Before a claim is allowed to stand, the agent returns to the source and checks it against the real bytes — word for word. A value it can’t find is discarded; not softened, not “close enough.”
The owning surface re-reads the source and compares the cited value to what is literally there. Match, and the claim stands; absent, and it is dropped with a halt.
It plans from the filesystem that actually exists. It will not invent a path, a file, or a dependency to make a step succeed.
How grounding works on a single surfaceInvariant A cited value that is not present in the source is never kept. If it can’t be pointed to, it doesn’t ship.
Go deeper — grounding & the Layer Law
Why grounding lives on one surface, and how the Layer Law keeps a guess from ever being promoted to a fact.
