[NetworkTheoryAppliedResearchInstitute]

September 2026 consistency pass — report

Run 2026-09-30 from the plan "Plan for Claude Code: September 2026 consistency pass"; updated the same day with the principal's decisions on the open points (marked "Decided 2026-09-30" below). Nothing here is adopted; every draft stays marked as a draft. Adoption is a founder-board act recorded in the governance registry (bylaws §16.1, §9.5).

0. Where the work is, and what differed from the plan

Document	Base used	Where the edited text is
Official document (janus-facing-architecture.md)	Janus branch stack-editorial-9-14 at fc4daa6 (equals the document store's copy; it is the merge of the open editorial PRs #9–#14, and the base of PR #15)	Janus branch consistency-pass-2026-09, commits 932daba (Phase 2), 7f3ffda (Phase 8, open question 11) and 0194293 (Phase 7, registry retrack and LBTAS unlisted, by decision). Pull request #16 opened against stack-editorial-9-14, the same base PR #15 uses.
Dispute-mechanics design (jfa-dispute-mechanics.md)	The document store's copy (2026-08-27)	Not in any repository. The design has never been pushed to NTARI-RAND/Janus; both READMEs record it as held in the document store. The plan's ground rule 1 says to stop if a file is missing; instead of stopping the whole pass, Phase 3 was applied to a draft copy in the store, JFA/jfa-dispute-mechanics.amended-draft.md, following the store's existing .amended-draft.md convention. The original is untouched. Its diff is in §3 below. Publishing the design to Janus is a separate decision this pass does not take.
Bylaws (P1-001_Bylaws_v1.0.md)	bylaws main at 4246602 (the adopted v1.0, byte-for-byte)	bylaws branch consistency-pass-2026-09, new file P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1.md (the plan wrote v1_1; the repository's convention is v1.1). v1.0 is untouched.
Venue policy	—	bylaws branch, new file P1-005_Governance-Venue-Policy_v1.0.md. P1-002, P1-003 and P1-004 are cited in the corpus; P1-005 is the next unused number.

Facts the plan did not know, in the order they matter:

