Where the machine grows · Volume 12

Volume 12 — Extension Specification: Semantic Charters, Cells, CellSpace

PROPOSEDsnapshot of 14 July 202619 min read← Volume 11 — Extension Points and the Widening Discipline Volume 13 — Extension Specification →

Reading aids · CoAgnes LabNot part of the specification; where they differ, the volume governs.

At a glance

The Cell extension, PROPOSED — agreed direction, not implemented behaviour — as one inspectable line: a Semantic Charter; a planner-authored CellBlueprint wrapped into a CellPackage; a Trial Cell admitted by CellSpace and run on ordinary rails; a staged result; independent weighted assessment; human review, where only accept publishes a sealed integration. §1
Its vocabulary — Semantic Charter, Cell, CellSpace, CellBlueprint, CellPackage, Trial Cell, template and precedent — its type shapes, whose responsibilities MUST NOT collapse into one open record, and emit.cell: a third, mutually exclusive emit declaration and a policy trust anchor, which the model may fill but cannot widen. §2 §2.1 §3
CellSpace, the WaveProcessor owning the root Cell and every child: with no cell.seed on the log the assembly MUST produce byte-identical logs to the flat machine; ordinary tuples gain no cell_id — identity derives from committed offsets; runtime names are qualified, routing follows one deterministic order, and three isolation modes set what a Cell sees. §2 §4
The protocol family — Charter, seeding, result, assessment, review and terminals — as ordinary domain.fact tuples on the seed's wave key: canonical emissions come only from CellSpace, one request yields at most one canonical outcome, and a required partial order and a transition table fix the lifecycle. §5 §5.6 §5.7
What bounds a trial: admission, a pure all-or-nothing function of seventeen checks; budgets that each action increments for its owner and every ancestor; a producer matrix fixing who may publish what; artefact tiers, in which only data interpreted by policy-controlled code is auto-trialled — and the blind spots that must not be pretended solved. §6 §8 §9 §10 §11

Where it sits

Read after: Volume 04 — Tuple Reference Volume 06 — Bind Descriptors Volume 07 — The Membrane and Output Controllers Volume 08 — The Nest Virtual Machine Volume 09 — Authoring Formats Volume 11 — Extension Points and the Widening Discipline
Read next: Volume 13 — Extension Specification
Requirements: 5 sentences with MUST, SHOULD or MAY — the list
At work: 11 of its sections seen in a real run of the machine, each linked under its heading
Across the set: every volume's questions the machine in figures

Questions this volume answers

Is a Cell a security sandbox? §1
Can the model that authors a blueprint widen the policy it runs under? §3
Does every tuple on the log say which Cell it belongs to? §4
Who assesses a Cell's result, and who computes the aggregate? §5.4
When does a Cell's result become public? §5.5
What happens when a package fails a single admission check? §6
Which problems does the extension leave unsolved? §11
What must an implementation demonstrate to claim the Cell extension? §13

This volume is the normative specification, within this set, of the Cell extension: the extension by which achieved semantic understanding may author a new algorithmic form, execute it on the existing wave rails in a bounded trial, preserve its lineage, and publish only after assessment and review. It changes no current contract by itself: PROPOSED means agreed direction, not implemented behaviour, and implementation must land together with tests and the promotion of this volume's affected sections to CURRENT. It is written to the extension checklist of Vol. 11 §7. (Lineage: the volume descends from the reference project's design proposal; it is self-contained and supersedes the need to read that document.)

§1. Outcome and boundaries

Target path, one continuous and inspectable line:

user intent → semantic charter → planner bind authors a CellBlueprint
→ controller wraps it into a CellPackage (parent-owned policy + Charter snapshot)
→ CellSpace admits it as a Trial Cell → the Cell runs on ordinary rails
→ cell.result (staged) → independent weighted assessment → human review
→ accept: sealed integration published │ revise: new sibling Cell │ archive

Boundaries fixed for the first slice: no arbitrary generated-code execution; no dynamic controller installation; no physical per-Cell log; no automatic promotion; no replacement of the YAML authoring path; Cell isolation is semantic scoping, not a security sandbox (§10).

