Recipe L5

L5 — Sensorimotor / motor hierarchy (embodied action)

The UNI Cookbook · every step carded at its real status
The UNI Cookbook / L5
proven + negative
proven (PASS) + NEGATIVE (symmetric bound)

What you are building. The "mind-body as one" rung: a no-backprop active-inference agent that moves — a proprioceptive motor hierarchy where the body senses its own configuration, a continuous servo fulfils goals projected down the hierarchy, and reafference learns the transition model. One proven live craft chain, one proven synthetic body-world coupling PASS, and its symmetric NEGATIVE, all carried at their real ledger class. A developmental SIMULATION of embodied action, never a person.

This recipe sits on the same single engine as every other rung (core.py, the discrete POMDP loop, exact conjugate-Dirichlet learning, AST-guarded no-backprop). Nothing here is "active inference demonstrated"; "active inference" is the framing LENS only (textbook level: Parr/Pezzulo/Friston, Active Inference, MIT Press 2022). The composed appliance is variationally-controlled (audited), module-exact only at the single-step categorical body→mind interface, never globally exact.

Ingredients (which pantry engines/primitives this calls by name)

Method (numbered build steps)

  1. Break the non-identifiable factor. A uniform-A single-modality proprioceptive factor is non-identifiable — the posterior sits stuck at 0.0. Install the proprioceptive diagonal-A prior to break the symmetry; the posterior shifts 0.0 → 0.75 (the body can now infer its own configuration). This is the Class-A anchor of the rung.

  2. Model the continuous servo + reafference on the same loop. A continuous signed-error servo (Class-B predictive coding) fulfils goals projected DOWN the hierarchy; reafference (the sensory consequence of the agent's own action) trains the transition model. No new optimizer, no backprop — the only learning rule remains counts + lr * sufficient_stat over A/B/D/E Dirichlet tensors, AST-guard live.

  3. Run the live mechanism gate (server-authoritative). A kin-9 lineage bootstraps the craft chain wood → planks → sticks → wooden_pickaxe + sword, confirmed server-authoritative via RCON (the brain never reads coordinates; it perceives only the symbolic/visual senses across a fixed Markov blanket). Register the motor-ablation discriminator: with the motor organ ablated, harvest must collapse ~700×. This is the live RCON mechanism gate (live Class C), separate from the synthetic A3 protocol of step 4.

  4. Separately run the Embodiment A3 synthetic protocol (held-once). Pre-register the bar, seal the held set, touch it ONCE, read the verdict off the CI bound that excludes the threshold (M2). Score held Δ (agent − policy-shuffle) over ≥5 disjoint seeds. Run both the PASS design (#1, fast immediate-reward axis) and the NEGATIVE design (#2, slow Z-bottleneck), each a synthetic-process design (NOT live-appliance, NOT recorded-hardware). Mind the length-confound: a Σ_t log p score penalises survival, so report survival + per-step (length-normalised) loglik separately and hard-fail premature death, or a fast-dying control looks like a false NEGATIVE.

  5. Keep the offline floor green. The 277 offline motor tests stay GREEN; the genome-gated organ keeps the default colony byte-identical.

Gate (exact ledger figures)

A clean L5 is: live mechanism gate PASS (craft chain reproduces server-authoritative; ablation collapses harvest) AND A3 Design #1 held Δ CI excludes 0 AND the diagonal-A posterior is off 0.0 AND 277 offline tests green.

Falsifier (operable)

Any one of these falsifies the rung:

Recorded NEGATIVE(s) (first-class, inline)

L5.2 — Embodiment A3 Design #2 (slow Z-bottleneck, compressed 2-modality EMA, delayed-reward) HELD NEGATIVE. Held Δ = −0.091, CI [−0.134, −0.055]. Class C. This is a synthetic protocol, and it is the only sealed motor NEGATIVE today: K-negative = 1, so no Section 0.6(B) bound is owed (a bound requires K≥3 structurally-distinct held NEGATIVEs, each changing ≥2 of {coupling topology, timescale source, information bottleneck, control path}; M5). Its own falsifier: a structurally-distinct corrected slow-Z-bottleneck re-run that pushes the CI above 0 overturns it.

