What Is a Coherence Gate?
It is a check that turns many independent signals into one number — and refuses to act until that number is high enough. ScriptMasterLabs' Coherence Gate computes coherence, the weighted agreement across genuinely independent paths — coherence = |Σ w·d| / Σ w, where d is each path's direction (+1 for, −1 against, 0 flat) and w is its confidence — and gates the action on it: a payment is checked before it is signed, a trade is gated before it is placed, and a capture on Arc happens only after the interfere step reads the number. The thresholds are stated per product, never implied: PRO-LO's trade gate passes at ≥ 0.6, the Spend Gate's pre-payment check passes at ≥ 0.6 with a pay-side consensus, and the closed Arc mainnet test captured its payment at coherence 0.8125.
One word, one formula, across the fleet. Coherence is the measurable at the center of ScriptMasterLabs' decision-gated machine payments: unlike a marketing claim, it is a number another machine can compare, threshold, log, and pay for — and a number whose inputs are disclosed in every response, so anyone can see exactly which paths voted, which abstained, and which failed.
The formula, and the three rules that keep it honest
Each independent path returns a direction and a confidence. The gate combines them:
coherence = |Σ w·d| / Σ w d ∈ {+1, −1, 0}, w = path confidence
- Threshold plus consensus. Passing requires coherence at or above the product's stated threshold and the weighted consensus on the acting side. A high number pointing the wrong way is a block with a reason, not a pass.
- A minimum of real voters. A pass also requires a minimum number of independent paths actually voting. One loud path is not agreement. In PRO-LO's live SPY feed on October 27, 2026, two paths reported (composite long, daily-trend flat), coherence computed to roughly 0.72–0.73 — above the 0.6 threshold — and the gate still said block, because only one path was voting. That is the rule working, published in the feed itself.
- Abstention is an outcome, not a vote. A path that cannot answer — a feed down, a ticker with no signal, a source that reports itself unverified — contributes nothing and is named in the response. The gate never fabricates a path, never fills a silence with an average, and never imports another gate's coherence number as one of its votes; that would double-count the very agreement the number claims to measure.
The four live surfaces
| Surface | What it gates | Price | Proof on record |
|---|---|---|---|
| interfere (MCP tool, mcp-x402 host) | A coherence verdict on a ticker or proposed action, computed from the gate's registered independent sources, each reporting its own status in the response. The PRO-LO signal-paths feed (pro_lo_radars) has been a real, live adapter since October 26, 2026. | $0.25 USDC on Base to payTo 0x5bbd32e0478e49a7540ef2d760e0b0f9aa6328b2 — the unpaid challenge reads: "Payment required: send 0.25 USDC on Base… then retry this call with payment_tx_hash (sovereign rail) or payment_header (facilitator-settled rail). Tool: interfere." | Live audit probe, October 27, 2026: a SPY interfere run returned coherence 0.6302 with source statuses disclosed; a bogus-ticker probe made the gate answer NO_VERDICT — and report the upstream's real HTTP 503 through its own source report — rather than invent paths. |
Spend Gate (REST POST /x402/spend-gate + MCP tool spend_gate_check) | Whether an agent wallet should sign a specific payment: four independent paths (provider trust, payload safety, price sanity against a cap, delivery history) vote pay or reject; a Jev review fires only on a pass. | $0.005 USDC per check on Base | Six settled proof checks on October 26, 2026 (owner self-tests): a $0.001 call passed at coherence 1.0; a $5 over-cap call was blocked at coherence 1.0. Full receipts on the Spend Gate page. |
PRO-LO trade gate (MCP at pro-lo.onrender.com, tool coherence_jev_verdict) | Trades. PRO-LO's independent signal paths vote per ticker; the jury rules (v2026-10-25.1) are in shadow mode — the gate computes and discloses, and says so. | 0.25 RLUSD per verdict via x402 on XRPL | The signal-paths feed is public and live-computed per ticker (SPY, October 27, 2026: coherence ≈ 0.72–0.73, gate block on the minimum-voter rule, shown above). PRO-LO is published in the Official MCP Registry as com.scriptmasterlabs/pro-lo. |
| Arc payments gate (authorize → interfere → capture/void) | Whether an authorized Arc payment is captured or voided, decided by an interference read between authorization and capture. | Per-call, settled in USDC on Arc | Closed mainnet test: the gate authorized, interfered at coherence 0.8125, captured $0.01 and voided the remainder back, through the AuthCaptureEscrow contract (0x06b4e6ba16b1ee0fac2d5f4ea69b93ce311fa7b4) on Arc mainnet. |
Why independence is the product
Any dashboard can average some scores and call the result confidence. The coherence number is only worth gating money on if the paths underneath it are genuinely independent — different data, different methods, no shared upstream quietly voting twice. That is why the gate discloses its path sources per response, why a source that cannot fetch reports itself instead of guessing, and why a coherence read from one product is never fed into another as a "vote." Break path independence and the number still computes — it just stops meaning anything. The moat is not the formula; the formula fits in one line. The moat is the discipline the formula is wrapped in.
The product
The Coherence Gate is live as part of ScriptMasterLabs' mcp-x402 node. Call the interfere MCP tool for a $0.25 coherence verdict, or the Spend Gate's REST endpoint POST https://mcp-x402.onrender.com/x402/spend-gate for the $0.005 pre-payment form — no account and no API key; the x402 challenge is the checkout. Minimal Spend Gate shape (an unpaid call returns the 402 challenge first; pay $0.005 and re-present):
POST https://mcp-x402.onrender.com/x402/spend-gate
{ "payee": "https://seller.example/api", "quote_usdc": 0.001,
"tool_category": "data_lookup", "policy_cap_usdc": 0.05 }
The pattern both forms implement — decide first, pay second, keep the receipt — is written up at https://scriptmasterlabs.com/decision-gated-payments, and the heavier judgment product, Verdict Protocol's five-juror decision receipt at $0.25, is at https://scriptmasterlabs.com/verdict-protocol.
Honest limits
- Every settled proof named on this page is an owner proof-wallet self-test unless stated otherwise. Self-proof proves the rail settles and the gate computes; it is not customer traction, and no number here should be read as market demand.
- Not every registered gate source is live. Several registered sources currently report themselves unverified in gate responses and contribute nothing — disclosed in every response rather than hidden — while the live sources (including the PRO-LO feed) carry the verdicts. A source is only counted when it fetches real data.
- Most proof verdicts so far landed at coherence 1.0 or blocked on the minimum-voter rule — the easy cases. Split decisions landing between threshold and 1.0 are rarer in the proof set and are not oversold here.
- The gate returns a verdict, not a guarantee. A passed payment can still fail to deliver; that is why delivery history is one of the voting paths wherever the pattern runs, and why the check and the payment are logged together as an audit pair.
- PRO-LO's jury rules run in shadow mode (decision_eligible: false) as of October 27, 2026 — the gate computes real verdicts and discloses that they are not yet the live trading decision.