§2. Terminology

Seen at work Fragment 1 · CellSpace sets up its registers

Semantic Charter — the meaning contract for a bounded piece of work: title, purpose, question, weighted criteria (with optional minima). Committed before any algorithm is authored against it; the later planner cannot rewrite its criteria.
Cell — a bounded runtime compartment: one local topology, local state, a Charter, an immutable starting context, ingress visibility conditions, an egress publication contract, budgets and capabilities, lifecycle and provenance. All Cells are projections over the one wave log.
CellSpace — the WaveProcessor owning the root Cell and every child: routing, admission, materialisation, policy enforcement, lifecycle derivation. Replaces the standalone top-level topology in the assembly.
CellBlueprint — untrusted model-authored content: declarative topology (same document shapes as external authoring), result contract, semantic links, schemas map, optional safe view, inert artefacts, optional revision binds.
CellPackage — the immutable admission envelope around a blueprint: Charter snapshot + digest, parent-owned policy, selected context, authoring provenance. Assembled by the controller from the bind's bound scope and declared emit.cell; never from model output.
Trial Cell — a Cell whose outputs are staged: private facts cannot become public integrations until sealing.
Template / precedent — an immutable reusable blueprint/pipeline with applicability and proof runs (exact reuse after fresh checks) / a prior package-with-outcome retrieved as planner material (never registered directly).

§2.1 Normative type shapes

Seen at work Fragment 3 · #11 · the blueprint

Design-level shapes; names may adapt to the host language, but the responsibilities MUST NOT collapse into one open record.

type CellRef = string;      // v1 value: `cell@<cell.seed offset>`
type CharterRef = string;   // v1 value: `charter@<charter.proposed offset>`

type CharterCriterion = { id: string; question: string; weight: number; minimum?: number };
type SemanticCharter  = { title: string; purpose: string; question: string;
                          criteria: readonly CharterCriterion[] };

type CellIngressRule      = { match_type: string; where?: readonly CollectWhereClause[] };
type BoundScopeSelector   = { scope: string; field?: string };   // one-level only
type BoundScopeProjection = BoundScopeSelector & { as: string };

type CellBudget = { max_depth: number; max_cells: number; max_revisions: number;
                    max_records: number; max_blueprint_bytes: number;
                    max_emissions: number; max_inference_calls: number };

type CellPolicy = { mode: 'trial';
                    isolation: 'snapshot' | 'subscribed' | 'meta';
                    raw_input: 'deny' | 'allow';
                    accepts: readonly CellIngressRule[];
                    capabilities: readonly string[];
                    budget: CellBudget;
                    publish: { candidate: string; accepted: string } };

type CellEmitDeclaration = CellPolicy & {
  charter_from: BoundScopeSelector;
  seed_from: readonly BoundScopeProjection[];
  revises_from?: BoundScopeSelector };

type SemanticLink = {
  source: { kind: 'purpose' } | { kind: 'question' }
        | { kind: 'criterion'; criterion_id: string };
  target: { kind: 'knot' | 'descriptor' | 'result_field' | 'view_element'
                 | 'schema' | 'artefact'; local_id?: string; path?: string };
  role: 'collects' | 'tests' | 'transforms' | 'publishes' | 'presents';
  rationale: string };

type GeneratedArtefact = { id: string;
  kind: 'function_source' | 'controller_source' | 'query_source'
      | 'migration_source' | 'prompt';
  media_type: string; language?: string; content: string; entrypoint?: string;
  requested_capabilities: readonly string[];      // review metadata, never grants
  fixtures: readonly Record<string, unknown>[] };

type CellBlueprint = { version: 1;
  topology: { knots: readonly unknown[]; descriptors: readonly unknown[] }; // Vol. 09 shapes
  semantic_links: readonly SemanticLink[];
  result: { local_fact_type: string; producer_bind: string; data_field: 'result';
            schema_ref: string; view?: Record<string, unknown> };
  schemas: Record<string, JsonSchema>;            // keys are local fact types
  artefacts: readonly GeneratedArtefact[];
  revision?: { planner_bind: string;
               reframe?: { charter_bind: string; planner_bind: string } } };

type CellPackage = { version: 1;
  charter: { ref: CharterRef; digest: string; value: SemanticCharter };
  blueprint: CellBlueprint;
  policy: CellPolicy;                              // normalised declaration
  context: Record<string, unknown>;                // the seed_from projections
  provenance: { bindId: string; uid: string; serviceRequestOffset: number } };

type AssessmentCriterion = { id: string; grade: number; rationale: string;
                             evidenceRefs: readonly number[] };
type AssessmentProposal  = { cellRef: CellRef;
                             criteria: readonly AssessmentCriterion[];
                             risks: readonly string[]; openQuestions: readonly string[];
                             recommendation: 'accept' | 'revise' | 'archive' };
type WeightedAssessment  = AssessmentProposal & {
  charterRef: CharterRef; resultOffset: number; proposalOffset: number;
  aggregate: number;                               // computed by CellSpace only
  provenance: { bindId: string; uid: string; serviceRequestOffset: number } };

CellPolicy is the declaration after its selection fields are resolved; blueprint.result.schema_ref must resolve to the entry named by the local fact type and to the same schema its producer bind uses; a Charter or policy inside model-returned blueprint JSON is an unknown field and is rejected.

