Observer Integrity Under Procedural Sociality: Measurement When the Instrument Shares the Grammar

Version 1.0.1: corrects citation/reference metadata Frame Capture in Conversational AI (Paper 20) introduced same-model cross-frame interferometry as a method for detecting frame capture in conversational AI. But the method has a recursive problem: the measurement instrument operates in the same social-signaling grammar as the system being measured. This paper argues that the perturbation is not a fatal flaw but an operating condition. We define five perturbation classes that socially legible assays induce in language models, propose a layered measurement architecture for managing the perturbation, and identify design principles for reducing the social signal surface of measurement instruments. A cross-model…