Commit-Gated Causal
Execution for
Autonomous Systems

Polaris is a protocol for structurally binding execution authority to validated canonical state. Side effects are permitted only as consequences of committed, validated transitions — enforced by construction, not policy.

Causal Invariant ∀e ∈ E : e ∈ Epermitted ⟹ ∃τ ∈ T : commit(τ) ∧ e ∈ effects(τ)
I1

Canonical Progression Uniqueness

At most one committed successor exists per canonical state. Enforced via atomic compare-and-swap at the linearization point.

∀ Sₙ : |successor(Sₙ)| ≤ 1
I2

Mandatory Validation Precondition

No state advancement without validation-pass under the applicable gate profile. The commit authority independently recomputes critical gates.

∀ Tᵢ : commit(Tᵢ) ⟹ V(Tᵢ, Sₙ, G) = PASS
I3

Execution Causality Binding

Side effects require a state identifier equal to the canonical pointer at evaluation time. The gate is non-bypassable by structural design.

execute(E, S_r) ⟹ S_r = canonical_pointer
01

Proposed Layer

A Proposed State Transition Object (PSTO) carries a canonical pointer reference, class identifier, payload, credentials, and proof bundle. All PSTOs are normalized into a deterministic canonical encoding before validation.

Validation Pipeline · Gate Profile Registry
02

Canonical Layer

The Commit Authority atomically advances the canonical pointer via CAS — the linearization point of the system. The resulting hash-linked state chain is append-only, tamper-evident, and deterministically replayable.

canonical_state_pointer
03

Execution Layer

The Execution Gate permits side effects only when the execution request's state pointer equals the current canonical pointer. Mismatch produces structural rejection with no side effect.