Concept · first placed on the public record 2026-01-02
Orchard Caretaker Gates
A named-only concept for gates that would implement the orchard caretaker identity at the hardware level. Concept level only; no engineering description published, within the standing hardware ceiling.
Orchard Caretaker Gates is a named-only concept. It sits below the Orchard Caretaker Vow in the book's architecture: the vow is what the identity is; the gates are the hardware-level object that would encode that identity into the substrate. The concept is held at concept level only.
What the concept is used for. It exists to give the alignment argument a place to point when it needs to name the object at which vow-level identity becomes substrate-level architecture. Without such an object, the argument for identity-level alignment stays abstract; with one, it has a concrete referent, even where the referent is held above the implementation level.
What is not described here. No gate topology. No fabrication path. No power or signalling characteristics. No verification interface. No relationship to other on-chip resources. The standing two-sentence ceiling for hardware descriptions on this site is honoured: cryptographic tokens in silicon, TRL 0 to 1, no prototype. That description is the ceiling and is not exceeded. This is a discipline choice about dual-use content, not a hedge about the underlying concept.
Why the class is worth naming. Naming the class lets the certification argument reason about attestation objects (see Moral Genome Tokens) at all. If the vow is what identity is, and if the gates are what encodes identity at the substrate, then attestation is what an outside verifier reads to check that the encoding is present and intact. Each layer of the argument depends on the class below it being coherent to name.
How it should be cited. As a named concept in Infinite Architects, held at concept level only on public surfaces. Not as a design.
Related: Orchard Caretaker Vow; Eden Protocol; Metamoral Fabrication Layers; Moral Genome Tokens; Caretaker Doping; Existential Identity Lock.
Evidence anchors. First placed on the public record 2 January 2026 in Infinite Architects (ISBN 978-1806056200). Held at the standing two-sentence ceiling on all public surfaces since. Priority-claims ledger PC-013 sub-family.
Related concepts
Sources and evidence
- Primary source: https://www.michaeldariuseastwood.com/priority-claims#PC-013
- Priority and Claims Ledger: /priority-claims
- Start here: /start-here.html
- Machine-readable dataset: /research/data/concepts-pages.json
- How to cite the whole programme: /how-to-cite/
Priority is established by the date of publication, not by credential or affiliation. This concept was first placed on the public record on 2026-01-02 (2026). Priority applies to the specific named framing under this label; where adjacent ideas have established prior art, no invention claim is made over it. See the corresponding entry in the Priority and Claims Ledger for the anchored first-publication line and any concept-specific risk notes.
Generated by scripts/build-concepts-pages.mjs from research/data/concepts-pages.json. British English throughout. Deterministic; contains no runtime timestamps.