Safest cross-platform deployment#

Minimal carrier formats that almost never break#

• Plain-text signature line:
  rtt=1 | coherence=declared | drift=bounded | paradox=structural
  Works in comments, markdown, email footers, issue templates, commit messages, and documents.
• HTML meta tag:
  <meta name="rtt" content="rtt=1 | coherence=declared | drift=bounded | paradox=structural; v=0.1">
• HTTP response header:
  RTT-Awareness: rtt=1; coherence=declared; drift=bounded; paradox=structural; v=0.1
  (Headers are ideal because they’re “invisible” but first-class to tooling.)
• /.well-known/ declaration file:
  /.well-known/rtt-awareness (text) so crawlers/tools can discover it without scraping HTML.
• rtt.json manifest:
  Machine-readable canonical form for tooling and local resolvers.

Practical rule#

Use at least two carriers per site: one human-visible (meta/markdown) + one machine-stable (header or well-known). That gives us resilience when one layer is stripped.

Self-updating without breaking trust#

“Self-updating” is where projects accidentally become spooky. The safe pattern is: pull-based, signed, and pinned by default.

A sane update model#

• Pinned default: Sites pin to a specific manifest version (e.g., v=0.1.0) and only update when explicitly allowed.
• Optional update channel: stable / candidate / local channels.
• Signed manifest: Publish a small rtt.manifest.json plus a detached signature file. Local tools verify before adopting.
• ETag/Last-Modified polling: Cheap update checks without hammering servers.

Manifest sketch#

{
  "schema": "rtt-awareness-manifest",
  "version": "0.1.0",
  "declaration": "rtt=1 | coherence=declared | drift=bounded | paradox=structural",
  "ruleset": "https://example.org/rtt/ruleset/0.1.0",
  "channel": "stable",
  "updated": "2026-02-06"
}

Letting sites inherit RTT awareness#

“Inheritance” should feel like CSS inheritance: local overrides, upstream defaults, explicit precedence.

Inheritance primitives#

• Base declaration: site-wide default in one place (header or well-known file).
• Scoped override: per-path or per-document overrides (meta tag in page, frontmatter in markdown).
• Precedence order (simple and predictable):
  1. Document-local (frontmatter/meta)
  2. Path-local (directory manifest)
  3. Site-wide (/.well-known/… or server header)
  4. Upstream (imported manifest)

“Import” mechanism#

Allow a site to point to an upstream canon:

• In /.well-known/rtt-awareness: import: https://www.triadicframeworks.org/.well-known/rtt-awareness

Then the resolver merges: upstream → local overrides. No magic—just declared composition.

Tiny local resolver that simulates the full substrate#

We want something that can act like the world locally: ingest declarations, resolve inheritance, and expose a stable view.

Minimal architecture#

• Input adapters: read from
  • local files/folders (docs trees)
  • HTTP headers
  • HTML meta tags
  • well-known declarations
  • manifests
• Resolver core: merges declarations by precedence; produces an “effective awareness” object.
• Simulator: represents “substrate” as a graph of regimes/contexts and runs constraint checks (drift bounds, coherence gates, recurrence assumptions).
• Outputs:
  • CLI summary (rtt resolve <url-or-path>)
  • local web UI (optional)
  • JSON export for other tools

Concrete lowest-friction implementation#

• Local reverse proxy (single binary/script) that:
  • fetches a page
  • reads headers + HTML meta
  • computes effective RTT awareness
  • optionally injects a small “awareness panel” into the HTML only on localhost
• Or browser extension that does the same resolution in-page (no server changes required).

Effective resolution object#

{
  "effective_declaration": {
    "rtt": "1",
    "coherence": "declared",
    "drift": "bounded",
    "paradox": "structural"
  },
  "sources": [
    {"type": "well-known", "uri": "https://site/.well-known/rtt-awareness"},
    {"type": "meta", "uri": "https://site/page"}
  ],
  "version": "0.1.0"
}

Pairing: browser extension (observer) + /.well-known/ (carrier)#

This keeps RTT awareness pull-based, local-first, opt-in, and reversible—no platform permissions required beyond what a user installs.

Carrier: /.well-known/rtt-awareness

File format v0#

Plain text is the most resilient across hosts/CDNs and easiest to debug:

schema: rtt-awareness
version: 0.1.0
declaration: rtt=1 | coherence=declared | drift=bounded | paradox=structural
channel: stable
updated: 2026-02-06
 
# optional inheritance
import: https://www.triadicframeworks.org/.well-known/rtt-awareness
 
# optional scoping (prefix match)
scope /docs/: rtt=1 | coherence=declared | drift=bounded | paradox=structural
scope /labs/: rtt=1 | coherence=declared | drift=bounded | paradox=structural

Inheritance semantics#

• Upstream first, then local overrides.
• Local scope overrides beat site root.
• Page-level meta (if we later add it) beats everything.

Self-updating: safe-by-default update model#

Because the extension is local, “self-updating” really means: the extension periodically re-reads the site’s own well-known file plus any declared imports.

Rules#

• Default is pinned: honor whatever version: is returned; do not “upgrade” semantics automatically.
• Channel only selects which manifest we fetch, not what we interpret.
• Caching: store (url, etag, lastModified, fetchedAt, parsedManifest) and revalidate with conditional requests.
• Failure mode: if fetch fails, keep last-known-good and mark status stale.

This makes the system behave like DNS caching: stable, conservative, and predictable.