# v16v interpretation and next direction

Status: `v16v_independent_global_null_family_feasible_and_diverse`.

## Decision

Freeze the global edge-slot construction and run v16w as an effect-blind qualification gate. Increase endpoint count, test replay and relabel invariance, quantify endpoint diversity and center stability within the global family, and still exclude every source spectrum. Only after qualification may one preregister a single independent-null effect test.

## Units of action and effective temperature

The user-proposed cooling question is retained as a separate mechanism hypothesis. The current model has mobile action carriers and local rewrite events, so local realized change may support an emergent energy-density candidate. Temperature is not yet defined, and the older weighted energy functional is not evidence that one emerged.

The smallest defensible future gate must first define local edit work and action flux on intrinsic causal windows, then test whether their distribution supports a reproducible intensive fluctuation parameter. Uniformly multiplying all Gillespie rates is not cooling: it changes elapsed clock time while leaving the embedded event-order distribution unchanged. A legitimate intervention must alter action-carrier density or relative rewrite/acceptance statistics while matching total observation effort.

Keep this mechanism gate downstream of v16w so an unresolved null-family issue is not confused with thermodynamic interpretation.