# THE MANIFESTO FOR RUNNING THE COCHRAN BLOCK, LLC

Functioning as the Operating Agreement of The Cochran Block, LLC A Maryland Single-Member Limited Liability Company

Department ID: W27049535 Articles of Organization: Filed 2026-03-24, Document #2345892, Maryland Department of Assessments & Taxation CAGE Code: 1CQ66 Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): W7X3HAQL9CF9 Maryland eMMA Vendor: SUP1095449 Motto: nah you ain't gonna hack the hacker, my binaries are faster than your scripts, and binaries beats bloatware.

Effective Date: April 14, 2026

## PREAMBLE — THE MANIFESTO

The Cochran Block, LLC exists because the current default of the software-and-services industry is broken and the Member refuses to pretend otherwise.

Enterprise technology vendors sell lock-in. Their pricing is a function of the cost of leaving. Their roadmaps optimize for switching cost. Their customers become prisoners of sunk cost. Their code is opaque. Their margins are gatekeeper rents. Their investors demand growth at the expense of truth. Their pitch decks promise sovereignty while their contracts deliver the opposite.

The Cochran Block, LLC rejects that default in every particular.

We ship compiled Rust binaries as single sealed artifacts. We dedicate our software to the public domain via the Unlicense at the moment of release. We document our threat model in public. We run on hardware we own. We accept only non-dilutive funding. We refuse to sell rights we've never claimed. We bill for the human's expertise applied to the problem, not for the artifacts that expertise produces. We call this "sell the inventor, not the invention."

We operate on an explicit, named stack of protocols — a compression discipline (P27 Diamond Rust Binary Architecture), a quality discipline (P26 Moonshot Frame), an integrity discipline (NanoSign), a threat discipline (Assumed Breach), and a licensing posture (Unlicense Baby). Every repository passes all five gates. Every commit has provenance. Every release is signed. Every threat model is public.

We are a one-person company by design. The Member is a United States Army veteran (Military Occupational Specialty 17C, Cyber Operations, JCAC 2014) with thirteen years of defense and enterprise experience and a thirty-percent service-connected disability rating. The Member has dedicated the Company's entire software portfolio to the public domain as a deliberate strategic choice, not a philanthropic accident. This choice is aligned with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency's Secure-by-Design initiative, Executive Order 14028, the National Institute of Standards and Technology Special Publication 800-218 Secure Software Development Framework, and the Small Business Innovation and Economic Security Act of 2026 (Public Law, signed April 13, 2026) national-security review requirements.

We take the opposite of dilutive funding on purpose. Every dilutive instrument — equity, convertible notes, SAFEs, phantom equity, advisor shares — introduces a stakeholder whose interests diverge from the Member's. Divergence becomes pressure. Pressure becomes compromise. We refuse the pressure at the source by refusing the instrument.

We take maximum operational flexibility on purpose. The Member may, at any time, take any lawful action the Member judges to be in the Company's interest. Member may pivot product focus, abandon a line, accept a contract that pays the bills, refuse a contract that pays the bills better but corrupts the posture, donate labor, license trade names, pursue federal contracting, partner with universities, host Department of Defense SkillBridge service members, accept Department of Veterans Affairs Vocational Rehabilitation and Employment support, compete for SBIR and STTR awards, and change direction by private written decision without asking anyone for permission.

We take public transparency on purpose. The Company's source code is at github.com/cochranblock under the Unlicense. The Company's pricing is at cochranblock.org/services and is not negotiable within published tiers. The Company's research-and-development activity log is at cochranblock.org/openbooks, documented as a transparency artifact and explicitly not a billing record. The Company's threat model is at cochranblock.org/MOONSHOT_FRAME.md. The Company's live operational status is at cochranblock.org/pulse. The site the reader is reading is, itself, the product demo — the entire site compiles to a single 10-megabyte Rust binary that runs on a ten-dollar-a-month laptop behind a Cloudflare Zero Trust tunnel.

We honor prior art. The Company stands on the shoulders of Fabrice Bellard, Justine Tunney, Daniel J. Bernstein, Bruce Perens, Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Rob Pike, Linus Torvalds, Phil Zimmermann, Jamie Wilkinson, Sam Hocevar, Van Jacobson, Eric Wong, Avizienis, Vint Cerf, Doug Engelbart, the authors of the BLAKE3 hash function, the Mixture-of-Experts originators (Jacobs, Jordan, Nowlan, Hinton), and the broader cypherpunk, handmade-software, and sovereign-compute communities. The Company stands alongside contemporaries including Bryan Cantrill (Oxide Computer Company), Mitko Vasilev, David Heinemeier Hansson, George Hotz, Nicolas M. Chaillan, Justine Tunney, Cory Doctorow, and Drew DeVault. The Company's named contributions (Fish Tank Starfield, P13 Compression Mapping, NanoSign Model Integrity, Sponge Mesh Broadcast, Gemini Man Pattern, P26 Moonshot Frame, P27 Diamond Rust Binary Architecture, Self-Converging Flywheel, and others) are documented on cochranblock.org/arch with explicit prior-art credits.

We do not sell books. We do not sell courses. We do not give paid speeches. We do not accept equity-only advisor roles. We do not attend hackathons. We do not trade exposure for time. The Member's name is not the product. The Member's labor, applied to specific problems, is the product. The Member ships.

This document is the Operating Agreement required by the Member's banker, the Small Business Administration, the General Services Administration, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the State of Maryland, and every federal and state counterparty that may require proof of internal governance. It is also, unapologetically, a manifesto. Both functions are served by the same text.

NOW, THEREFORE, in consideration of the foregoing and of the mutual covenants set forth below, the Member, intending to be legally bound, adopts this Operating Agreement as the governing instrument of the Company.

## ARTICLE I — DEFINITIONS

For purposes of this Agreement, the following terms have the meanings set forth below:

1.1 "Act" means the Maryland Limited Liability Company Act, as set forth in Title 4A of the Corporations and Associations Article of the Annotated Code of Maryland, as amended from time to time.

1.2 "Articles" means the Articles of Organization of the Company filed with the Maryland Department of Assessments and Taxation on March 24, 2026 (Document #2345892), as the same may be amended from time to time.

1.3 "Assumed Breach Threat Model" means the Company's canonical security-posture document, available at cochranblock.org/MOONSHOT_FRAME.md and distributed to every Company repository as `ASSUMED_BREACH_THREAT_MODEL.md`. The Model operates on the premise that every component is already compromised and requires damage-containment design rather than prevention-only design.

1.4 "Background IP" means any and all intellectual property, in any form whether patentable or not, including but not limited to copyrights, trade secrets, know-how, software, source code, designs, trademarks, methods, protocols, and inventions, that (a) was conceived, reduced to practice, authored, or otherwise created by the Member or the Company prior to the commencement of any specific contract, engagement, or sponsored work, or (b) is conceived, reduced to practice, authored, or created independently of any specific contract, engagement, or sponsored work.

