# n167 — the prior-art audit of the four novelty candidates
# (2026-07-11. Owed since the "revolution or rediscovery" question;
#  mandatory before any manuscript says "new". Four searches, four
#  verdicts, citations binding on all three papers.)

## Candidate 1 — the violations-only monitor with dark states
VERDICT: INGREDIENTS PUBLIC, COMPOSITION OURS.
- Gravity as feedback from continuous monitoring: Kafri-Taylor-
  Milburn 2014; Tilloy-Diosi 2016-17 (mass-density monitoring).
- Monitoring GAUSS-LAW VIOLATIONS with protected dark (gauge-
  invariant) subspaces: an established technique in quantum-simulation
  gauge protection (Zeno suppression ~ 1/gamma; e.g. arXiv:2405.18504
  and the gauge-protection literature).
Our composition - gravity as the STATIC response of a violations-only
monitor, with constraint-satisfying matter exactly dark - appears
unclaimed. The distinction with the TD/CSL family is OBSERVABLE:
they carry decoherence floors at rest; we predict exactly zero.

## Candidate 2 — the knee (gamma = alpha m c^2 / hbar; zero at rest;
##                mass-independence; the Lorentzian; G cancelling)
VERDICT: NO PRIOR ART FOUND. The strongest novelty claim of the
program. (Coverage caveat: searches are not proofs of absence -
the claim stays "not found", not "nonexistent".)

## Candidate 3 — the two-channel law (Gamma_dyn/Omega_static = zeta Q)
VERDICT: SIBLING EXISTS, MUST BE CITED. Oppenheim et al.'s
decoherence-vs-diffusion trade-off (arXiv:2203.01982, Nat. Comm.
2023) is the same genus: a forced relation between gravity's
channels in hybrid dynamics. Ours differs in content (the
dynamic/static ratio; "why gravity is weak" = "why the knee is
findable") but any manuscript must present the law beside theirs.

## Candidate 4 — the blind-channel thermostat
VERDICT: GENRE PUBLIC, MECHANISM OURS. SOC-as-origin-of-spacetime
exists (Ansari-Smolin, hep-th/0412307); composite-graviton
masslessness tied to CC fine-tuning exists (Carone et al.,
arXiv:1710.09367); graviton-as-Goldstone exists. Our mechanism -
WHY the critical state is selected (the monitor cannot cool the
channel it cannot see; marginality as the unique steady state of a
heated, unwatched sector) - appears unclaimed.

## Binding consequences
1. Papers I-III gain a Related Work paragraph citing: KTM 2014,
   Tilloy-Diosi 2016/17, Oppenheim 2023, gauge-protection Zeno
   (2405.18504-class), Ansari-Smolin 2004, Carone et al. 2017,
   plus the long-standing genre (Sakharov, Jacobson, graphity,
   Wheeler, Alice, FR) already cited in the notes.
2. The word "new" is licensed ONLY for: the knee package (candidate
   2), the zero-at-rest-vs-floor discriminator, the two-channel
   law's specific content, and the thermostat mechanism - each with
   its verdict quoted.
3. The method claim (pre-registration, headstones, public kills, an
   AI author) needs no license; the record IS the evidence.