DecompositionGate

Mechanism

The four-test operator applied as a gate over candidate decompositions. The tests are judged against a provisional claim frame: the outward capability being promised, the purpose of the decomposition, and the range of instances it claims. The frame may be revised, and several frames or carves may coexist for comparison. Each candidate dimension is tested for Necessity (relative to the claimed capability, removing it collapses the parent's promise, as Parsimony's ablation applied to the split), Independence (it can change or be reimplemented without forcing the same revision in the others; lower coupling, not zero interaction, shown by change propagation, routing overlap and recurrent joint failures) and Universality (every instance in the claimed range contains it; a dimension limited to some implementations may still be a specialization under a narrower claim). The accepted set is then tested for Completeness: addressing all of it yields a functioning instance of the parent for the current promise, and a gap points to a missing axis, interaction or framing assumption. A candidate is accepted only if all three of its tests hold, so strength on one does not offset failure on another; a failed or uncertain candidate may be reframed, tried under a narrower claim, or kept with its verdict and rationale as a labelled alternative in the frontier of the ArchiveServingFrontier. Yields a Decision. The tests structure a judgment rather than certify it, so a passing carve is the best-supported current hypothesis, and leakage that later surfaces as downstream failure raises a FrameError that reopens the carve.