The Innovation Floor-Lock Theorem; Observation Limits in a Self-Field-Following Agent under Optimal Kalman Filtering

We present a structural analysis of detection failure in a self-referential adaptive perception architecture. An SFE agent tracks a one-dimensional stochastic field via a matched Kalman filter and monitors prediction surprise through a self-regulating windowed gate. We prove that once the filter reaches steady state, the predictable component of state evolution is absorbed by the estimator, leaving a whitened residual that carries no information about the field's confinement regime k. The normalized residual magnitude locks at a universal value: "E[ε̃] = sqrt(2/π) · (σₘ / V_field) ≈ 0.714 (for all k ≥ 0 under matched filtering)", independent of field-confinement strength. This is a structural…