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Title

The Animus Cycle: A Design Specification for Reciprocal-Boundary Closure in Finite Systems

Authors and accountable contributors

1. Cholee Hackett, first author
2. Kelly Hackett, co-author and research sponsor

Kelly Hackett provided financial and non-financial sponsorship for this research. Both authors must be added as OSF contributors and approve the Registration.

Record status

Registration of an existing proposed design specification using the Open-Ended Registration template. This is not a prospective preregistration, completed experiment, or Test 05 result.

Short description

The Animus cycle is a proposed reciprocal-boundary closure pattern for finite systems. The term "Animus cycle" is used here in the proposed technical sense introduced by Hackett & Hackett (2026): a finite-system run whose ending produces and validates a return that satisfies the run's beginning contract under a declared reconstruction rule. Forward execution from the candidate beginning must produce the ending from which that return is independently derived. Thus closure is reciprocal: the beginning produces the ending, and the ending supplies a condition required by the beginning. Information loss is not required for closure, and any continuity through information loss is optional and reported separately. The specification defines eight named validation predicates, bounded-observer exclusions, retention roles, NONE, UNIQUE, and MULTIPLE history classifications, and a default prohibition on branching unless ORIGIN_CUT is declared in advance. The stronger optional Animus Omega Cycle, technically the Animus Omega branch-reconvergence cycle, begins with one authoritative history, permits declared represented branches during expansion, and reconciles them under a frozen narrative-equivalence rule during contraction until one canonical history remains. Branch reconvergence, information loss, continuity through loss, and reciprocal closure are reported separately. A built-in deterministic browser trace illustrates the sequence but is not Test 05 evidence. Any future reserved branch-reconvergence experiment requires a separate, prospectively time-locked protocol with matched controls and independently scored outcomes. Frozen reference fixtures provide a passing example, an endpoint-mutation failure, and a separately versioned declared ORIGIN_CUT example. They are executable teaching examples, not Test 05 evidence. Tests 01-04 are separate retrospective measurements of adjacent components and do not establish the complete Animus cycle.

Keywords

Animus cycle; Animus Omega; Animus Omega Cycle; Animus Omega branch-reconvergence cycle; reciprocal-boundary closure; finite systems; beginning contract; ending-derived return; sealed-history validation; deterministic replay; bounded observer; state reconstruction; event sourcing; checkpointing; fixed-point constraints; reproducible specification

Language

English

Licensing

The author-written specification, claims boundary, fixture documentation, and Registration narrative are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International.

The simulator source is Copyright 2026 Hackett & Hackett: Cholee Hackett and Kelly Hackett. All rights reserved. Public availability permits inspection but does not grant a general license to modify, redistribute, or reuse the source.

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