engram: native set-based reframe_region + engine hardening (embed-gap, lazy cosine, vindex harvest) #109

Merged
will.anderson merged 7 commits from feat/reframe-region-setop into dev 2026-08-15 21:50:42 +00:00
Owner

Preserving already-committed and uncommitted work from an open worktree during a worktree audit. Adds native set-based reframe_region on the cognition engine, decorator-as-seam @route codegen port, teacher-summon (default-off, byte-inert when unset), plus geometry ops + primitive agentic tools over the one geometry (6 commits). On top: fixes lazy-embed index gap #20 (O(1) seen bitmap so lazily-embedded older nodes are picked up incrementally, not only on full rebuild), replaces engram_activate's O(N*D) cosine prescan with a lazy-memoized cosine cache (proven bit-identical), and extracts a vindex_harvest_from_store primitive with a new brute-force-vs-HNSW bench/oracle harness (vindex_bench.c). See git log on this branch for full commit-by-commit detail.

Preserving already-committed and uncommitted work from an open worktree during a worktree audit. Adds native set-based reframe_region on the cognition engine, decorator-as-seam @route codegen port, teacher-summon (default-off, byte-inert when unset), plus geometry ops + primitive agentic tools over the one geometry (6 commits). On top: fixes lazy-embed index gap #20 (O(1) seen bitmap so lazily-embedded older nodes are picked up incrementally, not only on full rebuild), replaces engram_activate's O(N*D) cosine prescan with a lazy-memoized cosine cache (proven bit-identical), and extracts a vindex_harvest_from_store primitive with a new brute-force-vs-HNSW bench/oracle harness (vindex_bench.c). See git log on this branch for full commit-by-commit detail.
will.anderson added 10 commits 2026-08-15 19:26:27 +00:00
auto_term_empty_streak — the counter the 2026-08-06 review added to catch
exactly this — read 50 and climbing. Fifty consecutive curiosity scans where
the soul's dynamic seeding produced nothing and the loop fell back to four
hardcoded phrases. The live WM top said why in one look: every slot was a
Memory node labelled "memory:remembered". The extractor read the LABEL only,
the sentinel guard correctly rejects sentinels, so there was never anything
to extract. It was written against Knowledge nodes, which have real titles,
and was structurally blind to the node type that dominates working memory.

Rather than add a sixth guard to the five that accumulated across four
reviews (genre words, quoted titles, stopwords, label-df), invert the
algorithm. The old one was: take the first word, then check whether it is
acceptable. That shape forces quality to be expressed as rejection, and
rejection can only ever encode floods that already happened.

engram_salient_term() scores EVERY candidate token and returns the argmax of
idf · position · casing (YAKE, Campos et al. 2020, with real corpus IDF
substituted for YAKE's corpus-free proxies), falling back from a sentinel
label to the node's content. Term quality becomes the selection criterion
instead of a veto: a bad token loses to a better token in the same text
without needing to be on any list. Tabu is applied during the argmax, so
inhibition-of-return costs seed quality rather than costing the whole scan.

Two defects found by instrumenting rather than assuming, which is the lesson
this codebase keeps relearning:

  - The first live run returned five ALL-CAPS terms in a row. Memory content
    conventionally opens with an all-caps header, so YAKE's acronym bonus was
    handing the seed to whatever word the heading started with. Restricted to
    tokens <= 5 chars, where all-caps is evidence of an acronym rather than
    evidence of a heading. Long headers now compete on specificity.

  - df via istr_contains is substring matching, so "them" hit inside "theme"
    and function words came back with nonzero df. Added word-boundary df
    locally; engram_label_df keeps substring semantics for its callers.

An earlier draft claimed the min_df floor subsumed the 73 stopwords that
08-03 measured label-df as missing. Re-measured: about:2, whole:1, them:2 —
they clear a floor of 1. The claim was false and the comment now records the
correction. The floor buys lexical reachability; the argmax buys quality; the
stopword list still earns its keep.

