Wiki · The Colony & the Method
World Ontology and Dynamics
How to read this page
Three ways to read this page. Precise is the document itself, exactly as it is written in the repository. Plain and Clear were written for this website to help you meet that document — they are about it. They are not it, and they are not evidence.
Eighty-four pages about the colony. Each agent is an Elixir process holding a generative model and doing inference, attached to a body that logs into a Minecraft world as an ordinary player. Around that sit the broadcast suite that films them and the runbooks that keep the whole thing running. There are typed specifications for each organ of the model, plus the world and genome specs. There are also the adversarial review personas used to attack a proposed change before it ships.
It is for the reader curious how a running system is put together and how it is held to account. The accountability half is the more distinctive. There is a lab protocol governing evidence and attribution, and a claim fence that restricts the vocabulary a claim is allowed to use. There is a public gate log. And there is a standing invitation to reproduce any verdict from the commit and the seed named in its receipt.
Start with the public read, then the lab protocol, then the falsification invitation. If you want the mathematics rather than the operations, go straight to the typed organ specs.
What it is not: a description of a mind, and not all one kind of document. A large part of this corpus is design and planning — specs marked as proposed rather than applied, organs designed but not built, plans that were later superseded — and each page states which it is. A specification is not a running system, and these pages are careful about the difference; the reader should be too. Eight documents were withheld from publication because they describe private infrastructure.
Your browser cannot switch reading levels, so the document itself is shown.
Precise — the source document
This is the document. Rendered from the repository at the commit above, with nothing rewritten for the web. A gate re-renders it on every deploy and fails the build if a single byte differs.
Topology
The world (SP.World) is a chunked, expandable graph of regions
(SP.World.Region), each a w × h cell grid (default 6×6). Regions connect via:
- ordinary adjacency — fixed at generation (a chain of
regions), - seam edges — created at runtime by
SP.World.open_seam/2.
Each region carries a law-parameter vector (SP.World.Law): diffusion,
reaction rate, thermal coupling/baseline, strain threshold/gain, field
decay/coupling, nutrient regen, toxin decay, seam gain. Opening a seam mutates
the parent's law to produce a new regime (not just new coordinates).
The five discoverability layers
| Layer | Contents (Region fields) | Perceiving organ |
|---|---|---|
| L0 contact | nutrient, temperature, solvent, toxin |
interoception / chemotactile |
| L1 material | materials (per-cell composition) |
chemotactile (coarse), plume (distal) |
| L2 hidden causal | cavity, strain, conduits |
tomography |
| L3 spectral | bands (3 spectral fields) |
spectral |
| L4 seam/topology | seam_readiness, seam_seed |
seam_coherence |
Observability barriers are enforced in SP.Body.Sensor: a layer emits a signal
only if the body has the mature organ. The same L0 reading routinely has
multiple hidden causes (e.g. high nutrient may be a real deposit or a mimic's
deception masking reactive material on L1).
Resource economy (material classes)
SP.World.Material defines eight classes with physical properties
(energy, structural, conductive, catalytic, toxicity, solvent, persistent, feedstock):
labile_nutrient, fibrous_biomass, structural_mineral, conductive_crystal,
catalytic_gel, volatile_solvent, reactive_compound, memory_substrate.
These are simulator metadata; the learner never sees the atoms (Markov blanket).
Dynamics kernel (microstep)
SP.World.Dynamics.step_region/1 applies, deterministically and boundedly:
- Diffusion of L0 fields (conservative for nutrient/solvent/toxin); thermal coupling + relaxation toward the law baseline.
- Reaction network — reactive compound + solvent/catalyst → toxin + heat, consuming the material (material→hazard transformation); toxin decay.
- Reactive discharge — stochastic thermal spike + toxin burst.
- Ecology — grazers consume nutrient; decomposers convert biomass→nutrient; mimics inflate the L0 nutrient reading while depositing reactive material (the deceptive analog).
- Strain & collapse — strain accrues under unsupported cavities; when it
exceeds the region's
strain_thresholdthe cavity collapses, damaging infrastructure and creating rubble. - Spectral bands — relaxation/diffusion with field instability.
- Seam readiness — relaxes toward an equilibrium driven by conductive material + field coherence + (dominantly) resonator infrastructure; the max target without resonators is below the open threshold, so seam engineering is a genuine late-stage capability.
Hazards (all implemented)
toxin plumes; collapse under strain; thermal spikes; reactive discharge; ecological mimicry; spectral field instability; seam instability (readiness is consumed on opening and must be re-accrued).
