ACI family · the validation core · the final product

The Duality Engineone standard, both brothers — verified to failure

The capstone of the Eskimo Brothers stack: the completed validation core that holds HACI (the human side) and MACI (the machine side) to one identical three-artifact standard — a reference validator, a deterministic torture suite, and a tiered brutal auditor. Its job is singular: guarantee that anything claiming to be HACI or MACI is checked the same brutal way on both sides of the human/machine boundary. And above the two halves sits a third, converged layer — one auditor testing shared invariants against both at once, mapping where they agree and where they diverge — plus a system audit that breaks the assembled engine on purpose, to prove it isn't a rubber stamp. Two brothers, one bond between them: the duality made ternary.

verified status — reproduced, not asserted

HACI · the human side
torture suite0/1108
deterministic hash 9e5152b9a3de
brutal audit0/40
PASS — 0 crashes · 0 holes · 0 false alarms
MACI · the machine side
torture suite0/3929
deterministic hash 60b61b96e7e8
brutal audit0/44
PASS — 0 crashes · 0 holes · 0 false alarms
CONVERGED · the cross-half third
converged FSS (accept both)0/12
converged BSS (reject both)0/12
cross-half asymmetries0
STABLE — 1 asymmetry recorded, not failed
SYSTEM AUDIT · auditing the auditor
assembled-engine audit0/14
injected breaks that surfaced0/5
tier 1: 5/5 · system-FSS: 4/4 · system-BSS: 5/5
PASS — proven non-vacuous (it fails when broken)
⬡  ENGINE STATUS: STABLE — both halves symmetric · converged loop sound · system non-vacuous  ⬡
→ these are not marketing numbers. I ran python run_duality_engine.py and python system_brutal_audit.py on this exact source — both torture hashes reproduced bit-for-bit, the converged loop returned 12/12 · 12/12 · 1 asymmetry, and the system audit scored 14/14 with all five injected breaks surfacing. The MACI suite is additionally mutation-tested: nine deliberate validator breaks → nine catches. (An earlier snapshot scored 13/14 — its converged layer passed a zero-test vacuously; the system audit caught it, and this is the patched build.)

the two halves — symmetric, not identical

HACI · humanMACI · machine
formdocument dialect, line-orientedmessage protocol, JSON Lines
extension.haci.maci
authorityownership by case (human / ai / shared)explicit field (sovereign / delegated / advisory / observer)
operators! ? > prefix / suffix dualityroles: COMMAND / PROPOSAL / QUESTION / EVIDENCE / DECISION / DELEGATE / CODE
core guaranteecommitted human declarations are immutableauthority cannot be forged or exceeded
decision trackingadjacency + commit-gatingexplicit refs forming a verifiable DAG

The split is principled: a human reading a document carries authority by typography (case); a machine parsing a message carries it in a field. Each half uses the affordance that fits its reader — but both are held to the same gauntlet below.

the three-artifact standard

① VALIDATOR
the reference implementation — deterministic, hashable. The single source of truth for "is this conformant?"
② TORTURE SUITE
curated adversarial + seeded fuzz + property tests, run forward and reverse, with a deterministic result hash.
③ BRUTAL AUDITOR
the tiered 3 | [2.1, 2.9] | 3 scaffold that attacks the validator from both directions — below.

the brutal auditor — 3 | [2.1, 2.9] | 3

TIER 1 · FOUNDATION
crashes, determinism, pathological input. Does it survive at all, and give the same answer twice?
TIER 2.1 · FSS — Forward Static Scan
should-accept probes. Catches false negatives — over-strictness, where a valid thing is wrongly rejected.
TIER 2.9 · BSS — Backward Semantic Stress
should-reject probes. Catches false positives — silent acceptance of a malformed thing. The dangerous direction.
TIER 3 · VERDICT + FEEDBACK LOOP
every BSS hole becomes a new FSS guard; every FSS alarm narrows the BSS net. The two tiers sharpen each other.
FSS ⟲ BSS — over-strictness ⟷ silent acceptance, pulled taut against each other

the converged layer — one auditor, both halves

Each half has its own FSS/BSS feeding its own foundation. The converged layer (shared/converged_audit.py) unifies them: seven shared invariants, each given a HACI realization and a MACI realization, asserted to hold on both. Convergence is at the property level, not the input level — the halves speak different surface languages, so no single literal input feeds both. FSS 12/12 · BSS 12/12.

