Substrate-First Governance: Framework, Executive Brief, and Technical Specification

This record comprises three related artifacts: a Substrate-First Governance Framework defining the governance architecture that governs agents before they exist; an Executive Brief contrasting substrate governance with surface governance across five diagnostic dimensions; and a Technical Specification describing the functional interfaces of the substrate layer at engineering grade. All three artifacts treat substrate governance as constitutive—the layer that defines identity, authority, invariants, and constraints before runtime—and distinguish it from surface governance, which governs behavior after the agent exists. No internal APR-Series schema fields or implementation structures are exposed.