AetherRuntime: A Falsification-First Investigation of Runtime Assurance in the Aether Family

AetherRuntime: A Falsification-First Investigation of Runtime Assurance in the Aether Family AetherRuntime is the sixth functional dimension (provisional) of the Aether family. It investigates whether a runtime-assurance gap genuinely exists in the Aether family, and specifies a five-layer architecture (monitoring, detection, containment, halt, recovery) with two propositions (determinism of local anomaly detection; irreducible halt window). No implementation is claimed. No real-world deployment has been evaluated. F1–F4 are not falsified by argument; F5 is untested. The paper includes: - 33 pages - 6 figures (Fig1–Fig6) - 5 runtime layers (Monitoring, Detection, Containment, Halt, Recovery) - 2 propositions with proof sketches - 20 open questions (Q1–Q20) - 9 evaluation metrics (M1–M9) - 5 baselines (B1–B5) Version 0.1.0 — November 2026.