docs: carry the correspondence corrections, because a stale doc builds the wrong thing #152

2026-08-16T18:30:12Z

will.anderson commented

2026-08-16 18:30:12 +00:00

Documentation only. No .c, .h, or .el file is touched.

Authority for everything here: lang/spec/correspondence-and-censorship.md (PR #149) and lang/spec/runtime-ownership.md. Their reasoning is transcribed, not re-derived.

Why

The docs described a mind made of subsystems — a grounding subsystem, a wonder manifest, a dreamer on a beat, faculties as arguments to one call. Each is a supervisor invented for something that should be a property of the substrate. Two of the documents carrying those claims are load-bearing for a build agent: engram/spec/cognitive-architecture.design.md says "a build agent executes from this doc", and tools/api-reshape/README.md marks the refuted shapes PROVEN on a live clone.

Corrections carried

Grounding is not a subsystem — it IS the edge weight. grounded-by as a relation type should not exist: grounding is a property of a relation, not a relation between nodes. Never computed on demand.
Faculties are operations, not parameters. reason changes the estimate (a read), induce changes the parameters (the correspondence-beat), abduce changes the structure (a write GeoGradient cannot express).
Wonder is the boundary, not a manifest. Curiosity is wonder crystallized at a nucleation site — one thing at two phases. wonder removed from the operator table in AGENTS.md.
Consolidation is ambient, not scheduled. A brain has no cron job. The presence of a ticker is the diagnostic.
co_registration is deprecated — it averaged a per-edge property into a region scalar, so opposing sites cancelled. GeoEdge.discord replaces it. Nothing new may read it.
In an immutable substrate, any mechanism that refuses a write is either redundant with immutability or an epistemic constraint misfiled as a protective one.

The two design docs are marked superseded in part, with the refutation placed at the point each claim is made — not rewritten. Preserving what was argued down is the point of an immutable record.

Also measured while verifying the above

claim	measurement
`engram/README.md` documented a Rust `engram-core` crate on `sled`, "flat cosine scan… until scale demands an HNSW layer"	No Rust in `engram/` — no `.rs`, no `Cargo.toml`, no `crates/`. `sled` appears nowhere in the tree. HNSW is the index (`engram_vindex.h:6`)
`README.md` + `AGENTS.md` pointed at `lang/releases/…` for the authored runtime	`lang/releases/` does not exist. The runtime is at `lang/runtime/`
`language.md` listed `engram_` and `http_` runtimes as stubs	Both are live; `http_serve_async` is what `neuron/soul.el:729` runs
`language.md` had no coverage of #144	Added §20 Geometry — the `Geometry` type, wire adapters, realizers via `dlsym`, `transduce`

Discrepancy to resolve — not edited

correspondence-and-censorship.md §7 is headed "Dreaming has seven implementations"; its own table lists ten rows. Independently measured, the count is eleven — the table omits POST /api/reify (engram/src/server.el:1832), and reify is on the doc's own list of consolidation verbs. Flagging rather than editing, per the doc's rule.

Known-wrong shapes still live in code (documented, not changed)

COG_GROUNDED_BY_RELATION "grounded-by" — lang/runtime/engram_cognition.h:158; cog_ground_edge — engram_cognition.c:249
route_faculty(path, "reason"|"induce"|"abduce"|…) — engram/src/server.el:1870–1886
"still_held":true as a hardcoded literal — lang/runtime/el_runtime.c:14538