Measured on 60 live Memory nodes before shipping: 0 empty, versus 60 of 60
under the old extractor. Terms are topical — HEBBIAN, CONSOLIDATION,
TEMPORAL, crash-loop, PRIMING, NEIGHBORHOOD, DRIFT. Three of sixty are weak
header words; left alone deliberately, because listing them is the move that
produced four blocklists.

ENGRAM_ST_DEBUG=1 dumps the scored candidate set. It exists because there was
no way to see whether the all-caps run was the corpus or the casing weight
without guessing.
Two changes to the activation path, both grounded in measurement on the live
store rather than on the spec.

1. Rescale cosine before the query gate.

   The propagation gate (arXiv:2606.30133, added in an earlier review) fed RAW
   cosine into FLOOR + (1-FLOOR)*c. Raw cosine from nomic-embed is compressed
   into a narrow high band, so that expression is close to a constant.

   Measured, 400 random UNRELATED node pairs on the live store:
     median 0.562, central 98% span [0.381, 0.743]

   So a node with no semantic relation to the query was propagating at
   0.25 + 0.75*0.562 = 0.67. Two thirds strength. The gate was a small tax.

   Fixed by shifting and flooring about ENGRAM_EMBED_S0 -- which is already in
   this file, already 0.45, and already used exactly this way by the Pass-2 WM
   term. The propagation gate simply never used it. Same 400 pairs after:
   median unrelated pair falls to 0.40, top of range preserved (0.85 vs 0.92),
   gate spread widens 0.42 -> 0.60. Only 8.5% reach the floor, so dissimilar
   lexical/structural pathways are damped, never severed. Range is unchanged
   at [0.25, 1.0], and cosq == NULL still degrades to no gating at all.

2. Decompose the WM eviction counter by cause.

   _eg_act_wm_evicted was incremented from six sites with four distinct causes
   and collapsed all of them into one integer. Today's review measured 175,547
   evictions over 13.5h (~216/min against 24 slots) and could not tell healthy
   rotation from cap thrashing from duplicate churn.

   That is this file's most-repeated defect: dup_wm and dup_wm_global exist
   only because the aggregate could not answer "why" during the 08-02 and
   08-06 incidents. Each of those needed a NEW gauge before it was diagnosable.

   evict_floor / evict_cap / evict_bll complete the decomposition, so
     wm_evicted == floor + cap + bll + dup_wm + dup_wm_global
   holds as an identity and each term implies a different correction. Verified
   on an isolated instance: 30 nodes, 24 filled the cap, wm_evicted 6 ==
   evict_cap 6, all other terms 0.

Built and smoke-tested out of tree. The live daemon runs a pinned binary and
was deliberately not restarted -- the store compaction workstream is in flight.
The buildable form of the "one operation" theory (memory bdc8a488). Maps the
theory onto what is already compiled: the five reasoning operators in
engram_reason.c already collapse onto ONE primitive — engram_reason_point_fit —
plus the geo-algebra (combine/subtract/analogy-rotate/distance), and
engram_verify.c is built on the same fit. So the operator-collapse is already
half-written; what is missing is not the primitive.

What is missing, and what this doc specifies:
- think(anchor, prior) -> gradient (a distribution/direction, not a point); each
  named faculty = {point_fit + a prior}, the operation frozen, the prior learned.
- Prior as a first-class stored node (warp + calibration), superseding the
  intrinsic importance/salience scalar with a relational, grounded-for-whom edge.
  Confirmed against the runtime: importance is already a live activation
  computation (el_runtime.c:13013), never trusted as a static field.
- vantage_read(anchor, aperture) — one op, three settings: self / foreign-field /
  veil.
- The reflexive correspondence-loop as the learning engine: move the grounding
  check from offline Python into the geometry, reflexive, reusing the DORMANT
  verifier (engram_verify_grounding has no runtime caller and no El binding today)
  turned inward. grounding = learning = one loop.
- hold/ground/assert kept distinct: the engram holds anything, grounding is an
  edge, the honesty floor is on assertion only; ungrounded content is first-class.
- metastability: keystone core (read-mostly priors) + plastic everything else.

