Category Lag is a structural failure mechanism in which a classification system — regulatory, organizational, or conceptual — is applied to objects that evolved faster than the system's categories. The mechanism does not require a logical error. The rules are applied correctly to the wrong class. The danger is that Category Lag is invisible from within the classification system: by its own logic, it is operating correctly. Three confirmed failure modes are documented: regulatory boundary lag, project taxonomy mismatch, and pathway design mismatch. The mechanism's characteristic behavior — the applied category carries hidden dependencies from its original class into the new class, generating requirements that are systematically wrong for the new object — is formalized. Boundary conditions, falsification criteria, and prevention architecture are given.
Roman Kir (Mon,) studied this question.