Sal-Meter Kernel Program & Future Broader Opening — PI Readiness Edition v1.2

This document is a public, non-clinical, pre-opening scientific coordination dossier aligned to the current execution order of the Sal-Meter / CAIS kernel program. It does not present the program as an already-open external competition. Instead, it clarifies the present kernel-first structure under which External Layer-0 precedes internal Phase 0, Phase 1, Phase 2a, and Phase 2b, and broader opening becomes justifiable only after LOCK 1 and LOCK 2. The document defines what serious principal investigators, laboratories, and technical teams should understand, prepare, and avoid overstating at the present stage. It also draws explicit boundaries around public claims, canonical authority, anti-capture governance, intellectual ownership, and commercialization order. It is best read as a philosophy-adjacent scientific governance and readiness document at the intersection of philosophy of artificial intelligence, philosophy of science, and consciousness-related measurement architecture.