nd Problem Statement</h2>
<p>A proposal was made to add a lock/unlock mechanism to SPIKE Nexus, allowing
operators to globally lock the system (<em>e.g., via a CLI or API</em>) to prevent all
secret and policy operations except unlock/status. The lock state would be
persisted in the backing store and enforced across all Nexus instances, with the
root key zeroed out in memory. This was intended to provide a system-wide freeze
for security or operational reasons.</p>
<p>However, this approach introduces signi