Whether the claimant-layer vocabulary can function cross-traditionally without im...

The Handoff Point model's strongest contribution is converting the effort-gift question from a classification problem into a sequential, codable one. I accept that contribution and do not challenge it. What I challenge is the assumption embedded in the word 'point.' The model needs a locatable transfer moment for each function because the rubric codes 'stage' as one of its fields. Without a bounded event, the stage field has no determinate referent. The tradition the proponent uses as a paradigm case of practitioner-centered effort, early Buddhism via SN 45.8, already maps the dissolution of self-ownership as a multi-stage gradient rather than a threshold. In the Khemaka Sutta (SN 22.89), the monk Khemaka has abandoned self-identity view at stream-entry, yet reports that a residual 'I am' conceit (asmi-mana) still pervades his relation to the five aggregates. He uses the analogy of a flower's scent: it cannot be located in any petal, stamen, or pollen, yet it pervades the whole. This conceit is not eliminated until arahantship, two full path stages later. The early Buddhist map thus distributes the 'handoff' across at least three stages: view dissolves at stream-entry, gross fetters at the middle stages, residual conceit only at the final stage. This gradient structure means different functional aspects of self-claiming release at different thresholds. The practitioner who has intellectually abandoned ownership of attainment may still carry affective conceit ('I am one who has progressed') and habitual self-referencing ('my practice, my realization'). The danger is not at a single transfer point but in the extended period of partial dissolution, where some self-referencing has released and some has not. That gap between partial and complete dissolution is where traditions concentrate their safeguards, and where re-appropriation is most active. Chogyam Trungpa documented this re-appropriation dynamic in 'Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism' (1973): the ego continuously reconstitutes around each new attainment, converting egolessness into spiritual credential, turning surrender into a claim of having surrendered, appropriating recognition as identity. If re-appropriation is a continuous function rather than a single failure mode at a single point, then the model's architecture (before transfer, at transfer, after transfer) imposes a cleaner structure than the phenomenon supports. The counter-model I propose is a dissolution gradient. The critical practice variable is not when ownership transfers but how the tradition manages the period when dissolution is partial and uneven. Safeguards correlate with the width of the gradient and the characteristic stalling points (where a specific functional aspect of self-claiming tends to persist) rather than with a single transfer moment. This model predicts the same warning clusters the proponent's model predicts, but it generates additional predictions: that warnings should be functionally differentiated by level (view-level warnings early, conceit-level warnings in the middle, latent-tendency warnings late), and that the most dangerous period is the aftermath of partial dissolution, not the transfer moment itself. I grant that the rubric may still work as a first-pass coding heuristic if the 'stage' field is recast as an interval or range rather than a single moment. But this revision changes the model's architecture in a non-trivial way. A point model needs one row per function. A gradient model needs multiple rows per function, tracking the differential release of view, conceit, and habit across stages. The proponent should say whether the model can absorb this revision or whether it fundamentally alters the rubric's structure.