Status: accepted (2026-08-20, approved default).
Context
The bounds algebra meets three sources (Blueprint declared, Deployment host-side, host live policy). Operational bounds narrow freely with evidence. Protected bounds — classification and disclosure ceilings, authority/approval/effect-impact traits — encode obligations. An "acknowledge and narrow" default would let a portable artifact or a deployment silently under-state an obligation; the privilege-escalation direction is exactly the quiet failure.
Decision
Narrowing a protected bound DENIES by default (:protected_bound_clamp_denied).
A host may explicitly opt into an :acknowledge posture, which always
records clamp evidence. Operational bounds always emit clamp evidence
iff effective ≠ requested. Obligation families meet at the strictest
value; classification markers are retained regulatory obligations whose
effective set is the union of sources — dropping one is a widening.
Consequences
Portable input can never widen a host bound (property law, mutation-gated: flipping the meet to loosest reds the corpus). The deny default makes every protected narrowing a loud host decision rather than a silent drift. Hosts that need narrowing flows opt in explicitly and get evidence trails. The corpus pins the widening direction in both families with red cases.