# peripheral — Neuron's I/O organ (own-core, local, consent-gated)

The interface made physical. Two afferent senses in, one efferent voice out —
all reached the way the agentic surface reaches any tool.

```
MIC    (hear)  afferent   device -> capture -> descriptor -> ingest -> geometry
CAMERA (see)   afferent   device -> capture -> descriptor -> ingest -> scene-geometry
SPEAKER(speak) efferent   render WAV -> PLAY ALOUD out the speaker
```

Closes the conversational loop: **hear (mic) -> understand (engram) -> speak (speaker)**.

## Rails
- **Own-core.** macOS-native only: AVFoundation (camera/mic), CoreAudio voice-
  processing (AEC), afplay (speaker), ImageIO/CoreGraphics (frames), hand-rolled
  DSP (WAV, LPC, formant synthesis). No cloud, no heavy deps.
- **Local-only.** Raw streams are written to `out/` and never egress. `.gitignore`
  keeps captured media out of git.
- **Consent-gated (two locks).** A Neuron-level grant (`grant`/`revoke`) *and* the
  OS TCC permission. Sensitive senses (camera/mic) fail closed without both.
- **Disclosed.** Every device touch prints a `[peripheral]` line on stderr.

## Build
```
swiftc -O -o bin/periph src/periph.swift \
  -framework AVFoundation -framework CoreMedia -framework Foundation \
  -framework CoreGraphics -framework ImageIO -framework CoreImage
```

## Commands
```
periph grant|revoke <camera|mic>          # Neuron-level consent
periph status
periph speak <file.wav>                   # SPEAK ALOUD (efferent)
periph tone <out.wav> [hz] [sec]          # own-core WAV synth
periph listen <sec> <out.wav>             # MIC capture (afferent), 16k mono
periph see <out.jpg>                      # CAMERA one frame (afferent)
periph feat-audio <wav> | feat-image <jpg>          # capture -> compact descriptor
periph ingest-audio|ingest-image <file> <engramURL> # descriptor -> engram node (geometry)
periph voiceprint <voice.wav>             # extract F0 + formants F1-F5
periph imitate <voice.wav> <out.wav>      # speak back in that voice (LPC resynthesis)
periph hear-imitate <sec> <out.wav>       # MIC -> signature -> imitate -> SPEAK ALOUD
periph converse <manifest.json> [--authority F] [--barge-at S[:backchannel|:bargein]] [--resume] [--live-mic]
```

## The afferent metabolism
A capture is never shipped raw. It becomes a **compact descriptor** — the afferent
twin of the music instrument-signature:
- audio -> `[seconds, sr, ch, rms, peak, zcr, centroid, F0]` (~2400-6000x smaller)
- image -> `[w, h, meanRGB, brightness, 3x3 luminance grid]` (~400000x smaller)
- voice -> `[F0, F1..F5, bandwidths]` (11 numbers)

That descriptor is what the ingest organ (engram `POST /api/nodes`) turns into an
embedded node = geometry.

## Voice by imitation
`voiceprint`/`imitate` are own-core LPC (autocorrelation + Levinson-Durbin, order
16 @ 16 kHz), formant extraction from the LPC spectral envelope, and source-filter
resynthesis (glottal impulse train at F0 through the all-pole formant filter). A
voice is grabbed by ear as ~a dozen numbers and spoken back — **no training, no
stolen voice.** Measured fidelity on real speech: resynthesized formants match the
source within 2-3%. The full phoneme->formant path for *novel* sentences is the
speech faculty's seam (`elp` audio surface profile); this engine provides the
formant synthesis primitive it renders through.

## Interruptibility (native turn-taking)
`converse` plays the utterance as an ordered, salience-tagged **meaning-plan**
while the mic listens (full-duplex, AEC on so it never barges in on its own voice):
- **barge-in**: user speech -> pause on the spot (sample-accurate), not "finish the buffer."
- **yield-or-hold**: a decision grounded in the current segment's salience + progress
  + the interrupter's authority — YIELD (stop) or HOLD ("hang on, let me finish").
- **backchannel** ("mm-hm"): brief/low -> keep going, resume seamlessly.
- **resumable**: on yield the remaining plan persists (`.resume.json`); `--resume`
  picks the thread back up ("as I was saying").

Live full-duplex uses `--live-mic` (OS AEC). Injected `--barge-at` drives the
decision loop deterministically for testing.
```
```
