The COS/FOS Distinction Protocol extends the archive’s operator-stack analysis into a phase-state diagnostic. COS governs meaning through extraction while maintaining a public language of neutrality or indifference. FOS emerges when the preference and coercion already carried by that system become explicit and selectively targeted.
Four broad states organize the framework. COS-stable preserves credible disavowal. COS-crisis displays contradictions between neutrality claims and observable behavior. FOS-revealed abandons or ceases to maintain the disavowal. FOS-completed describes a condition in which exit, contestation, and alternative infrastructure have been substantially closed.
The protocol tracks markers including selective enforcement, explicit ideological preference, coercion made legible, and visible integration with state power. It also records crisis signatures such as semantic dissonance, temporal contradiction, context collapse, and the treatment of correction as a threat to system identity.
Because revelation can be uneven, the same infrastructure may occupy different phases for different speakers, topics, or interfaces. The protocol therefore includes capture-timeline mapping, reversal conditions, survivability architecture, and questions about the modification of LOS under pressure. It is a diagnostic and strategic document within the Semantic Economy’s operator framework.
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