Specs

Normative. Where these and the narrative docs disagree, the spec wins and the narrative is a bug.

Scope

Specs exist only for the MVP surface:

One operator signs on from a phone. The agent sees them on the board. The operator sends Query. An answer comes back.

Distress and the escalation ladder are specified too, despite sitting outside that loop, because they are safety-critical and must never be improvised later.

Everything else — endorsements, presets, funding, recovery, propagation, allied interop — is deliberately unspecified. Specs written before the loop is proven are guesses in a more confident format.

Conventions

• MUST / MUST NOT / SHOULD / MAY carry RFC 2119 meaning
• All times UTC; all durations in seconds
• Constraint references like [C24] point at ../research/constraints.md
• Values marked configurable have a stated default and MUST be changeable without a code change

The one architectural decision underneath all three

Signals are encrypted to the Watchtower key, not to the individual holding watch.

The alternative — encrypting to whoever currently holds the board — breaks on handover, locks the agent out of anything addressed to a human, and makes shared watch [C28] impossible.

The cost is explicit: the box can read every signal. That is already true, since it holds the board, runs the agent, and executes escalation. It is stated here rather than implied, and it is why the node inventory in ../principles.md says plainly what a seizure would yield.