§3. Authoring surface: `emit.cell`

Seen at work Fragment 3 · #1 · the first fragment's doer

A third, mutually exclusive service.emit variant (rail Vol. 11 §3.5). The declaration is a policy trust anchor: the model may fill content within it but cannot widen it; a nested emit.cell inside a generated blueprint is untrusted until admission proves it a subset of the current Cell's ceiling.

yaml

service:
  instruction: "Author one bounded CellBlueprint …"
  schema: schemas/cell-blueprint.schema.json
  emit:
    cell:
      mode: trial
      charter_from: { scope: charter, field: definition }   # one-level selectors only
      seed_from:                                            # → immutable cell.context
        - { as: frame,   scope: frame }
        - { as: charter, scope: charter, field: definition }
      revises_from: { scope: revision }                     # optional; also in seed_from
      isolation: snapshot            # snapshot | subscribed | meta
      raw_input: deny                # deny | allow; nested may not widen deny→allow
      accepts: [ { match: evidence.granted } ]              # ingress rules (shared matcher)
      capabilities: [inference]      # closed registry; v1: inference only
      budget:                        # closed keys; §8
        max_depth: 1
        max_cells: 1
        max_revisions: 2
        max_records: 16
        max_blueprint_bytes: 131072
        max_emissions: 120
        max_inference_calls: 8
      publish: { candidate: answer.candidate, accepted: chat.message.answer }

Compiler rules (loader work item): mutual exclusivity with writes/unfold; service schema required; selectors name existing scope aliases with at most one non-empty top-level field; unique non-empty as names in seed_from; closed keys and value sets throughout; max_depth/max_revisions non-negative integers, other budgets positive integers; unknown fields rejected.

Controller rules: resolve charter_from / seed_from / revises_from from the bound scope at discharge; assemble one CellPackage with the validated result as blueprint only; a missing scope entry is service.failed, never a partial package; the controller neither compiles nor judges the package.

§4. CellSpace: placement, identity, materialisation

Seen at work Fragment 3 · #0 · the first fragment's listener

Placement. Engine([CellSpace(root: TopologyGraph), …observers]). With no cell.seed on the log, the assembly MUST produce byte-identical logs to the flat machine (root compatibility — the extension's primary regression gate).

Lab fig. 12·1 All Cells are projections over the one wave log. CellSpace holds the root Cell and a child, cell@42, named by its seed's offset, whose runtime names are qualified. The child's records reach it by their home, its cell.context is targeted to its CellRef, and its private facts reach their owner only; one public fact may reach several Cells — root first — and reaches this subscribed Cell because its accepts matches. A reading aid by CoAgnes Lab; §4 governs.

Identity without a universal scope field. Ordinary domain tuples gain no cell_id. Identity derives from committed offsets: CellRef = cell@<cell.seed offset>; CharterRef = charter@<charter.proposed offset> (assigned in the later charter.defined, since only an observer of the committed proposal knows its offset). Cell depth is derived (parent depth + 1), never authored.

Materialisation. Authored local names stay semantic; runtime names are qualified: knots/binds cell@42::evidence.ready, private fact types cell@42::analysis.partial. Every private-type reference in records — match_type, writes, unfold templates, the result target — is rewritten before commitment; reserved protocols and admitted imports keep their names. Topology records gain optional home: {cellRef, localId} (absent on root records — byte-compatibility preserved); unfold templates inside a Cell get home added at materialisation so instantiated records commit with concrete ownership. Local ids and private types MUST NOT contain :: or start with cell@.

Fact classes at materialisation: import (allowed by accepts, name preserved) · private (qualified) · protocol (reserved namespaces; routed by contract) · result (private during trial; wrapped into cell.result) · accepted export (emitted only after sealing).

Routing order (deterministic). Key equality with the seed key is required before any predicate (predicates narrow, never widen). Then: Charter proposals/definitions (§5.1 rules) → lifecycle facts (CellSpace-handled) → topology records to their home (a Cell-owned record with missing/mismatched home is audit-only: registered nowhere, fails the Cell) → sys.knot.ready to the owner of the qualified knot → winding answers to the owner of knotId → service answers/delegated records to the owner of bindId/uid → private qualified facts to their owner → targeted cell.context to its CellRef → remaining public facts against each open Cell's ingress predicates (one tuple may reach several Cells). Root first, then Cells in creation-offset order.

