Deterministic Governance and Bounded Recursive Self-Improvement in Settlement Operating Systems

Abstract

This document introduces Deterministic Settlement OS Science (DSOS Science), a new integrative scientific field concerned with the design, formal analysis, and verification of operating systems that govern autonomous and semi-autonomous settlements under deterministic, human-auditable rules. The field addresses a structural gap at the intersection of AI safety, operating systems theory, formal verification, and settlement governance: while existing AI governance frameworks address high-level ethical principles, and existing recursive self-improvement (RSI) literature addresses theoretical containment of superintelligent agents, no prior scientific body of work provides implementable OS-level primitives for bounded, auditable self-improvement in resource-constrained settlement environments. DSOS Science is instantiated by three foundational reference architectures — JasperOS, Squirrel OS, and Universal Bridge — which collectively span the deterministic kernel layer, the resource-constrained edge deployment layer, and the federated interoperability layer of the DSOS stack. The establishment of this field is significant both for AI governance, where it supplies the missing OS-level substrate beneath high-level policy frameworks, and for settlement infrastructure, where it provides a reproducible scientific foundation for the safe, sovereign, and interoperable operation of autonomous communities at any scale.Keywords: settlement OS; bounded RSI; deterministic governance; AI containment; recursive self-improvement; formal safety architecture; OS-level AI governance; federated settlement networks1. Field