Be as pedantic as you want. All it takes it 1 op return and you are a hard fork. My bet is somebody drops a time locked transaction to block 1 after the activation to force the issue.

nothing pedantic about it, bet all you want, that's not a hard fork

Uh huh. So someone posts an 81 byte op return. Core validates the block. Knots does not validate the block. There are now 2 chains. Those 2 chains can never merge or reconcile. That's not a hard fork?

nope, not a hardfork. bip110 uses existing consensus rules rather than adding new ones making it compatible with all nodes on the network nodes that enforce bip110 would not ever see the offending block as valid, making the enforcing node only ever compatible with one side of the chainsplit. nodes that dont enforce bip110 remain compatible with both , but only one side of the chainsplit carrying perpetual wipeout risk. both sides of the chainsplit ultimately cant coexist without a hard fork present a hardfork would explicitly reject bip110 blocks which would be adding a rule.

Knots will be explicitly rejecting blocks that core validates. That's 2 chains no matter how much wall of text you post.

nodes only follow one chain 🤷 2 chains is a great rapper tho

Yeah. Core nodes will follow the new longer chain tip and knots nodes will stay on the old block waiting for someone to add to it because they think that new block is invalid. The core nodes and the knots nodes will follow different chains. And when 1 chain becomes 2 chains in a way where they can never merge or reconcile it is called a hard fork. I can't tell if you are fucking with me because this is pretty basic.