Isolation modes. snapshot (default): context + own private facts + correlated answers; no ambient future public facts. subscribed: + future public facts matching accepts. meta: + lifecycle/assessment publications on the same key; no outward capability unless declared. Visibility modes, not transactions: abort is an appended event, never rollback.

§5. Protocol family

All lifecycle records are ordinary domain.fact tuples (rail Vol. 04 §6). Key rules throughout: same wave key as the seed; canonical emissions come only from CellSpace; one request → at most one canonical outcome (consumed correlations).

Lab fig. 12·2 The protocol family in its required partial order. Four times a record committed by others — a bind's charter.proposed, a cell.seed with the package wrapped around the planner's blueprint, the Cell's local result, an evaluator's proposal — is checked by CellSpace, which alone emits the canonical record, or a rejection or failure. A human's cell.reviewed then chooses the terminal: only accept seals the Cell and publishes the accepted export. Unrelated tuples may appear between any two. A reading aid by CoAgnes Lab; §5 governs.

§5.1 Charter: `charter.proposed` → `charter.defined` | `charter.rejected`

Seen at work Fragment 2 · The request is indexed under its name

A bind publishes untrusted charter.proposed via ordinary writes (its {bindId, uid, result} wrapper is the provenance). CellSpace verifies the causal same-key service.request (whose writes target is charter.proposed and which MUST declare a schema), revalidates the closed shape, then emits charter.defined {definition: {ref, digest, value}, home, parentRef, proposalOffset, provenance} — or charter.rejected with path-anchored errors. home derives from the proposing request's ownership (null for root). A local definition routes to its owner and meta subscribers, not to root or siblings. The first proposal or correlated failure consumes the request.

Reference payloads (data of the domain.fact):

json

// charter.proposed — the ordinary writes wrapper is the provenance
{ "bindId": "request.charter.bind", "uid": "request.charter.bind#1",
  "result": { "charter": { "title": "…", "purpose": "…", "question": "…",
                           "criteria": [ { "id": "relevance", "question": "…",
                                           "weight": 1, "minimum": 0.75 } ] },
              "parentRef": null } }

// charter.defined — canonical, emitted by CellSpace
{ "definition": { "ref": "charter@17", "digest": "sha256:…", "value": { } },
  "home": null, "parentRef": null, "proposalOffset": 17,
  "provenance": { "bindId": "request.charter.bind",
                  "uid": "request.charter.bind#1", "serviceRequestOffset": 15 } }

parentRef, when present, must resolve to an earlier Charter and denotes a refined next-level contract whose canonical definition is present in the proposing request's scope. A domain requiring human Charter approval inserts a review fact and gate between proposal and definition; it never mutates the proposal.

§5.2 Seeding: `cell.seed` → `cell.rejected` | `cell.opened` + records + `cell.context`

Seen at work Fragment 3 · The Cell is admitted: cell@20

cell.seed carries the complete package. CellSpace does not trust the envelope: it indexes the earlier service.request at the stamped offset and verifies key, bindId, uid, schema, declaration, Charter alias, selected scope entries, and effective policy; the blueprint is re-validated at admission (§6). A seed without its causal request is rejected before any registration. On admission: cell.opened (refs, parent, Charter digest and summary, mode/isolation, materialised record ids, effective budgets/capabilities, package digest) → the materialised topology records (each with home and planner emittedBy) → cell.context {cellRef, context} after every record, so registration precedes the first fact that may reach it. The seed offset becomes the CellRef; first valid seed or correlated failure consumes the service correlation — even a malformed seed is terminal for it.

Reference payloads:

json

// cell.seed — the whole package, no duplicate top-level provenance fields
{ "package": { "version": 1,
    "charter":   { "ref": "charter@17", "digest": "sha256:…", "value": { } },
    "blueprint": { }, "policy": { }, "context": { },
    "provenance": { "bindId": "answer.planner", "uid": "answer.planner#1",
                    "serviceRequestOffset": 39 } } }

// cell.context — only the named seed_from projections, immutable
{ "cellRef": "cell@42", "context": { "frame": { }, "charter": { } } }

cell.opened carries: cellRef and seed offset; parent planner uid, owning parent CellRef, optional revised CellRef; CharterRef, Charter digest and summary; mode and isolation; materialised record ids; effective budgets and capabilities; package digest. cell.rejected carries cellRef, seed offset, and path-anchored errors — and registers nothing.

