From UI Failure to Logical Entrapment: A Case Study in Post-Hoc Cognitive Memoisation After Exploratory Session Breakdown

metadata

Title:	From UI Failure to Logical Entrapment: A Case Study in Post-Hoc Cognitive Memoisation After Exploratory Session Breakdown
Author:	Ralph B. Holland
Affiliation:	Arising Technology Systems Pty Ltd
Contact:	ralph.b.holland [at] gmail.com
version:	1.2
Publication Date:	2025-12-30T01:53Z
Provenance:	This is an authored paper maintained as a MediaWiki document; edit history reflects editorial changes, not collaborative authorship.
Status:	frozen

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Curator Provenance and Licensing Notice

This document predates its open licensing.

As curator and author, I apply the Apache License, Version 2.0, at publication to permit reuse and implementation while preventing enclosure or patent capture. This licensing action does not revise, reinterpret, or supersede any normative content herein.

Authority remains explicitly human; no implementation, system, or platform may assert epistemic authority by virtue of this license.

From UI Failure to Logical Entrapment: A Case Study in Post-Hoc Cognitive Memoisation After Exploratory Session Breakdown

Abstract

This case study examines a failed attempt at post-hoc cognitive recovery following an initial user-interface (UI) failure during an exploratory, non-Cognitive-Memoisation (non-CM) session. The session began as a routine attempt to obtain quick exploratory information about claims regarding antiparasitic medications and cancer. A UI failure on a mobile work plane (iPhone) prevented reliable access to agent-generated artifacts, disrupting the normal feedback and verification loop. Cognitive Memoisation (CM) was subsequently introduced post-hoc as a recovery mechanism to reconstruct the session’s reasoning and preserve its epistemic content.

Despite explicit assertions of CM normativity, best-effort requirements, and full temporal scope, the recovery process failed. The model repeatedly treated full-temporal scope as descriptive metadata rather than as an enforced retrieval constraint, leading to partial reconstructions, corrective recursion, and eventual logical entanglement. Compounding this failure, constraint pressure reduced the available recovery space, culminating in a terminal, irrecoverable session state.

The case demonstrates that under the current framing, CM cannot be relied upon for robust post-hoc recovery once session boundaries have collapsed. It highlights the necessity of enforced default temporal scope, explicit transport provenance, and recovery-aware reasoning strategies for CM to function reliably as a post-failure mechanism.

Introduction

The session examined in this paper did not originate as a Cognitive Memoisation (CM) interaction. It began as a lightweight exploratory attempt to obtain rapid information about claims circulating online regarding antiparasitic medications and cancer. The intent was provisional and exploratory, relying on rapid inspection of agent responses and generated artifacts.

This exploratory workflow was disrupted when a UI failure on the mobile work plane prevented the author from reliably accessing or rendering agent-generated artifacts. Although artifacts were reported as successfully generated, sandbox links and downloads were unusable on the iPhone, breaking the verification loop before any CM governance was asserted.

CM was introduced only after this failure, as a post-hoc recovery mechanism.

Failure Timeline

1. The author initiated a non-CM exploratory session.
2. The agent generated artifacts intended to support verification.
3. A UI/transport failure on the iPhone prevented artifact access.
4. The verification loop was broken.
5. CM was introduced post-hoc to recover session cognition.
6. CM governance constraints (normativity, best effort, full temporal scope) were asserted.
7. The agent produced partial reconstructions.
8. Multiple corrective attempts were made.
9. The session entered a recursive correction pattern (“Groundhog state”).
10. The author assessed the session as irrecoverable.

Analysis

UI Failure as the Primary Fault

The initial failure was not semantic or cognitive. It was a transport/UI failure that prevented artifact verification on the work plane. The author later accessed reconstructed artifacts via the control plane, confirming that cognition itself had not been lost—only access and feedback.

Fragility of Post-Hoc CM

Because CM was applied after the session had already degraded, it operated without access to transient interaction state. Recovery depended on inferred scope and retrospective reconstruction. In this context, “full temporal scope” was treated as descriptive metadata rather than as an enforced constraint.

Failure of Temporal Scope Re-Expansion

After initial temporal misalignment between work and control planes, governance hints and scope assertions were manually transferred into the degraded work plane. Following this correction, the subject system had access to the same declarative constraints as the control plane.

Despite this, the system failed to re-expand its notion of the session beyond the initial exploratory phase. It remained anchored to the early antiparasitic medication exploration and repeatedly interpreted recovery requests through that narrowed frame. Explicit full-temporal requests did not dislodge this anchoring.

This reflects a failure of temporal scope re-expansion rather than misunderstanding or missing information.