Seven staged milestones, earliest is a real end-to-end slice (induction as
{primitive + grounded prior} with the loop closing on it, reboot-proven on a
snapshot). Build rails stated: offline/secondary, snapshot-first, reboot-prove,
zero-loss, gated launchctl cutover. Design only; no code changed this pass.
Generalise the ad-hoc cog-arch (worktree+build+store-clone+C-tests) and
store-fix (secondary soul + launchctl rails cutover) proto-sandboxes into one
reproducible primitive: run experiments and code changes against the REAL
engram runtime on an isolated snapshot of the live mind, with a gated
promote-to-prod path.

Dev environment as a primitive — any team member gets a private, isolated copy
of the mind (separate port/store/process); prod on :8742/:7770 is untouchable
from a sandbox. Wraps the real binary; never reimplements engram logic.

Lifecycle: create/up (consistent store+WAL+config snapshot; place OR build the
runtime from --source/--branch/--binary; boot on an isolated port) · build ·
run · validate (rails as checks: zero-loss under load+reboot, reboot-prove, RSS
bound, retrieval parity, keystone integrity) · promote (gated rails cutover:
snapshot-first, additive binary swap, bootout→settle-poll→bootstrap, verify,
auto-rollback; never pkill/kickstart -k; dry-run unless approved) · destroy.

Dogfooded: reproduced retrieval-parity 25/25 vs baseline and the cog-arch
correspondence-loop known result (Brier 0.028648->0.000586, reboot-proven) and
real-store reboot-prove at 10994-node scale, all inside a sandbox; prod
untouched.
Collapse ~90 noun-CRUD MCP tools into read/write/relate/supersede (type is a
parameter) plus the live agentic primitives (think/attend/learn/ground/assert)
already in the engram cognition build. Additive: old noun-tools aliased to the
new ops. Vantage-read applies aperture -> a bounded slice, fixing the whole-self
dumps. Signatures grounded in the live cognition binary; validated on an
isolated nsbx clone (parity.sh: 12 proven, 0 failed). Live :8742 untouched.
Ground-truth the three seams (route/telemetry+interoception/bus) with file:line
evidence. Port the tested @route codegen+parser from feat/el-route-decorators
into the worktree elc (decoration synthesizes el_route_dispatch — no hand-written
90-branch handle_request). Rebuild elc self-host; prove decorate->serve end-to-end
(route_proof.el on :8951). Rewrite surface.el as El-native decorated components:
@route + @accessor/@manager, in-process engram_* builtins (not http_get), @manager
ops emit on the real dharma_* bus (same transport as wt/swarm-ccr). Identity
keystones refused in write/relate/supersede. Gate-1 clone recipe (WAL-aside
cold-boot + ENGRAM_WAL=on) proves the FULL op set live on the clone. Boundary
auto-emit (telemetry/interoception/bus) staged as a reviewable cg_fn diff
(SEAM_STAGED.md) — needs the cognition-engram rebuild to verify link. Live :8742
untouched; no push, no cutover.
Will waived diff review -> build it for real. Add engram_boundary_beat() to the
runtime (afferent counter++ + engram_chrono_tick + engram_strengthen(self-anchor)
+ dharma_emit) and two act-stats counters (aff_boundary_ops, dharma_emits).
codegen cg_fn injects ONE engram_boundary_beat(op) at the entry of every
@manager/@accessor fn (fn_has_decorator, so it fires under @route @manager too) —
a decorated op self-reports with ZERO hand-written instrumentation. Rebuilt elc
self-host + the cognition engram in the worktree; ran it as the clone daemon on
:8900. Proof (/api/boundary-proof, @manager, empty body, 5x): aff_boundary_ops
0->5, dharma_emits 0->5, self activation_count 1510->1513, chrono stamp advanced.
Brought in feat/cognitive-architecture engram runtime+server for the build.
strengthen = activation bump (not content/edge write) -> identity protection
intact. Live :8742 untouched; no push, no cutover.
+282 lines in engram/src/server.el implementing the flag-gated teacher summon
(consult_teacher backend abstraction, tier autoselect, GGUF fetch/cache). With
TEACHER_ENABLE unset the summon path is byte-inert. Consolidates the proven
api-reshape pieces (geometry-ops d4f401d, boundary auto-emit 0182642) for the
validated cutover.
Add the universal engram mutation as ONE operation: isolate a region
(cosine + adjacency) -> supersede it as a set (immutable region-tombstone,
originals retained, engram_forget never used) -> insert the new manifold as a
set -> rebind edges by cosine -> one atomic persist. Single-node write and
supersede are the degenerate n=1 case of the same reframe_core path, not a
separate CRUD path. Keystones kn-efeb4a5b / kn-5b606390 are write-protected.
Purely additive: routes POST /api/reframe, /api/write, /api/supersede.