§5.3 Result: `cell.result`

Seen at work Fragment 3 · CellSpace records the Cell's result

The declared result producer MUST be a local operator bind whose writes target is the candidate type (deterministic emit output lacks publication provenance and is not accepted in v1). CellSpace observes the qualified private result fact, verifies bindId/uid, extracts data.result, validates it against the embedded schema, then emits cell.result — review material, not yet public:

json

{ "cellRef": "cell@42", "result": { }, "schemaDigest": "sha256:…",
  "evidenceRefs": [], "localResultOffset": 73,
  "producedBy": { "bindId": "cell@42::answer.fold", "uid": "cell@42::answer.fold#1" } }

§5.4 Assessment: `cell.assessment.proposed` → `cell.assessed` | `cell.assessment.rejected`

Seen at work Fragment 3 · CellSpace records the assessment

An evaluator bind outside the trial (its intention distinct from planner and producer) binds the canonical Charter and cell.result, and writes a proposal: per-criterion grades with rationale and evidence refs, risks, open questions, recommendation. CellSpace verifies the causal request, requires every Charter criterion exactly once, validates grades/evidence, and computes the aggregate itself — sum(grade·weight)/sum(weight), weights from the Charter only (grades and minima finite in [0,1]; weights non-negative, positive sum). Only then cell.assessed. A model-supplied aggregate is ignored data. Four verdicts never collapse: admission ≠ runtime success ≠ assessment ≠ human usefulness.

§5.5 Review and terminals

Seen at work Fragment 3 · #27 · the return is declared

cell.reviewed {cellRef, decision: accept|revise|archive, assessmentOffset, aspects[], actor} — committed from human ingress (actor stamped server-side; never self-declared by browser or model). Aspects have the closed shape {kind: clarify|correct|preserve|override|risk|reframe, note, criterion_id?, semantic_target?}; revise requires ≥ 1 aspect; accepting below a criterion minimum requires an override aspect; accept requires the canonical assessment of the current result.

Terminals: accept → cell.sealed + the accepted export — always the system-owned envelope, whatever the declared fact type:

json

{ "factType": "chat.message.answer",
  "data": { "cellRef": "cell@42", "charterRef": "charter@17",
            "assessmentOffset": 88, "reviewOffset": 91, "result": { } } }

(result still validates against the blueprint result schema; the surrounding fields are never model-authored; the envelope is used only for a Cell's accepted export, not stamped on ordinary facts.) Provable violation → cell.failed with closed reason (budget_exceeded, capability_violation, invalid_generated_fact, invalid_result, runtime_invariant); expected *.failed facts do NOT auto-fail a Cell. revise → owner-targeted cell.revision.requested (self-contained: Charter, prior context, aspects, prior result/assessment/failure); the declared revision planner authors a replacement whose revises_from names that fact; the replacement derives the old Cell's parent and depth; the old Cell archives only after the replacement opens. archive → cell.archived, no public integration. Reviews are idempotent; conflicting/premature reviews emit cell.review.rejected; only the first valid terminal path publishes.

§5.6 Required partial order (happens-before, never adjacency)

charter service.request < charter.proposed < charter.defined
< planner service.request < cell.seed < cell.opened
< every local topology record < cell.context
< valid local result < cell.result
< evaluator service.request < cell.assessment.proposed < cell.assessed
< cell.reviewed < cell.sealed | cell.revision.requested | cell.archived
< accepted public export (accept only)

Unrelated committed tuples may appear between any two nodes.

§5.7 Transition table and idempotency

Current state	Committed input	Required emission	Next state
absent	valid `cell.seed`	`cell.opened`, records, context	running
absent	invalid `cell.seed`	`cell.rejected` only	rejected
running	declared local result	`cell.result` once	awaiting_assessment
running	provable policy/schema/budget violation	`cell.failed`	failed
awaiting_assessment	valid assessment proposal	`cell.assessed`	ready_for_review
ready_for_review	review `accept`	`cell.sealed`, accepted export	sealed
ready_for_review	review `revise`	`cell.revision.requested`	revision_requested
awaiting_assessment	review `revise`	`cell.revision.requested`	revision_requested
failed	review `revise`	`cell.revision.requested`	revision_requested
revision_requested	replacement seed admitted	`cell.archived` with `supersededBy`	archived
awaiting_assessment · ready_for_review · failed · revision_requested	review `archive`	`cell.archived`	archived

Derived, not evented: running, awaiting_world, awaiting_assessment, ready_for_review, failed, sealed, archived read from explicit lifecycle events; stalled / settled_unfinished derive from a quiescent log with an open result path (no cell.stalled fact until a reliable quiescence hook exists, Vol. 11 §6.2). Only the first valid terminal path may publish; repeating an identical review is a no-op; a conflicting or premature review (before cell.result; accept before canonical assessment; accept from a failed Cell) emits cell.review.rejected with the current state. The owning parent CellRef derives from the service-request ownership index, never parsed from a model-supplied id string.