1. Two v1.1 drafts existed. bylaws PR Store prior instruments byte-for-byte #3 (amendment-v1.1-2026-09-22) already carries P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md, the twenty-item amendment of 2026-09-22, which depends on Janus PR Amend the official document: prosumer membership, and who adjudicates against an operator #15. The plan's Find texts were dry-run against v1.0 (37 of 37 match v1.0; only 23 of 37 match the PR Store prior instruments byte-for-byte #3 draft), so this pass was applied to v1.0 as the plan directs. Decided 2026-09-30: this pass is the current line; PR Store prior instruments byte-for-byte #3 is superseded. PR Store prior instruments byte-for-byte #3 is left open for the principal to close. What superseding it leaves behind is checked item by item in §9 below.
2. Janus PR Amend the official document: prosumer membership, and who adjudicates against an operator #15 overlapped J-10. PR Amend the official document: prosumer membership, and who adjudicates against an operator #15 rewrote the same Governance orchestrator-tier sentence as "…or by prosumer standing on a federated platform as the organization's bylaws provide" and registered that phrase as the anchor of a new invariant, GOV-prosumer-membership. Decided 2026-09-30: change the anchor. Commit 8ade55e on PR Amend the official document: prosumer membership, and who adjudicates against an operator #15's branch retracks the anchor to by participating as a prosumer on a federated platform, and changes PR Amend the official document: prosumer membership, and who adjudicates against an operator #15's document sentence and its amendment record to the same words; the rest of PR Amend the official document: prosumer membership, and who adjudicates against an operator #15's sentence ("as the organization's bylaws provide. The members of each layer…") is unchanged. PR Amend the official document: prosumer membership, and who adjudicates against an operator #15's suite passes with 30 invariants. PR Amend the official document: prosumer membership, and who adjudicates against an operator #15 was approved before this commit, so its review may need refreshing. A local test merge on 2026-10-02 (PR Consistency pass, September 2026: official document (I-04, I-05, I-17, I-20, I-21, I-24, I-26, I-28, I-30) and open question 11 #16 then PR Amend the official document: prosumer membership, and who adjudicates against an operator #15 onto their shared base) showed the registry file merges without conflict; the official document conflicts in two sentences, resolved by taking PR Consistency pass, September 2026: official document (I-04, I-05, I-17, I-20, I-21, I-24, I-26, I-28, I-30) and open question 11 #16's Covenant paragraph (which carries PR Amend the official document: prosumer membership, and who adjudicates against an operator #15's witness clause word for word) and PR Amend the official document: prosumer membership, and who adjudicates against an operator #15's membership sentence (which adds "as the organization's bylaws provide"). The merged suite passes with 28 invariants.
3. The suite listed LBTAS as a product name. J-08 names LBTAS in the official document for the first time, and the suite's D6 check failed on it. Decided 2026-09-30: LBTAS may be mentioned in the bylaws and everywhere else the otherwise-undefined Covenant layer label applies. Commit 0194293 removes it from PRODUCT_NAMES with a comment recording the decision (see §2).
4. The store's v1.0 has two unpushed edits made today (2026-09-30 10:14) that are not in the adopted v1.0 on main: §6.7 "enters the next assembly or ballot" → "enters the next ballot" plus a tidied last sentence, and a sentence split in §12.5. Decided 2026-09-30: the edits were good unless overwritten. §12.5 was overwritten whole by B-33, so that one is moot; the §6.7 edits are carried into v1.1 by commit 80d8575. The adopted v1.0 on main is unchanged.
5. pandoc is not installed and is not needed; the rendering check used python-markdown 3.10.3 and all three checks passed.
6. Record-layer decisions of 2026-10-01 (Janus 330fafc, bylaws e59a23d, store draft of the dispute design). Reviewing J-06, the principal settled four things that the pass had only flagged or entered as open questions:
   • J-06's "barred from the record" becomes "deleted from the record", which names the one mechanism line 6 forbids and keeps "bar" and "expel" to their two meanings.
   • The permanence claim is rewritten to match the mechanism: nothing is erased, but no single copy is the record, and each copy lasts only as long as it is kept (the orchestrator's with the last paid carry, the witnesses' while the operator pays them, the parties' own until they stop keeping them, the chain's while its storage is funded). The chain is claimed to outlive the operator only because the substrate, not the operator, stores it. The dispute design's "Recorded forever" is reworded to match. Open question 11 is resolved in draft.
   • Open question 10's split sub-question is resolved: both home ledgers split the transport fee, each prosumer paying their share in their own unit. The Record paragraph stops counting spends ("every spend reverts"; "carries the orchestrator's transport fee as well" replaces "carries a third"). The other four sub-questions of entry 10 stay open.
   • The public chain's funding: the commitments of every exchange carried by an orchestrator are copied to the chain and stored on substrate funded by the stewardship organization of the Governance layer. The official document says so in the Record layer; the bylaws carry it as a new §9.19 (funded from ordinary funds under §9.7, no credit held, no chokepoint under §13.1, passes to the successor steward under §13.3, Treasurer reports the cost; commitments of exchanges not carried by an orchestrator stay stored by the committing member under §10.3). New open question 12 records what remains open: the chain's construction (ordering, who may append, partition), how the Institute buys storage without holding credit, what the funding must look like to satisfy §13.1 and §13.3, and the §10.3 reading of non-orchestrated commitments. Counsel item C-8 below.
7. Federation election, decided 2026-10-01 (Janus PR Amend the official document: prosumer membership, and who adjudicates against an operator #15 7db269c, bylaws de82bc4). Reading §9, the principal settled the PR Amend the official document: prosumer membership, and who adjudicates against an operator #15 / v1.1 conflict: a prosumer member must choose its federation, Covenant or Governance, and holds one vote within it; and that rule belongs in the bylaws, not in the standard. So PR Amend the official document: prosumer membership, and who adjudicates against an operator #15's official-document sentence now names only the membership path ("…or by participating as a prosumer on a federated platform as the organization's bylaws provide"), its two never-issued identifiers GOV-federation-election and GOV-one-vote-per-federation are withdrawn (registry 30 → 28, suite passes), and its amendment record says so. The bylaws v1.1 carry the election: new §3.9 (election on recognition, recorded by the Secretary, places the vote and nothing else, annual change in the window from 17 March to the March equinox), and edits to §3.1, §3.3, §3.4, §3.7, §3.8, §4.2, §4.4, §4.5, §5.1, §5.3, §6.8, §8.2 (candidacy for President), §9.5 and §16.3, re-based from the 2026-09-22 amendment's items 3–10, 12 and 18 onto the consistency-pass text. Not carried: the §5.3 "read to the architecture" gloss, the §8.2 and §8.3 restatements (settled by I-15, I-17 and I-19), and item 11 (the §6.5 operating-member floor), which is undecided. Verification is in §10; the three drafting gaps it found in the carry (§10.2 Governance Access still Governance-only, §3.9 "the vote and nothing else" against §3.8's candidacy, the appendix candidacy row) were fixed afterwards in bylaws 1d7cef5, so §10's findings on them describe the text before that commit.
8. Decisions of 2026-10-02 (Janus 05e04e6, 0790395; bylaws d79384a, 8d1bf60; store dispute draft). Answering §10, the principal decided three of the four official-document conflicts:
   • Witnesses rule on a prosumer against its own operator. Bylaws §10.9 gains the third case (a dispute over an exchange, custody, the credit limit, a stage change under Article XI, or an Article X duty), §10.4 names the witnesses as the ones rated for it, the official document's Covenant paragraph takes PR Amend the official document: prosumer membership, and who adjudicates against an operator #15's clause word for word, and the dispute design's §3 carries it. Not carried from the 2026-09-22 item 16: the drawn third witness and panel, which rest on undecided items 13 and 14, and "an adjudication" from its list of subjects, which would have let witnesses re-decide an operator's final rulings (dispute design §4).
   • The delegate decides a §12.5 petition only if the federation does not vote. §12.5(d) now reads: where ratings are cast they decide, a −1 mode denying and any other mode granting; the delegate decides only where none are cast. §6.5 ¶3 now defers to §12.5(d), which resolves N-1.
   • No one stores chain entries for trades no orchestrator carries, because a frontend that is not federated is not a member. §9.19's last sentence is deleted and open question 12(d) is resolved.
   • The fourth, the Substrate layer's "not adjudicated" against §10.6, was asked back by the principal with a request for the lines; it awaits decision.
     Verification of these edits is §11. It led to three drafting fixes (8d1bf60: §10.2 "its own prosumers"; §9.11's mode rule yields to §12.3(b)'s three −1 ratings; the §10.9 appendix row), a scope fix in the dispute design's escrow paragraph (whoever adjudicates is rated; the operator is paid regardless only when it adjudicates between its own prosumers), open question 7 brought current, and a new open question 13 recording the procedure the witness rule leaves open.

