Version of June 2nd, 2026, based on technical development within the Absolute Frame Theory programme. The Absolute Frame Theory (AFT) derives the Standard-Model gauge group as topological data of an embedding X: M of the observable four-dimensional manifold into a flat ten-dimensional Euclidean substratum. We analyse the gauge-coupling sector of that construction and sort it, with marked epistemic status, into what is derived and what is not. Three results follow. First, AFT derives the coupling ratios and the weak mixing angle ²W=3/8: the SO (10) embedding collapses the three Standard-Model couplings to one, and the surviving freedom is a single dimensionless number. Second, the scalar content is fixed by the embedding itself---the fluctuation field X is the 10 of SO (10), a Standard-Model Higgs bidoublet plus a colour sextet---leaving AFT with no fundamental left--right order parameter; we argue that left--right (SU (2) R) breaking is instead geometric, being the Euclidean-to-Lorentzian signature transition that turns the compact Spin (4) into the non-compact Lorentz group, with the consequence that the left-handedness of the weak interaction and the orientation of the cosmic arrow of time share one geometric origin. Third, we treat the unified-coupling value as an induced (composite) coupling. Below the substratum scale it runs with the full asymptotically-free beta function, but its boundary value is the finite induced coupling, which is logarithmically---not power---divergent, because the substratum is flat and the charged interface modes are a finite confined set rather than a Kaluza--Klein tower. The value g ₆ₔₓ is therefore renormalization-scheme dependent and not derivable from observations confined to M; it is identified by measurement, like the substratum constants of the gravitational and cosmological sectors. The gauge structure is derived; the gauge-coupling value is boundary data. This sharpens the programme's derivability boundary: the quantities AFT cannot derive include not only symmetry-orbit labels but ultraviolet-sensitive renormalizable couplings, the openness of the latter tracing to the flatness of the substratum.
Patricio E. Valenzuela (Tue,) studied this question.