Governance and Operational Tests for Non-Violation Retention: A Protocol Layer for Ψ-NVP

This paper introduces a governance and operational testing layer for retentive formalisms constrained by the Non-Violation Criterion (Ψ-NVP). Building on Articles I–II, the work formalizes accountability semantics for protocol interaction, defines auditable protocol artifacts, and specifies reproducible procedures for estimating applicability thresholds without violating non-amplification constraints. A protocol ledger is introduced to ensure governance-grade transparency, together with explicit classes of violations and a single demonstrative protocol template for post-dynamic retention assessment. Thresholds are treated as applicability boundaries rather than performance targets, preserving the minimal, non-optimizing, and non-amplifying character of the framework. The article completes the retentive formalism by providing a disciplined operational layer with clear limits of responsibility and applicability.