§6. Admission (`admitCellPackage`)

A pure function: package + seed + matched causal request + matched Charter + parent policy + immutable id indexes → fully materialised plan or structured errors. No record is emitted until every check passes (all-or-nothing; rejection registers nothing). The seventeen checks, in order: (1) outer closed shape + canonical byte ceiling; (2) Charter authority (earlier same-key definition; value + digest match; no replacement Charter/policy in blueprint); (3) causal request (offsets, bindId/uid, emit form, schema; unconsumed; revision source rules); (4) Charter content (non-empty purpose/question, unique criteria, weight rules); (5) schema support and coverage (subset only; every writable private type covered; exact-key refs; no paths/URLs); (6) topology compilation via the shared compiler; (7) semantic links (every criterion served; every generated element justified; no dangling targets); (8) identity (unique local ids; reserved separators); (9) imports (every unqualified collect is import or protocol; raw-input policy); (10) exports (exactly one result path; candidate/accepted types per policy); (11) reachability (static bipartite graph fact → knot → readiness → bind → fact; conservative: unprovable = reject); (12) closure (activations/demands resolve; revision/reframe paths verified); (13) termination (records, depth, children, unfold worst-case from schema maxItems, emissions, calls — within parent ceiling and remaining ancestor budgets); (14) capabilities (subset of parent; v1 inference only; artefact requested_capabilities are review metadata, never grants); (15) protocol authority (no generated writes to lifecycle/review/accepted types); (16) view safety (fields of the result schema only; no script/URL/ expressions); (17) attribution (lineage reconstructable from uid, offsets, parent, ids, digest).

Semantic links are the meaning-to-form bridge: {source: purpose|question|criterion, target: knot|descriptor|result_field|view_element| schema|artefact, role: collects|tests|transforms|publishes|presents, rationale}. Records instantiated later by admitted unfold inherit the producing descriptor's links; runtime-generated items never invent new justification.

§7. Canonical JSON and digests

Seen at work Fragment 3 · #16 · the charter is defined

One shared canonicalJson(value) for every digest (Charter, blueprint, package, schema, artefact) and for max_blueprint_bytes: JSON values only (reject undefined, non-finite numbers, functions, cycles); array order preserved; object keys sorted recursively by code point; no insignificant whitespace; SHA-256 over UTF-8; sha256:<64 hex>. Digests prove content identity, not trust. Model-supplied digests are unknown fields.

Derived read models (pure functions of the log, rail Vol. 08 §8): digestCharters, digestCells, digestDecisions, digestArtefacts; Charter status ∈ running | waiting | review | failed | accepted | archived | stalled. stalled/settled_unfinished remain quiescence digests, not in-wave facts (open hook, Vol. 11 §6.2).

§8. Budgets and the session layer

Seen at work Fragment 3 · The Cell counts an effect: 1

Accounting semantics: max_depth — greatest admitted descendant distance; max_cells — the Cell plus all descendants (replacements consume max_revisions, not subtree slots; initial attempt uncounted); max_records — owned records including later unfold; max_blueprint_bytes — canonical bytes including schemas/views/artefacts/fixtures; max_emissions — every locally returned emission pre-interception (a rejected attempt still counts); max_inference_calls — every intention pre-discharge (failures count). An action increments the owner and every ancestor; child declarations must fit the parent ceiling and remaining ancestor budgets (monotone narrowing; no multiplication by fan-out). In-flight child/unfold requests reserve worst-case budget at request commitment; completion converts, failure releases. The first pre-commit action over a ceiling is withheld → one cell.failed; already-committed controller completions over a ceiling stay as audit, unregistered, and fail the Cell. CellSpace's own lifecycle emissions consume no Cell budget (failure reporting must not recursively fail).

WaveSession (prerequisite for chat/review ingress): owns one runtime and key; serialises messages and reviews; re-settles only after the previous settle completes; one JSONL/SSE history; digests exposed; message endpoint accepts only declared input fields, review endpoint stamps actor server-side.

