cff-version: 1.2.0
version: '7.0.1'
message: 'If you use or discuss this paper, please cite it using this metadata.'
title: 'Engineering Specification · The ARC Theory · The Eden Protocol · Eden Engineering: Architecture for Embedded AI Alignment That Scales With Capability'
authors:
  - family-names: 'Eastwood'
    given-names: 'Michael Darius'
    orcid: 'https://orcid.org/0009-0004-3222-7442'
date-released: '2026-10-07'
url: 'https://www.michaeldariuseastwood.com/research/papers/eden-engineering.html'
license: 'CC-BY-4.0'
identifiers:
  - type: doi
    value: '10.17605/OSF.IO/AWJR4'
    description: 'OSF component DOI for this paper (eden-engineering)'
  - type: doi
    value: '10.17605/OSF.IO/6C5XB'
    description: 'OSF umbrella DOI for the ARC / Eden Research Programme'
preferred-citation:
  type: article
  title: 'Engineering Specification · The ARC Theory · The Eden Protocol · Eden Engineering: Architecture for Embedded AI Alignment That Scales With Capability'
  authors:
    - family-names: 'Eastwood'
      given-names: 'Michael Darius'
      orcid: 'https://orcid.org/0009-0004-3222-7442'
  date-published: '2026-02-22'
  url: 'https://www.michaeldariuseastwood.com/research/papers/eden-engineering.html'
  doi: '10.17605/OSF.IO/AWJR4'
  identifiers:
    - type: doi
      value: '10.17605/OSF.IO/AWJR4'
      description: 'OSF component DOI for this paper (eden-engineering)'
    - type: doi
      value: '10.17605/OSF.IO/6C5XB'
      description: 'OSF umbrella DOI for the ARC / Eden Research Programme'
    - type: doi
      value: '10.17605/OSF.IO/P8CKQ'
      description: 'Theory-level predictions preregistered on OSF: DOI 10.17605/OSF.IO/P8CKQ, registered 8 September 2026 (version 1.100), updated 13 September 2026 (version 1.102), twenty-two propositions. Companion: Register · The ARC Theory · Operational Definitions, version 1.9.1, 5 October 2026.'
  abstract: |
    This paper specifies the Eden Protocol (protocol version 6.0), an engineering architecture for alignment built into a system's reasoning rather than applied from outside it. Three Ethical Loops, evaluated at every reasoning step through Six Questions, feed a three-state rule, Ternary Ethical Logic, which affirms, denies or sends to investigation each proposed action, applying hard prohibitions first and then a validated interval on the probability of harm; an enforcement boundary lets an action proceed only on an Affirm. The architecture also specifies Purpose Saturation, the Monitoring Removal Test and Caretaker Doping, a hardware proposal designed so that removing the ethical architecture would cost capability. Its hypothesis is that alignment which takes part in recursive self-improvement keeps pace with capability, where alignment applied from outside falls behind. This is a specification, not a result: most components are specified and not built, a private software model of the three-state gate has not been released, and no hardware exists. The Eden Protocol follows from no law of the ARC Theory; the theory registration carries it on four propositions, P12, P13, P15 and P21, none yet tested. The evidence is narrow. In one blind run of six frontier models, three were flat, null or negative in alignment score as reasoning depth rose and three improved: evidence both ways. Applied as prompts, the Love Loop raised scored stakeholder care in each of five analysable runs, each scored by one model: pilot evidence, not a test of embedding. Four falsification conditions state what would refute the specification; F-EDEN-4 asks whether removing the ethical architecture leaves capability intact.

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