantics are published in docs/KFD-7-formal.md. The Domain Profile Declaration is published at schemas/kfd-7/domain-profile.schema.json and is implemented independently by the native and WebAssembly verifier projections. Current package verification proves document, metadata, route, digest, declaration, and negative-fixture closure. The activation evidence additionally binds product-owned runtime and release qualification without claiming universal minimality.

Adopters

Adopters cite KFD-7 when they expose the Action Responsibility Geometry through a Domain Profile. They own the evidence for coordinate independence, fact-cut admission, causal fidelity, authority correctness, progressive disclosure, and domain transfer.