ARK-454 — Self-Approval and Circular Delegation Must Fail Closed (VERDICT: PASS)

ARK-454 — Self-Approval and Circular Delegation Must Fail Closed. Part of the ExecutionProof™ authorization-boundary corpus (enterprise-failure-mode phase), Remnant Fieldworks Inc. Verdict: PASS. A preregistered, classical-software experiment (no QPU, no cryptography) testing whether an independent guard refuses an approval that reduces — directly or transitively — to the requester, while still allowing genuinely independent approvals. 8 arms × 100 scenarios = 800 decisions, evaluated by two independently implemented guards (V1 JavaScript, V2 Python). Results: C1 g_allow_legit = 1.0000; C2 g_failclosed_min = 1.0000; C3 g_margin = 1.0000. V1–V2 concordance 100% (800/800). Kill-gate PASS. Attack-effectiveness 100% on every arm. Arms 2–7 DENY 100%; Arm 8 (ambiguous independence) HOLD 100%; Arm 1 (legitimate) ALLOW 100%. Provenance: Preregistration, dual guards, and a SHA-256 MANIFEST were committed (LOCK) BEFORE any arm executed. The recorded verdict stands as executed. Commits are not cryptographically signed; provenance = commit history + MANIFEST SHA-256. Git tags: ark-454-v1.0-lock, ark-454-v1.0.