:PROPERTIES:
:ID:       2f783eb4-638e-5afa-9b59-6224d086a712
:END:
#+title: Infrastructure Lock-In and Switching Costs
#+filetags: :passepartout:economics:moats:lock-in:switching:

A hospital that runs Passepartout with HIPAA gate rules ($50K/yr) for five years has accumulated:

- A fact store with a decade of compliance decisions
- A proof forest of verified rules
- An empirical decision history tied to their specific deployment
- Customized gate rules encoding their specific workflows and approvals

Switching to a competitor means discarding all of it. The accumulated value grows as the fact store deepens. Annual revenue per enterprise grows from $250K in year one to $500K-$1M by year five as more [[file:domain-gate-packages.org][domain packages]] are added.

This is the strongest residual [[file:moats.org][moat]]. The [[file:evaluation-harness.org][evaluation harness]] (regression suite) is a close second — it grows with every deployment and cannot be ingested from public data. The [[file:verification-monopoly.org][verification monopoly]] and [[file:upgrade-lifecycle.org][upgrade lifecycle]] compound this lock-in: every new regulation encoded as a gate rule deepens the proof forest, making the deployment harder to reproduce elsewhere.