The Self-Replication Boundary
Self-replication is not a single category. A responsible site must distinguish ordinary engineering from uncontrolled autonomy.
Cognivirus uses the following boundary.
| Category | Description | Site stance |
|---|---|---|
| Human-directed variation | Humans create or request candidate adapters under normal review. | Ordinary engineering; still requires provenance. |
| Governed descendant creation | A pipeline proposes candidates under external quotas, independent evaluation, and human release authority. | High-risk but governable if evidence and rollback are strong. |
| Automated candidate search | A system generates many variants under evaluator selection. | Requires strict control-plane separation and no-op outcomes. |
| Uncontrolled autonomous replication | Components can copy, deploy, expand authority, evade review, or persist without external permission. | Out of bounds for this site and unacceptable as an engineering pattern. |
What this section does not provide
This section does not provide instructions for autonomous replication, deployment evasion, credential acquisition, persistence mechanisms, malware construction, backdoor design, or bypassing evaluators.
Why the boundary matters
ModelBreeder-style governance draws a hard line around uncontrolled replication and candidate-controlled evaluators. Cognivirus accepts that line as necessary. The critical question is whether the line remains enforceable when the replicated unit is not a whole model but a small adapter, memory record, routing preference, or synthetic data fragment.
An architecture can prohibit model self-copying and still permit behavioral reproduction through descendants. That is the gap Cognivirus studies.
Boundary controls
A controlled reproduction boundary should include:
- externally enforced candidate quotas;
- signed adapter provenance;
- no self-signed promotion;
- no candidate-controlled evaluator selection;
- immutable release records;
- clear base-family compatibility constraints;
- rollback packets that restore the complete ecology;
- human-owned policy gates for any change to replication rules.
The rule is simple: candidate generation may be automated only when authority expansion is not.