EPICON Philosophy

EPICON Philosophy¶

Cycle: C-363 · Type: Foundational reference (not implementation)

EPICON (Intent Protocol) is how Mobius answers why something changed — not only what changed. This page is philosophy and review discipline, not API docs.

Every important action should answer¶

Question	EPICON field / practice
Who acted?	Actor, service account, or sentinel identity
Why?	Stated intent — values invoked, reasoning, boundaries
What changed?	Scope, files, endpoints, or state delta
Was it autonomous?	Human, agent, cron, or bot — label the mode
Was it reviewed?	Consensus label, sentinel review, or explicit waiver
Can history replay it?	Ledger event, reserve block, or journal entry with hash

If a PR cannot answer these six questions in plain language, it is not ready to merge.

Principles¶

Intent before execution — declare EPICON (or equivalent journal) before irreversible writes.
No silent autonomy — agents and crons identify themselves; no anonymous production mutations.
Replay beats rhetoric — a claim is weaker than a reproducible attestation chain.
Boundaries are part of intent — say what the change does not apply to.
Vacation-safe work — docs and copy passes are valid EPICON scope when runtime risk is zero.

When EPICON is required¶

Federation PRs touching integrity, ledger, vault, or sentinel roster
New cron or write path on Terminal or CPC
Constitutional changes on Substrate (cycle.json, license policy, quorum)

When a lightweight note suffices¶

Typo fixes, link repairs, screenshot updates (C-363 class)
Browser Shell public language changes that do not alter routes or APIs