This work presents the Structural Convergence Framework, a regime-based model for describing continuity, traversal, and transformation in constrained systems. The framework departs from traditional models that associate persistence with structural invariance. Instead, it proposes that continuity emerges from a system’s sustained alignment with a governing regime of admissible transformations. In this view, systems do not persist by preserving form, but by remaining within the bounds of structural convergence. A central component of the framework is the notion of metric coupling, in which traversal is not defined by geometric displacement alone, but by the identification, stabilization, and exploitation of structurally favorable pathways. These pathways are characterized by reduced cumulative cost, increased stability, and bounded informational requirements. The work formalizes traversal as a cost-constrained trajectory in state space, subject to operational, informational, temporal, and ontological limits. It introduces key concepts such as pathway saturation, temporal drift, irreversibility thresholds, and identity continuity under transformation. This preprint is intentionally speculative and does not claim empirical validation. Its purpose is to provide a coherent and extensible structure for reasoning about systems in which transformation does not imply loss of continuity, and in which access to favorable regimes produces structural asymmetries in capability, coordination, and persistence. The framework draws conceptual inspiration from nonlinear dynamics, complex systems theory, and philosophical accounts of identity and persistence, while remaining deliberately independent of any specific physical implementation. Keywords: structural convergence, regime-based systems, metric coupling, traversal, continuity, system constraints, complex systems
Daniel J. Ribeiro (Tue,) studied this question.