Foundations
Foundations is the map. It does not repay an argument. A reader who wants the why follows the name. A reader who wants the bytes follows the specification. A reader who wants a running thing follows the reference.
PCOC is a family. The construction this repository runs is a hike: a room grown from a key and an opening header, legs taken while later headers close the stages, checked from the log. The family says what any instance still owes. The hike is one discharge.
Where a question goes
The briefs take one question each. They teach. They do not amend the specification.
The scarce step sits on the object, not on a door. How do you make a digital thing scarce?
A cap and a list are the same office. A made object has no office. Issued, listed, or made?
The cost does not amortise. Two objects need two rooms. What kind of cost refuses to divide?
Occupancy is the unit. The time half is not in the bytes. Why memory, and why a clock?
Effort has no when. A public sequence supplies one. How do you prove when the work happened?
The evidence is in the file, not in a lookup. Can you check a stranger without asking anyone?
A cheap inspection may refuse. Only a replay may confirm. Why can saying no be cheap when saying yes cannot?
The object is already a composition. The pattern is the repetition. The uses are a guess. What follows from two things?
The finished file is a spent commitment the holder can put at risk. Why carry the cost forward?
How you make one says the hike once, at construction depth. It is the discharge, not a tenth brief.
Where the arguments meet
Three pressures sit on the same object, and they are not the same pressure.
The economic pressure is incidence. A key is free, so the floor has to sit on making the object. The maker pays that once per object. The checker pays to look, once per file. A cheap rejection is not proof that anyone paid the floor. That argument is Cost and incidence.
The threat pressure is the two ways the arrangement fails. Someone gets a seat-shaped file for less than the floor. Or the floor holds and the room cannot afford to look. A file that did the work is valid. That argument is Threat model.
The family pressure is the ten debts any instance still owes: a checkable object, verification without trusting the maker, a public-key binding, a per-object cost, cheap checks before dear ones, public time, scarcity from cost, one-contract interoperability, a bound terminal state, and hash contexts kept apart by role. Membership does not attest a person or an acceptance. That list is Family contract.
The technology is the hike that discharges those debts. The incentives say why the cost has to sit on the object. The threat says what remains open once it does. None of the three picks the other's numbers.
What Bitcoin is doing here
Bitcoin is the public surface the hike reads. It is not the family, and it is not the object.
A header arrives on a schedule the maker does not set, carries content the maker could not predict, and can be checked by anyone. The hike uses those properties as the clock. The opening header helps fill the room. Later headers close the stages. Bitcoin does not issue the object, and it does not admit anyone.
Bitcoin headers are the clock. Writing a mark back into that order is a plant. That writing is a separate fee from the leg. The leg buys the quantity. The fee buys a place. They are not the same bill. The plant and its path are how this hike places the mark. A pooled notary that batches marks for convenience is a FatSlot-era convenience. It is not family law, and it is not how this hike must plant.
Where the parts sit
The briefs are the questions. The rationale is the arguments those questions leave unpaid: the family, the two holes, the two bills, and this map. How you make one is the construction said once.
The specification is the hike as text, under specifications/satoshi-hike-v1.35/. A pin change is not a new family debt.
The reference is what runs: produce and verify. A pass is the file matching the construction. It is not an acceptance.
A door that wants a rule — how many stages must sit on a chain it trusts, how old a finished object may be, whether the presenter holds the secret — names that rule itself. The object does not carry it.
Records are what was measured, and on what. Nothing under records is this law.
An earlier tree, pcoc-prototype, still holds FatSlot seal v1, its notary, and its admission bench. Those pages are that instance. Do not read them as the map of this one.