Definition
A45 of the exchange of 2026-10-17, answering the owner’s request at U45:
An agent’s constituent action-generating regimes are intrapersonally synchronized, relative to a context and temporal horizon, insofar as their interactions sustain mutually compatible courses of practical activity without requiring recurrent overriding arbitration by processes operating at a higher level of governance.
It “need not consist in identical preferences, unanimous first rankings, or the elimination of disagreement. It may arise through aligned valuations, reciprocal adjustment, negotiated accommodation, or learned coordination among processes with distinct evaluative perspectives.” A higher level may remain, “for monitoring, exceptional arbitration, and revision”. What marks the condition is that “coherent activity is ordinarily maintained through the constituent processes’ own coupling rather than repeated imposed resolution of their conflicts.”
Three things are relative and are stated with it: the regimes in play, the context, and the horizon.
Static compatibility is not synchronization. That some joint policy gives every process an acceptable part (A45: “∃π∈Π such that ρ_i(π)∈A_i(c,t) ∀i”) says the course exists. Synchronization is the dynamics that reach and keep it: local interactions that “generate compatible joint policies across the relevant horizon while making h_t unnecessary in ordinary operation”, where h_t is supervisory intervention.
The term is new. The owner asked to generalize TERM-050, and the template says a changed definition is a new TERM, so that the claims stated in the old one can be found. Six claims are stated in TERM-050’s sense (CLAIM-156, CLAIM-162, CLAIM-163, CLAIM-169, CLAIM-198, CLAIM-261). It does not supersede TERM-050: the two are independent dimensions (next section but one).
Two dimensions, not a hierarchy
Valuational concordance (TERM-050) and practical synchronization vary independently. Regimes can agree about what should happen and have no working mechanism to bring it about; they can coordinate effectively while ranking differently.
| practical coordination absent | practical coordination present | |
|---|---|---|
| valuational concordance absent | unresolved disagreement | negotiated or coupled coordination |
| valuational concordance present | agreement without effective coordination | concordant, coordinated action |
The lower-left cell is what makes them two dimensions. Every regime may rank the same course first and the agent still fail to take it, because nothing couples the regimes’ activity across the relevant delays, or because the course needs a coordination none of them supplies. The upper-right cell is the owner’s U45 case: disagreement settled among the regimes without override. TERM-050 keeps its own role, as the column a coordination mechanism need not reach. This also meets CLAIM-163’s objection more directly: that objection is to synchronization talk with no mechanism, and the mechanism belongs to this term’s dimension, not to concordance.
What it is not
- Not TERM-050’s intrapersonal synchronization, and not its generalization. TERM-050 is the case in which every regime ranks the course first from every delay, so “there is no contest to win”. A45 called it valuational concordance, “the special case captured by the previous definition”. That inclusion does not follow, as the owner pointed out in review of the filing (workbench entries of 2026-10-18). Concordance is agreement in rankings and requires no coupling; practical synchronization is achieved coordination through the regimes’ own interactions. See the next section.
- Not supervisory integration. A45: “coherent action is achieved through repeated higher-level intervention, rather than primarily through local coordination”. The agent acts as one, as CLAIM-261 says a divided agent can, but its regimes are not synchronized in either sense.
- Not a test of how the coordination was established. A45: “Behavioral conformity under coercion can resemble synchronization.” Regimes conditioned never to object can acquire compatible behaviour and keep it up through their own local interactions, with no active supervisor intervening. They are then practically synchronized. The term is descriptive: a dynamical achievement, compatible activity sustained by the regimes’ interactions. Whether that arrangement is non-dominating, that is, how it was established, whether each contribution stays consequential and what happens under counterfactual dissent, is a further and more demanding condition (CLAIM-362, with its counter CLAIM-364). Conditioned conformity can count as practical synchronization and fail that condition. Two agents can be equally synchronized and differ deeply in autonomy. (The first filing said the definition excluded conditioned conformity; the owner’s second review corrected it.)
- Not authentic integration. A45 named a stronger condition, in which coordination is “also non-dominating, contestable, and maintained through the organization’s own processes of mutual accommodation”; that is the owner’s criterion, CLAIM-362. This term carries no claim about ownership.
- Not neural phase synchrony, and not shown to be a mechanism. CLAIM-163’s objection stands: the term names a coupling, a candidate collective variable (how often supervisory intervention is needed) and transitions, but the record has not shown them in a will.
Where it comes from in the record
QUESTION-077 anticipated it: if coupled agreement “turns out to be what intrapersonal “synchronization” actually is, the word may earn its mechanism, though not in the sense TERM-050 gives it.” QUESTION-078 is the question it serves: whether “differentiated interests keep distinct roles, boundaries and pathways of influence within a stable or metastable pattern of coordination”. CLAIM-358 is stated in it.