GCL Negative-Knowledge Registry

Purpose

The negative-knowledge registry preserves bounded failures, obstructions, exhausted searches, counterexamples, and superseded implementation routes as durable institutional records.

It prevents three recurrent errors:

1. a failed route silently returning without its prior blocker;
2. a finite or assumption-dependent negative result being widened into a universal claim;
3. an issue comment being treated as authority after the underlying protected evidence changes.

The protected truth-spine record class is negative_knowledge_record. Issue #189 governs the pilot implementation.

Authority

The authoritative pilot is:

negative_knowledge/pilot_registry.json

Its closed schema is:

schemas/negative_knowledge_registry.schema.json

Validation runs through:

python3 ci/validate_negative_knowledge.py

The validator is reached from the existing Programme policy-reachability lane. A repository with no negative-knowledge surface is unaffected. Once any surface component appears, the complete schema, registry, and validator are required; partial adoption fails closed.

The registry declares the intended protected state active_pilot. That declaration has no authority on a feature branch. It becomes effective only after the exact subject receives external exact-head Referee review, explicit Human Steward release, and protected merge. Individual records name the reviewing office and satisfaction mode; they do not contain or simulate their own review disposition.

Record boundary

Every record binds:

• the exact attempted claim or mechanism;
• assumptions and included scope;
• explicitly excluded variants;
• method and execution identity;
• immutable evidence paths, commits, and Git blob identities;
• result and smallest known witness where applicable;
• what the result does not establish;
• present inactive disposition;
• structured reopening requirements;
• supersession lineage;
• review jurisdiction and claim-boundary fields.

The scope and evidence sections each receive a canonical SHA-256 digest. Changing either section without updating the corresponding digest is rejected.

Pilot records

Mathematical route obstruction

NK-NS-CI-A2-L4-001 records that the Navier–Stokes L4 weighted active-diagonal route is exhausted under its audited interfaces. It does not refute the restricted A2 target, the independent L5 route, or any future route based on a genuinely new PDE theorem.

Bounded computational exhaustion

NK-UC-N4-SCREEN-001 records exact exhaustion of the Union-Closed search on universes n <= 4, with no violation found. It does not establish Frankl's conjecture for larger universes or universally.

Superseded systems defect

NK-GCL-TOOLING-PARTIAL-SURFACE-001 records the exact policy-reachability integration defect found during tooling Tranche 1 and binds its protected repair. It prevents reintroduction of unconditional validation that treats absent and partial control surfaces identically.

Fail-closed rules

The pilot rejects:

• unknown or duplicate record identities;
• malformed or mutable-only evidence;
• scope or evidence digest drift;
• missing or mismatched reopening triggers;
• broken, self-referential, or cyclic lineage;
• superseded records without an exact successor identity;
• finite-search records widened beyond their finite scope;
• incompatible status and failure-kind combinations;
• silent route reactivation;
• embedded review self-attestation;
• theorem-level refutation without Referee jurisdiction;
• any mathematical, certification, novelty, priority, publication, patentability, product, or commercial promotion flag.

Status boundary

The pilot is candidate infrastructure until its exact PR head receives the required external review and Human Steward protected disposition. Validation proves only that the registry satisfies its declared contract. It does not prove the recorded mathematical targets, issue certificates, or establish broader impossibility claims.