Meta-Stable Architectures Volume IV: Reflective Coordinator and Coherence-Driven Recovery in Networked Systems

This work introduces the Reflective Coordinator (RC), a phase-mediated coordination mechanism enabling recovery in networked metastable systems without external control. The study demonstrates that baseline dynamics exhibit a critical transition (f ≳ 0.22) where recovery time diverges due to absorbing isolation. The proposed RC resolves this by combining coherence recognition and coherence-driven relaxation, restoring finite recovery under high stress, noise, and repeated perturbations. Simulations confirm robustness across network topologies, scaling (N = 100–1000), and stress regimes. The results establish coherence-driven relaxation as a minimal mechanism for recovery in metastable systems.