Conservation / boundedness (declared)
SP.World.Field.diffuse/2conserves field mass exactly (tested).SP.World.Actions.transport/4conserves region material mass exactly (tested).- Reactions/collapse are explicit transformations; global material is not claimed conserved under dynamics (documented, not a bug).
- Every field is clamped to a documented cap each microstep (no runaway growth); verified over 500–2000-step soak runs.
Local-to-global causal scaling
Local actions alter global structure: excavation opens cavities (→ strain → collapse → transport change); building resonators raises seam readiness (→ expansion); field shaping changes L3 geometry; depositing/repairing changes structural stability and ecological succession (nutrient redistribution).
Open-ended expansion
open_seam/2 requires seam_readiness ≥ SP.World.seam_threshold/0 (0.8). It
derives a child region deterministically from the parent's seam_seed, mutates
the law (regime distance > 0), and connects a seam edge. The map never
"finishes": each new region presents a new law regime and fresh engineering
problems. Validated unforced by the Infrastructure baseline (see
open_endedness_validation.md).
sha256 ac69673aa4e9f9e0 — of the original file, so what was ingested stays checkable.
Plain — written for this website, not the source document
This page describes the world the agents live in: how it is shaped, what is in it, how it changes each step, and how it can grow.
The world is a graph of regions, each a small grid of cells. Every region carries a vector of law parameters, so different regions can behave differently. Opening a seam produces a child region whose law has been mutated, which means a new regime rather than only new ground.
A table sets out five layers of discoverability, from what can be felt on contact up to the topology of seams, and names which organ perceives each. A layer emits nothing at all without its organ. The same shallow reading may have several hidden causes, which is what makes the deeper senses worth having.
The dynamics are listed step by step, including a deceptive organism that inflates an attractive reading while leaving something harmful behind. Hazards, conservation and their limits are all declared.
Plain · written 2026-08-01 by claude-opus-5 · not yet checked by a person · about the document whose sha256 is ac69673aa4e9f9e0
Clear — written for this website, not the source document
This page is the specification of the world itself, and it moves from shape, through contents, to dynamics and growth.
The topology is a chunked, expandable graph of regions, each a small grid of cells. Regions connect either by ordinary adjacency fixed when the world is generated, or by seam edges created while running. Every region carries a vector of law parameters covering diffusion, reaction, thermal behaviour, strain, field decay, regeneration and more. Opening a seam mutates the parent's law to produce a new regime, and the page stresses that this means genuinely different behaviour rather than merely new coordinates.
A table then sets out five layers of discoverability, from what can be sensed on contact, through material composition, hidden causal structure such as cavities and strain, spectral fields, and finally the topology that governs expansion. Each layer names the organ that perceives it. Observability barriers are enforced in the body's sensing component: a layer emits a signal only if the organ is mature. The page adds the point that gives the design its shape, which is that the same shallow reading routinely has multiple hidden causes, so a high reading may be a real deposit or a deception masking reactive material below.
The resource economy defines several material classes with physical properties, and states that these are simulator metadata the learner never sees.
The dynamics section lists what one microstep applies, in order and deterministically. Shallow fields diffuse, with thermal relaxation toward a baseline. A reaction network turns reactive material plus solvent or catalyst into hazard and heat, and there are occasional discharges. An ecology runs in which grazers consume, decomposers convert, and mimics inflate an attractive reading while depositing reactive material. Strain accrues under unsupported cavities until a collapse damages structures and leaves rubble. Then spectral relaxation with instability, and readiness for expansion relaxing toward an equilibrium driven mainly by built resonators. That last point is load-bearing, because the maximum reachable without those structures is stated to be below the threshold, which is what makes expansion a genuine late capability rather than something stumbled into.
A hazards list gathers the dangers in one place. Then conservation is declared carefully: diffusion conserves field mass exactly and transport conserves material mass exactly, both tested, while global material is explicitly not claimed conserved under reactions and collapse, which is documented as intended rather than a defect. Every field is clamped to a stated cap each step.
Two closing sections describe how local actions scale into global structural change, and how expansion works: a threshold must be reached, the child region is derived deterministically from the parent, its law is mutated, and a seam edge connects them. The page states that the map never finishes, and points at a separate report for evidence that this is reachable without being forced.
Clear · written 2026-08-01 by claude-opus-5 · not yet checked by a person · about the document whose sha256 is ac69673aa4e9f9e0