The reservoir and the manifold — value is in the routing layer, not the engine

concept

"The most valuable asset in an energy system is not the fuel or the engine. It is the reservoir that stores a gradient and the manifold that routes that gradient to useful work." Source → Gradient → Reservoir → Manifold → Converter → Work. Biology standardizes energy through ATP, and the key insight is not the molecule but the COMMON INTERFACE. The manifold decouples sources from loads and allows many inputs and many outputs; it is the enduring platform while fuels, engines, and storage technologies evolve. WHERE IT ALREADY BEARS WEIGHT — The same shape as the keeping: sources → cards (the reservoir) → search and the graph (the manifold) → verifiers (the converter) → an answer a person can use. It is also why a card stays bare while presentation is derived on the way out — the record is the reservoir, and the experience layer is a converter that must never be welded to it.