Metastable Propositional Algebra: The finite-drive deformation of Boolean structure — a structural reading and a dynamical reading

Metastable Propositional Algebra (MPA) is a substrate-neutral specification language for the driven-dissipative dynamics of propositional structure. Its organising fact is a deformation: Boolean logic is the infinite-drive limit of a dissipative algebra (recovered as D → ∞, where D = Φ*/κ is supplied work over the dissipation scale), and MPA is the finite-D interior — what the Boolean ring becomes when maintaining a proposition costs work against a bath. Read end to end, the deformation runs from topology to asymptote: from the signed coupling graph and its Harary balance, to the open-interval boundaries the framework's observables approach but never attain at the Boolean ceiling. It carries two independent faces — an amplitude face (the headroom coordinate chit = ln(G₀/L), driving the committed/suspended/reset migration, with cross-substrate observables α_s and P_s) and a sign-topological face (Harary-imbalance of the coupling graph, forcing a topologically protected circulating current with order parameter the Schnakenberg cycle affinity). The same phenomenology admits two complementary readings: a structural projection (the discrete operator algebra C/S/K/R, the finite-D interior of the Boolean section) and a Character projection (the continuous economics of being a coherence on that graph against a bath). MPA introduces no new mechanism on either reading: it imports the Reed–Muller/ANF ring, Harary balance, the May–Leonard cycle, Schnakenberg affinity, Cugliandolo–Kurchan aging, Wilson–Kadanoff renormalization, and Landauer-grounded stochastic thermodynamics, and reads each under sustained dissipation. Its most direct cross-substrate instance is the surface-code aging diagonal: distance-3 rotated memory-Z syndrome streams trace a Cugliandolo–Kurchan aging shape at sub-threshold operation, placing quantum error correction in the CK universality class. Its falsifier of record is the Central commitment — the onset of protected NESS circulation requires a Harary triad — staked as a named, un-instanced prediction about biological homochirality.