Skipjack as Horizon Governance: The Enforcement Capstone of Intent Horizon Theory

Skipjack as Horizon Governance: The Enforcement Capstone of Intent Horizon Theory Version: 0-1-seed Slug: skipjack-horizon-governance Live page: https://nonsequitur.tech/pubs/white-papers/skipjack-horizon-governance/ PDF: skipjack-horizon-governance-v0-1-seed.pdf Abstract The Skipjack Protocol, formalized in MR-P5, specifies four runtime enforcement mechanisms that operationalize the HGC³AE² framework's structural commitments: context integrity, structured task decomposition, human-in-the-loop control points, and iterative feedback. The protocol was formalized before the intent horizon was named as an architectural primitive (IH-1) and before the intent-CIA-NR security model (IH-2) and the structural account of confident misalignment (IH-3) supplied the vocabulary in which the protocol's load-bearing function becomes specifiable. This paper closes the Intent Horizon Theory series by re-describing the four Skipjack mechanisms as the operational gates of horizon governance. This paper does not redefine Skipjack. Per the H-21 cite-without-redefinition discipline applied across the IH series — and matching the corresponding discipline applied to MR-P1 in IH-3 — Skipjack's canonical specification (MR-P5) remains authoritative. What this paper supplies is a structural re-description in which each Skipjack mechanism is shown to be a gate against a specific intent-horizon boundary whose threshold is set by the epistemic-weather instruments (IH-4) and whose firing is mechanically determined by the intent-CIA-NR property states (IH-2). The argument is in five movements. Section 2 establishes the cite-without-redefinition scope and the relationship between the canonical Skipjack specification and the horizon-governance re-description. Section 3 maps each of the four Skipjack mechanisms to its horizon-governance role: context integrity as the substrate-boundary gate, structured task decomposition as the conceptual-boundary gate, human-in-the-loop control points as the storm escalation gate, and iterative feedback as the drift recalibration loop. Section 4 specifies the firing conditions for each gate, drawing on the IH-4 weather classes and the IH-2 intent-CIA-NR property readings. Section 5 reads the four gates as a closed loop that returns the system, at each Skipjack ceremony, to a horizon-integral operating state — completing the loop from operator pin (IH-1) through security model (IH-2), failure-mode diagnosis (IH-3), and operator-facing instruments (IH-4) to enforcement gates (this paper). Section 6 closes the Intent Horizon Theory series and hands off to the downstream Cyber Governance (#348) and Governed Autonomy (#349) series, which inherit the IH framework as the substrate over which their respective concerns operate. Released by zenodo-deposit workflow. Zenodo DOI auto-mints from this Release via the configured Zenodo-GitHub integration.