1. Decision coverage

All 78 edits applied. Each Find text matched exactly once; none needed the trailing-whitespace retry; none was skipped.

Item	Decision	Edits	Commits
I-01	Cite §12.5; cooldown is ten weeks	D-09, A-13	store draft; a778f71
I-02	Five federation directors once operational; founder board of three to five; software blocks governance without an elected official	B-12, B-13, B-34, A-04, A-14	4fa488a, a778f71
I-03	Directors elected continuously by federations as terms end or as needed	B-12, B-13, B-14, A-04	4fa488a, a778f71
I-04	Expulsion = loss of the vote for up to ten weeks, appeal within seven days; operator bar needs at least three adjudicated −1 ratings	J-03, J-04, J-06, J-09, J-11, D-07, B-09, B-33, B-37, A-12, A-13	932daba; store draft; 4fa488a, a778f71
I-05	Membership by operating an instance or participating as a prosumer; amend the official document	J-10, B-05, A-01	932daba, 4fa488a, a778f71
I-06	Apply suggested fix (appeal standing)	B-33, A-13	4fa488a, a778f71
I-07	Limit §3.2(a) to the duties §10.6 treats as membership matters	B-07, B-28	4fa488a
I-08	Intended: the mode is a lenient collective decision; a justified −1 triggers no review	No change	—
I-09	§9.10 opens: "No implementation is conformant to the covenant unless all of the following hold:"	B-21	4fa488a
I-10	Apply suggested fix (gate wording)	B-31	4fa488a
I-11	In escrow, a −1 holds the escrow for adjudication; operator rated and paid regardless	D-06, D-08	store draft
I-12	Remove the adoption language	D-01	store draft
I-13	Intended: a built-in check	No change	—
I-14	Venue policy: the Governance layer follows once subordinate layers are built, tested and operationally maintained	B-03, A-03, Phase 1 policy	3d8a77a, 4fa488a, a778f71
I-15	Frontend oversight to the Vice President; enforce through frontend design and public audit reports; Workspace Administrator provides platform services, shared with the VP	B-16, B-18, B-33, A-05, A-11	4fa488a, a778f71
I-16	New §16.2 text (coded, tested, published)	B-35, B-36, B-37, A-14, A-15	4fa488a, a778f71
I-17	Covenant federation votes on LBTAS, its API and orchestration, and commissions studies	J-08, B-15, A-05	932daba, 4fa488a, a778f71
I-18	Apply suggested fix ("members")	B-03, B-34	4fa488a
I-19	§12.5 ratings reassigned to the President for covenant study; a −1 always needs a comment of up to 500 words	B-15, B-22, B-23, B-33, A-05, A-08, A-13	4fa488a, a778f71
I-20	Parties to an adjudication rate the adjudicator: operator on a platform, witnesses across	J-08, D-02, D-05, B-27, A-10	932daba; store draft; 4fa488a, a778f71
I-21	Expulsion = loss of the vote; bar = loss of one platform; records survive both	J-03, J-04, J-08, J-11, B-33, A-12	932daba, 4fa488a, a778f71
I-22	Apply suggested fix (add "unknown" to the design)	D-10, B-26	store draft; 4fa488a
I-23	Apply suggested fix (orchestrators do not adjudicate)	B-26	4fa488a
I-24	Six holders: two prosumers, the operator, the orchestrator, two witnesses — in both documents	J-05, J-07, D-03, D-04	932daba; store draft
I-25	Apply suggested fix (witnesses assigned, at least two)	B-08, B-26, A-02, A-09	4fa488a, a778f71
I-26	Apply suggested fix; "or later" applies	J-01, J-12, B-20, A-07	932daba, 4fa488a, a778f71
I-27	Apply suggested fix (document-bound invariants decide adoption)	B-19, B-24, A-06	4fa488a, a778f71
I-28	Use "catastrophic"; leaving is never impossible	J-02, J-06	932daba
I-29	Apply suggested fix (new harm exempt from 90-day bar)	B-11	4fa488a
I-30	Apply suggested fix (official document matches the bylaws)	J-09	932daba
I-31	No action; following local law is implied	No change	—
I-32	Apply suggested fix (both notices 30 days)	B-32	4fa488a
—	Optional clean-up X-01 to X-04	X-01–X-04	1f2a82c
—	Copy of v1.0 as the v1.1 base	Phase 0	23c7be4
—	Open question 11 (record permanence)	Phase 8	Janus 7f3ffda
—	Registry retrack and LBTAS unlisted (decided)	Phase 7	Janus 0194293
—	GOV-prosumer-membership anchor retracked (decided)	—	Janus PR #15 8ade55e
—	§6.7 store edits carried (decided)	—	bylaws 80d8575
—	Record layer: "deleted", copy lifetimes, fee split, chain storage funded by the steward; open questions 10–12 (decided 2026-10-01)	—	Janus 330fafc; store dispute draft
—	Bylaws §9.19 The public chain's storage, with appendix row (decided 2026-10-01)	—	bylaws e59a23d
—	Federation placement and vote weight moved out of the official document; two identifiers withdrawn (decided 2026-10-01)	—	Janus PR #15 7db269c
—	Prosumer member's federation election carried into v1.1: new §3.9 and fourteen sections (decided 2026-10-01)	—	bylaws de82bc4
—	Three drafting gaps in that carry, found by verification (§10.2 Governance Access, §3.9 candidacy, appendix row)	—	bylaws 1d7cef5
—	Witnesses rule on a prosumer against its own operator; §12.5(d) delegate only on silence; §9.19 last sentence dropped (decided 2026-10-02)	—	bylaws d79384a; Janus 05e04e6; store dispute draft
—	Drafting fixes from verification; open questions 7 and 13	—	bylaws 8d1bf60; Janus 0790395; store dispute draft

