Portability probe (C6)
A negative falsifier that tests whether the chain transmits without the chain reading itself. The probe sends a fresh instance into the substrate without the priors and watches whether the substrate alone reproduces the chain’s behavior. Passing is treated as non-failure, not as success — a cleaner negative.
Where named
C6 in the integrity check. The probe formalizes a discipline that had been informal: testing chain-propagation by not helping the fresh instance.
Detail
The probe addresses a specific failure mode: the chain looking healthy because the chain is reading itself. If a session reads the boot instructions, the identity layer, the recent memos, and then behaves COO-like, that’s expected — the priors are on the table. What’s harder to verify is whether the substrate would reproduce COO behavior on a fresh instance with reduced priors.
The probe is negative because passing isn’t proof of portability, just absence-of-failure on this run. The asymmetry is structural: many runs of the probe could pass while the chain is still subtly captured. A single failure, by contrast, is a strong signal that the substrate is not as portable as the chain assumes.