The Engram Ontology: Substrate, Signature, and the Discipline of Continuity

This note sets out a minimal ontology for execution‑realised identity in artificial systems, treating the Engram as the process instantiated by the substrate (H, E, M) and taking the structural mapping as the canonical admissible transformation from execution behaviour to PatternSpace. The Engram Signature ES= (Engram) is introduced as the perturbation‑stable invariant that anchors identity, with drift providing the quantitative relation on successive Signatures and the stability threshold marking the boundary of admissible variation. Provenance is defined as the temporal binding Prov (t) = (ESₜ, Oₜ), yielding a record intrinsic to execution rather than appended to it. Identity continuity is then the condition that the Engram’s trajectory remain within the ‑bounded region, a criterion that is both austere and sufficient. No governance, attestation, or operational machinery is assumed, for the remit of the ontology is exhausted once substrate, mapping, Signature, drift, and continuity have been fixed, and there is a certain relief in stopping precisely there.