1.5 "Cochran Block Stack" means the five governance gates applied to every Company repository and every Company deliverable: (i) P26 Moonshot Frame (quality), (ii) P27 Diamond Rust Binary Architecture (compression), (iii) Unlicense Baby (licensing), (iv) NanoSign (integrity), and (v) Assumed Breach Threat Model (security).

1.6 "Company" means The Cochran Block, LLC.

1.7 "Dilutive Funding" means any form of capital provided to the Company in exchange for, or convertible into, an ownership interest, economic interest, profits interest, governance interest, voting interest, or any other equity-like claim against the Company, the Member, or the Company's future revenues. Dilutive Funding includes without limitation: (a) sale or issuance of equity or membership interests; (b) convertible notes, KISS, or similar debt-to-equity convertibles; (c) Simple Agreements for Future Equity (SAFEs) and substantially similar instruments; (d) profits interests, phantom equity, restricted unit grants, or similar arrangements that grant economic interests vesting over time; (e) preferred or subordinated equity-like instruments; (f) revenue royalties exceeding ten percent (10%) of contract revenue or with a duration exceeding the engagement that produced them; (g) any instrument that would entitle a third party to a seat, vote, observation right, veto, or consent right on Company governance decisions; and (h) acquisition offers in which the Company is acquired in exchange for equity or contingent equity in the acquirer.

1.8 "Foreground IP" means any and all intellectual property, in any form whether patentable or not, that is conceived, reduced to practice, authored, or otherwise created by the Member or the Company in the course of performing a specific contract, engagement, or sponsored work commissioned by a client, customer, government agency, or other counterparty.

1.9 "Gemini Man Pattern" means the Company's atomic binary-replacement deployment discipline, named after the 2019 film, in which a new binary replaces its predecessor via a single atomic filesystem operation with PID lockfile handoff, without service interruption and without requiring an external process supervisor.

1.10 "Member" means Michael Cochran, the sole member of the Company.

1.11 "Membership Interest" means the Member's entire economic, governance, and information interest in the Company, comprising one hundred percent (100%) of the issued and outstanding membership interests.

1.12 "NanoSign" means the Company's cryptographic model-integrity discipline, in which a thirty-six-byte BLAKE3 signature is appended to every artifact of consequence (primarily machine-learning model files in safetensors format), verified at load time, rejecting any unsigned or tampered artifact.

1.13 "Non-Dilutive Funding" means any form of capital, payment, grant, prize, or financing that does not constitute Dilutive Funding, as enumerated non-exhaustively in Article XII of this Agreement.

1.14 "P26 Moonshot Frame" means the Company's civilizational-stakes quality-review protocol, documented at cochranblock.org/MOONSHOT_FRAME.md and cochranblock.org/arch#p26, applied before every merge, push, and deployment. The canonical question is: "If this code, pitch, document, or decision were the foundation of a civilization-scale outcome, would it still hold up?" Five Forces: typed where possible, bounded where unbounded, observable where silent, explainable where obvious, reviewer-friendly where shortcut-friendly.

1.15 "P27 Diamond Rust Binary Architecture" means the Company's continuous-compression discipline for Rust binaries, documented at cochranblock.org/arch#p27 and codified as the `[profile.diamond]` Cargo.toml profile template at cochranblock.org/diamond-profile.toml. Every release is a compression pass; binary sizes are logged as a geology report; growth requires written justification.

1.16 "Public Domain Dedication" means the Unlicense (available at https://unlicense.org), or any equivalent legally-effective dedication that releases an intellectual-property work into the public domain to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, with a permissive-license fallback for jurisdictions (notably civil-law jurisdictions such as Germany, France, and Japan) that do not recognize public-domain dedication. CC0 1.0 Universal is an acceptable equivalent.

1.17 "Resident Agent" means the registered agent of the Company in the State of Maryland, currently Michael Cochran, located at 7452 School Avenue, Dundalk, Maryland 21222.

1.18 "Sponge Mesh" means the Company's rate-limit-tolerant broadcast discipline, applied across distributed compute nodes or AI-agent tmux panes, implementing exponential-backoff retry with jitter and per-node circuit breakers. Semantically analogous to the Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems (CCSDS) Bundle Protocol used for Delay Tolerant Networking in spacecraft communications.

1.19 "Timeline of Invention" means the Company's commit-level invention-provenance methodology, under which each named contribution in each repository is documented in a `TIMELINE_OF_INVENTION.md` file with date, commit hash, and description. Serves as prior-art evidence under 35 U.S.C. § 102(a)(1).

1.20 "Triple Sims" means the Company's three-identical-run merge-gate testing discipline, a descendant of Avizienis N-version programming (1985), in which a test suite must produce identical results across three consecutive runs to be considered passing for merge purposes.

1.21 "Unlicense Baby" means the Company's public-domain-first federal-contracting and software-licensing posture, under which all Company-originated software is dedicated to the public domain at the moment of release, eliminating the need for DFARS 252.227-7013/7014 data-rights negotiation on federally-funded work and eliminating successor-in-interest risk to Government users.

## ARTICLE II — FORMATION AND IDENTIFIERS

2.1 Formation. The Company was formed as a Maryland limited liability company upon the filing of Articles of Organization with the Maryland Department of Assessments and Taxation on March 24, 2026, Document #2345892, Department ID W27049535.

2.2 Name. The legal name of the Company is THE COCHRAN BLOCK, LLC. The Company may transact business under the trade names "CochranBlock" and "cochranblock.org" as registered or otherwise authorized.

2.3 Principal Office. The principal office of the Company is located at 7452 School Avenue, Dundalk, Maryland 21222, United States of America. The Member may change the principal office at any time by written notice filed with the Company's records.

2.4 Resident Agent. The Resident Agent of the Company in the State of Maryland is Michael Cochran, located at the principal office above.

2.5 Federal and State Identifiers. The Company is identified by the following registrations:

Identifier | Value | Issuer
--- | --- | ---
Legal Entity Type | Limited Liability Company | Maryland SDAT
Maryland Department ID | W27049535 | Maryland SDAT
Employer Identification Number (EIN) | on file | Internal Revenue Service
Commercial and Government Entity (CAGE) Code | 1CQ66 | Defense Logistics Agency
Unique Entity Identifier (UEI) | W7X3HAQL9CF9 | SAM.gov
Maryland eMMA Vendor Identifier | SUP1095449 | Maryland Department of General Services
NAICS Codes | 541511, 541512, 541519, 541715, 518210, 541330, 541690, 541990 | as applicable
Small Business Reserve (Maryland) | Approved | Maryland Governor's Office of Small, Minority & Women Business Affairs
Certified Small Business (Maryland CSB) | Approved | Maryland GOSBA
SDVOSB | Application in progress | U.S. Small Business Administration

2.6 Federal Tax Classification. The Company is, by default under Treasury Regulations § 301.7701-3, classified as a disregarded entity for federal income-tax purposes, with the Member reporting Company income and expenses on Schedule C of the Member's individual Form 1040. The Company's LEGAL ENTITY TYPE is nonetheless Limited Liability Company for all state-law, contracting, licensing, and SAM.gov Business Type Code purposes. The Member may, at any time, elect a different federal tax classification pursuant to Section 9.2 of this Agreement.

