32. Identity

The Answer develops the corresponding account of Ahaṃkāra and local identity.

Decision

Mirror is LychD's singular identity-binding jurisdiction. It owns Persona definitions/revisions, an exact Persona revision binding when an Invocation selects one, explicit absence when it selects none, scoped identity context and eligible memory hydration, hydration receipts, attribution across people and machinery, and reviewed Persona-revision proposals. It does not authenticate a Principal, grant scope, select model, schedule Pattern, evaluate quality or causal blame, or train weights; IAM/Ward, Dispatcher, Spellweaver, Drift, and Soulforge retain those offices.

Keep the names apart

No value substitutes for another: Persona grants no authority; a Principal does not author every requested output; a provider is not Persona; shared Persona does not merge Runs. Present Sigil is a frozen name/scope set, without stable identity id, credential lineage, delegation relation, or revocation epoch; future Mirror keys may not pretend Sigil.id exists.

Persona voice means declared discourse, commitments, manner, and orientation. It is not an acoustic voice profile, synthesized speech artifact, musical vocal, dubbed performance, or presentation asset. Echo retains acoustic and speech-lifecycle facts; Riffmaw musical performance; Language Edition timed-language performance; and Avatar the eligible presentation selection that may reference any exact permitted artifact. Avatar's Morphe may select presentation style and an already eligible output locale; it cannot select or rewrite Persona discourse manner, translate text, or turn localized wording into identity.

Persona and binding

A Pattern explicitly selects an exact Persona revision or selects no Persona. Every admitted Run keeps that choice. A name may direct later work to a promoted revision, but promotion cannot rewrite an existing binding.

One Persona has a stable id and immutable revisions. Publication freezes a revision; editing produces candidate children. Each revision declares:

Codex owns declared intent. Phylactery stores revisions, bindings, hydration receipts and attribution. When a Persona is selected, Mirror compiles its contribution:

Persona revision + Pattern/AgentSpec requirements + active Principal/Sigil
+ eligible identity-scoped memory → ordered context blocks + hydration receipt

The receipt records source revisions, memory references, transformations and exclusions, ordering, size and truncation, and the envelope digest. It establishes what was supplied, not model obedience. Context owns token budgeting and final prompt assembly. Ward authorizes namespaces, tools and scopes; Dispatcher selects capability; Orchestrator supplies readiness. More forceful identity instructions cannot replace any missing permission.

Identity memory is denied by default across Personas and Principals. Every record carries its namespace, producer, subject, provenance, eligibility and retention. Cross-identity recall needs explicit policy and retains source attribution.

Resume preserves the revision-pinned Persona binding and cites newly admitted memory. It does not silently replace the selected revision with the latest Persona.

Attribution and congruence

Every identity-bearing Invocation or artifact records who initiated, approved, delegated and acted, together with the active Sigil. It retains the exact Persona, AgentSpec, Posture, Composition and Pattern revisions; the exact Invocation identity; contributing models, providers, tools, sources and humans; and parent, handoff and artifact lineage. Each record identifies its evidential role: assertion, observation, evaluation, correction or promoted act. Attribution establishes these relationships without deciding quality, credit, fault or causal blame.

At a Composition Suite handoff, the immutable artifact retains its original attribution. The consumer starts a newly admitted child Invocation with its own binding. Handoff and correlation receipts convey neither authority nor authorship. Delegation names both principals and uses the delegate's producer identity and grant. Edits and rejected branches add to lineage rather than laundering it.

Drift keeps the author and subject of findings and corrections. Mirror binds that history; Drift owns verdicts and attribution candidates; Soulforge independently admits any training use.

A Persona may supply Drift with criteria for commitments, voice boundaries, role limits, memory claims, tool behavior and response to pressure. Congruence measures one property of that Persona; it does not establish truth or general quality. A designed Phantasma Pattern may request bounded Shadow branches and a versioned Persona-congruence Trial Suite. Mirror cannot select whichever resemblance it prefers.

Matched controls distinguish continuity from slogans, mimicry, refusal and leakage. Changes to authority language, tools, memory policy or core commitments rerun affected adversarial and regression evidence. A punctuation change need not rerun every Trial Suite.

Revision and recovery

Experience may inform a revision proposal. The promoted definition changes only through the reviewed passage:

attributed observations/findings → bounded diff against exact parent → validation
→ Drift congruence/regression evidence → required Magus/HitL decision → immutable child

Smith may draft or package a candidate and Spellweaver may coordinate the work; publication stays with Mirror. Repetition, praise, model confidence and memory volume grant no additional scope, tool, trigger, queue position or hardware priority.

Rollback directs future Invocations to a prior promoted revision and leaves earlier Runs and artifacts intact. A static prompt supplies none of the required binding, scoped memory, receipt, lineage or rollback. Retrieval provides hydration input, while behavioral resemblance can support at most a Drift finding. Automatic self-revision is refused because it bypasses the attributable reviewed passage.

Consequences

Acceptance evidence

Mirror remains Designed until a Persona is declared, revision-pinned to a Run, hydrated from an authorized namespace with reproducible receipt, fully attributed, resumed with its pinned revision intact, tested against matched congruence controls, revised through an immutable candidate, and rolled back for new Invocations. State of Work records that transition.