The shape of the result is the load-bearing finding: under the registered synthetic protocol the active channel mattered — it was load-bearing on the fast immediate-reward axis (#1, vs a same-perception / same-learning policy-shuffle control) but did not matter on the slow delayed-reward compressed-interoceptive-bottleneck axis (#2). This is the framing LENS only, NOT active inference demonstrated and NOT a capability win. The NEGATIVE delimits the PASS; it is not a failure to hide. The live behavioural / ablation tallies for motor (K-of-6 over 6 h, paired MOTOR_SHUFFLE=1 control) are PARKED — accruing, not a sealed hold.

SIGNED consult — Design #3 Proprioceptive Servo Bridge (DESIGNED / not-yet-run)

UNI-GPT consult 2026-06-27 (SIGN, Q6) folds in the next design to accrue, aimed at a live PASS (not bound-seeking — no strawman built to farm negatives). It is a Class-C UNI design; the standard part is only the AIF control vocabulary. It changes 4 dimensions vs #1/#2: (1) coupling topology — scalar reward/Z coupling → closed-loop triadic (task policy → motor setpoint → proprioceptive error → corrective action); (2) timescale source — immediate-reward / slow-Z → event-triggered fast motor correction (update when proprioceptive PE crosses threshold, else hold the current primitive); (3) information bottleneck — global Z → low-dim proprioceptive residual r_motor = desired_pose/velocity − inferred_pose/velocity; (4) control path — direct discrete action bias → a motor shim turning policy intent into continuous/local corrective commands.

Protocol L5_D3_PROPRIO_SERVO_BRIDGE_HELD_v1 (designed): paired kin seeds, one cure at a time (no Z-bottleneck cure, no new learning rules, no exploration bonus, no reward edits). Held bar: held_motor_delta = treatment − control, paired bootstrap 95% CI excludes 0 positively, point estimate ≥ +0.05 (smaller than #1's +0.092 but nontrivial). Live bar: paired CI for live motor-success delta excludes 0 positively AND no earned survival/allostasis/task metric regresses beyond non-inferiority. motor_score = task-relevant successful actions − collision/overshoot/oscillation − stalled-control − energy/recovery penalties ("more movement" must NOT count as success). Discriminator = delayed/slipped embodiment trials (actuator noise / one-step delay / friction change / positional perturbation / contact-state ambiguity). Ablations that MUST collapse the gain: (A) ε_prop := 0 (shim present, compute runs); (B) ε_prop shuffled across time/kin; (C) open-loop setpoint only (mapping kept, no feedback correction).

K-discipline (held DOWN): if Design #3 fails cleanly and is truly structurally distinct with all pre-registered bars/controls valid, the ledger would have at most K-negative = 2 — still no Section 0.6(B) motor bound owed until K≥3. It does not count toward K≥3 if <2 structural dimensions changed, if undertuned vs control, if it silently combines cures, if the protocol drifts so deltas aren't comparable to #1/#2, if the discriminator is absent/too easy, if the ablation is hardcoded (disables the whole motor stack) rather than causal (only ε_prop), or if a bug/seed-imbalance/env-drift/logging-failure breaks paired inference. Status: DESIGNED / not-yet-run — no result, no rung raised. Design #3 RAISES NOTHING and the rung's status is UNCHANGED; the Design #2 negative is not erased by it.

HONEST FENCE — proven (PASS) + NEGATIVE (symmetric bound)

proven — a held, sealed, UNI-signed PASS exists with its falsifier still live: the diagonal-A posterior shift (Class A), the live RCON craft-chain mechanism gate (Class C), the A3 Design #1 synthetic PASS (Class C, +0.092 [+0.038, +0.157]), 277 offline tests (Class E). Carried inseparably with its symmetric NEGATIVE (A3 Design #2, −0.091 [−0.134, −0.055], K-negative = 1, no Section 0.6(B) bound owed).

The A3 PASS allows exactly one claim and nothing stronger: "variationally-controlled active-inference evidence on body↔world coupling under the registered SYNTHETIC protocol." It is synthetic-process only (NOT live-appliance, NOT recorded-hardware) and NOT near-optimal control (the agent plateaus at 0.222 versus an oracle's 1.0 — the active channel mattering is the entire allowed claim).

Not claimed at L5: not general motor intelligence, not human-like embodiment, not AGI, not consciousness, not "created life", not "active inference demonstrated". Design #3 is designed, not run: it RAISES NOTHING. Live behavioural K-of-6 motor tallies are PARKED. Honest program position: ~2 of 11+ developmental rungs earned — a bounded peek, a toy world, never a person.

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