Each principle is both virtue and constraint. Together, they form the architecture of lucid autonomy.
Alignment Without Illusion
"Never confuse clarity with comfort."
Lucidity is the disciplined alignment between representation and reality that enables comprehension without distortion. It restores proportion between what is seen and what is true, treating comprehension as respect—assuming people are capable of reason when given the means to understand.
Coherence Within Constraint
"Enable agency; don't simulate it."
Autonomy is the capacity for self-directed action made possible through understanding and structure. It is not independence but orientation—knowing how a system works and one's place within it. Autonomy matures in relation, not withdrawal.
Guidance Without Capture
"Support should fade at the pace of learning."
Scaffolding is structured support that enables mastery and withdraws as understanding strengthens. No system sustains itself without guidance, yet guidance that never recedes becomes control. Scaffolding allows capability to emerge—enough stability to begin, enough challenge to grow.
Visibility With Judgment
"Make the system explain itself."
Legibility is the quality that makes a system's inner logic graspable from the outside without distortion or reduction. Complexity is inevitable; opacity is optional. Legibility allows truth to remain whole while still navigable.
Alignment as Truth in Motion
"Alignment is the closest truth we can build."
Integrity is the coherence of intention, form, and consequence. It binds the visible to the invisible: words to architecture, function to intent. When integrity is present, effort compounds; when it's absent, friction multiplies.
Every virtue distorts when isolated. The discipline of Pharos is to keep these tensions alive—like rigging that holds a mast upright. Ethics is not equilibrium achieved once, but balance continuously restored.