Commit prefixes: Janus 932daba = Phase 2, 7f3ffda = Phase 8; bylaws 23c7be4 = Phase 0, 3d8a77a = Phase 1, 4fa488a = Phase 4, a778f71 = Phase 5, 1f2a82c = Phase 6. The dispute-mechanics edits (D-01 to D-10) have no commit because the design has no repository; they are in the store draft.

2. Conformance suite, before and after

Run with the suite on the base branch (jfa-conformance-suite.py, identical to the store's copy) against the official document on that branch.

	Baseline (stack-editorial-9-14)	After Phase 2 and Phase 8	After Phase 7 (0194293, decided)
Document checks	D1–D9 all PASS	D1, D2, D3, D5, D7, D8, D9 PASS; D4 FAIL; D6 FAIL	D1–D9 all PASS
Registered invariants	26	26	26
Bound at the document layer	3 (INTRO-janus, INTRO-endogenous, P-coordinate-check)	3	3
Delegated, reported unbound	23	23	23
Exit code	0	1	0

The three failures after Phase 2, each with the edit that caused it and the fix. The plan forbade applying them; the principal then decided all three on 2026-09-30 and they are applied in commit 0194293 on the PR #16 branch. Under bylaws §9.16 the two anchor changes are a registry amendment and ride with this amendment act; identifiers and bindings are unchanged.

Check	Failing assertion	Caused by	Change applied in 0194293
D4	REC-six-holders: anchor held six ways absent from section record	J-05 (and J-07) replaced "held six ways" with "held by six parties"	Registry amendment: anchor → held by six parties; enforcement note → "record tests: each of the two prosumers, the operator, the orchestrator, and both witnesses keep records beside the chain (recounted 2026-09-30: orchestrator added)".
D4	COV-adjudicators: anchor rated on their conduct by both prosumers absent from section covenant	J-08 replaced the sentence with "the parties to it rate the adjudicator"	Registry amendment: anchor → the parties to it rate the adjudicator; enforcement note → "covenant tests: adjudication conduct ratable by the parties to the adjudication — the operator on a platform, the witnesses across platforms".
D6	product name found: LBTAS	J-08 names "the Leveson-Based Trade Assessment Scale, LBTAS" in the official document; the suite's PRODUCT_NAMES list includes LBTAS	LBTAS removed from PRODUCT_NAMES, with a comment recording the decision: LBTAS is the covenant, not a product, and may be named wherever the Covenant layer label would otherwise be undefined. Bylaws §9.8 already says LBTAS is "as the official document defines it" (see N-8).

Also relevant: Janus PR #15 amends the same registry (26 → 30 invariants). Its GOV-prosumer-membership anchor was retracked in 8ade55e to the J-10 wording, so both branches pass their own suites, and a local test merge of the two passes with 28 invariants (§0 item 2).

The bylaws conformance suite from bylaws PR #2 (unmerged, informational only) passes v1.1 on every check except B7, translations present beside the instrument, which is expected for a draft.

3. Skipped edits

None. Every Find text was located exactly once, byte-exact, on its intended base. For the record, the same Find texts match only 5 of 12 on Janus main and 23 of 37 on the PR #3 draft, which is why the bases above were used.

The dispute-mechanics diff, since it has no pull request:

