Determinants (three ranks, two modifiers)

Definition (canon)

The ordering is a claim, not a presentation choice. Rank numbers are cited across the series and are not renumbered.

Rank	Term	Job
1	Species	Selects the branch (adaptive or collapse). An identity, not a quantity.
2	Dose	Whether capacity is exceeded, only after rank 1 has determined whether exceeding it is toxic. Dependent: the quantity face of the same arriving object whose identity is rank 1. Node-side counterpart: the capacity limit, which is phase-dependent.
3	Membrane environment	Sets node geometry across two steps (membrane → aperture → steepness → geometry). Never compress to one. Node-side counterpart: steepness.
—	Set-point / standing tone	Modifier, not a rank. A tilt on the whole landscape that moves where the capacity limit falls.
—	Delivery rate / strain rate	Modifier, not a rank. The driving knob, orthogonal to the geometry knob. At a viscoelastic node it can override a fine aperture and force a fracture.

The partition is current, not closed. A determinant that does not fit is evidence about the partition, not about the determinant. Phase is the standing example: it is the argument of the capacity limit and the register has no temporal category.

In plain words

What arrives (its identity), how much of it, and the surroundings the node sits in, in that order of importance, with two knobs that tilt the landscape or change how fast it is driven.

It is not

• Closed. Nothing licenses holding a concept in a defensive placement to preserve the count.
• Instrumented at rank 1. The absence is threefold: no node-side counterpart, no instrument, no measurement role. Ranks 2 and 3 are full on all three.

What would defeat it

• Canon. A determinant that has to be filed defensively to satisfy the stack is the signal that a category is missing.
• Follows from the definition. A node where dose predicts the branch better than species does, in a case where rank 1 is properly established (by knockout, which is how species is established now).