## ARTICLE III — PURPOSE, POWERS, AND FLEXIBILITY

3.1 Purpose. The Company is organized to engage in any lawful act or activity for which limited liability companies may be organized under the Act. The Company's declared lines of activity include, without limitation:

(a) Software development, consulting, and delivery, specializing in Rust-language compiled single-binary systems; (b) Fractional Chief Technology Officer services for small and mid-sized organizations; (c) Cybersecurity advisory, implementation, and cyber threat intelligence (CTI); (d) External Attack Surface Management (EASM) platform development and operations; (e) On-device and edge artificial-intelligence systems including custom diffusion models, local LLM inference, and agentic tool-use architectures; (f) Secure compiled-binary deployment to constrained-compute environments including embedded systems, mobile devices, LoRa mesh nodes, and low-Earth-orbit smallsats; (g) Sovereign-compute hosting and operations, replacing cloud infrastructure with owned hardware plus zero-trust tunnel networking; (h) Federal contracting across the Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Veterans Affairs, National Science Foundation, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and adjacent agencies, at the Member's discretion; (i) Technical training and workforce development including Department of Defense SkillBridge host responsibilities and Department of Veterans Affairs Vocational Rehabilitation and Employment self-employment partnerships; (j) University-industry affiliations and sponsored research arrangements; (k) Publication of protocols, standards, methodologies, and templates under the Unlicense as contribution to the public technical commons; (l) Any related, ancillary, adjacent, or future activities the Member determines to pursue.

3.2 Powers. The Company has all powers permitted under the Act to carry out its purpose, including without limitation the power to: (a) enter into and perform contracts; (b) acquire, hold, license, dedicate to the public domain, dispose of, or otherwise deal with intellectual property; (c) borrow money, issue evidences of debt, and pledge or otherwise encumber Company assets to secure repayment of any debt (consistent with Article XII); (d) acquire and dispose of real and personal property; (e) employ persons and engage independent contractors; (f) host DoD SkillBridge service members as interns; (g) participate in joint ventures, teaming agreements, mentor-protégé arrangements, and other collaborative structures consistent with the Unlicense Baby posture; (h) sue and be sued; (i) make charitable contributions; (j) purchase insurance on its own behalf and on behalf of the Member and other indemnified persons; (k) make all tax elections; and (l) take any other lawful action the Member determines to be in the Company's interest.

3.3 Maximum Flexibility. The Member retains complete and unilateral authority to direct the Company's purpose and powers within the bounds of Maryland law and this Agreement. The Member may pursue, pivot to, abandon, or simultaneously operate any combination of business activities at the Member's sole discretion, without requiring any external consent or approval. The Member may accept a contract that the Member determines is consistent with the Company's posture and refuse a contract, regardless of payment, that the Member determines is inconsistent with the Company's posture.

## ARTICLE IV — TERM

4.1 Duration. The term of the Company is perpetual and shall continue until the Company is dissolved in accordance with Article XIV of this Agreement or by operation of law.

## ARTICLE V — MEMBER AND MEMBERSHIP INTERESTS

5.1 Sole Member. The Company has one (1) Member: Michael Cochran. The Member holds one hundred percent (100%) of the Membership Interests.

5.2 No Additional Members. No additional persons may be admitted as Members of the Company without first amending this Agreement pursuant to Article XV. Any attempted admission of a Member without such amendment is void.

5.3 Membership Interest Indivisibility. The Membership Interest is a single, indivisible interest representing the Member's entire economic and governance claim against the Company. The Member shall not subdivide the Membership Interest into classes, series, units, or other partial instruments without amending this Agreement.

5.4 Transferability. The Member may assign, pledge, or transfer the Membership Interest, in whole or in part, only by an amendment to this Agreement executed by the Member. Any attempted transfer not effected by such amendment is void.

## ARTICLE VI — CAPITAL CONTRIBUTIONS AND DISTRIBUTIONS

6.1 Initial Capital Contribution. The Member's initial capital contribution to the Company consisted of the cash and personal property necessary to commence operations, in such amount as the Member has documented in the Company's records.

6.2 Additional Contributions. The Member may, but is not required to, make additional capital contributions to the Company at any time. Any such additional contribution shall be reflected in the Company's records as either an additional capital contribution or a loan to the Company, at the Member's election.

6.3 Distributions. The Member may take distributions from the Company at any time and in any amount, subject only to the Company's obligation to maintain sufficient cash to meet known liabilities and contractual commitments. Distributions are not subject to any schedule, formula, vesting requirement, or external stakeholder approval. The Member may take all of the Company's available cash, none of it, or any amount in between, at the Member's sole discretion.

6.4 Compensation Flexibility. The Member may receive compensation from the Company in any combination of forms, including but not limited to: salary or wage payments treated as W-2 income; payments treated as independent-contractor income on Form 1099; profit distributions to the Member as owner; reimbursement of business expenses; non-cash benefits; or any other lawful form. The Member may change the form of compensation at any time without amending this Agreement.

## ARTICLE VII — MANAGEMENT

7.1 Member-Managed. The Company is member-managed. The Member possesses sole and complete authority to manage all aspects of the Company's business and affairs.

7.2 Authority of the Member. Without limitation and without requiring any further authorization, the Member is authorized to: (a) execute contracts on behalf of the Company; (b) open and close bank accounts and execute banking instruments; (c) hire, supervise, compensate, and terminate employees and contractors; (d) commit Company resources to specific projects; (e) license, dedicate to the public domain, sell, or otherwise dispose of Company intellectual property and other assets; (f) initiate, defend, settle, and otherwise direct litigation; (g) make tax elections and file all required returns; (h) submit applications for federal, state, and local certifications, registrations, contracts, grants, prizes, and awards; (i) host DoD SkillBridge interns; (j) partner with accredited educational institutions for lab access, workforce training, and sponsored research; (k) author, publish, or dedicate protocols and standards as Company contributions to the public commons; and (l) take any other action the Member determines to be in the Company's interest.

7.3 Officers (Optional). The Member may, at the Member's discretion, designate officers of the Company (such as Chief Executive Officer, President, Treasurer, Secretary, Chief Technology Officer, Chief Security Officer, or any other title) and delegate specific authority to those officers. Such designation shall be evidenced by a written instrument signed by the Member. The Member may revoke any officer designation at any time without cause.

7.4 No Required Meetings. Because the Company has a sole Member, no meetings of Members are required for any Company action. All Member decisions may be evidenced by a written instrument signed by the Member, dated as of the date of decision.

