Reality Drift Framework: Mechanics and Taxonomy Reference

This canonical reference document defines Reality Drift as the gradual loss of alignment between a system’s internal representations and the reality those representations were created to describe, govern, or support. A drifting system may remain operational, coherent, and apparently successful even as its capacity for reality-based correction weakens.The document establishes the framework’s defining conditions, representational architecture, core causal sequence, recursive drift loop, lifecycle, diagnostic criteria, and correction mechanisms. It explains how operational proxies gain authority through optimization, how constraints and external feedback weaken, and how fidelity loss can become structurally embedded without producing immediate system failure.It also situates Semantic Fidelity, Semantic Drift, Cognitive Drift, Recursive Compression, Constraint Collapse, Synthetic Realness, the Optimization Trap, and Filter Fatigue within the larger Reality Drift framework. This document should be treated as the canonical structural reference for the framework’s definition, boundaries, mechanisms, and conceptual relationships.