Documentation only. **No `.c`, `.h`, or `.el` file is touched.** Authority for everything here: `lang/spec/correspondence-and-censorship.md` (PR #149) and `lang/spec/runtime-ownership.md`. Their reasoning is transcribed, not re-derived. ## Why The docs described a mind made of subsystems — a grounding subsystem, a wonder manifest, a dreamer on a beat, faculties as arguments to one call. Each is a supervisor invented for something that should be a property of the substrate. Two of the documents carrying those claims are load-bearing for a build agent: `engram/spec/cognitive-architecture.design.md` says *"a build agent executes from this doc"*, and `tools/api-reshape/README.md` marks the refuted shapes **PROVEN** on a live clone. ## Corrections carried - **Grounding is not a subsystem — it IS the edge weight.** `grounded-by` as a relation *type* should not exist: grounding is a property *of* a relation, not a relation *between* nodes. Never computed on demand. - **Faculties are operations, not parameters.** `reason` changes the estimate (a read), `induce` changes the parameters (the correspondence-beat), `abduce` changes the structure (a write `GeoGradient` cannot express). - **Wonder is the boundary, not a manifest. Curiosity is wonder crystallized** at a nucleation site — one thing at two phases. `wonder` removed from the operator table in `AGENTS.md`. - **Consolidation is ambient, not scheduled. A brain has no cron job.** The presence of a ticker is the diagnostic. - **`co_registration` is deprecated** — it averaged a per-edge property into a region scalar, so opposing sites cancelled. `GeoEdge.discord` replaces it. Nothing new may read it. - **In an immutable substrate, any mechanism that refuses a write is either redundant with immutability or an epistemic constraint misfiled as a protective one.** The two design docs are marked **superseded in part**, with the refutation placed at the point each claim is made — not rewritten. Preserving what was argued down is the point of an immutable record. ## Also measured while verifying the above | claim | measurement | |---|---| | `engram/README.md` documented a Rust `engram-core` crate on `sled`, "flat cosine scan… until scale demands an HNSW layer" | **No Rust in `engram/`** — no `.rs`, no `Cargo.toml`, no `crates/`. `sled` appears nowhere in the tree. HNSW is the index (`engram_vindex.h:6`) | | `README.md` + `AGENTS.md` pointed at `lang/releases/…` for the authored runtime | **`lang/releases/` does not exist.** The runtime is at `lang/runtime/` | | `language.md` listed `engram_*` and `http_*` runtimes as stubs | Both are live; `http_serve_async` is what `neuron/soul.el:729` runs | | `language.md` had no coverage of #144 | Added **§20 Geometry** — the `Geometry` type, wire adapters, realizers via `dlsym`, `transduce` | ## Discrepancy to resolve — not edited `correspondence-and-censorship.md` §7 is headed **"Dreaming has seven implementations"**; its own table lists **ten** rows. Independently measured, the count is **eleven** — the table omits `POST /api/reify` (`engram/src/server.el:1832`), and *reify* is on the doc's own list of consolidation verbs. Flagging rather than editing, per the doc's rule. ## Known-wrong shapes still live in code (documented, not changed) - `COG_GROUNDED_BY_RELATION "grounded-by"` — `lang/runtime/engram_cognition.h:158`; `cog_ground_edge` — `engram_cognition.c:249` - `route_faculty(path, "reason"|"induce"|"abduce"|…)` — `engram/src/server.el:1870–1886` - `"still_held":true` as a hardcoded literal — `lang/runtime/el_runtime.c:14538`

will.anderson added 3 commits 2026-08-16 20:49:52 +00:00

docs: carry the correspondence corrections, because a stale doc builds the wrong thing e239f2894c

The docs described a mind made of subsystems — a grounding subsystem, a wonder
manifest, a dreamer on a beat, faculties as arguments to one call. Each of those
is a supervisor invented for something that should be a property of the
substrate, and two of the documents carrying them are load-bearing for a build
agent: cognitive-architecture.design.md says "a build agent executes from this
doc", and tools/api-reshape/README.md marks the refuted shapes PROVEN on a live
clone.

Corrections carried, per lang/spec/correspondence-and-censorship.md (PR #149)
and lang/spec/runtime-ownership.md:

- Grounding is not a subsystem — it IS the edge weight. grounded-by as a
  relation type should not exist; grounding is a property of a relation, not a
  relation between nodes. Never computed on demand.
- Faculties are operations, not parameters. reason changes the estimate, induce
  changes the parameters, abduce changes the structure — a write, which
  GeoGradient cannot express. A write is not a parameter of a read.
- Wonder is the boundary, not a manifest. Curiosity is wonder crystallized at a
  nucleation site: one thing at two phases. Removed wonder from the operator
  table in AGENTS.md.
- Consolidation is ambient, not scheduled. A brain has no cron job. The presence
  of a ticker is the diagnostic.
- co_registration is deprecated — it averaged a per-edge property into a region
  scalar, so opposing sites cancelled. GeoEdge.discord replaces it. Nothing new
  may read it.
- In an immutable substrate, any mechanism that refuses a write is either
  redundant with immutability or an epistemic constraint misfiled as a
  protective one.

The two design docs are marked superseded-in-part with the refutation at the
point each claim is made, not rewritten. Preserving what was argued down is the
point of an immutable record.

Also measured and corrected while verifying the above: engram/README.md
documented a Rust engram-core crate on sled with "flat cosine scan until scale
demands HNSW" — there is no Rust in engram/ and HNSW is the index; lang/releases/
no longer exists, so both README.md and AGENTS.md pointed at a deleted path for
the authored runtime; language.md listed the engram_* and http_* runtimes as
stubs. Added language.md §20 for geometry-as-a-value, realizers and transduce
(#144), which had landed with no spec coverage.

Documentation only. No .c, .h, or .el file is touched.

docs: mark GeoEdge.discord as design-branch-only, not on dev 914bab11d2

The line references were correct but silently implied the code was on dev.
It is on design/correspondence-and-censorship (a8845e1). On dev,
co_registration is still at engram_geometry.h:79 with its original comment
and still unread by anything.

docs: the nine-op surface shipped, and two of its primitives are the wrong shape

El SDK CI - dev / build-and-test (pull_request) Failing after 4m14s

Details

caa1206af5

lang/AGENTS.md said the collapse was 'not yet compiled into the MCP server'.
Verified against the live tool surface: it is exactly the nine ops. Noted that
think's faculty parameter and ground's minted edge are both documented as the
wrong shape.

will.anderson force-pushed docs/correspondence-and-ownership-2026-08-16 from f7bc0e3d5d to caa1206af5

2026-08-16 20:49:53 +00:00

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will.anderson merged commit 78adcd5649 into dev

2026-08-16 20:50:22 +00:00

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Reference: neuron-technologies/el#152