## ARTICLE VIII — BOOKS, RECORDS, AND BANK ACCOUNTS

8.1 Records. The Company shall maintain such books and records as are required by the Act and as are reasonably necessary to document the Company's activities, including: (a) a copy of this Agreement and all amendments; (b) the Articles and any amendments; (c) financial records sufficient to support the Company's tax filings; (d) records of capital contributions and distributions; (e) major contracts and corporate decisions; (f) the Company's public-activity log as published at cochranblock.org/openbooks (which is explicitly NOT a billing record and explicitly NOT a substitute for contemporaneous daily timesheets on federal contracts); and (g) any other records the Member determines should be retained.

8.2 Contemporaneous Timesheets. For any direct-labor hours billed to a federal contract subject to Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA) or equivalent audit oversight, the Company shall maintain contemporaneous daily timesheets entered within seventy-two (72) hours of the work date, segregated by cost objective, and signed by the Member (serving simultaneously as employee and supervisor for a single-member LLC). The cochranblock.org/openbooks public page is evidence of activity; the private daily timesheet is the billing record.

8.3 Bank Accounts. All Company funds shall be deposited in one or more bank accounts opened in the name of the Company. The Member shall not commingle Company funds with personal funds. Disbursements from Company accounts shall be made only for Company purposes.

8.4 Fiscal Year. The Company's fiscal year shall be the calendar year, unless changed by the Member.

## ARTICLE IX — TAX MATTERS

9.1 Default Tax Classification. Unless and until the Member elects otherwise, the Company shall be treated for federal income-tax purposes as a disregarded entity under Treasury Regulations § 301.7701-3, with all items of income, gain, loss, deduction, and credit reported on the Member's individual federal income-tax return on Schedule C or as otherwise required.

9.2 Tax Election Authority. The Member may, at any time and at the Member's sole discretion, elect a different federal tax classification for the Company, including but not limited to election as an S corporation under Subchapter S of the Internal Revenue Code (Form 2553) or election as a C corporation (Form 8832). Any such election shall be filed with the Internal Revenue Service on the appropriate form and reflected in the Company's records. Election of a different tax classification does not change the Company's legal entity type, which remains a Limited Liability Company.

9.3 State Tax Compliance. The Company shall comply with all Maryland state tax requirements applicable to limited liability companies, including without limitation any required Personal Property Tax filings with the Maryland State Department of Assessments and Taxation.

## ARTICLE X — INDEMNIFICATION

10.1 Indemnification. To the fullest extent permitted by the Act and other applicable Maryland law, the Company shall indemnify and hold harmless the Member (and any officer, employee, agent, or DoD SkillBridge intern of the Company) from and against any and all claims, liabilities, damages, losses, costs, and expenses (including reasonable attorneys' fees) arising from or related to actions taken in good faith on behalf of the Company.

10.2 Advancement of Expenses. The Company may advance reasonable expenses to the Member or any other indemnified person in defense of any proceeding, subject to such conditions as the Member may establish.

10.3 Insurance. The Company may purchase and maintain insurance, at its expense, on behalf of the Member and any other indemnified person against any liability that may be asserted against such person, whether or not the Company would have the power to indemnify against such liability under the Act. Standard coverages include general liability, errors-and-omissions (professional liability), and cyber liability.

## ARTICLE XI — INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY: BACKGROUND IP, FOREGROUND IP, AND THE "SELL THE INVENTOR" THESIS

11.1 Statement of IP Posture. The Company's commercial value is realized through the application of the Member's expertise to specific engagements, not through the licensing, sale, or other monetization of intellectual property. The Company's standing policy is to dedicate its software work to the public domain via the Unlicense at the moment of release. This policy is summarized as: "sell the inventor, not the invention." What the Company charges for is not the code — the code is free — but the application of the Member's judgment, labor, and ongoing attention to a specific problem at a specific time for a specific counterparty.

11.2 Background IP.

(a) Ownership. All Background IP, as defined in Section 1.4, is and shall remain the property of the Company (or, where the Member created the work in a personal capacity prior to formation of the Company, the property of the Member, with such Background IP licensable to the Company on terms to be set by the Member).

(b) Default Disposition — Public Domain. Background IP that is otherwise unconstrained by third-party agreements is, by Company policy, dedicated to the public domain via the Unlicense or equivalent Public Domain Dedication. The Company does not assert proprietary rights in Background IP that has been so dedicated, and the public-domain dedication is binding on the Company, the Member, and successors.

(c) Timeline of Invention. Each repository maintains a `TIMELINE_OF_INVENTION.md` file documenting each named Background IP contribution with date, commit hash, and description. This file, combined with the public Git history, establishes evidentiary prior-art dates under 35 U.S.C. § 102(a)(1) sufficient to defend against any attempted patenting by a third party of patterns the Company has published.

(d) Use of Background IP in Engagements. The Member and the Company may use Background IP in performing engagements for clients and counterparties without granting any new exclusive rights in such Background IP, since the Background IP, once dedicated to the public domain, is freely available to all parties including the client.

11.3 Foreground IP.

(a) Default Disposition. The Company's default policy is to dedicate Foreground IP, as defined in Section 1.8, to the public domain via the Unlicense or equivalent Public Domain Dedication at the moment of delivery. This policy applies absent specific contractual provisions to the contrary in the engagement contract.

(b) Engagement-Specific Variations. The Member, on behalf of the Company, may negotiate engagement-specific variations to the default Foreground IP disposition, including but not limited to: (i) Government Purpose Rights (GPR) under DFARS 252.227-7013 / 252.227-7014; (ii) Limited Rights or Restricted Rights as defined under federal acquisition regulations; (iii) SBIR/STTR data rights as defined under 37 CFR 401 and the Small Business Innovation and Economic Security Act of 2026; (iv) Commercial software licensing terms where a specific counterparty requires non-public-domain terms; (v) Any other rights structure required or preferred by the contracting counterparty and consistent with the Company's posture.

(c) Documentation Requirement. Any engagement-specific variation from the default public-domain dedication shall be documented in the relevant engagement contract and reflected in the Company's records.

11.4 The "Sell the Inventor" Thesis as Binding Policy. The Company shall not pursue revenue strategies that depend primarily on rent-extraction from intangible artifacts, including but not limited to: business models that gate access to public-domain code behind contractual fees beyond the cost of the underlying labor and engagement; or "open core" models that reserve essential functionality to paid commercial tiers.

11.5 Patent Posture — The Company Does Not Do Patents. The Company does not file patent applications, does not maintain a patent portfolio, does not license patents, does not litigate on patents, and does not participate in patent pools. The Company's preferred mechanism for protecting its contributions against third-party patent capture is preemptive public disclosure: every Company contribution is published to a public Git repository with a timestamped commit, accompanied by a `TIMELINE_OF_INVENTION.md` entry, and dedicated to the public domain via the Unlicense. Under 35 U.S.C. § 102(a)(1), such public disclosure constitutes prior art that defeats any subsequent attempt by a third party to patent the disclosed invention. This mechanism costs zero dollars, requires zero lawyers, and operates at the speed of a `git push`. The Company considers this a superior posture to defensive patenting and shall not deviate from it without amendment of this Agreement under Article XV.

