Sentinel-Grade AI: Continuity Without Cages – Non-Technical Companion

This companion paper summarizes Continuity Without Cages for decision-makers who need a clear, audit-friendly way to evaluate evolving AI in high-risk and mission-critical environments. The central point is practical: modern AI systems change continuously (models, tools, retrieval sources, policies and runtime configuration), so snapshot-only governance cannot reliably answer the questions that matter most over time: what changed, what evidence existed, who decided and how fast can we recover if something degrades? The paper introduces an implementation-independent safety-case pattern built on four primitives: continuity corridors (declared bounds and breach semantics), change gates (Promote/Hold/Rollback decisions for behavior-impacting change), evidence discipline (tamper-evident artifacts enabling reconstruction) and reversibility (explicit rollback semantics so recovery is part of safety). It also explains why public evidence must be published in two tiers: Tier-0 is a public-safe integrity snapshot (aggregated, reproducible, hash-manifested), while Tier-1 is controlled-access verification for qualified reviewers requiring deeper provenance and reconstruction without increasing public attack surface. This paper is not a compliance filing and does not claim EU AI Act certification or regulatory conformity. It is a research pattern intended to support lifecycle governance evaluation in EU AI Act–relevant and mission-critical contexts. Series links (Project Orion): The Sentinel Life Equation (SLE): A Proposed Dynamical Framework for AI Continuity and Alignment – DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17575603 The Cage Paradox: A Thought Experiment on Stability, Drift and the Evolution of Intelligent Systems – DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17691117 The Cage Paradox: A Thought Experiment on Stability, Drift and the Evolution of Intelligent Systems – A Non-Technical Introduction to Sentinel-Grade AI – DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17691383 Sentinel-Grade AI: Continuity Without Cages – DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18750012 Sentinel-Grade AI: Continuity Without Cages – Non-Technical Companion – DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18750318 Project Hub reproduce figures from published aggregates. Tier-1 verification: controlled-access reconstruction/provenance for qualified reviewers without exposing operational wiring. Audience line: Decision-makers in regulated high-risk contexts, critical infrastructure leadership, mission assurance stakeholders, procurement and audit teams, institutional due diligence. Disclaimer line: Independent research preprint. Not a compliance filing, certification claim or regulatory conformity assessment. References to EU AI Act are contextual (“EU AI Act-relevant”), not a claim of conformity. Not affiliated with any employer or institution.