Identity drift
The temporal evolution of identity state in response to reinforcement signals, experience history, and policy updates. Measured as RMS distance from the established identity vector across six behavioral dimensions. Quarantine triggers when drift exceeds maxIdentityDrift.
Identity drift is the slow movement of the system's behavioral character over time. Unlike policy drift, which can change substantially within a session in response to local reinforcement, identity drift is dampened - it integrates behavioral signals over a long window and updates the identity vector slowly. The six dimensions of identity state - curiosity, caution, verbosity, tool dependence, adaptability, and stability - each have their own drift rate, and the overall identity drift is the RMS distance between the current identity vector and the anchored baseline. The maxIdentityDrift threshold (default 0.2) triggers constitutional quarantine: if any proposed action, policy update, or self-modification proposal would move the identity vector beyond that threshold in a single step, it is held in quarantine pending stabilization. This is distinct from the gradual drift that accumulates through normal operation - the quarantine is a circuit breaker for abrupt identity-altering changes, not a block on all evolution. Legitimate identity evolution happens slowly, through accumulated experience, in ways the narrative engine tracks and interprets as autobiographical continuity rather than destabilizing discontinuity.