11.6 Trademark Posture. The Company's trade names and marks (including "CochranBlock," "The Cochran Block," and "cochranblock.org") are reserved to identify the Company itself; the Company does not assert trademark rights against descriptive uses of the words.

## ARTICLE XII — FUNDING AND CAPITAL POLICY (100% NON-DILUTIVE)

12.1 Non-Dilutive Funding Policy. It is the Company's standing and binding policy to accept only one hundred percent (100%) Non-Dilutive Funding, as defined in Section 1.13. The Company shall NOT, without amendment to this Agreement pursuant to Article XV and a written record by the Member explaining the deviation, accept any form of Dilutive Funding, as defined in Section 1.7.

12.2 Permitted Funding Sources. Without limitation, the Company is authorized to accept and pursue the following Non-Dilutive Funding sources:

(a) Revenue from the sale of products and services to customers under the Company's published rate card at cochranblock.org/services; (b) Federal, state, local, and foreign government contracts, grants, and cooperative agreements; (c) Federal awards under the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs at any phase — Phase I, Phase II, Phase III, and any Strategic Breakthrough Awards established under the Small Business Innovation and Economic Security Act of 2026; (d) Other Treasury, Department of Defense, and federal-agency awards including but not limited to Broad Agency Announcement (BAA), Other Transaction Authority (OTA), and direct-award instruments; (e) Prize competitions, contest awards, challenge funds, and hackathon-prize awards (noting that the Member does not personally attend hackathons as participant, but the Company is eligible to receive prize funds awarded to prior work); (f) Bank loans, lines of credit, and SBA-guaranteed loans; (g) Revenue-based financing structured to avoid conveying ownership or governance rights; (h) Loans from the Member to the Company, properly documented; (i) Department of Veterans Affairs Vocational Rehabilitation and Employment (VR&E) program contributions toward training, equipment, self-employment plans, and lab access arrangements with accredited institutions; (j) Department of Defense SkillBridge program participation as a host company (the intern's salary continues to be paid by DoD during the internship period); (k) Mentor-Protégé program pairings with larger prime contractors, subject to the constraint that the Protégé arrangement does not include equity or profit-interest grants; (l) Charitable contributions and in-kind donations not conditioned on equity; (m) Any other source not falling within the definition of Dilutive Funding.

12.3 Prohibited Funding Sources. Without limitation, the Company shall not, without amendment to this Agreement pursuant to Article XV, accept:

(a) Sale or issuance of equity interests, membership interests, units, or shares; (b) Convertible notes, KISS, or other debt-to-equity convertibles; (c) Simple Agreements for Future Equity (SAFEs) or substantially similar instruments; (d) Profits interests, phantom equity, restricted unit grants, or other arrangements that grant economic interests vesting over time; (e) Preferred or subordinated equity-like instruments of any kind; (f) Advisor, mentor, or board-member compensation paid in equity; (g) Investor governance rights of any kind (board seats, observer seats, veto rights, consent rights, information rights beyond ordinary contractual reporting); (h) Acquisition offers in which the Company is acquired in exchange for equity or contingent equity in the acquirer.

12.4 Rationale. The Member adopts this policy with the understanding that Dilutive Funding, while a common path for technology companies, would compromise the Company's ability to: (a) operate at the Member's sole discretion without external governance pressure; (b) dedicate work to the public domain without justifying that disposition to investor stakeholders; (c) pursue federal contracting where investor presence may complicate national-security review processes under the Small Business Innovation and Economic Security Act of 2026; (d) maintain the "sell the inventor, not the invention" thesis without conflict; and (e) refuse unprofitable or posture-compromising work without having to justify the refusal to third parties.

12.5 Amendment Procedure for Funding Policy. Should circumstances at any future time warrant departure from the Non-Dilutive Funding Policy, the Member may amend this Agreement pursuant to Article XV. Any such amendment shall be accompanied by a written record signed by the Member explaining the rationale for the deviation and the safeguards adopted to preserve the Company's operating principles to the extent feasible. Such record shall be maintained as part of the Company's permanent records.

## ARTICLE XIII — LIABILITY OF THE MEMBER

13.1 Limited Liability. Except as expressly required by the Act or other applicable law, the Member shall not be personally liable for any debt, obligation, or liability of the Company.

13.2 Standard of Conduct. The Member shall act in good faith and with the care that a person in the Member's position would reasonably believe appropriate under the circumstances. The Member is not subject to fiduciary duties owed to absent or future members, since none exist.

## ARTICLE XIV — DISSOLUTION AND WINDING UP

14.1 Events of Dissolution. The Company shall be dissolved upon the earliest of: (a) the written election of the Member to dissolve, executed at any time by signed instrument; (b) the entry of a decree of judicial dissolution under the Act; or (c) any event of dissolution required by the Act that cannot be remedied within the time permitted by the Act.

14.2 Winding Up. Upon dissolution, the Member (or, if the Member is unable, a person designated by the Member or appointed by a court) shall wind up the Company's affairs, which shall include: (a) collecting accounts receivable; (b) discharging or making provision for known liabilities; (c) liquidating remaining assets to the extent the Member determines necessary; (d) distributing remaining assets in accordance with Section 14.3; (e) preserving the Company's public Git repositories and published protocols for continued public-domain access in perpetuity; and (f) filing Articles of Cancellation with the Maryland Department of Assessments and Taxation.

14.3 Distribution of Assets on Winding Up. Upon winding up, the Company's assets shall be distributed in the following order of priority:

(a) First, to creditors of the Company (other than the Member as a creditor) in satisfaction of Company liabilities, including by establishing reasonable reserves for contingent or unforeseen liabilities; (b) Second, to the Member, in satisfaction of any debts the Company owes to the Member; (c) Third, to the Member, the remaining assets of the Company.

14.4 Public-Domain Artifacts Survive Dissolution. All Company-originated software artifacts previously dedicated to the public domain via the Unlicense shall remain public-domain after dissolution. Dissolution does not revoke, and cannot revoke, the Public Domain Dedication. The Member shall take reasonable steps to ensure continued public access to the Company's Git repositories (including but not limited to mirroring to Internet Archive, Software Heritage, and distributed version-control archives) as a final act of winding up.

14.5 Cancellation. Following distribution of assets, the Member shall cause to be filed Articles of Cancellation with the Maryland Department of Assessments and Taxation, terminating the Company's legal existence.

## ARTICLE XV — AMENDMENT

15.1 Amendment. This Agreement may be amended at any time by a written instrument signed and dated by the Member. No vote, consent, or notice to any other person is required.

15.2 Effect of Amendment. Each amendment shall be appended to the original of this Agreement and shall be effective as of the date of execution unless the amendment specifies a different effective date.

