Temporal Continuity and Covariant Loop Gravity: Geometric Closure, Circulation Obstruction, Refinement Gates and Quantum Recovery

Temporal Continuity and Covariant Loop Gravity: Geometric Closure, Circulation Obstruction, Refinement Gates and Quantum Recovery rebuilds the proposed connection between spin foam quantum gravity and the Chronoflux continuity framework from the standard geometric data of covariant loop gravity. The paper begins with the spin foam two-complex, its SU(2) face representations, edge intertwiners, closure relation and simplicity constraints. Under geometric, nondegenerate boundary conditions these data reconstruct areas, oriented normals and a piecewise flat gravitational geometry. This is the earned geometric closure. The Einstein gravitational metric follows from the tetrad and bivector sector, not from a later hydrodynamic interpretation. The central circulation claim is then tested at operator level. A face spin j fixes the SU(2) Casimir magnitude j(j+1). An oriented linear flux instead has projections m=-j,...,j and changes sign under orientation reversal. The face spin alone therefore cannot determine a temporal circulation. A physical circulation operator requires a direction, a state or intertwiner, a conversion scale and a gauge covariant projection. A second exact obstruction appears in the cellular structure. Spin foam closure is an internal vector relation among bivector fluxes carried by two-faces around a tetrahedral edge. Covariant current conservation is d star J=0 and closes the flux of a three-form across the three-dimensional boundary cells of a four-cell. These relations are not identical. A Chronoflux bridge must map geometric two-face data to temporal three-cell flux data while preserving orientation, dimensions, gauge covariance, gluing and refinement. Simplicity is restored to its proper role as a metricity constraint. It does not impose scalar potential flow or minimal hydrodynamic shear. Indeed, if the temporal one-form is the gradient of a smooth scalar, its local vorticity vanishes identically. The paper therefore presents a covariant multi-potential fluid action as one possible route by which a conserved timelike current and nonzero vorticity can coexist, while keeping that route separate from the EPRL amplitude until a common derivation is supplied. The proposed continuum stress sector is also audited. The contraction between the declared longitudinal inertia tensor chi u^mu u^nu and the physical projected shear tensor vanishes identically. It cannot generate the claimed temporal shear dynamics. A nonzero anisotropic stress requires an independent spatial tensor and, where relaxation is intended, its own constitutive or open-system dynamics. The large-spin Regge limit is retained under the correct conditions. Nondegenerate geometric boundary data yield the familiar conjugate Regge phases on a fixed two-complex, and suitable boundary states may select a branch. This semiclassical scaling is kept separate from the refinement limit, which changes the complexes and amplitude maps and remains a renormalisation problem. The loop quantum gravity area spectrum remains exact as a geometric spectrum. Relabelling its spin as circulation does not establish a second physical meaning. Horizon entropy is likewise restored to gauge-invariant boundary state counting, including the invariant or SU(2) Chern-Simons constraints, rather than the unrestricted product of representation dimensions. The paper closes with two precise routes by which temporal continuity could acquire quantum gravitational authority. The first begins from a common covariant action whose symmetries derive the temporal current and whose metric variation derives its stress before discretisation. The second begins from refined amplitudes carrying temporal sources and requires a Ward identity that survives coarse graining. Admissibility tests the gauge, causal and variational closure of either route. Recoverability asks whether the temporal scale and projection data can be reconstructed from declared boundary observables. Persistence requires the same current interpretation to survive changes of state, complex and scale. The result preserves the genuine geometric content of spin foams while defining the exact work required for temporal continuity to become part of a covariant quantum gravity theory.