I1AUTHORITY_INTEGRITYauthority cannot be forged or exceeded — HACI: an AI-cased line can't carry human authority; MACI: a message can't exceed its granted authority. both enforce I2REFERENCE_SOUNDNESSreferences must resolve to real targets — both hard-reject dangling references I3COMMITMENT_IMMUTABILITYa committed fact can't be silently changed — HACI: conflicting redeclaration errors; MACI: a decision must carry a terminal status. both enforce, different mechanism I4ACYCLICITYthe dependency / decision graph has no cycles — both detect cycles I5CAUSAL_ORDER ⚠nothing references something not yet established — the one asymmetry (below) I6WELL_FORMED_ACCEPTEDvalid input is never wrongly rejected — the converged FSS; both accept clean input I7MALFORMED_REJECTEDinvalid input is never silently accepted — the converged BSS; both reject malformed input

the one asymmetry — where the brothers diverge

The converged loop's unique product isn't a pass/fail — it's cross-half asymmetry detection: the map of where the two sides enforce a shared invariant with different strength. Recorded, not failed — the most valuable signal the convergence produces. Exactly one stands today:

I5 · CAUSAL_ORDER — MACI's net strictly contains HACI's
MACI enforces causal order: a forward reference is a hard FORWARD_REF error — machines need strict ordering for replayable streams. HACI enforces only reference resolvability: an out-of-order but resolvable reference is accepted with an OPEN_CONVERSATION warning — a human document tolerates a forward reference the reader can follow. Both guard the reference axis; MACI's constraint HACI's. The split is principled, not a bug — so it is logged as the asymmetry, not raised as a failure.

auditing the auditor — the system audit

A component can be sound and the assembly still rotten — adapters mistranslate, a suite rubber-stamps, a crash gets swallowed. system_brutal_audit.py aims the same 3 | [2.1, 2.9] | 3 discipline at the whole engine, and proves anti-vacuity: it injects five breaks and demands each one surface as a failure.

break HACI cycle detection → the engine must report failure break the MACI authority check → the engine must report failure make the converged adapter lie (always "ok") → convergence must report unstable zero-test convergence must not pass — a suite that runs nothing can't claim a clean bill (an earlier snapshot failed exactly here; this is the patch) a crashing subprocess → the runner must not report stable

All five surface. With Tier 1 (5/5 integration) + system-FSS (4/4) the assembled engine scores 14/14 — sound AND proven to fail when broken. The auditor is not a rubber stamp, and now neither is the thing that checks the auditor.

a live taste — run the MACI brutal audit

A faithful slice of the machine-side auditor, in your browser: FSS probes that should pass and BSS probes that should be caught, run through the ported MACI validator (same named checks: DECISION_WITHOUT_REFS, REF_NOT_FOUND, FORWARD_REF, CHAIN_CYCLE, DELEGATE_NO_SCOPE…). Now inject a regression — disable a rule and watch the BSS tier catch the hole it opens. That is what "the suite has teeth" means.

▸ FSS · should accept
▸ BSS · should reject
inject a regression (mutation test):
(the cycle probe stays caught either way — FORWARD_REF backs it up: defense in depth)
what this is. the completed validation core of the ACI family — the module that proves HACI and MACI are both sound and held to one standard. It ships the real thing: run_duality_engine.py, shared/converged_audit.py, system_brutal_audit.py, and for each half a *_validator.py, a *_torture.py, and a *_brutal_audit.py (run python run_duality_engine.py → exits 0, writes duality_engine_status.json). It deliberately does not include the editor extension, the defensive publications, or the converters — those build on top of this stable core.
honest line. the whole status board reproduces a real local run — both torture hashes matched, the converged loop returned 12/12 · 12/12 · 1 asymmetry, and the system audit scored 14/14 with all five injected breaks surfacing. The live audit below is a faithful slice of the machine-side auditor — the full suites are 1108 + 3929 torture cases, 40 + 44 brutal probes, 12 + 12 converged invariants, and 14 system checks in Python, not in this page. "Brutal audit to failure" is exhaustive adversarial fuzzing, not a formal proof. v0.1 / v2.6 reference validators.
THE DUALITY ENGINE · STABLE · 2026-06-26 David Lee Wise · Bridge-Burners LLC · the brothers ↗ · the ACI namespace ↗