Verified on an isolated clone of the JSON-snapshot engine (set-replace, n=1,
no-regression, keystones, durable reboot); compile-verified clean against the
cognition multi-TU build. NOT deployed — prod :8742 frozen; blue-verify on the
cognition/egm engine required before any cut.
Adds an O(1) "seen" bitmap so lazily-embedded older nodes get picked up
incrementally instead of only on a full rebuild (embed-gap #20).

Replaces engram_activate's O(N*D) cosine prescan with a lazy-memoized
cosine cache (eg_cosq_at), proven bit-identical to the old path.

Extracts a clean vindex_harvest_from_store primitive (read-only vector
harvest, careful malloc/ownership/error-path handling) reused by both
index-build and the new vindex_bench.c — a read-only proof harness
comparing brute-force vs HNSW recall/latency on both the real store and
synthetic data.

.nsbx-env intentionally excluded — local sandbox config (ports, paths,
dev-only placeholder key), not checked in.
will.anderson added 1 commit 2026-08-15 21:47:04 +00:00
engram: reconcile M8 HNSW vindex (#109) onto current dev, restore 3 fixes the branch predated
El SDK CI - dev / build-and-test (pull_request) Failing after 4m49s
bacaf3d39c
Lands feat/reframe-region-setop (PR #109: native set-based reframe_region,
decorator-as-seam @route port, teacher-summon, and the M8.1 activate-latency
work — lazy-memoized cosq via eg_cosq_at + engram_vindex HNSW-accelerated
seed discovery + vindex_harvest_from_store/vindex_bench oracle) onto dev's
actual current HEAD, plus engram-tiered-storage's still-unique test suite.

RECONCILING #109 WITH engram-tiered-storage (M4-M10 HNSW/geometry/reason/
verify work): not a two-way merge. engram_vindex.c's HNSW core (search_layer/
select_neighbors/prune_links/insert) is BYTE-IDENTICAL between the two
branches; #109's copy is a strict superset (adds vindex_harvest_from_store,
used by vindex_bench.c's brute-force-vs-HNSW oracle). engram_reason.c and
engram_verify.c are also byte-identical. #109's own branch point already
carried engram-tiered-storage's M4-M10 lineage forward, so there was nothing
left to merge into #109 for those files. The one thing engram-tiered-storage
had that #109's tree dropped: its full test suite (test_vindex.c,
test_geometry.c, test_reason.c, test_verify.c, test_m7_traversal.c, the
interoception P0-P5 tests, bufpool/compaction tests, and their run_*.sh
harnesses) — ported over here unchanged.