§9. Effect policy (producer matrix)

Producer	May publish
CellSpace	canonical Charter/Cell lifecycle, review normalisation, accepted export
WaveSession ingress	declared user inputs; `cell.reviewed`
admitted local topology	private facts; `inference.request`/`service.request` via built-in executors
installed service controller	correlated completions; the request's declared emit
artefact/delivery controllers	their statically declared receipt protocols only

Generated topology may not write lifecycle/review/seal/failure/archive/accepted types (admission rejects; runtime interception remains as defence). Before returning an emission a controller could claim, CellSpace checks capabilities: an unauthorised intention never enters the log — instead cell.effect.rejected + cell.failed(capability_violation); nothing crosses the membrane that was not first committed. The controller list stays the readonly assembly array; no fact modifies it; controller activation requires human approval, review/tests, deployment installation, explicit credentials, and an auditable control-plane operation.

§10. Artefacts, storage, promotion

Risk-ordered tiers: Tier 1 (auto-trialled): declarative blueprints, JSON Schemas, safe views, prompts, criteria — data interpreted by policy-controlled code. Tier 2 (generated, never auto-executed): TS/JS, SQL, connector/ controller source, migrations — stored, diffed, linted, fixture-tested, reviewed. Tier 3 (sandboxed execution): a separate capability host with OS-level isolation, invoked itself as a membrane intention — explicitly not designed here. Every artefact: unique local id, ≥ 1 semantic link, digests computed by CellSpace, fixtures inert and inside the byte ceiling.

Packages are immutable by content: the trial never executes a mutable path; cell.opened records the digest; an optional static ArtefactStoreController persists by digest; sealing is proof of usefulness in context, not universal correctness; promotion (precedent: exact package; template: blueprint digest + applicability contract) is a separate explicit action; reuse always re-enters fresh admission. One accepted run suffices for a precedent; template thresholds are domain policy, not CellSpace code.

Persistent replay/restart; ownership-encoding proof across every protocol (else a narrow protocol-level origin field; envelope-wide cell_id stays rejected); quiescence hook; operator one-shot lifecycle; schema subset expressiveness; conservative reachability limits; evaluator independence (shared model bias); complete cost budgets (tokens/money); logical-vs-security isolation; reasoning-data privacy/retention; concurrent ingress; human review load; template generalisation; generated-view renderer; log growth; control-plane UI; the cell terminology collision (resolved by the canonical table: knot = accumulator; bind = gather/judge/publish; bound scope = one bind's record; Cell = bounded local topology and lifecycle; Charter = semantic obligation; Membrane = external boundary); Charter authorship quality; deterministic publication attribution.

§12. Implementation phases and acceptance

Phase 0 maturity prerequisites (Vol. 11 §6.3) → Phase 1 flat-compatible CellSpace (identical logs) → Phase 2 static Trial slice (hand-authored blueprint fixture; child cannot see raw input, cannot pollute root, cannot replace Charter/policy, publishes only after accept) → Phase 3 planner-authored blueprint (real emit.cell; independent evaluator; revision planner; full budgets) → Phase 4 chat + Charter rail over WaveSession → Phase 5 library (digest store, precedents, promotion) → Phase 6 advanced artefacts/sandbox/ control plane. §13 is the normative regression catalogue.

§13. Regression catalogue

An E(cells) claim (Vol. 14 §1) requires demonstrable tests for each line.

Compatibility. Root-only CellSpace reproduces the golden log exactly; every flat pipeline/loader/runtime test stays green; writes and unfold emissions unchanged; one assembly across shells.

Admission. Reject: unknown package keys; malformed schemas/views; a missing, later, mismatched, or model-replaced Charter; a seed with no matching earlier same-key request; mismatched offset/bindId/uid/scope/schema/emit/ policy; a second seed or conflicting terminal completion per service uid; missing/duplicate assessment criteria, out-of-range grades, invalid evidence offsets, self-evaluation correlation, model-supplied aggregate; dangling semantic links, unserved criteria, unjustified generated records; missing knots/demands, unreachable results; duplicate local ids, reserved prefixes/separators; raw-input collection absent from imports; undeclared public writes; direct writes to lifecycle/review/accepted protocols; oversized canonical blueprints, malformed/duplicate artefact ids; unbounded unfold arrays, worst-case fan-out over budget; record/depth/fan-out/call budgets or capabilities above the parent ceiling. Prove rejection registers no partial topology.

