[mntmoss]

The question to reconcile in my mind: Malleable systems with reproducable builds.

It's very easy to get your hands dirty with the bytes and add various assumptions and dependencies. Most "hack solutions" go in that direction. But reproducing the modification in some larger context changes the assumption: What if the dependency isn't there?

What tends to make the system stable over the long term is the thematic assumptions: Certain broad goals that never shift, even as the specification does. I think that's the factor missing from having malleability itself as a goal. You already have it, that's software.