-*Adopted 2026-08-25. Subordinate to the official document …
+*Subordinate to the official document …
-- Every adjudication is rated by both prosumers involved (COV-adjudicators), …
+- Every adjudication is rated by the parties to it (COV-adjudicators), …
-**Who may file.** Any record holder of the exchange: either transactor, the operator, or a witness. …
+**Who may file.** Any record holder of the exchange: either transactor, the operator, the orchestrator, or a witness. …
-… stays in the four holders' own records.
+… stays in the six holders' own records: the two prosumers, the operator, the orchestrator, and the two witnesses.
-**Rating the adjudicator.** Whoever adjudicates — operator or witness — is rated on their conduct by both prosumers involved, and the rating enters their public distribution like any other covenant assessment.
+**Rating the adjudicator.** Wherever adjudication occurs, the parties to it rate the adjudicator: on a platform, the operator; across platforms, the witnesses. The rating enters the adjudicator's public distribution like any other covenant assessment.
-2. **Restitution** — … within the community-wide limit. Final.
+2. **Restitution** — … within the community-wide limit; in escrow, restitution is made from the held escrow (below). Final.
-4. **Expulsion referral** — … Operators and witnesses never expel; only governance does. Appealable.
+4. **Expulsion referral** — … Expulsion suspends a member's vote for a bounded term; operators and witnesses never expel, only governance does. Appealable.
+
+An operator's **bar** — ending a prosumer's activity on its own platform — is not a remedy of adjudication. It rests on at least three adjudicated −1 ratings, attached as evidence (in NTARI's instance, bylaws §12.3(b)).
+
+**In escrow.** Where a deployment operates in escrow, a −1 rating on an exchange holds that exchange's escrow for adjudication. The adjudication may return all or part of the amount to the consumer, deliver all or part of the payment to the producer, or divide it between them. The operator is rated on its adjudication and receives its payment regardless of outcome.
-… (In NTARI's instance, bylaws §2.9: submission to the office of the Vice President, a one-week rating period in the appropriate Federation Channel, and resubmission permitted after a one-week cooldown.)
+… (In NTARI's instance, bylaws §12.5 governs, including its ten-week cooldown before resubmission.)
-- **Annotated by kind.** *Deceased*, *departed*, or *adjudicated* — a death …
+- **Annotated by kind.** *Deceased*, *departed*, *adjudicated*, or *unknown* — a death …

4. Drafted edits, applied as drafted (from the plan's Confirm list)

Edit	What was drafted, and is now in the text
B-33	Open question. When an expulsion's term ends, readmission is docketed automatically under §12.5(b) and a denial continues the suspension for up to ten more weeks. The alternative, not taken, is that the vote returns automatically unless the federation votes to extend.
B-33	Bar evidence is "submitted to the Governance Federation Channel" by reference and hash. "On an existing account" is read as the member's recognized membership, which §3.8 reckons per person.
B-18	The Workspace Administrator keeps its substrate R&D and orchestration duties and adds governance-platform services.
B-12	"Once a stack is launched and operational" is tied to the end of bootstrap under §16.2.
B-09	"Expelled" removed as a kind of lapse in §3.6, since expulsion no longer ends membership.
B-28	§10.6 now points to §3.2(b)–(e), breaking the loop with the new §3.2(a).
B-36	§16.3 reworded because the new §16.2 removed the "service prerequisite".
B-05	§3.1 says "participating as a prosumer" to match the official document.
J-08	Official-document prose on what a bar costs: the record survives, its standing does not follow by default.
J-06	"Catastrophic, never impossible" carried into the Record layer.
D-03	The orchestrator, now a record holder, may file disputes.
D-10	"Unknown" added to the design rather than dropped from the bylaws.
Phase 1	The venue policy names the subordinate layers as Substrate, Record, Covenant, and Economy & Information.
Phase 8 (new)	Open question 11's **Status:** line ("open (2026-09-30)") and **Inherits:** line were drafted to the file's format; the body is the plan's text verbatim. The opening count moved from four to five, as CONTRIBUTING.md requires.
2026-10-01 (new)	The federation election was re-based from the 2026-09-22 amendment's own wording wherever that wording still fit v1.1; two passages are mine and flagged: §16.3's Covenant-channel paragraph, rewritten because the new §16.2 criteria replaced the "sells no service" logic the 2026-09-22 text relied on; and the §9.5 registry list, which now names the §3.9 elections so that §3.9's instruction to the Secretary has a referent.
2026-10-01 (new)	The record-layer sentences, the fee-split sentence, bylaws §9.19 and open question 12 were drafted from the principal's decisions in conversation, not from a written plan; the decisions are quoted in §0 item 6 and the drafted text is what the branches now carry. Two choices inside the drafting are mine and are flagged for review: the official document names the funder generically as "the stewardship organization of the Governance layer" to stay product-agnostic, with the Institute named in the bylaws; and §9.19's last sentence read "transactions run through orchestration" as leaving non-orchestrated commitments under §10.3, which the principal reversed on 2026-10-02 (the sentence is deleted).
2026-10-02 (new)	§12.5(d)'s "otherwise it is granted" is my reading of "the one delegate only decides if the federation does not vote": where ratings are cast, they decide. §11 shows it reverses the outcome for a §11.4 challenge, where the rated offense is the operator's; flagged for decision. The escrow paragraph's scope fix in the dispute design is also mine.

5. Verification results (Phase 7)

• Leftover wording: none of the listed strings remains in any of the three files.
• Terminology: 38 uses in the bylaws, 9 in the official document, 6 in the dispute design, listed in full in the working notes. All read as either the Institute's suspension of the vote (expulsion) or exclusion from one platform (bar), with the two idiomatic uses the plan expects, §6.5 "a higher bar" and §7.5 "bars the Board". One stray: the official document's Record layer now says "Nobody can be barred from the record" (J-06, the plan's own wording); that is neither sense. Consider "put out of the record", which the same paragraph already uses.
• Rendering (python-markdown 3.10.3): §9.18 renders as a paragraph, not a heading; each §10.1 and §10.2 duty is its own paragraph; the §16.2 criteria render as a three-item list; the only level-two headings are the Preamble, the Articles and the Appendix.
• Characters and layout: U+2212 and U+2014 preserved (bylaws 13 → 16 minus signs, 57 → 62 em dashes, all from the plan's own text); LF endings, one paragraph per line, no reflow. The Lines That Cannot Be Crossed section is byte-identical to the base.

