Agenda Kernel Criterion Canonical Before a response can count as adequate, it must have the right shape: recovery, typing, bridges, verification, failure conditions, and residual-boundary disclosure.
Kernel CriterionCanonical

Answer-Shape Requirements

Before a response can count as adequate, it must have the right shape: recovery, typing, bridges, verification, failure conditions, and residual-boundary disclosure.

Result Criteria No Externalities
Positive
The page says what a serious answer must include, not only what the program refuses.
Typed
Different question classes require different answer-shapes across mathematics, physics, life, and metaphysics.
Auditable
A result must expose status, scope, dependencies, failure modes, and unresolved boundaries.

Why answer-shapes matter

A large theory can fail even when individual sentences sound plausible.

It can predict without explaining, formalize without bridging, simulate without substrate, classify without recovery, or make metaphysical claims without public failure conditions. Answer-Shape Requirements prevent those shortcuts from being mistaken for success.

The Package 2 white paper The Shape of a Theory of Reality states the public doctrine behind this page: a theory of reality may not start with borrowed words and treat them as explanations. It must earn its language, earn its questions, and only then earn its answers.

Core requirements

Problem recovery The answer must say which problem or burden it addresses and what is actually recovered.
Layer typing The answer must locate itself: mathematical, physical, life, metaphysical, bridge, verification, or status claim.
Recovery path The answer must show how the relevant structure arises, rather than merely naming it.
No hidden externality Dependencies must be internalized, derived, typed, factored out, bridged, or marked unresolved.
Diagrammatic inspectability The answer must expose enough structure to be followed in the public corpus or verification surface.
Model / phenomenon / ontic distinction The answer must not silently turn usefulness into ontic status.
Verification mode The answer must identify how it can be checked, challenged, formalized, compared, or falsified.
Failure conditions The answer must say what would weaken, refute, or reclassify it.
Status and scope The answer must carry a status label that does not exceed its evidence.
Residual boundary disclosure Unresolved boundaries must be disclosed instead of hidden inside confident prose.

By question class

Mathematical answers may require definitions, theorems, proofs, formal dependencies, Lean status, and bridge criteria.

Physics answers may require quantity typing, dimensional consistency, regimes, measurement bridges, empirical contact, and falsification pressure.

Life answers may require organizational closure, boundary conditions, heredity, evolution, development, ecology, and mind/life transitions.

Metaphysical answers may require explicit handling of being, relation, identity, causality, modality, truth, language, value, and the ultimate boundary.

Insufficient answer-shapes

The following do not count as complete answers by themselves:

  • “The model fits.”
  • “The formalism is elegant.”
  • “The simulation produces the pattern.”
  • “The analogy is suggestive.”
  • “The concept can be rephrased.”
  • “The boundary is mysterious, therefore solved.”

Relation to Results and Verify

The Results lane records current classified claims. The Verify lane records inspection routes.

Answer-shape discipline connects the two: a result should be readable as a claim with a known shape, known status, known dependencies, and known ways to fail.

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