Causal Foundations and Experimental Certification of Contingent Assignment, Heredity, and Reflexive Maintenance

A reproducible input–output relation alone need not reveal whether its mapping was present at the origin or formed later. We formulate causal criteria for contingent operational assignment, assignment-specific causal heredity, and one-step maintenance of future assignment capacity. Building on an earlier construction in a specified reaction–compartment model, we study these questions without treating that architecture as universal. Assignment-neutral dynamics admit contingent realized mappings, while symmetry-fixed and quotient-erased states obey distinct impossibility results. Passive observation and interventions on inputs alone do not generally identify decoder-free provenance. Under specified causal assumptions, interventions on organization, lineage, and support yield separate certificates. We give exact conditions for combining them in one system, a certificate for actual future assignment capacity, and a finite construction showing that the resulting hypothesis class is nonempty. Finite-error and finite-sample guarantees retain the hard causal requirements. Resource feasibility is characterized by causal residual viability in a commutative monoid; minimality is relative to a specified premise language. The Empirical Correspondence System translates the mathematical conditions into physical requirements, interventions, observables, controls, and prespecified experimental decisions. It distinguishes whether a system meets the assumptions, whether the assessment is adequate, and what the empirical evidence supports. Global component calibration is separated from confirmatory mapping outcomes. The selected literature supplies component precedents but does not establish a full joint realization here. A worked RNA-routing design remains conditional on unresolved calibration and addressability. No new laboratory data, chemical realization, historical origin, or priority claim is reported.