Authorization With a Scope: Coverage, the Fork, and Demotion

This note asks what happens to a directive after it is issued. A directive is treated as an authorization with a scope: it can stand without covering a given interval, and only covering makes that interval authored. Coverage is lost by takeover, when monitoring collapses or an involuntary process runs, or by displacement, when another directive occupies the executive. What follows a lost interval is decided at a fork. An image recounts the record, an interpretation raises a question, and the question is either asked, leading to renewal, dropping, adoption or narrowing, or left unasked, so that the directive fades. Fade is treated as a verdict in hindsight, not an event. The note places the damage after a lapse in a question never asked rather than in the attribution drawn. It argues that self-labels steer automatic behavior only where nothing is covering, in proportion to felt intensity rather than sincerity. Each claim is stated against its nearest neighbor, with the tests that would count against it. Its stated limit is that its verdicts about which intervals were authored are themselves made in hindsight, by a reviewer that is independent of the run but not neutral.