Cognitive Trust Stack (CTS): A Framework for Verifiable AI Behavioral Provenance

Every artificial intelligence system deployed today operates under behavioral constraints that are unverifiable by any external party. Alignment claims exist as documentation, policy statements, or terms of service -- all mutable, none cryptographically provable. When an AI system causes harm, there is no mechanism to prove what rules it was following. When an organization claims its AI is safe, there is no standard by which that claim can be independently verified. This is the AI behavioral provenance problem, and no existing framework solves it. The Cognitive Trust Stack (CTS) establishes that the alignment state of an AI system at any point in time MUST be a verifiable fact, not an assertion requiring trust. CTS defines a complete, implementable framework for declaring, anchoring, enforcing, and verifying AI behavioral constraints through a five-layer architecture combining: (1) a declarative alignment schema formatted to IETF Internet-Draft standards, (2) archival permanence via Digital Object Identifier (DOI) registration, (3) cryptographic temporal anchoring via Bitcoin blockchain timestamping using the Dual-Layer Digital Permanence (DLDP) methodology [REILLY-REM], (4) runtime retrieval injection for active constraint enforcement, and (5) independent third-party verification. CTS does not replace existing AI alignment techniques. It provides the missing accountability layer that sits above them -- making alignment a cryptographically provable fact rather than an unverifiable claim. The full CTS specification, reference implementation, schema, and provenance manifest are published at Zenodo DOI 10.5281/zenodo.19097169. The priority of this framework is cryptographically anchored in Bitcoin block 941168 (2026-03-18), with SHA-256 hash: e915b5162422281e1c0185c9e2ee faf74b7f539996b878cb1e69e10533f24ac2 The OpenTimestamps proof file (CTS_Whitepaper_v1.0.docx.ots), included in the Zenodo record, provides independent cryptographic verification of existence prior to block 941168.