An argument, like a building, has to carry weight before anyone agrees with it, and the two kinds of carrying are more analogous than most theoretical writing acknowledges. A concept that has not yet found agreement is still doing structural work inside an argument — bearing the load of everything built on top of it — well before consensus arrives to confirm that the load-bearing was sound. Tectonic theory treats this seriously: which concepts are structural, actually holding up the argument's weight, and which are merely decorative, addable or removable without the argument collapsing, is a distinction most theoretical writing leaves unexamined. ArgumentSeal names the point at which a structural concept has been tested enough — by counterexample, by revision, by continued load-bearing under scrutiny — that it can be sealed into the argument's foundation with reasonable confidence, rather than remaining a load-bearing element nobody has actually stress-tested.
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