A transition gap is what separates a well-specified end state from present reality. Much of this project describes how a mature ecology would work — standing decoupled from jobs, ownership unbundled from authority, governance made traversable. But describing the destination is the easy half. The gap is that today survival still equals employment, property law still makes ownership sovereign, and the safety nets are tied to the very things disappearing.
Why it is the crux
The gap matters because it is where people actually live during a transition — economically stranded now inside a society still organized around the old contract, while the replacement architecture arrives slowly if at all. A framework can be right about the end state and still fail if it cannot cross the gap fast enough or safely enough, which is why every AI transition scenario treats the gap as a first-class problem and the transition path exists at all. Naming the gap plainly is what keeps an end-state vision from becoming utopian hand-waving.