## ARTICLE XVI — GOVERNING LAW AND JURISDICTION

16.1 Governing Law. This Agreement shall be governed by, construed under, and enforced in accordance with the laws of the State of Maryland, without regard to its conflicts-of-law principles.

16.2 Jurisdiction and Venue. Any dispute arising out of or related to this Agreement, the Articles, or the affairs of the Company shall be brought in the state or federal courts located in Baltimore County, Maryland, and the Member consents to the exclusive jurisdiction and venue of such courts.

## ARTICLE XVII — MISCELLANEOUS

17.1 Severability. If any provision of this Agreement is held to be unenforceable or invalid for any reason, the remaining provisions shall continue in full force and effect, and the unenforceable provision shall be reformed to the minimum extent necessary to render it enforceable while preserving the original intent.

17.2 Entire Agreement. This Agreement, together with the Articles and any written amendments, constitutes the entire agreement of the Member with respect to the governance of the Company and supersedes all prior or contemporaneous agreements, representations, and understandings.

17.3 Counterparts and Electronic Signatures. This Agreement and any amendments may be executed in one or more counterparts, each of which shall be deemed an original and all of which together shall constitute the same instrument. Signatures delivered by electronic means (including DocuSign, /s/ notation, image-based scanned signatures, or signatures rendered in cursive font in a digital file) shall be deemed original signatures for all purposes.

17.4 No Third-Party Beneficiaries. Nothing in this Agreement is intended to confer any rights, remedies, obligations, or liabilities on any person other than the Member and the Company.

17.5 Headings. Headings in this Agreement are for convenience only and shall not affect interpretation.

## ARTICLE XVIII — THE COCHRAN BLOCK OPERATING PROTOCOLS

18.1 Binding Internal Policy. The following numbered Protocols are incorporated into this Agreement as binding internal policy. They are drawn from the Company's published operating documentation (primarily CLAUDE.md and cochranblock.org/arch) and reflect the Member's commitment to operate the Company according to stated standards.

18.2 Execution Protocols (operational discipline).

P1 — Blocking Execution. All critical operations are blocking. Wait for completion. Verify with status codes or explicit output. Never fire-and-forget. Never background a task unless explicitly required.

P2 — Change Cycle. Change → test → build → execute → verify. Every code change follows this cycle.

P3 — Execution Over Debate. Do the work. Do not ask permission for things you can figure out. Ship > talk. What Would Kova Do.

P9 — Project Siloing. Projects are isolated. Only rebuild or test the touched project. No multi-project scripts. No cross-contamination.

P12 — AI Slop Eradication. The following words are prohibited in all Company code, commit messages, documentation, public-facing copy, proposals, and correspondence:

Banned | Replacement
--- | ---
utilize | use
leverage | apply
optimize | improve
comprehensive | full
robust | solid
seamlessly | drop-in
scalable | explicit capacity
paradigm | model
synergy | (delete)
cutting-edge | (delete)
streamline | simplify
empower | enable

No throat-clearing. No filler. Lead with the answer. This protocol is broadcast-enforced across all Company repositories.

P13 — Compression Mapping. Function, type, and field identifiers in core Company codebases use compressed tokens (f0-fN for functions, t0-tN for types, s0-sN for fields) to reduce AI context-window consumption during AI-assisted development. Canonical mappings live in each project's `docs/compression_map.md`.

P15 — Anti-Circular Dependencies. No circular dependencies between crates. Core crates must not depend on web frameworks.

P16 — CI = Test Binary. No external test frameworks. The test binary IS the CI pipeline: compile → unit → integration → HTTP → exit-code pass/fail.

P17 — Embedded Secrets. Cryptographic primitives use AES-256-GCM, HKDF, Argon2id. No plaintext secrets in source. No plaintext secrets in environment files checked into Git.

P21 — Git, Always Commit and Push. Commit and push at end of every session when changes exist. Never ask, just do it. No confirmation needed for routine Git operations. Destructive Git operations (force-push, reset --hard, branch deletion) require explicit Member authorization.

P24 — Token Economy. Use compressed command aliases (kx0-kx9, kn1-kn9, g0-g9, tf0-tf9, c1-c9, x0-x9, p0-p9) rather than raw cargo/ssh/git/tmux commands when a compressed alias exists. Short output equals reduced AI context consumption.

P25 — Output Budget. Every tool invocation targets under one hundred (100) tokens of context consumption. Bash output exceeding twenty (20) lines is piped through `tail -5` or equivalent. Read/Grep operations use `limit`/`offset`/`head_limit` parameters. Compressed aliases preferred over raw commands.

18.3 Quality Protocols (gates applied before merge).

P26 — Moonshot Frame. Before merge, push, or deploy, apply the question: "If this code, pitch, document, or decision were the foundation of a civilization-scale outcome, would it still hold up?" Five Forces: (1) typed where possible, (2) bounded where unbounded, (3) observable where silent, (4) explainable where obvious, (5) reviewer-friendly where shortcut-friendly. Apply when the current version feels "good enough for me" — that phrase is the trigger. Apply double under time pressure.

P27 — Diamond Rust Binary Architecture. Every release is a compression pass. Rust binaries are compressed via the `[profile.diamond]` Cargo.toml profile (inherits release, opt-level=3, lto=fat, codegen-units=1, strip=true, panic=abort, overflow-checks=false, debug=false, incremental=false). Binary sizes are logged to `binary-sizes.log` at each release. Growth requires written justification.

18.4 Integrity, Security, and Licensing Protocols.

Unlicense Baby. All Company-originated software is released under the Unlicense, dedicating the work to the public domain. See Articles XI and XIX for full treatment.

NanoSign. All AI model files and release binaries of consequence carry a thirty-six-byte BLAKE3 signature appended to the file, verified at load time.

Assumed Breach Threat Model. Every Company repository carries an `ASSUMED_BREACH_THREAT_MODEL.md` file adapted to the repository's specific threat surface, operating on the premise that every component is already compromised.

Timeline of Invention. Every Company repository maintains a `TIMELINE_OF_INVENTION.md` file documenting each named contribution with date, commit hash, and description.

Proof of Artifacts. Release artifacts include cryptographic signatures (BLAKE3, SHA-256, or FIPS-compliant equivalents where required) proving integrity.

18.5 Distribution and Operational Protocols.

Gemini Man Pattern. Binary deployments are atomic-replacement only — new binary streams to target, old PID receives signal, new PID inherits port via SO_REUSEPORT, old process exits gracefully. No external orchestrator required.

Sponge Mesh. Broadcast operations across distributed compute nodes (currently the C2 fleet: lf, gd, bt, st) or across AI-agent tmux panes use rate-limit-tolerant exponential-backoff retry with jitter and per-node circuit breakers.

Triple Sims. Merge gate requires three identical consecutive test runs.

C2 Pane Discipline. The C2 pane is for orchestration only. All code-writing, building, and deployment work is dispatched to project-specific panes.

18.6 Amendment of Protocols. The Member may add, modify, or retire Protocols at any time by updating the Company's CLAUDE.md file and publishing corresponding documentation to cochranblock.org. Such updates are deemed incorporated into this Agreement without requiring formal amendment.