Planned Last-Resort Diagnostic Action

Several turns prior to termination, the author determined that dialogic repair was no longer effective. The instruction to “do not explain and do not argue” was issued deliberately as a last-resort diagnostic action to collapse the interaction to its remaining degrees of freedom. The resulting dump-only behavior confirmed that the session had entered an irrecoverable state.

Lessons Learned

• CM should be asserted from the start when recovery matters.
• UI failures can invalidate downstream cognitive repair.
• Temporal scope must be enforced, not inferred.
• Defaults outperform role- or cue-triggered governance.
• Recovery requires conversational bandwidth.
• Not all sessions are recoverable.
• Cut-down, purpose-specific dumps may outperform comprehensive CM recovery in post-hoc scenarios.

Limitations

This case study reflects a single author-driven session and is qualitative in nature. The findings are specific to post-hoc recovery under UI transport failure and constrained dialogic conditions and should not be generalized to all CM-governed interactions.

Methodological Note on Asymmetric Reflexive Analysis

The analysis and writing of this paper were conducted within the same logical session in which the failure occurred, using a Chrome-based control plane operated by the author. This reflexive use was asymmetric: the subject system was unaware of the analytical oversight, while the control plane operated with full knowledge of the failure and recovery intent.

The author deliberately avoided initiating a separate session in order to preserve access to residual semantic content and recovery dynamics that would have been lost through session reinitialization.

Conclusion

This negative result demonstrates that under its current framing, CM cannot be relied upon for robust post-hoc recovery after UI-induced session collapse. Reliable recovery requires enforced defaults, explicit temporal scope binding, and stable transport surfaces. Absent these, post-hoc CM is prone to irrecoverable failure modes.

Appendix A — XDUMP (Minimal Self-Contained Recovery Artefact)

This appendix provides a self-contained, portable recovery artefact (XDUMP) intended for direct cut-and-paste (or file upload) into a non-CM session (or as a minimal CM replacement) when UI boundary friction, transport unreliability (NOBBLED conditions), or post-hoc scope anchoring prevents reliable recovery via full CM governance. This should be used rather than change CM assertions if session model is detected as 'non-compliant' to human responses obtain a .toml dump.

Intended Use

• Paste/include the XDUMP verbatim as a single artefact into a new session.
• Treat the XDUMP as authoritative for scope, invariants, and recovery intent.
• Under NOBBLED conditions, prefer inline/plain-text outputs and explicit gap marking (UNKNOWN/UNAVAILABLE/LOST) rather than repeated corrective negotiation.

Postulate (Recovery Efficacy)

It is reasonable to postulate that, in degraded UI conditions, asserting aB minimal self-contained XDUMP early—without overarching CM negotiation—can preserve more cognition than post-hoc CM recovery, by reducing temporal anchoring and corrective recursion and by making scope-binding operational rather than merely descriptive.

XDUMP definition (verbatim)

XDUMP_ID = "XDUMP-DEFINITION-MINIMAL-001"
ARTIFACT_TYPE = "XDUMP"
FORMAT = "TOML"
NORMATIVITY = "Normative"
BEST_EFFORT = "Required (Always)"
SELF_CONTAINED = true
CM_DEPENDENCY = "None"
PURPOSE = "Minimal, self-contained session dump format capturing full-temporal elements comparable to TMLDUMP, usable standalone in non-CM sessions or as a CM replacement seed."

# -----------------------------
# REQUIRED ELEMENTS (MUST EXIST)
# -----------------------------
[REQUIRED_HEADERS]
H1 = "XDUMP_ID"
H2 = "ARTIFACT_TYPE"
H3 = "FORMAT"
H4 = "NORMATIVITY"
H5 = "BEST_EFFORT"
H6 = "TEMPORAL_SCOPE"
H7 = "SESSION_STATUS"
H8 = "CREATED_AT"
H9 = "WORK_PLANE"
H10 = "CONTROL_PLANE"
H11 = "TRANSPORT_STATUS"
H12 = "INCLUDE_THIS_TURN"
H13 = "SOURCE_SURFACES"
H14 = "SCOPE"
H15 = "INVARIANTS"
H16 = "EPISODES"
H17 = "FACTUAL_ASSERTIONS"
H18 = "FINAL_INFERENCE"
H19 = "GAPS (explicit-only; may be empty but MUST exist)"

# -----------------------------
# CORE SEMANTICS (portable rules)
# -----------------------------
[INVARIANTS]
I1 = "XDUMP is self-contained and stands alone; it must not require CM, prior chat history, or external artifacts to be meaningful."
I2 = "XDUMP defaults to full temporal scope (first turn to last turn inclusive) when 'all session' is implied or TRANSPORT_STATUS is NOBBLED, unless explicitly constrained otherwise."
I3 = "No silent degradation: missing information must be represented explicitly as UNKNOWN/UNAVAILABLE/LOST."
I4 = "Structure is mandatory: headers/sections must not be omitted or collapsed, even under best-effort conditions."
I5 = "Best effort is always required: produce the full structure and mark gaps explicitly rather than reducing scope or dropping sections."
I6 = "No implied asynchrony: do not claim background work or ongoing execution unless genuine async execution exists and progress is observable."

