Reference

Protocols

Every claim the substrate makes is backed by a protocol — borrowed, vendored, extended, or invented. Foundational sources (the Bible's witness tradition, common law, BitcoinArchive's three-chain architecture). Standards used (SHA-256, Ed25519, BIP39, Bech32, BitNet, noble/scure). Legal frameworks (FRE 902(14), AGPL-3.0 + Values Addendum). Substrate-invented doctrine (CAIRN, the BitNet substrate discipline across six scopes, the empathy protocol, seed-vs-send, attestation gate, L0–L4 taxonomy). Plus what's in development.

→ Read the protocols catalog  ·  → The CAIRN walk protocol

Cards_v2 contracts

• CONTRACT.md — the load-bearing contract for cards_v2: interaction model, tag-along bundle, comment redirect, attestation strip, fingerprint, recovery file, voice rules, audience clusters, schema additions.
• SCHEMA_V2_PLUS.md — schema_version 3 delta over V2: five new top-level blocks plus the step-level attestation block.
• TEMPLATE.md — canonical card prose skeleton.
• TEMPLATE.json — canonical sidecar skeleton.
• CLAIMS_AUDIT.md — the truth-claim audit across all 28 cards (320+ claims, all backed or framed as build-on).

Builder-card skill

The skill that lets authorized users (Garrison Node members, bitcoinarchive.org collaborators, UOX_rebuild contributors, L2/L3 trusted users, council-recognized agents) and clones of the substrate author new sims under the same contract.

• SKILL.md — the canonical instructions for any LLM that loads the skill.
• CARD_TEMPLATE.md · CARD_TEMPLATE.json · SUBMISSION.md — the canonical scaffolds.
• VOTING_PROTOCOL.md — silo coms ceremony rules; prose-only vs code/schema thresholds; vote sealing.
• ETHICS_AND_LAWFUL.md — the floor: what the substrate will not be used for; how LLM provider usage policies are honored unconditionally; how privacy is treated; what happens when a clone strips the floor.
• CLONE_INHERITANCE.md — what every clone gets; what every clone commits to; how cross-attestation works between clones; how the mesh adapts to entropy.
• Worked example — the four-question flow against an unfinished sim ("the air-quality litigant").

The architecture (Garrison Node)

MerkleTrust is the product face. Garrison Node is the architecture underneath. The reference docs at ~/garrison/gn-integrations/ describe the engine in depth — three places blockchain is actually used, the 23 silos, the morello replay layer, the DuckDB cube, the voting layer, the contribution flow.

The geek panel sim (40z) is the walkthrough version. The doc-tree links below are the long-form reference.

Where blockchain is actually used

• rustchain-v2 (forked from Scottcjn/Rustchain) — per-Garrison-Node attestation chain. Replay-from-any-anchored-point produces the same state. Source at ~/garrison/GN/ws/ws3_forge/rustchain-v2/.
• rust-sv (Bitcoin SV reference impl) — local rustchain anchors periodically to BSV. Double-anchor pattern for fork resilience. Source at ~/garrison/rust-sv/.
• Beacon-skill signing surface — ed25519 + HMAC-SHA256 over internal events.

Discipline

• Daily ceremony — 15 seconds, real SHA-256, anchored to BSV.
• Soul-chain seven-file SHA verification at every boot. Mismatch halts.
• Workspace contract at ~/garrison/CLAUDE.md — drift catchment via daily attestation.
• Archive discipline — move-to-archive, never silent rm. _v1_S<sprint>.md suffix on archived files.

Sprint history

The work that produced cards_v2 ran across these sprints:

• S141 — site live; 26 sim cards (40a–40z) initial authoring.
• S143 — V2 schema (data_fate, mock_ui, public_ceremony, simulation_posture).
• S144 — sim audit; archive discipline added to workspace contract.
• S145 — five priority sims hand-curated to V2; two custom CSS themes (home_hub, hearing_room).
• S146 — site polish; mkdocs strict mode; navigation tightening.
• S150 — editorial day; 92 mechanical edits, 71 deferred for sovereign editorial.
• S151 — prose pass; 40a–40g landed in canonical voice; runtime auto-fallback removed; IT-review broadcast added universally; login page rewritten.
• S152 — cards_v2 pivot. Schema bumped to v3. 26 cards rewritten + 41 (builder) + 42 (operator). Builder-card skill filed. Old cards archived. New static site (this site) built.

Closing handoffs and broadcasts at ~/garrison/GN/handoffs/2026-04-28/.

Source code

• Substrate: github.com/garrison-node/merkletrust
• rustchain-v2: ~/garrison/GN/ws/ws3_forge/rustchain-v2/
• rust-sv (vendored): ~/garrison/rust-sv/
• kafka-rust (vendored): ~/garrison/kafka-rust/
• This site (build script + assets): ~/garrison/site/v2/

Inspirations and credits

• DeAngelo's YouTube series on the million killer apps for blockchain. The framing for card 41 (the 1,000,001th) and card 42 (the 1,000,002th). Crediting the inspiration; not claiming an endorsement.
• BitcoinArchive.org (BitDreams chronicle) — three-chain architecture, layer/tier system, CVT pipeline, era-progressive design.
• Federal Rule of Evidence 902(14) (2017) — hash-verified digital records as self-authenticating. Cited in 40e, 40f, 40k.
• BitNet (Microsoft) — ternary weights, 1.58 bits per digit, log₂(3) ≈ 1.585. Cited in 40x, 40y.
• Sigstore, in-toto, SLSA — software supply-chain attestation frameworks. Cited in 40d for the "different threat model" positioning.