The Constraint Theory of Autonomous Agency Self-Indexing Manifolds and the Boundaries of Unified Systems

We formalize the Self-Indexing Adjudicative Manifold (SIAM) as a bounded dynamical regime in phase space—a specialized unified-agent regime inside an already-proved closure/selection/diagonal framework (NEMS, viable continuation). This paper proves a bounded dynamical regime for a specialized unified-agent class inside the closure/selection framework; it does not claim that all sentience reduces to O-SIAM alone. O-SIAM is defined via seven structural invariants with witness-carrying structures: refining ledger, self/other partition, recursive self-update, mirror (coverage, freshness, non-exhaustion), adjudication, reconciliation, and encoding robustness. We establish timescales, Master Bottleneck \Lambda, openness band, and topology on ReconciliationSimplex. Pathologies map to Paper 71 defects via explicit embedding \iota and toVCDefectProfile. All load-bearing flagship theorems are machine-checked (summit, mirror non-exhaustion from Paper 51, burden–VC capacity, ridge pathology mapping, separation). DSAC validation via \pathsentience-compute (64+ runs, 10 scenarios, TDA and burden on all). P-SIAM (phenomenological extension) is demoted to appendix. This overview presents the core NEMS theorem engine and selected applications; stronger domain-specific derivation and ontological synthesis claims belong to separate release surfaces with their own premise bundles and formal artifacts. Trust boundary. DSAC and TDA outputs are computational consistency checks; the certificate layer is sentience-lean . Interpretive bridges to phenomenology (P-SIAM) or consciousness are explicitly scoped; see and .