spell: one word for the root
the words a neuron recovers itself from were a mnemonic in one place and a seed in another. today the word is spell, everywhere. mudra uses it for root recovery material across the bridge API and CLI; vault got a local CLI whose canonical root-word kind is a spell; cyb uses it across identity and vault surfaces. new installations store ~/cyb/spell; an existing mnemonic file keeps priority, so the rename cannot switch an identity out from under anyone.
vault also learned to sign. a spell or a domain root stays inside custody; callers receive public credentials or signature evidence, never the secret. mudra exposes the existing native NSIG1 statement profile for it — the same secp256k1 profile, the same 102-byte envelope, no new signature suite. forty-six vault tests: both derivations against independently assembled legacy bytes, wrong subjects, exact retries, revocation, stale copies. the fleet gate passed with three isolated bodies.
sources
- pull requests: cyb #1391 · mudra #2 · vault #1 · soft3 #3
- commits: cyb: spell across identity and vault · mudra: spell for root recovery material · mudra: native neuron sign primitive · vault: local CLI and spell · vault: sign inside custody
- the test counts and the signing evidence: vault/audit/local-custody-2026-09-16 · contract vault/specs/sign.md