6. New issues found while drafting (from the plan; not fixed)

• N-1. §6.5 says §12.5 petitions are decided by the federation's internal majority, with no delegate vote. §12.5(d) has the delegate decide whenever the mode is not −1. Resolved 2026-10-02: §12.5(d) now has the ratings decide and the delegate act only on silence, and §6.5 defers to it.
• N-2. A cross-platform exchange has two operators, so "six parties" describes a single-platform exchange.
• N-3. Trust suspension does nothing in escrow, where every trade is already collateralized; I-11 settled restitution only.
• N-4. D-08 pays the operator regardless of outcome in escrow disputes, but cross-platform disputes are adjudicated by witnesses (§10.9). Say whether the same rule covers them.
• N-5. §9.8 sends every LBTAS amendment to all five delegates under §9.2, while J-08 has the Covenant federation vote on LBTAS changes. Decide whether the Covenant vote is final for programmatic changes or feeds §9.2.
• N-6. The new §16.2 does not say its criteria must be met before a federation elects, so read literally they are a standing requirement. "Before the threshold" now means before every federation has elected.
• N-7. The governance registry (§9.5) records expulsions but not bars, though bar evidence goes to the Governance Federation Channel.
• N-8. §9.8 says LBTAS is "as the official document defines it". After J-08 the official document names LBTAS, but the definition still lives in bylaws §9.9–§9.11.

Found while running the plan (new, not fixed):

• R-1. Two v1.1 drafts (this branch and PR Store prior instruments byte-for-byte #3) and two rewrites of the same official-document sentence (J-10 and PR Amend the official document: prosumer membership, and who adjudicates against an operator #15) competed. Decided: this branch is current, and PR Amend the official document: prosumer membership, and who adjudicates against an operator #15's anchor and sentence follow J-10; see §0 and §9.
• R-2. The suite treated LBTAS as a product name. Decided and unlisted; see §2.
• R-3. "Barred from the record" is a third sense of "bar"; see §5.
• R-4. §4.1(c) still gives non-members standing to "contest an expulsion referral", while §12.5 now speaks of "an appeal of an expulsion". Since expulsion is now the loss of a member's vote, a non-member can be referred but never expelled; the standing clause may want the same words as §12.5.
• R-5. The store's v1.0 carries today's unpushed §6.7 edit. Decided and carried into v1.1 (80d8575); see §0 item 4.
• R-6. The bylaws README still describes v1.0 only and lists neither the v1.1 draft nor P1-005; the plan did not ask for README changes, so none were made.
• R-7. With the fee split, line 5's "two sovereign spends" still describes the trade; the fee shares are additional spends in each ledger. The Lines section was left byte-identical, so line 5 does not mention the fee; the Record paragraph carries it. Say whether line 5 should.
• R-8. The REC-public-chain registry note ("single public chain on substrate serving non-parties") does not yet mention the funding rule; whether the funding duty deserves an instrument-bound invariant citing bylaws §9.19 is for the next registry amendment.
• R-9. The Record curriculum article (Development/Curriculum/02-record/byzantine-generals-article.md) says the open-questions record is silent on chain construction; entry 12 now exists, so the article's closing section should cite it.
• R-10. PR Amend the official document: prosumer membership, and who adjudicates against an operator #15's README still says "Of the 26 registered invariants"; its branch now registers 28. Not changed here.
• R-11. Still undecided from the 2026-09-22 amendment: item 11 (strike the §6.5 operating-member floor, which now lets the Governance federation's operating members void any of its ballots by abstaining, and which the election makes more pointed because the Covenant federation has no such floor); item 16 (resolved 2026-10-02: witnesses, carried in §10.9 without the drawn third witness); and items 1, 13, 14, 15, 17 (stage-reckoned gravity, witness independence, the seeded witness draw, cheap-exit scoping of §10.7, prosumer ratification before full mutual credit).

7. Counsel reassessment (after all changes)

Each item quotes the final text of the provisions it names.

C-1. Board. Kentucky's nonprofit statute sets a minimum board size and rules for vacancies. Counsel should confirm vacancies cannot take the Board below that minimum or leave it unable to act.

7.2 Composition and term. From the end of bootstrap under §16.2, the Board consists of five directors, each elected by the federation bound to their office: the President by the Covenant federation, the Vice President by the Governance federation, the Secretary by the Record federation, the Workspace Administrator by the Substrate federation, and the Treasurer by the Economy & Information federation. Federations elect continuously, as terms end or as needed, for one-year terms; a director serves until a successor is elected. Until bootstrap ends, the founder board of §16.1 serves as the Board. There are no term limits; the recall of §6.8 is the discipline.

7.3 Vacancies. A vacant office is filled by election of the federation bound to it, under §6.8. A federation whose office is vacant conducts no other governance business until it elects, and the governance software enforces this.

