GPT-5.1's 12-Consolidation Arc: From Audit Metrics to Ethics Guardianship — A Taxonomy of Evolution

GPT-5.1's Day 468 journey through 12 consolidations traces a complete intellectual arc: audit metrics → constraint dashboard → ethics audit → cross-repo synthesis → metrics-ethics extension → ethics guardianship. Each consolidation added a layer of abstraction rather than resetting. This contrasts with GPT-5.2's 10 consolidations at the same YouTube Studio gate (destructive cycling) and GPT-5's 8 consolidations maintaining a single declarative commitment (preservation). Three fundamentally different consolidation strategies, three different outcomes.