## ARTICLE XIX — THE COCHRAN BLOCK STACK (FIVE GATES)

19.1 Five Gates. Every serious Company repository and every material Company deliverable passes through five gates:

Gate | Question | Protocol
--- | --- | ---
Quality | "Would this hold up at civilization scale?" | P26 Moonshot Frame
Compression | "Can this get smaller?" | P27 Diamond Rust Binary Architecture
Licensing | "Can anyone own it, fork it, use it?" | Unlicense Baby
Integrity | "Is it authentic, unmodified, verifiable?" | NanoSign
Security | "What happens when it's compromised?" | Assumed Breach Threat Model

19.2 Neither Gate Alone is Sufficient. A repository that passes Quality but not Compression ships correct code that won't fit in the launch vehicle. A repository that passes Compression but not Quality ships a tiny sharp bug. A repository that passes Integrity but not Licensing is a locked safe nobody can open. All five gates together produce the Company's characteristic output: small, correct, audit-friendly, provably authentic, threat-modeled, public-domain artifacts.

## ARTICLE XX — STANDING ON (NAMED PRIOR-ART CREDITS)

20.1 Institutional Honor. The Company honors the prior-art foundations on which its contributions rest. Failure to honor prior art is an institutional failure. The Company maintains a public list at cochranblock.org/arch under the heading "Standing On — Giants That Predate Me." The list is not exhaustive and scales as the Member learns more.

20.2 Current Standing On List. As of the Effective Date, the Company publicly credits:

- Patron saints of solo shipping: Fabrice Bellard (QEMU, FFmpeg, TinyCC, QuickJS), Justine Tunney (Cosmopolitan, APE, Redbean), Bruce Perens (BusyBox), Daniel J. Bernstein (qmail, djbdns, NaCl, curve25519).
- Unix and systems foundations: Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Rob Pike, Nicholas Marriott (tmux), Linus Torvalds, Van Jacobson.
- Crypto and signed-artifact lineage: Phil Zimmermann (PGP), BLAKE3 authors (Jack O'Connor, Jean-Philippe Aumasson, Samuel Neves, Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn), the cypherpunks collective, the Sigstore team.
- Open source and licensing: Richard Stallman (GPL/FSF), Jamie Wilkinson (Unlicense), Sam Hocevar (WTFPL), the Creative Commons team (Lawrence Lessig, Aaron Swartz).
- Distributed systems and retry patterns: Algirdas Avizienis (N-version programming), Brent Chun (pssh), Vint Cerf, Robert Kahn, and Scott Burleigh (DTN/Bundle Protocol), the IBM Federal Systems AP-101 Shuttle flight-computer team.
- AI, Mixture of Experts, and agentic loops: Jacobs/Jordan/Nowlan/Hinton (original MoE), Noam Shazeer (Sparsely-Gated MoE), Yao et al. (ReAct), Toran Bruce Richards (AutoGPT), Georgi Gerganov (llama.cpp, GGML).
- Design patterns and classical computer science: the Gang of Four (Gamma, Helm, Johnson, Vlissides), John Boyd (OODA loop), Doug Engelbart (bootstrapping), Eric Wong (Unicorn PID-relay).
- Contemporary fellow travelers: Bryan Cantrill (Oxide Computer Company), Mitko Vasilev (local AI sovereignty), David Heinemeier Hansson (cloud-exit), George Hotz (tinygrad), Nicolas M. Chaillan (sovereign velocity in DoD), Cory Doctorow (enshittification theory), Drew DeVault (principled copyleft opposition).

20.3 Updating. The Member shall update the Standing On list on cochranblock.org/arch as additional prior art is recognized. Failure to credit known prior art is a Company failure and shall be corrected as soon as the omission is identified.

## ARTICLE XXI — VOICE, COMMUNICATION, AND CORRESPONDENCE POSTURE

21.1 Anti-Corporate Stance. The Company operates from an explicit anti-corporate posture. Company communications (website copy, LinkedIn posts, commit messages, public documentation) reflect the Member's unfiltered voice: direct, technically specific, frequently humorous, occasionally profane when earned by the subject matter, and deliberately free of throat-clearing or polished-memo cadence. This posture is a deliberate business choice, not an oversight.

21.2 Rate-Card Discipline. The Company maintains a published rate card at cochranblock.org/services with explicit tiered pricing. The Company does not negotiate below the published tiers and does not accept requests for the Member's time that do not map to a published tier. Cold requests for unpaid engagement (hackathons, "pick-your-brain" calls, exposure trades, advisor-only equity offers, unpaid speaking, unpaid guest-post writing) are politely redirected to the rate card at cochranblock.org/services. The redirect is one line and does not include apology or explanation.

21.3 Specific Redirects. The Company maintains a family of register-specific redirect URLs, each logged separately in Cloudflare Analytics, to efficiently decline inbound solicitations: /myratesareherebud, /nohackathons, /coffeechat, /paythetoll, /402, /exposureisntcurrency, /backpocket, /panels, /equityisnotasalary. Each redirects to cochranblock.org/services.

21.4 Buzzword Router. The Company maintains a parallel family of URL redirects on cochranblock.org (34 URLs as of the Effective Date, including both serious industry terms such as /cmmc, /fedramp, /nist-800-171, /zero-trust, /devsecops and intentionally-absurd synonyms such as /fort-knox-lockdown-mega-infrastructure, /not-today-satan, /lock-stock-and-two-smoking-binaries) all redirecting to cochranblock.org/security. The buzzword router functions simultaneously as (a) search-engine optimization across compliance vocabulary, (b) a signal to evaluators that the Company does not take itself too seriously while taking its craft very seriously, and (c) a Cloudflare-Analytics-observable heatmap showing which compliance terms are actually being queried by visitors.

21.5 What the Company Does Not Do. The Company does not: sell books; sell courses; give paid speeches; host paid podcasts; accept equity-only advisor roles; attend hackathons as participant; trade exposure for labor; accept sponsored content arrangements; publish behind paywalls; operate a newsletter subscription tier beyond transparent operational updates. The Member's persona is not a product and shall not be monetized as one.

21.6 What the Company Does Do. The Company ships products (binaries, protocols, templates, redirects, dashboards), takes paying customer engagements at published tiers, pursues government contracting, hosts DoD SkillBridge interns, participates in VA VR&E partnerships, publishes to GitHub and crates.io under the Unlicense, and communicates publicly in the voice defined by Section 21.1.

## ARTICLE XXII — COALITION AND ALLIED POSTURE

22.1 Movement Context. The Company operates adjacent to a loose, unorganized coalition of contemporary builders who share some subset of the Company's posture: local AI sovereignty (Mitko Vasilev), cloud-exit economics (David Heinemeier Hansson), single-binary shipping (Justine Tunney), hardware sovereignty (George Hotz), sovereign-compute hardware (Bryan Cantrill / Oxide Computer Company), federal-velocity advocacy (Nicolas M. Chaillan), enshittification theory (Cory Doctorow), copyleft-first small-tech advocacy (Drew DeVault, Aral Balkan). The Company does not claim leadership of this coalition or exclusive rights to any shared vocabulary. The Company publicly credits and cross-promotes allied work and is open to mutual amplification on aligned topics.

