Proof Before Production

APQC is the coordinator of governed cryptographic-estate transformation. It exists because crypto migration is a lifecycle that must be orchestrated across many components without losing governance. Validate is the phase APQC coordinates to simulate the approved plan before production — surfacing predicted failures and blast radius so no material failure is carried into a live change. Validation is a preflight simulation; it is not the migration and it is not the final verdict.

The APQC invariant. APQC coordinates the simulation transition; it does not produce the evidence, govern the policy, render the verification verdict, or preserve authority. The simulation tooling runs simulate-only; the console coordinates and displays the predicted outcome. A passing simulation predicts behaviour — the independent proof of what actually occurred is rendered later, in Verify, by an external verifier.

Who owns each adjacent responsibility: Agent-008 governs · H33-74 produces portable evidence · Verification renders the independent verdict (later, in Verify) · Authority Center preserves authority · HATS monitors continuously (later, in Sustain). When to use APQC vs. another capability: use APQC to coordinate the simulation transition inside the lifecycle; use the owning flagship directly when you need that capability on its own.