Mechanism
Integrity-constrained forecasting is the mechanism by which the agent's integrity field shapes its speculative reasoning, not only its committed execution. The forecasting engine constructs planning graphs whose branches represent hypothetical future trajectories: sequences of speculative mutations the agent is evaluating as possible futures. Integrity-constrained forecasting governs which of those branches the engine is permitted to generate in the first place. The constraint prevents the agent from speculating about behavioral trajectories that would violate its declared values, unless the structural conditions for deviation are present.
The constraint operates during the speculative mutation simulation phase of the forecasting execution cycle. As the forecasting engine proposes speculative mutations for each branch, the integrity engine evaluates each proposed mutation against the agent's declared value set and computes the projected deviation likelihood for the speculative action using the deviation function. The result determines whether a branch carrying that mutation may be generated at all. This is a generation-time filter on the planning graph, distinct from the slope validation and policy compatibility checks that evaluate branches after they exist.
The Deviation Function as the Gating Computation
The gating computation is the same deviation function the integrity subsystem uses to anticipate deviation in committed execution. The function is defined as D = (N - T) / (E x S), where N is the agent's current need vector (the magnitude and directionality of its unmet requirements), T is the agent's ethical threshold (the minimum condition that must be exceeded before deviation becomes structurally available), E is the agent's empathy weighting (the degree to which it internalizes projected harm to other entities), and S is the agent's self-esteem score (its self-assessed alignment with its declared values).
The numerator (N - T) is the deviation pressure: the gap between what the agent needs and what its normative framework allows. The denominator (E x S) is the deviation resistance: the combined internal counterforce that opposes deviation even when pressure is positive. When the agent's need is at or below the ethical threshold, the numerator is zero or negative, so the deviation likelihood is zero or negative, indicating that the structural conditions for deviation are absent. The forecasting engine applies this output as the gate on speculative branch generation.
The Generation Gate
If the projected deviation likelihood for a proposed speculative mutation is zero or negative, and the mutation would constitute a deviation from the agent's declared values, the integrity constraint prevents the forecasting engine from generating a branch containing that mutation. The agent does not speculate about behavioral paths that its integrity model classifies as structurally unjustified. The deviation-class branch is never instantiated in the planning graph, so it cannot be simulated, ranked, or promoted.
This is a stronger position than rejecting an unjustified branch after it has been constructed. Because the gate operates at generation time, the planning graph that the rest of the forecasting execution cycle evaluates contains no structurally unjustified deviation branches to begin with. The agent's speculative landscape reflects its declared values, rather than reflecting them only at the moment of promotion.
Need-Modulated Relaxation
The constraint is not absolute. It is modulated by the agent's need vector. When the need vector is sufficiently elevated that the deviation function output is positive, indicating that the structural conditions for deviation are present, the integrity constraint relaxes and permits the forecasting engine to generate branches that include deviation-class mutations. This need-modulated relaxation ensures that the constraint does not prevent the agent from planning for structurally justified deviation when the conditions warrant it.
The result is a directional asymmetry in the agent's speculative reasoning. The agent can speculatively explore deviation paths when need exceeds the ethical threshold, but it cannot speculatively explore deviation paths when need is below the threshold. The same deviation function that determines whether deviation is permissible in committed execution determines whether the agent is even allowed to imagine it.
Interaction With the Personality Field
The integrity constraint interacts with the personality field through the risk tolerance trait. An agent with high integrity and high risk tolerance may generate speculative branches that approach but do not cross the deviation boundary, exploring the space of actions that are maximally aggressive while remaining within the agent's declared values. An agent with high integrity and low risk tolerance generates speculative branches that remain well within the declared value boundaries, avoiding even the appearance of approaching the deviation threshold.
An agent with low integrity but high deviation resistance, the case of high empathy and high self-esteem despite prior deviations, generates speculative branches informed by its deviation history: the agent's speculative reasoning accounts for the fact that it has deviated before and that the coherence trifecta is actively working to restore alignment. The personality field thus shapes how close to the boundary the agent's permitted speculation runs, while the deviation function determines where the boundary itself lies.
Proportional Gating by Integrity Score
The constraint applies a proportional threshold mechanism keyed to the three-domain integrity model. An agent with high integrity across all three domains, personal, interpersonal, and global, does not speculate about deviation paths unless the need vector exceeds the ethical threshold by a margin that is proportional to the agent's current integrity score. Higher-integrity agents require stronger structural justification to enter speculative deviation reasoning than lower-integrity agents.
The proportional gating is a structural reflection of the fact that high-integrity agents have more to lose from deviation: higher self-esteem, stronger relational commitments, and greater systemic trust. They therefore require stronger structural justification to contemplate deviation. The margin scales with the integrity the agent has accumulated, so an agent that has maintained alignment across all three domains carries a correspondingly larger barrier to entering speculative deviation reasoning.
Composition Within the Forecasting Engine
Integrity-constrained forecasting sits upstream of the other evaluation stages in the forecasting execution cycle. By filtering branch generation, it shapes the planning graph that slope validation, policy compatibility checking, and affective reinforcement tagging subsequently operate on. The slope constraint separately interacts with the integrity field through the integrity impact projection: for each slope-eligible branch, the integrity engine computes the projected change to the agent's integrity score across all three domains, and that projected impact is incorporated into the branch's evaluation score, reducing the priority of branches with negative integrity impact. The generation gate and the impact projection are distinct interactions: the first decides whether a deviation branch exists, the second weights the consequences of branches that do.
Because the deviation function is evaluated continuously as part of the agent's cognitive cycle, the gate responds to the agent's current state at each evaluation. As the need vector, ethical threshold, empathy weighting, and self-esteem evolve, the set of speculative branches the agent is permitted to generate evolves with them, without any separate reconfiguration step.
Disclosure Scope
Integrity-constrained forecasting, comprising the application of the integrity field to constrain the forecasting engine's speculative branch generation during the speculative mutation simulation phase, the use of the deviation function D = (N - T) / (E x S) to compute projected deviation likelihood for each proposed speculative mutation, the prevention of branch generation for deviation-class mutations when the projected deviation likelihood is zero or negative, the need-modulated relaxation that permits deviation-class branch generation when the deviation function output is positive, the interaction with the personality field through the risk tolerance trait, and the proportional gating keyed to the agent's integrity score across the personal, interpersonal, and global domains, is disclosed in the cognition filing (U.S. Application No. 19/647,395 and its international counterpart). This article describes that disclosed mechanism. The scope extends to embodiments in which the need vector, ethical threshold, empathy weighting, and self-esteem score are realized over different state representations, provided the deviation function gates speculative branch generation and the need-modulated relaxation governs when deviation-class branches may be generated.
