Carry-Trace Test

Carry-Trace Test names the Atlas practice test that distinguishes confirmed downstream carrying from projected openings by requiring a recoverable return trace.

It separates the order operating from the order known. Reality may carry a condition before any participant reads it. The Atlas does not create that carrying through recognition, but it grounds its own claim only where the downstream condition can be followed back through what made it available.

Places

Carry-Trace Test places the Atlas practice test that distinguishes confirmed downstream carrying from projected openings by requiring a recoverable return trace.

Holds

Carry-Trace Test is held by Atlas Note Standard, Dependency Order, Trace, and Retracing. Term placement, structural precedence, a followable path, and the checking act must be available before a carry claim can be grounded.

Pairs

Carry-Trace Test is vertical. Carry and trace are two reading directions through one dependency relation, not a lateral pair:

generative direction: A ──carries──▶ B
evidential direction:  A ◀──traces── B

Traces

• Atlas Note Standard
• Dependency Order
• Trace
• Retracing

Nests

Carry-Trace Test nests wherever an Atlas note claims that one term carries another, including paths with multiple prior conditions or interrupted passage.

Reads

Carry-Trace Test becomes recognisable where a proposed forward carry is accepted only after a downstream term can recover the prior condition and relevant passage through its trace.

The test asks:

1. Is the downstream term already available, or is it only anticipated?
2. Does the downstream term trace this prior term as a condition that had to hold?
3. What passage conditions allowed, shaped, delayed, blocked, or transformed the carrying?
4. Does the downstream term require several prior conditions rather than a single source?
5. If the anticipated condition did not appear, did carrying fail, or was passage interrupted?

The placement rule is:

possible downstream continuation → opening
projected continuation from prior traces → prediction
downstream continuation with recoverable return trace → carry
retained returnable trace → memory

Prediction may direct a later check, but it does not establish a Carries link. Absence of an anticipated outcome does not alone establish absence of bearing; the passage must also be checked. A confirmed carry may remain unread for a time, but once claimed inside the Atlas it must be answerable to retrace.

Carries

Nothing at practice grain. The test returns its result to the dependency links being checked.