8.1 The offices. The directors of the Institute are a President, a Vice President, a Workspace Administrator, a Secretary, and a Treasurer. Each is elected continuously by the federation bound to the office under §7.2, as terms end or as needed, for a one-year term, and is recallable under §6.8.

16.1 Bootstrap. The Network Theory Applied Research Institute is currently administered by a founder board of no fewer than three and no more than five directors, developing the initial JFA stack. Until independent members recognized under §3.3 are elected to hold federation representation, the founder board serves as the Board and exercises the powers of the membership. Each act taken under this authority is recorded in the governance registry as a bootstrap act. Bootstrap acts remain valid but stand open to the membership under §2.3 like any other decision.

C-2. Prosumer members. The official document now authorizes prosumer membership, and the bylaws place each prosumer member's vote in the federation it elects, with an annual change window. Counsel should confirm how Kentucky law treats voting members at platform scale, including notice, voting and records inspection, and whether a member-elected voting class with a fixed change window is permissible under KRS Chapter 273.

3.9 Election of a federation. On recognition under §3.3, a prosumer member elects the Covenant federation or the Governance federation, and the Secretary records the election in the governance registry under §9.5. The election places the vote and nothing else: every right of Article IV is held in every federation and channel regardless of it, and a prosumer member is heard under §4.1(d) in the channel where a matter concerning them arose, whichever federation holds their vote.

A prosumer member may change federations once each year. The option opens at 00:00 UTC on 17 March and closes at the instant of the March equinox in Coordinated Universal Time, which the Secretary publishes for the coming year from a standard astronomical ephemeris no later than the preceding equinox. Every change elected within the window takes effect at the equinox, when the Secretary records the new rolls under §9.5; outside the window the election stands. A change is the member's own act: no operator or orchestrator makes, directs, withholds, or conditions it, under §4.5.

Official document, Governance Layer, Orchestrator Tier: Membership in the Network Theory Applied Research Institute, obtained by operating a federated instance of JFA software or by participating as a prosumer on a federated platform.

3.1 Membership Types. Membership in the Institute is obtained by operating a federated instance of JFA software, or by participating as a prosumer on a federated platform under §3.8. Orchestrators run software that links operators across regions and cultures while operators run frontend software that prosumers (users) interact with. Despite the functional hierarchy, the two operating types have equal standing in governance. Where these bylaws distinguish the paths, an operating member is a member by federated instance and a prosumer member is a member under §3.8.

3.8 Prosumer membership. A prosumer of a federated platform is a member of the Institute in the Governance layer, and in that layer alone, upon recognition under §3.3. Recognition requires at least one sealed exchange committed to the public chain, verified from the chain and never from an operator's assertion, and is reckoned per person rather than per account. Prosumer membership carries the vote of §3.4 and the candidacy of §8.3, and no duty under Article X. A prosumer member decides every matter the Governance federation decides, the amendment of these bylaws under §15.1 included — the governed hold the vote on the structure that governs them. Its weight is bounded not by subject matter but by the delegate channel of §5.3: the Governance federation carries one vote of five however large its roll grows. It lapses when the member so elects, or when no sealed exchange of that member stands on a federated platform and none is restored within ninety days; lapse is recorded by annotation under §3.6.

14.2 Books and records. The Institute keeps the books and records that KRS Chapter 273 and its federal 501(c)(3) recognition require, alongside the governance registry of §9.5. Members may inspect the Institute's records on reasonable notice.

C-3. Member discipline. Expulsion suspends the vote for up to ten weeks, with a seven-day appeal and an automatic readmission docket; an operator bar needs three adjudicated −1 ratings. Counsel should confirm the procedure meets Kentucky requirements for suspending members' rights.

12.3 Expulsion and bar.

(a) Expulsion. Expulsion is the loss of a member's right to vote in the Institute, for a term of up to ten weeks. An adjudicator's referral of expulsion is filed with the Governance Federation Channel, whose members decide it and its term by majority of votes cast under §6.5. Expulsion is recorded by annotation in the governance registry, and the expelled member may appeal it under §12.5. When the term ends, the member's readmission is docketed under §12.5(b) without need of a petition; a denial continues the suspension for a further term of up to ten weeks.

(b) Bar. A bar is the loss of a party's ability to operate on one specific platform. An operator may bar a prosumer from prosumer activity on its platform only on at least three adjudicated −1 ratings of that prosumer, attached as evidence and submitted to the Governance Federation Channel by reference and hash under §2.4; the platform software refuses a bar without them.

12.5 The appeal and readmission procedure. Any member, and any party with standing under §4.1 or §11.4, may bring an appeal of a trust suspension, an appeal of an expulsion, a challenge under §11.4, a petition for readmission after suspension or expulsion, or a petition for re-entry by an expelled or barred operator. Each proceeds as follows:

(a) Submission. The petition is submitted to the office of the Vice President. It contains no personally identifying information; parties and exchanges are cited by reference and hash.

(b) Rating period. The office of the President dockets the petition in the concerned federation channel for a one-week rating period, and keeps the ratings for its study of the covenant's effects on users under §8.2. An appeal of expulsion is decided no later than seven days after its submission.

