Ecosystem bridges and benchmark contracts

v0.22 implements RFC-013. The release ships portable boundaries that independent hosts, renderers, games, and benchmark products can implement without moving their policy into GAOS.

One host lifecycle

Every direct host or transport adapter maps to the same lifecycle:

authenticate
  → assign or resume a controller epoch for a fixed logical seat
  → validate a canonical command
  → prepare → persist → commit
  → publish a seat-scoped observation or repair
  → checkpoint / reconnect / terminate
  → finalize portable replay evidence

SessionHostDriver is the transport-neutral contract. One serialized lane per session, conflict-detecting idempotency, persistence before publication, explicit timeout escalation, seat-scoped delivery, revision-based repair, and complete durable evidence are normative. Sockets, authentication, matchmaking, storage, presence, and server allocation are host-owned.

Nakama and Colyseus are direct hosts when their authoritative TypeScript runtime can execute the SDK and required cryptography. A plain Node HTTP/WebSocket service is the reference composition. Photon Fusion is a transport or authoritative-hosting choice whose integration must name the actual state authority.

Photon Quantum is an alternate simulation core. Either GAOS is the simulation authority, or the integration emits explicitly external evidence over confirmed inputs, pinned simulation identity, frame digests, and results. It must never describe an external simulation as a native GAOS replay.

RFC013_HOST_CONFORMANCE_SCENARIOS lists the shared scenario identifiers that adapters use alongside the shipped event-store conformance runner.

Presentation boundary

PresentationFrame<TView, TEvent> separates a durable seat-scoped view from transient deterministic cues. Every event has an identity stable across retry and reconnect. presentationFrameFromObservation deduplicates those identities, carries the durable transition revision, and suppresses old cues on a repair snapshot.

The gaos.presentation-frame-v1 schema and golden JSON fixture are the first cross-language source of truth. Unity projects stable entity ids into GameObjects, Godot into nodes, and Unreal into Actors/UObjects. Those projections, animation queues, WebSockets, Blueprint events, art, input, and native replication remain engine-owned.

Stable seats and controller epochs

SeatControlLedger records authority independently from gameplay and connection state:

• the logical seat set is fixed at genesis;
• epochs are consecutive and have digest continuity;
• vacancy is explicit;
• a new controller or key starts a new epoch;
• same-controller, same-key reconnect resumes the epoch;
• multi-seat swaps are prepared and committed atomically;
• stale epochs and controller ids are rejected;
• host-policy and controller-handoff transitions remain distinguishable; and
• checkpoints validate complete per-seat continuity when rehydrated.

The v0.22 ledger preserves claimed handoff signature material but does not reinterpret the v1 submission signature scheme. Cryptographic v2 handoff verification, replay evidence integration, and TypeScript/Python golden vectors are the historical v0.23 target scope of RFC-014. They are incorporated into the official v0.24 release.

Research and benchmark primitives

The engine exports GameDescriptor, GameObserver, Policy, explicit ChanceOutcome, distribution validators, deterministic selection, policy entropy, and Wilson win-rate intervals. Descriptors are machine-readable claims; conformance remains the evidence for those claims.

The ./benchmark entry point exports the gaos.benchmark-manifest.v1 contract, structural validation, deterministic task/seed/episode planning, and complete deterministic aggregation. The SDK owns these mechanics. A benchmark owns tasks, scores, weights, held-out content, eligibility, resource policy, and publication.

Evidence verification, organizer reproduction, open implementation, model identity attestation, and hidden-test compliance remain five distinct claims. EvidenceTrustClaims keeps them separate; no single checkmark implies all.

Generated engine clients, complete hosting guides, executable conformance, dynamic-control evidence, runner resume/packing, portable submission verification, remaining qualified research tooling, and the neutral deployable leaderboard all ship in v0.24. RFC-014 records the historical compatibility milestone, and RFC-015 completes the publication path.

Those releases keep external trust product-owned. A product supplies pinned public keys or certificate roots, policy, and signer or service adapters to the SDK; GAOS does not select an authority, hold its private key, or operate its service. Keys embedded only in submitted evidence are not trust anchors. RFC-014 defines the provisional verification boundary, and RFC-015 requires benchmark manifests and leaderboards to preserve its independent facts.