{"id": "card_doctrine_authority_chain", "kind": "note", "title": "A request is not an authority — the four-layer chain", "body": "A request layer may PROPOSE an action; a separately governed layer admits only a bounded capability; an execution layer may carry out only pre-approved motions; and a reflex layer continuously limits the physical envelope — pressure, flow, current, force, speed, balance, and joint state. Independent sensors witness the result, and the record is sealed outside the requesting process.\n\nStated for a controlled machine, this is the general law the other documents restate in their own materials: intelligence may PROPOSE; a separate, independently governed layer determines what may actually happen; and the record of what happened is kept somewhere the requester cannot reach. The value is in the separation, not in any one layer's cleverness.\n\nWHERE IT ALREADY BEARS WEIGHT — Already load-bearing here: `shelves.curate` refuses a typed name as authority and keeps the check in the module so neither the HTTP nor the MCP door can bypass it; `consent.guard()` admits a bounded capability for an agent; every curation act is sealed with a steward and a reason in an append-only record the actor cannot edit.", "source": {"label": "a robotics control architecture — Matt Harris", "ref": "a robotics control architecture", "authority_tier": "author"}, "shelf": "doctrine", "box": "concept", "bands": ["doctrine", "architecture", "authority chain"], "subject": "A request is not an authority — the four-layer chain", "connections": [{"to_card_id": "card_spine_doctrine", "relationship": "part_of", "evidence": "one of the recurring-architecture concepts"}], "author": "matt", "created_at": 0.0, "updated_at": 0.0, "visibility": "public", "lifecycle_stage": "public", "volatility": "durable", "surface": "secular", "generated": false, "extra": {"document": "a robotics control architecture", "concept": "authority_chain"}, "call": "doctrine.concept", "facets": {"concept": ["architecture", "authority chain"]}, "presentation": {"glyph": "•", "kind_label": "concept", "by": "a robotics control architecture — Matt Harris", "authority": "author", "posted": "", "standing": ""}, "neighbors": [{"id": "card_spine_doctrine", "title": "The recurring architecture — one pattern, several materials", "relationship": "part of", "why": "one of the recurring-architecture concepts", "href": "/card/card_spine_doctrine", "resolved": true}], "house": {"door": "FIND", "kind": "card", "trail": "connections", "seal": "/card/card_doctrine_authority_chain", "next_step": {"do": "follow a connection: what this card rests on, and what rests on it", "door": "FIND", "tool": "card_connections", "params": {"id": "card_doctrine_authority_chain"}}, "ends": "a verdict or a card · the trail · a seal · one next step"}}