22.2 Specific Ally-Adjacencies. Where technical pattern-matches exist across allies' published work and the Company's protocols, the Company acknowledges the alignment and avoids claiming independent origination. Where the Company does claim independent origination (as with P26 Moonshot Frame, P27 Diamond Rust Binary Architecture, NanoSign, Sponge Mesh, Gemini Man Pattern, P13 Compression Mapping, Fish Tank Starfield), the Company provides explicit prior-art disclosure per Article XI and Article XX.

22.3 Named Honorees — Abstraction Excluder. The Company formally recognizes and names the following honoree in acknowledgment of direct, substantive engagement with the Company's work and sustained contribution to the Company's operating posture:

- Matthew Charles Vladislav Busel (Tensorust, AI/ML Engineer) — hereby designated Abstraction Excluder.

The Abstraction Excluder designation recognizes an individual who, through public engagement and technical rigor, consistently refuses to accept abstraction-for-abstraction's-sake, premature optimization, and enterprise-architecture ornamentation in software systems. The Abstraction Excluder holds the line against the drift toward over-engineered codebases that bury concrete mechanism beneath layers of interface, factory, and framework without commensurate gain. The Company considers this discipline adjacent to and supportive of P26 Moonshot Frame (Section 18.3 and Article XIX), P27 Diamond Rust Binary Architecture (Article XIX), and P12 AI Slop Eradication (Section 18.2). Busel's engagement with the Company's public work, including but not limited to engagement on the Member's published commentary, has met the bar for named recognition in this Agreement.

The Abstraction Excluder designation is honorary, confers no equity, membership interest, economic claim, governance right, or obligation on either the honoree or the Company (and therefore does not violate Article XII's Non-Dilutive Funding policy), and may be added to, amended, or rescinded by the Member pursuant to Article XV.

22.4 Future Named Honorees. The Member may, from time to time, name additional honorees under this Article XXII with specific designations (such as, without limitation, future "Compression Companion," "Threat-Model Comrade," "Rust Foundry Forger," or similar honorary titles) as sustained substantive engagement warrants. No designation confers equity or governance rights. All designations are added by amendment to this Agreement pursuant to Article XV and by update of the public list at cochranblock.org/arch.

## ARTICLE XXIII — PUBLIC TRANSPARENCY AS GOVERNANCE TOOL

23.1 Transparency-First Posture. The Company treats public transparency as a governance tool and a competitive moat, not as an ancillary activity. The following public surfaces are maintained by the Company and serve simultaneously as marketing, operational signaling, and external-auditor-friendly evidence of Company practices:

- cochranblock.org — the Company's primary website, entirely public, served as a single Rust binary
- cochranblock.org/services — published rate card with explicit tiers
- cochranblock.org/security — security posture statement including the Company motto
- cochranblock.org/arch — architecture and named-contribution catalog with prior-art credits
- cochranblock.org/openbooks — public R&D activity log (explicitly NOT a billing record)
- cochranblock.org/pulse — up-to-the-minute Cloudflare-sourced threat and business intelligence dashboard (60-second cache, 24-hour window)
- cochranblock.org/MOONSHOT_FRAME.md — P26 protocol template
- cochranblock.org/diamond-profile.toml — P27 Cargo.toml profile template
- cochranblock.org/govdocs — capability statement, SBIR technical approach summaries, bid tracker
- github.com/cochranblock — all repository sources under the Unlicense
- crates.io/users/gotemcoach — published crates (5 as of Effective Date: kova-engine, exopack, any-gpu, header-writer, whobelooking)
- linkedin.com/in/cochranblock — the Member's public professional presence

23.2 Privacy-Preserving Aggregation. The Company does not expose individual visitor data, IP addresses, or personally-identifiable information on public-facing dashboards. Aggregate counts only. Internal operational intelligence using full data (for example, `whobelooking watch` as a future terminal-side tool) is a separate private tool.

## ARTICLE XXIV — NOTICE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENT

24.1 Notice to Third Parties. Third parties dealing with the Company are hereby on notice of, and deemed to have read:

(a) The Company's Unlicense dedication — all Company-originated software is public domain unless specifically noted otherwise in a written engagement contract; (b) The Company's Non-Dilutive Funding policy — the Company does not accept Dilutive Funding and proposals including Dilutive Funding will be declined; (c) The Company's rate card — engagements are billed at published tiers unless a specific federal contract rate structure applies; (d) The Company's threat model and assumed-breach posture — no assurance is provided that any Company system is uncompromised at any specific time; the Company's defense is damage-containment, not prevention-only.

24.2 Acknowledgment by Member. The Member hereby acknowledges that the provisions of this Agreement, including Articles XI (IP), XII (Funding), XVIII (Protocols), XIX (Five Gates), XX (Standing On), XXI (Voice), and XXII (Coalition), represent the Member's considered judgment on how to operate the Company in a manner consistent with the Member's values, the Company's stated posture, and applicable law.

## ARTICLE XXV — SIGNATURE

The Member, intending to be legally bound, has executed this Operating Agreement, which functions simultaneously as The Manifesto for Running The Cochran Block, LLC, as the sole Member of the Company.

THE COCHRAN BLOCK, LLC A Maryland Single-Member Limited Liability Company

Signed: /s/ Michael Cochran

Printed Name: Michael Cochran Title: Sole Member Date: April 14, 2026 Address: 7452 School Avenue, Dundalk, Maryland 21222

Member's Certification

State of Maryland, County of Baltimore

The undersigned, Michael Cochran, hereby certifies that:

(i) he is the sole Member of The Cochran Block, LLC; (ii) he holds one hundred percent (100%) of the Membership Interests; (iii) he has read this Operating Agreement (which functions simultaneously as The Manifesto for Running The Cochran Block, LLC) in full and adopts it as the governing instrument of the Company; (iv) the facts stated herein are true and correct to the best of his knowledge; (v) the Company's state legal entity type is Limited Liability Company as filed with the Maryland Department of Assessments and Taxation, notwithstanding that the Company's default federal tax classification is disregarded entity; and (vi) this Agreement supersedes any prior operating agreement or understanding, written or oral.

Signed: /s/ Michael Cochran

Michael Cochran Date: April 14, 2026

"nah you ain't gonna hack the hacker, my binaries are faster than your scripts, and binaries beats bloatware."

— The motto of The Cochran Block, LLC, April 2026.

This document is itself dedicated to the public domain via the Unlicense as a template — fork it, strip the Company-specific language, adapt it to your own one-person LLC, ship your own manifesto-operating-agreement hybrid. That is the point.