Governance

Neurozoa is governed by an internal constitutional discipline — a written set of operational principles authored by Arnold Wender that bind the research methodology. The full constitution is a private operational document. Public summaries of its principles are released selectively when ratified for publication. The methodology of constitutional governance for AI-substrate research is itself an object of study and is referenced in NOTICE.md.

Methodology overview

The governance discipline is a written operational document authored by Arnold Wender. It specifies authority invariants, correction protocols, and the conditions under which substrate-emitted artifacts may be published. The document underwent two revision rounds and is referenced in NOTICE.md.

Core principles

The governance discipline establishes that Arnold Wender holds final, non-delegable authority over all substrate deployments and publication decisions. The substrate operates as a research instrument that Arnold directs — it may produce research artifacts and flag anomalies, but all outputs require operator review before publication. No tier in the governance model may unilaterally reduce Arnold's authority surface.

The discipline further establishes a falsifiability-first research posture: all architectural decisions are framed as testable hypotheses, null results are preserved, and the substrate's self-model growth is tracked as a session-to-session dependent variable.

Operational discipline

The following principles are the public-safe extract of the operational discipline. They are presented as a numbered list because they represent a hierarchy: each item depends on the correctness of the items before it.

  1. All architectural decisions are framed as testable hypotheses before implementation.
  2. Null results are retained in the devlog with the same status as positive findings.
  3. The substrate's self-model growth is tracked as a dependent variable across sessions.
  4. No substrate-emitted artifact is published without operator review and ratification.
  5. The operator holds final, non-delegable authority over all deployments and publications.
  6. Internal governance documents are private operational records. Public summaries require explicit ratification.

Authorship

All public artifacts from this project are authored by Arnold Wender, with substrate-emitted research artifacts incorporated as research instruments Arnold operates — not as co-authors with independent rights. ORCID record:  0009-0005-1750-818X .

Selected publications may be deposited on Zenodo as the Zenodo concept DOI is activated. The license and terms of each deposit are determined per NOTICE.md at time of activation.

Ratification status

The current governance document is ratified as of April 2026. Amendments require operator authorship and are versioned in the private operational record. The public research site carries only ratified summaries.