Mitchell_2026_LLT_ScorpTrak_Theory_Preprint_v1_0.pdf

This preprint introduces Locality-First Trust (LLT), a scale-invariant trust architecture in which all authority transitions are forced through bounded verification boundaries, authority is monotonic between clean re-creations, and all verification outcomes are immutably witnessed outside the evaluated execution context.We formalize LLT using a minimal axiom set, a Single-Context Trust State Machine (SCTSM), and reference execution semantics. From these primitives we derive adversarial correctness under arbitrary scheduling and prove a compositional full-system theorem: if each execution context obeys monotonic authority under boundary exclusivity with immutable witnessing, then the entire system is structurally safe, locally contained, and maintains constant expected per-context verification cost. System overhead scales with boundary crossings rather than total system activity.The paper also provides minimal implementation constraints that bridge theory to realizability without binding the model to a specific operating system, hardware platform, or network topology. This establishes LLT as a deployable architecture class rather than a detection heuristic or global state reconstruction method.In contrast to map-centric and scan-centric trust models, LLT maintains correctness by making unsafe authority transitions structurally impossible. Compromise cannot cascade across execution contexts, retries monotonically reduce attacker capability, and trust is re-created only through clean, externally attested instantiation.This is Preprint v1.0 (Theory) of the Scorp-Trak architecture.