Intent Loss: When the System Has No Carrier for What It Was Built to Do

Intent Loss is a structural failure mechanism in which a system loses its operational grip on the intent that justified its design — not through corruption of the intent, not through displacement of the human who holds it, but through the absence of a structural carrier that makes the intent binding at the point of decision. The mechanism introduces a precise distinction: a constraint is intent with a carrier; a preference is intent without one. Preferences lose to structural pressures in the ordinary operation of systems. Four confirmed failure modes are documented across pedagogy, software development, organizational transformation, and autonomous systems. The mechanism is distinguished from Human Displacement and Assumption Violation. Falsification criteria and prevention architecture are given.