The Irreversibility Observatory is the forward project attached to the irreversibility register: the thing that would actually watch the lines rather than merely name them. For each condition it records the same seven fields — the condition, its precursor signals, the threshold that counts as crossing it, a reversibility estimate, the ecological scale affected, the responsible jurisdictions, and the intervention window still open — and revises the severity levels in public as evidence accrues.
Its purpose is deliberately narrow. It does not predict doom, forecast dates, or control anything; it answers one question continuously — which conditions is civilization approaching that would materially reduce its future ability to change course? Because that question makes it powerful, it carries the same discipline as the framework’s other measures: it must stay distributed and contestable and must never itself become a metric with ontological authority. A warning system built to protect the ability to change course cannot become a line no one may question.