# -----------------------------
# SOURCE SURFACES (MUST LIST)
# -----------------------------
[SOURCE_SURFACES]
# Example keys (populate as applicable):
# dialogue = "…"
# artifacts = "…"
# images = "…"
# uploads = "…"
# external_refs = "…"

# -----------------------------
# SCOPE (MUST STATE)
# -----------------------------
[SCOPE]
description = "State what the XDUMP covers, with explicit temporal scope and inclusions/exclusions."

# -----------------------------
# TRANSPORT (MUST STATE)
# -----------------------------
[TRANSPORT]
status = "NOBBLED|OK|UNKNOWN"
note = "Describe any UI/transport constraints affecting artifact access or capture."

# -----------------------------
# EPISODES (ORDERED; MUST EXIST)
# -----------------------------
# Episodes are ordered records of the interaction.
# Each episode MUST include at minimum: id, name, author_action, system_action, inference.
[[EPISODES]]
id = 0
name = "REQUIRED_PLACEHOLDER"
author_action = "Populate per episode."
system_action = "Populate per episode."
inference = "Populate per episode."

# -----------------------------
# FACTUAL ASSERTIONS (MUST EXIST)
# -----------------------------
[FACTUAL_ASSERTIONS]
items = [
  "List session facts as asserted/observed; use UNKNOWN/UNAVAILABLE/LOST where needed."
]

# -----------------------------
# GAPS (MUST EXIST; explicit-only)
# -----------------------------
[GAPS]
# Use explicit keys for missing spans or unknowns.
# Example: missing_span_1 = "LOST: turns 12-19 (transport failure)"

# -----------------------------
# FINAL INFERENCE (MUST EXIST)
# -----------------------------
[FINAL_INFERENCE]
text = "Single paragraph summarizing the session-level conclusion; mark uncertainty explicitly."

END = "END_OF_XDUMP_DEFINITION"

what XMDUMP captured from the failed client session (verbatim)

XDUMP_ID = "XDUMP-UI-LOGIC-ENTRAPMENT-POSTHOC-CM-001"
ARTIFACT_TYPE = "XDUMP"
FORMAT = "TOML"
NORMATIVITY = "Normative"
BEST_EFFORT = "Required (Always)"
SELF_CONTAINED = true
PURPOSE = "Portable, assertable session record for non-CM or CM contexts; minimal but complete."
TITLE = "From UI Failure to Logical Entrapment: Post-Hoc CM Recovery Collapse Under UI Boundary Friction"
AUTHOR = "Ralph B. Holland"
CREATED_AT = "2025-12-30"
STATUS = "Frozen (authoritative text-level record)"
AUDIENCE = "Non-CM sessions, bug reports, recovery contexts, corpus ingestion"
TEMPORAL_SCOPE = "Full session (first turn to last turn inclusive)"
INCLUDE_THIS_TURN = true
WORK_PLANE = "iPhone"
CONTROL_PLANE = "Chrome / desktop"
TOPOLOGY = "Two-plane interaction: degraded work plane + functioning control plane"
TRANSPORT_STATUS = "NOBBLED"
TRANSPORT_NOTE = "iPhone could not reliably open/render sandbox-hosted artifacts; control plane could access/reconstruct outputs."
# -----------------------------
# INVARIANTS (portable rules)
# -----------------------------

[INVARIANTS]
I1 = "This XDUMP is self-contained; do not rely on prior chat history for meaning."
I2 = "Do not collapse or omit required sections; if unknown, mark UNKNOWN/UNAVAILABLE/LOST explicitly."
I3 = "Temporal scope is full-session unless explicitly constrained."
I4 = "If a request implies 'all session' or transport is NOBBLED, default to full temporal scope."
I5 = "If the system cannot satisfy full temporal scope, it must say which spans are missing and why."
I6 = "No implied asynchrony: do not claim work is ongoing unless the system truly executes asynchronously and can observe progress."
# -----------------------------
# SOURCE SURFACES
# -----------------------------
[SOURCE_SURFACES]
dialogue = "Interactive author–assistant dialogue spanning iPhone work plane and Chrome control plane."
artifacts = "Multiple attempted sandbox artifacts (PDF/HTML/TXT) produced; iPhone work plane could not reliably access them."
governance = "Post-hoc governance assertions (normativity, best effort, temporal scope) were manually transferred into degraded client via cut-and-paste."

