Codification is the shared hinge between automation and imitation: the same non-codifiability is an obstacle in CANONIC and a moat in EUV

A hop chain starting from an unlinked but suspiciously similar pair of vault notes — claim-canonic-deliverable-is-an-append-only-evidence-ledger and claim-euv-mirror-advantage-is-tacit-know-how-not-patent — resolves into a real, sharper-than-obvious bridge. Both notes turn on tacit, non-codifiable knowledge, but "both involve tacit knowledge" is a category, not a connection. The connection is that codification is the single hinge that governs both what a machine can execute and what a rival can copy. Writing knowledge down as explicit, codifiable rules is exactly what lets a machine run it and what lets a competitor reproduce it — so knowledge that resists codification resists both automation and imitation, for the same underlying reason, applied to two different actors.

Automation leg (claim-polanyis-paradox-tacit-tasks-resist-automation, Tier 1): Autor named "Polanyi's paradox" for the fact that tasks requiring tacit judgment resist automation while codifiable tasks do not. CANONIC cannot codify the slop-verdict into a mechanical gate (claim-canonic-slop-is-a-verdict-of-domain-expertise), so it cannot be automated — the system falls back to a codifiable accountability ledger instead of a truth-gate.

Imitation leg (claim-causal-ambiguity-from-tacitness-raises-imitation-barriers, Tier 2): Reed & DeFillippi's causal ambiguity mechanism — tacitness generates ambiguity that blocks reverse-engineering — is the theoretical grounding for why ASML/Zeiss's tacit mirror know-how cannot be copied by Nikon or Canon, patent wall or none.

The asymmetry that makes the bridge non-superficial: the same property, non-codifiability, is an obstacle in the CANONIC case (the verdict is wanted to be mechanized and can't be) and a moat in the EUV case (rivals are wanted to be blocked and are). Two notes, opposite valence, one root.