The VM holds the boundary.

The table is created in init as :ordered_set, :private; its identifier never leaves the process. There is no API surface to bypass — outside reads are refused by the virtual machine itself, which is the same mechanism that enforces memory safety on the BEAM.

G1 reach-through ok -- outside lookup -> ArgumentError, insert -> ArgumentError; info reports protection: :private (metadata visible, data refused)

The recorded correction: the draft expected :ets.info on a private table to refuse outsiders alongside lookup; the platform returned full metadata — protection: :private included — to a process that cannot read one row. The spec was amended first, the gate rewritten as a positive assertion, and the clause came out sharper: a system's state is unreachable from outside; a system's existence is nobody's secret. The BEAM guards data, not existence, and hiding metadata would cost supervisors and telemetry their visibility for nothing.

Ordering costs nothing: :ordered_set sorts by Erlang term order, binaries compare bytewise, and byte order on branded ids is mint order. page_desc is a prev walk from :ets.last — no clock anywhere in the process. The G4 line, verbatim: page_desc(2000) == byte-sort desc over 2000 minted ids; store holds no clock.

The store performs no timestamp comparison and stores no timestamp column — the chronology is carried inside the key, and the table's own comparison order reads it back out.

init runs the canon's self_check! and aborts on mismatch — a store that cannot prove its codec refuses to start:

G6 canon ok -- self_check! -> {:ok, :native} (init gates on the same check)

And the gate adds no second parser: BrandedId.parse/1 returns {:ok, ns, snow} or :error, so classification beyond the namespace collapses to :invalid by design. The rung refused to reimplement parsing to refine the taxonomy. If the taxonomy ever sharpens on the BEAM, it sharpens in BrandedId, once.