The Invariance Maintenance Condition: Translation for Immunology

The Invariance Maintenance Condition (IMC) [Thomas, 2026a] identifies the class of systems that actively maintain structural invariants under perturbation at measurable cost. This paper demonstrates that the adaptive immune system satisfies all four IMC applicability conditions by its own internal logic. We provide an explicit variable-by-variable correspondence between IMC objects and immunological objects, expressed in standard immunological terms. We address the qualification that immunological maintenance cost is metabolically rather than thermodynamically denominated, and argue that this constitutes a domain-appropriate instantiation of Condition Y rather than a failure of it. We then derive four predictions that the IMC generates when translated into immunological variables: a precursor repertoire contraction signal preceding measurable loss of self-tolerance; asymmetric immunosuppressive requirements for tolerance disruption versus restoration; intervention transfer efficacy between model systems sharing constraint geometry; and a destruction threshold asymmetry distinguishing reversible tolerance breaks from irreversible machinery loss. None of these predictions is derivable from immunological theory alone. Each is stated in clinically and experimentally tractable terms with explicit falsification conditions.