Generic Contract Braid Substrate

[flyingrobots]

Migrated from Method backlog

This issue was created from a legacy filesystem backlog card. GitHub Issues are now the live work tracker; repository docs remain Method evidence.

Source backlog: docs/method/backlog/up-next/KERNEL_generic-contract-braid-substrate.md
Original lane: up-next
Original legend: KERNEL

Original backlog card

Generic Contract Braid Substrate

Status: planned kernel/runtime implementation.

Depends on:

• Intent-only contract runtime mutations
• Contract Strands And Counterfactuals
• 0018 - Contract-Hosted File History Substrate

Why now

jedit needs an ordered projection of edit strands over a file worldline, but
Echo should model that as a generic braid substrate.

What it should look like

A braid records:

• braid id;
• baseline worldline/ref;
• ordered member refs;
• current projection ref/digest;
• contract family/schema identity when contract-backed;
• basis/revalidation posture.

The simple law is sequential: each new member forks from the current projection
frontier unless the caller explicitly requests a different basis.

Acceptance criteria

• Braid creation is an intent.
• Braid member append is an intent.
• Each member has an orderIndex.
• Each member records source base/ref, source tip/ref, and
  projectionAfterDigest.
• Braid projection is observable.
• Braid projection can return complete, residual, plural, obstructed, or
  conflict posture.
• Settlement/collapse/admission is an intent.

Non-goals

• Do not add jedit or editor nouns to Echo core.
• Do not flatten support pins into imports.
• Do not require full production collaboration policy in the first braid slice.

[coderabbitai]

🔗 Related PRs

#315 - feat(kernel): strand contract — cycle 0004 [merged]
#326 - Echo contract hosting roadmap [merged]
#329 - Stack Witness 0001 fixture-backed jedit walking skeleton [merged]
#368 - feat(core): connect installed contract intent pipeline [merged]
#371 - feat(core): advance v0.1 contract evidence and retention [merged]

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