WHY THIS NEEDED HAND RECONCILIATION, NOT A MECHANICAL MERGE: #109's branch
forked from dev on 2026-08-14 15:40 (before restructure-adjacent history
diverged the file's merge-base for `git merge` — it presented as an add/add
conflict). A straight two-dot diff (dev tip -> PR tip) applied cleanly, but
it silently reverted THREE dev fixes landed on 2026-08-14/15, after the
branch point, that the PR's diff had no way to know about:

  1. qgate rescale (2026-08-14 self-review): PR's lazy eg_cosq_at rewrite of
     the query-aware propagation gate dropped the shift-and-floor rescale
     about ENGRAM_EMBED_S0 (measured: unrelated-pair median 0.562->raw gate
     0.67, i.e. "a small tax, not a gate"). Restored the rescale, wrapped
     around the lazy accessor -- the PR's actual improvement (WHEN cosq[oi]
     is computed) is orthogonal to WHAT it gates on and both are kept.
  2. Eviction cause decomposition (2026-08-14 self-review): dev decomposes
     wm_evicted into evict_floor/evict_cap/evict_bll so WM churn is
     diagnosable (identity: evicted == floor+cap+bll+dup_wm+dup_wm_global).
     PR's tree predates this and dropped all three counters + their JSON
     stats fields. Restored declarations, all 4 direct increment sites, the
     eg_wm_carry_over bll increment, and the act-stats JSON fields --
     alongside (not instead of) the PR's own P4 afferent / API-reshape
     counters already in that same struct/JSON.
  3. Hebbian link-formation selection (2026-08-15 self-review, TODAY): dev
     selects the STRONGEST qualifying candidate for consolidation each call;
     PR's tree predates this and reverted to hash-slot order (arbitrary wrt
     association strength) for edge formation -- the one path that writes
     PERMANENT structure. Restored the strongest-candidate while-loop,
     keeping the PR's own genuine improvement at that site
     (engram_adj_on_edge_added incremental-index append instead of a bare
     adj_dirty=1 full-rebuild flag).

engram/src/server.el's 3-way conflicts (autoconnect_on/ise_offgraph_on env
flags, /api/nodes connected-count in responses) were pure additive: dev's
side was empty, PR's side added the feature. Took PR's side whole.

VERIFIED (nsbx sandbox only, live :8742/:7770 never touched):
  - cc -std=c11 -O2, clean link against the real engram/src/server.el via
    elc, zero errors.
  - vindex_bench (built standalone, read-only harvest) against the real
    production store clone (13,671 embedded nodes, 768-dim nomic-embed-text):
    recall@10 = 1.0000 at ef 64/128/200; HNSW search 0.28-0.79ms/query vs
    2.03ms/query brute-force oracle (2.6x-7.2x). HNSW build itself: 46.5s
    for the full 13,671-node set -- see the flagged risk below.
  - Booted the reconciled binary in an isolated nsbx sandbox (:8905, cloned
    snapshot of the live store, 13,424 nodes / 37,656 edges) and called
    /api/activate for real: first call after boot 41.5s (pays the one-time
    HNSW build inline -- matches the standalone bench), second/third calls
    356ms/605ms, no crash, correct results, act-stats JSON (including the
    restored evict_floor/cap/bll fields) reads correctly.

KNOWN RISK TO FLAG BEFORE ANY LIVE CUTOVER (not fixed here; out of scope for
this dev-only land per instructions not to touch :8742/:7770): eg_vindex_sync
builds the HNSW index synchronously, inline, on the first engram_activate()
call after every process start (or index invalidation). On the real node
count that is a ~46s blocking stall on a single-threaded server -- the first
request after every restart (or its concurrent siblings) waits the full
build. Recommend a background/incremental build (or a bounded per-call build
budget) before this ever reaches the live daemon. See PR description / final
report for the fuller writeup.
will.anderson merged commit 2555e363a6 into dev 2026-08-15 21:50:42 +00:00
Sign in to join this conversation.