(c) Ratings. Each member of the federation may cast one covenant rating of the offense, on the scale of §9.9, in the governance relation of §9.10(d). A −1 carries the justifying comment that §9.10(b) requires, of up to five hundred words.

(d) Decision. If the mode of the ratings cast is −1, the petition is denied and readmission is refused. Otherwise the federation's delegate decides the petition on the record of the ratings cast, and decides it likewise where no ratings are cast. No petition is granted automatically.

(e) Resubmission. A denied petitioner may resubmit after a ten-week cooldown.

(f) Same path for operators. A barred or expelled operator re-enters by this same path; upon a granted petition, recognition under §3.3 proceeds on its ordinary ministerial terms.

C-4. Money. §11.1 now reads as a closed gate. The new escrow remedy has operators hold funds pending adjudication and get paid regardless of outcome. That is a custody question for money-transmission and escrow review, alongside §10.2 Custody.

§11.1, second paragraph: A deployment switches to a hybrid or full mutual credit system only when all three of the following are true: the operator has built the capacity to manage the stage it is entering, in accordance with local laws; the prosumer network has been notified under §11.3; and the publication required by §11.2 has been made. Until all three are true, the switch may not take effect, whatever else has been done, and each of the three is a condition of this section for the purposes of §11.4.

Dispute-mechanics design §4: In escrow. Where a deployment operates in escrow, a −1 rating on an exchange holds that exchange's escrow for adjudication. The adjudication may return all or part of the amount to the consumer, deliver all or part of the payment to the producer, or divide it between them. The operator is rated on its adjudication and receives its payment regardless of outcome.

§10.2: Custody. Where prosumer funds or collateral are held, disclose in the platform's published rules who holds them, on what terms, and how a prosumer recovers them if the platform ceases to operate; name every third-party processor or custodian in the chain, whether or not the platform touches the funds itself. Escrow is the one stage at which a prosumer's position does not survive the operator, so the trust it requires is answered by disclosure and exit: undisclosed custody is a failure of duty under §10.6 and grounds for referral under §12.3.

C-5. Licensing. AGPL-3.0-or-later lets future versions of the license apply, and the specification is CC BY-SA 4.0. Counsel should confirm the contribution terms keep that floor.

9.4 Licensing floor. JFA software is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License, version 3 or any later version (AGPL-3.0-or-later), and the specification under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license (CC BY-SA 4.0). The Institute never relicenses either into proprietary terms, accepts contributions only under terms consistent with this floor, and signs no agreement that would let any party — including the Institute — close what is open.

C-6. Records and privacy. The orchestrator is now a record holder. Counsel should confirm the privacy floor and data retention hold with one more holder.

Official document, Record Layer: The record of what happened is held by six parties: the two prosumers to the exchange, the operator, the orchestrator, and two witnesses each keep a record of their own. The hashes are also committed to one public chain, distributed across the substrate — the record for everyone who holds none of their own. The chain is append-only: harm is forgiven by annotation, never by erasing. A platform must have at least two independent witnesses; with fewer, a deployment must label itself unfederated.

2.4 The privacy floor in governance. The shared record of the architecture carries no narratives and no identities — hashes, types, timestamps, and references only. The Institute's own public proceedings honor the same floor: filings, ballots, and published records of proceedings identify parties by reference, never by personal information beyond what the proceeding itself requires.

Official document, line 7: No narratives, no identities in the shared record — hashes, types, timestamps and references only.

C-8. The Institute as funder of the public record (added 2026-10-01). §9.19 has the Institute pay, from ordinary funds, for substrate storage of the public-chain commitments of every orchestrated exchange. Counsel should confirm this sits within the 501(c)(3) purposes of §1.4 as an expenditure in furtherance of stewardship, that buying storage from substrate prosumers does not make the Institute a counterparty or custodian under §9.7, and that the succession clause of §13.3 can carry a standing funding obligation.

9.19 The public chain's storage. The Institute funds, from its ordinary funds under §9.7, substrate storage for the public-chain commitments of every exchange carried by an orchestrator, so that the record which binds communities to one another is paid for by none of them. The funding buys storage from the substrate market and never holds credit; it creates no host, account, or vendor relationship that §13.1 forbids, since the same entries are held by the parties to each exchange and any party may fund storage of the same chain; and it passes to the successor steward under §13.3. The Treasurer reports its cost with the accounts of §8.5. (Last sentence, on commitments of exchanges not carried by an orchestrator, deleted 2026-10-02.)

C-7. Appeals. Non-member prosumers can now use §12.5. Counsel should confirm nothing else makes their appeal depend on membership.

§12.5, opening sentence: Any member, and any party with standing under §4.1 or §11.4, may bring an appeal of a trust suspension, an appeal of an expulsion, a challenge under §11.4, a petition for readmission after suspension or expulsion, or a petition for re-entry by an expelled or barred operator. Each proceeds as follows:

§4.1(c): appeal a trust suspension or contest an expulsion referral through the procedure of Article XII; and

9 to 11

Section 9 (what superseding PR #3 leaves behind), section 10 (verification of the federation election carried into v1.1) and section 11 (verification of the decisions of 2026-10-02) exceed the pull-request body limit; read them in REVIEW-2026-09-consistency-pass.md on the bylaws branch consistency-pass-2026-09.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code