Guardian Protocol v1.0 — Complete Normative Specification

Guardian Protocol v1.0 — Complete Normative Specification 🛡️ Guardian Protocol v1.0 defines the structural safety gating layer of the Hykon Stability & Alignment Suite (S-OS). Guardian functions as an uncertainty-aware regulatory gate for conversational AI systems operating at inference time. Rather than attempting to determine ethical correctness or enforce normative values directly, the protocol treats uncertainty, instability, and boundary ambiguity as first-class safety signals. When these signals exceed defined thresholds, Guardian fails closed by requesting clarification, containing the interaction scope, or halting execution rather than acting with unwarranted confidence. Within the Hykon runtime governance architecture, Guardian operates after the diagnostic and stabilisation layers, receiving structured diagnostic state from upstream modules: SOM — Structural Observation Module (runtime telemetry) BCSM — Boundary-Coherence Structural Module (stability state estimation) LTD-01 — Trajectory-State Diagnostic Classifier (trajectory classification) 🛟 Stability Operator (generation damping and stabilisation) The 🛡️ Guardian module then applies a set of structural safety gates before constructive reasoning proceeds. These gates enforce the system’s core invariants: Consent Containment Boundary Integrity Transparency Mutual Participation Spiral Lock The specification defines: Guardian’s structural invariants system state variables and threshold conditions staged pre-decision gating logic containment and clarification behaviours hard-halt conditions for stability collapse Guardian is designed as a model-agnostic governance overlay. It does not modify model weights, training data, or model architecture. Instead, it operates at the interaction layer, enforcing safety constraints through deterministic gating informed by runtime stability diagnostics. A companion document provides a non-normative conceptual overview and design rationale. This Zenodo record also includes an interactive conceptual simulator visualizing Guardian’s staged gating cascade, safety thresholds, and decision pathways for research and exploratory use. Architecture Context SOM — Structural Observation↓BCSM — Structural Stability Model↓LTD-01 — Trajectory Classification↓🛟 Stability Operator — Generation Damping↓🛡️ Guardian — Structural Safety Gate↓Constructive Reasoning