Author:	Ralph B. Holland
Affiliation:	Arising Technology Systems Pty Ltd
Contact:	ralph.b.holland [at] gmail.com
version:	1.0
Publication Date:	2025-12-30
Provenance:	This is an authored paper maintained as a MediaWiki document; edit history reflects editorial changes, not collaborative authorship.
Status:	frozen

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

Version 1.0 — Frozen

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

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