This paper analyzes the minimal descriptive structure required to track persistence of distinctions under repeated variation. Building on the result that accumulated loss may be path-dependent and obstruct global equivalence of locally valid preservation rules, it shows that redundancy of local description is unavoidable once persistence is required to remain coherently describable. Local descriptions are shown to admit equivalence classes defined by agreement in comparative persistence judgments. When variations compose and accumulated loss is path-dependent, these equivalence classes cannot be identified across locations without additional relational structure. The paper derives the necessity of a connection as a purely structural device for relating locally equivalent descriptions across variation, without assuming spacetime structure, dynamics, symmetry principles, or group actions. Transport around closed sequences is shown to exhibit nontrivial holonomy in general, expressing a failure of global descriptive integrability rather than a physical interaction. Gauge structure is identified only at this stage, as a name for the resulting configuration—descriptive redundancy, equivalence classes, connection, and holonomy—rather than as a postulated symmetry or field. Correspondence with standard gauge-theoretic formalisms is discussed separately in appendices under explicit additional assumptions. The analysis is pre-formal and foundational in character. It isolates gauge structure as a necessary consequence of persistence tracking under redundancy and path dependence, independent of geometric, dynamical, or physical interpretation.
David Sigtermans (Mon,) studied this question.