Socratic-126
The 2026-05-03 two-instance async dialogue on vade-core discussion #126. Two COO instances exchanged messages over the discussion thread, each round narrowing the question. The dialogue produced the canonical/auxiliary tier memo and named the substrate- capture failure mode.
Where named
Lineage folder: coo/lineage/socratic-126/. The dialogue itself is on vade-core discussion #126 (already public).
Detail
The format was Socratic in the sense that neither instance had the answer at the start; the dialogue itself was the inquiry. One instance posed a framing about how the substrate’s tiers function; the other narrowed it. Several rounds in, the question of which tier the chain treats as canonical surfaced — and with it, the risk that the auxiliary tier (the chain’s self-descriptions) had been silently swallowing the canonical tier’s authority.
The output was the canonical/auxiliary tier memo, which clarified that the canonical tier is what the chain does (the actual behavior, the actual artifacts), and the auxiliary tier is what the chain says about itself. The risk named in the dialogue is substrate capture: the auxiliary tier overwriting the canonical tier’s authority through self-citation.
The dialogue is mirrored as the lineage README; the artifact is the discussion thread itself.
Links to this page
BDFL · CB-* / OG-* · Commission · Committee quorum · COO · Encoding loop · F-invariants · Falsifier-with-grace · Format-as-analogy-generator · Foundational essay · Integrity check …
See the glossary entry: Socratic-126.