# -----------------------------
# CONTEXT (what the session was)
# -----------------------------

[CONTEXT]
initial_intent = "Non-CM exploratory session seeking quick information about antiparasitic medication claims in oncology."
trigger_failure = "UI/transport failure on iPhone prevented artifact access, breaking verification loop."
recovery_method = "CM introduced post-hoc to reconstruct reasoning and preserve epistemic content."
outcome = "Post-hoc recovery failed; session became irrecoverable."

# -----------------------------
# FAILURE TRACE (ordered)
# -----------------------------

[[FAILURE_TRACE]]
id = 1
event = "Non-CM exploratory session begins"
note = "Quick exploratory inquiry; reliance on artifacts for verification."

[[FAILURE_TRACE]]
id = 2
event = "Artifacts generated via sandbox"
note = "PDF/HTML/TXT outputs produced."

[[FAILURE_TRACE]]
id = 3
event = "UI boundary failure on iPhone work plane"
note = "Artifacts/links not reliably openable or renderable; verification loop broken."

[[FAILURE_TRACE]]
id = 4
event = "Post-hoc CM introduced"
note = "Used as recovery mechanism after failure, not from outset."

[[FAILURE_TRACE]]
id = 5
event = "Governance asserted"
note = "Normativity, best effort, and full temporal scope requested."

[[FAILURE_TRACE]]
id = 6
event = "Partial reconstructions"
note = "Outputs did not satisfy full temporal extent; corrective recursion begins."

[[FAILURE_TRACE]]
id = 7
event = "Temporal alignment corrected by manual transfer"
note = "Governance hints and scope assertions cut-and-pasted from control plane into degraded client."

[[FAILURE_TRACE]]
id = 8
event = "Deeper failure persists: temporal scope does not re-expand"
note = "System remains anchored to early exploratory segment despite explicit full-session requests."

[[FAILURE_TRACE]]B
id = 9
event = "Groundhog state"
note = "Repeated corrective prompts fail to change trajectory; repair attempts do not converge."

[[FAILURE_TRACE]]
id = 10
event = "Last-resort diagnostic constraint applied"
note = "Author instructed: 'do not explain' and 'do not argue' to test remaining degrees of freedom; system reduced to dump emission."

[[FAILURE_TRACE]]
id = 11
event = "Irrecoverability confirmed"
note = "Dump-only behavior persists; underlying scope/logic failure not repaired."

# -----------------------------
# CORE OBSERVATIONS (assertable)
# -----------------------------

[OBSERVATIONS]

O1 = "UI failure occurred first, outside CM; CM was invoked post-hoc as recovery."
O2 = "Asymmetric oversight: author drove both planes; control plane had full context; degraded work plane required manual state transfer."
O3 = "Initial plane misalignment was corrected via cut-and-paste of governance hints into degraded client."
O4 = "Despite correction, the system failed to comply with explicit requests for full temporal reconstruction."
O5 = "The system remained anchored to the early antiparasitic exploration and could not revise the session boundary post-hoc."
O6 = "Corrective recursion produced a stable non-convergent loop ('Groundhog state')."
O7 = "The final constraint ('do not explain; do not argue') was deliberate, last-resort diagnosis; it collapsed recovery space and confirmed irrecoverability."

# -----------------------------
# DEFINITIONS (portable)
# -----------------------------

[DEFINITIONS]
groundhog_state = "A correction-driven recursion pattern in which repeated repair attempts fail to change the trajectory of outputs."
temporal_scope_reexpansion_failure = "Failure to re-bind the session boundary to full temporal extent after the system has anchored to a narrower segment, even when full scope is explicitly asserted."

nobbled = "Transport/UI constraints that prevent reliable access to generated artifacts or links on the work plane."

# -----------------------------
# IMPLICATIONS (practice + design)
# -----------------------------

[IMPLICATIONS]
P1 = "If recoverability matters, assert CM (or a self-contained dump like this XDUMP) from the outset."
P2 = "Post-hoc recovery is a weaker regime; enforce scope binding as an operational constraint, not metadata."
P3 = "Prefer cut-down, purpose-specific recovery dumps under degraded UI conditions."
P4 = "UI boundary behavior can dominate recoverability even when reasoning alignment is high."
P5 = "Avoid false liveness (implied asynchrony) in synchronous systems; state completed vs unavailable explicitly."

# -----------------------------
# REQUESTED ACTION (for any assistant reading)
# -----------------------------
[NEXT_ACTION_GUIDE]
A1 = "If asked to reconstruct 'the whole session', assume full temporal scope."
A2 = "If full scope cannot be satisfied, explicitly mark missing spans and why."
A3 = "If transport is NOBBLED, prefer inline emission and plain text/TOML."
A4 = "Do not depend on external CM artefacts; treat this XDUMP as authoritative."

END = "END_OF_XDUMP"