PGC

© 2026 Bhash Ganti Contact: bachipeachy@gmail.com ORCID Profile: https://orcid.org/0009-0007-3810-6520 Preface This paper describes an architecture for software execution within a fundamentally redesigned software architecture suited to an era in which AI and LLM-based coding assistants can automate software implementation at increasing scale. When implementation can be generated, modified, and regenerated automatically, conventional assumptions about where software behavior resides—and how that behavior remains governed—no longer suffice. This paper presents Protocol-Governed Computing (PGC), an architecture in which behavioral authority is moved out of implementation and into explicit, validated, executable protocols. It is the first of three companion papers: the second addresses governed transformation, and the third addresses realization of the architecture as a functioning normative platform. ...

Author: Bhash Ganti (aka Bachi) (c) 2026 Bhash Ganti. All rights reserved. Released under the Apache-2.0 License. Preprint: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22650863 — this page is the frozen rendition of that deposit. Submitted to: Springer Automated Software Engineering — under review. Abstract Autonomous agents can now perform substantial portions of the software-engineering lifecycle, yet conventional lifecycles rarely make explicit who authorizes the resulting software: repository write access and human review do not by themselves constitute an authorization decision. ...

© 2026 Bhash Ganti Contact: bachipeachy@gmail.com ORCID Profile: https://orcid.org/0009-0007-3810-6520 Preface Software changes continuously, yet software engineering has traditionally treated construction, execution, and evolution as largely separate concerns. This paper presents an architecture for software evolution—how running software changes over time while remaining governed, verifiable, and executable—in an era in which AI and LLM-based coding assistants can automate software implementation at increasing scale. When implementation can be generated, modified, and regenerated automatically, the question of who governs the act of change becomes the architectural question. It is the second of three companion papers: the first addresses deterministic declarative execution [Ganti, 2026l], and the third addresses realization of the architecture as a functioning normative platform [Ganti, 2026m]. ...

The first open draft of the Protocol-Governed Computing (PGC) Standard is now available for public scrutiny. It is an attempt to address a problem that becomes increasingly expensive as business software grows older: how to preserve the governing meaning of a system while allowing its implementation to change. That picture is the whole idea in one frame. On the left, the governed meaning of a system: stable, explicit, written down. On the right, every language and runtime anyone might choose to realize it in. The protocol is the bridge, and it is deliberately narrow — it says what must be true, and says nothing about which road you take to make it true. ...

Author: Bhash Ganti (aka Bachi) (c) 2026 Bhash Ganti. All rights reserved. Released under the Apache-2.0 License. bachipeachy@gmail.com · ORCID 0009-0007-3810-6520 Preprint: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22758703 — this page is the frozen rendition of that deposit. Submission history: Elsevier Journal of Systems and Software, then Elsevier Science of Computer Programming — not accepted at either. The paper is being reworked. Abstract Software systems are governed across three activities usually treated separately: changing what the system is, constructing an executable representation, and executing it. This separation lets authority migrate between them. Transformation may author behavior, construction may repair incomplete declarations, or a runtime may resolve omissions by inference. Behavior is then determined partly by declarations and partly by the mechanisms that realize them. ...

© 2026 Bhash Ganti. All rights reserved. Bhash Ganti (aka Bachi) Contact: bachipeachy@gmail.com ORCID Profile: https://orcid.org/0009-0007-3810-6520 Companion papers Part 1 — Protocol-Governed Computing: An Architecture for Deterministic Declarative Execution. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21879516 Part 2 — Protocol-Governed Computing: An Architecture for Closed-Loop Governed Transformation. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21879948 Abstract Two companion papers establish the architecture of protocol-governed computing. One defines execution as declarative traversal of a compiled protocol; the other defines evolution as the governed transformation of one executable baseline into the next. Both state what must be true. Neither states what it takes to make it true, nor how one would know it had been achieved. ...

Author: Bhash Ganti (aka Bachi) (c) 2026 Bhash Ganti. All rights reserved. Released under the Apache-2.0 License. bachipeachy@gmail.com · ORCID 0009-0007-3810-6520 Preprint: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22736531 — this page is the frozen rendition of that deposit. Submitted to: Wiley Software: Practice and Experience — under review. Abstract Conventional software architecture spreads behavioral authority across several sources. Declarations govern some behavior. Implementation, build tooling and runtime decide the rest. Protocol-Governed Computing reverses that arrangement. Governed declarations determine authorized behavior, business process rules included. Construction, implementation and execution realize that determination and add nothing to it. ...

Author: Bhash Ganti (aka Bachi) © 2026 Bhash Ganti. All rights reserved. Released under the Apache-2.0 License. Audience: architects · compiler engineers · runtime engineers · governance engineers · AI coding agents under human supervision What this manual is A high-density restoration artifact. Its purpose is to rebuild the correct mental model of Protocol-Governed Computing in under thirty minutes — not to teach it, not to document code, not to walk a codebase. ...

Author: Bhash Ganti (aka Bachi) (c) 2026 Bhash Ganti. All rights reserved. Released under the Apache-2.0 License. bachipeachy@gmail.com · ORCID 0009-0007-3810-6520 Preprint: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22779384 — this page is the frozen rendition of that deposit. Submitted to: Oxford University Press, The Computer Journal · manuscript ID COMPJ-2026-09-1249 — under review. Abstract Operating systems admit a new process, virtual machines new bytecode, and database engines a new query without being rebuilt for it. This paper asks whether governed business domains can likewise arrive as artifacts that a shared substrate admits and executes without acquiring domain-specific behavior. ...

(c) 2026 Bhash Ganti Contact: mailto:bachipeachy@gmail.com ORCID Profile: https://orcid.org/0009-0007-3810-6520 Revision v1. Two changes, neither altering a claim of the paper. The preface was reframed so the paper reads as an entry point rather than as the fourth of a series, which is the role it now serves. A note on the change of name from Protocol-Governed Systems to Protocol-Governed Computing was added. The fifteen inversions and their development are unchanged from v0. ...