transparency is the reference-relative form of reason mediation, stated on the frame, and its defect is the pathwise disagreement mass

Agent-decided, reversible; a research-branch finding (projects/deference/rounds/2026-09-24-transparent-channel/), not canonical. A channel of the frame — reason trace, activation event, inquiry outcome, specification — is transparent to its declared inputs when it is reason-mediated by the declared-input view at every exterior (Transparent), and realizes a reference when the factor map is declared (Realizes); the two coincide up to declaring the reference (transparent_iff_realizes). This is taken as the primitive behind selection sealing (item 87 clause 6), activation independence (item 89), provenance adequacy (item 68), inquiry causal faithfulness, trigger integrity and secret evaluator change, each of which is the hypothesis that a named channel realizes its declared reference. The approximate form is the pathwise disagreement mass with the reference, entering the landed inequalities where the mismatch and content terms sit (security_bypass_le_defects); total variation is recorded as a lower bound on it and not adopted, because the advisor chooses the coupling and the payoff algebra is pointwise in the exterior. Provenance normalization is placed as the reason-side corrigibilization — a substitution on the move alphabet whose existence condition is the truthful completeness of the authorized alphabet — and is recorded as unable to repair selection failures, which belong to supply. Nothing is registered. Alternatives rejected: channel equality of marginal kernels as the primitive (too weak for the joint mismatch event, Witness.marginal_refuted); posterior equality as the primitive (a prior-dependent corollary); a stochastic-kernel formalism beside the frame (the frame's exterior already carries the exogenous coordinate); total variation as the defect.