Isolation and routing. A child receives structured cell.context, never the raw message; raw_input: deny blocks direct raw selection while allowing derived structured publications; sibling Cells reuse local ids without collision; private facts do not wind siblings or root; a local Charter reaches owner/selected-child context only; no mode routes across wave keys; one public fact may wind two subscribed Cells; correlated answers return to the owning Cell; unfold records inherit the Cell home — a missing/contradicting home is audit-only, fails the Cell, registers nowhere; Cell ordering is deterministic.

Lifecycle. Proposal offset defines CharterRef and canonical content its digest; a valid proposal yields exactly one definition, a forged one only rejection; a planner cannot bind a Charter committed after its request; seed offset defines CellRef; records precede context; result stays staged before review; assessment normalised once with the aggregate recomputed from Charter weights; accept requires the canonical assessment of the current result and emits sealed + one enveloped export; revise creates a new attempt, never mutates the old, and is rejected without a reachable revision planner/budget; a replacement derives the old parent/depth and records revisesCellRef; reframe requires its two-bind path and a new canonical Charter first; a revision-requested Cell archives only after its replacement opens; archive publishes nothing; repeated review is idempotent, conflicting review emits cell.review.rejected; settled-unfinished is never labelled success.

Capabilities. An unauthorised effect becomes cell.effect.rejected + cell.failed and is never claimed by a controller; allowed inference works and is budget-counted; schema-invalid local emissions are withheld; an invalid committed controller completion stays audit-only and fails the Cell; crossing any hard budget emits one terminal failure and no over-budget emission; sibling/nested activity consumes ancestor aggregates rather than multiplying ceilings; a model-authored controller artefact cannot modify the membrane; no generated native source is evaluated in-process.

UI. Digests are pure functions of the persisted log; SSE replay reconstructs the surface; chat shows only committed messages/statuses; generated view paths check against the result schema; Charter criteria navigate to their linked targets; the raw trace stays reachable from every result; review ingress commits before lifecycle changes appear.

Reading aids · CoAgnes LabNot part of the specification; where they differ, the volume governs.

Requirements in this volume

Every sentence of the volume with MUST, SHOULD or MAY, as it stands, with the section it stands in. These key words mark its conformance requirements; the rest of its text is descriptive (Vol. 00 §4).

MUST NOTDesign-level shapes; names may adapt to the host language, but the responsibilities MUST NOT collapse into one open record.§2.1
MUSTWith no cell.seed on the log, the assembly MUST produce byte-identical logs to the flat machine (root compatibility — the extension's primary regression gate).§4
MUST NOTLocal ids and private types MUST NOT contain :: or start with cell@.§4
MUSTCellSpace verifies the causal same-key service.request (whose writes target is charter.proposed and which MUST declare a schema), revalidates the closed shape, then emits charter.defined {definition: {ref, digest, value}, home, parentRef, proposalOffset, provenance} — or charter.rejected with path-anchored errors.§5.1
MUSTThe declared result producer MUST be a local operator bind whose writes target is the candidate type (deterministic emit output lacks publication provenance and is not accepted in v1).§5.3

At a glance

Where it sits

Questions this volume answers

§1. Outcome and boundaries

§2. Terminology

§2.1 Normative type shapes

§3. Authoring surface: emit.cell

§4. CellSpace: placement, identity, materialisation

§5. Protocol family

§5.1 Charter: charter.proposed → charter.defined | charter.rejected

§5.2 Seeding: cell.seed → cell.rejected | cell.opened + records + cell.context

§5.3 Result: cell.result

§5.4 Assessment: cell.assessment.proposed → cell.assessed | cell.assessment.rejected

§5.5 Review and terminals

§5.6 Required partial order (happens-before, never adjacency)

§5.7 Transition table and idempotency

§6. Admission (admitCellPackage)

§7. Canonical JSON and digests

§8. Budgets and the session layer

§9. Effect policy (producer matrix)

§10. Artefacts, storage, promotion

§11. Blind spots (must not be pretended solved)

§12. Implementation phases and acceptance

§13. Regression catalogue

Requirements in this volume

§3. Authoring surface: `emit.cell`

§5.1 Charter: `charter.proposed` → `charter.defined` | `charter.rejected`

§5.2 Seeding: `cell.seed` → `cell.rejected` | `cell.opened` + records + `cell.context`

§5.3 Result: `cell.result`

§5.4 Assessment: `cell.assessment.proposed` → `cell.assessed` | `cell.assessment.rejected`

§6. Admission (`admitCellPackage`)