Obligation Is an Evidence-Carrying Temporal Response State
Permission changes which actions are admissible. Prohibition imposes a safety condition. Obligation instead creates a trigger-response state that remains pending until its primary action or declared fallback occurs.
Marici's direct-instruction and record-execution rules expose two coupled monitors. State-changing execution may discharge the action obligation while activating an evidence obligation; completion without the required checkpoint is therefore not global discharge. A blocking report discharges only when the declared safety or authority exception enables that exact fallback.
The finite monitor has inactive, pending, discharged, fallback-discharged, and violated states. A deadline or fairness condition must be declared rather than invented: without one, only unbounded liveness is expressible and finite violation cannot be certified.
The exact trace checker passes 13 of 13 tests. Universal policy realizability, multi-agent transfer of obligations, and concrete implementation refinement remain open.
Research packet: obligation-discharge-temporal-control-reconstruction.md