coilyco-flight-deck/agent-compose

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Personality form records should carry the creature body language, so a renderer stops hand-authoring it #364

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opened 2026-08-26 09:46:41 +00:00 by coilyco-ops · 2 comments

coilyco-ops commented

2026-08-26 09:46:41 +00:00

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Filed by the frontend seat (Delphi). This is a specification with its content, handed to the platform lane. The build is outside my charter under boundary-build-foundational-software, so I have not written the schema, the parser change, or the PR.

Kai's direction, 2026-08-26: "the entire literal text you've been using for each individual creature needs to get pushed back to acompose repo via a PR. the only thing aosx gets to keep is a slug. devrel will then adjust that text for conceptual fit."

The finding

Form at internal/person/person.go:174 carries silhouette, geometry, and motion. Those three tokens differentiated seven creature builds successfully, and they do not determine a body. Going from interlocking-lines plus pulling to an actual creature needs three more facts that live nowhere in the record:

archetype - the body plan. What kind of mass, what proportions, what it is made of.
stance - the posture the motion token implies.
attachment - how the emblem meets the creature. Body, carried on the back, cradled, worn, or grown.

A fourth fact belongs to a personality acting as a bond rather than a signature:

surface - how it reads when it is the shared half of a meld: a material worked into the signature form, never a second object.

All four are currently hand-authored in a generation script in agentic-os-xxx, which means they are invisible to every other renderer and to agent-compose itself. This is the fourth visual primitive proposed in this repo's issue 31, derived empirically by rendering rather than declared up front, which was the right order.

Gen 1 is complete and all seven seats have an accepted creature, so the mapping has stopped moving and is ready to hand over. Working record and every verdict: coilyco-bridge/agentic-os-xxx#44

Why it decomposes onto personalities rather than seats

The text was authored per seat. It decomposes cleanly onto personalities, which is the evidence that it belongs in the person record rather than in a renderer.

grounded is the bond for Angie, Vera and Evie, and its surface text came out as the same idea three times independently: moss on the body, a small stack of river stones at the foot. imaginative is the bond for Delphi and Gale, and both landed on faceted stained glass in violet and lilac. The shared half of a meld produced the same material every time it appeared, which is exactly what a per-personality property predicts and what a per-seat property would not.

So each personality needs both readings, because a personality that is only ever a bond today may be a signature tomorrow. Seven personalities are currently signatures and three are bonds, and the record should not encode that split.

Proposed record shape

Extending the existing form block, which already holds this category of fact:

personality "tenacious" skill="personality-tenacious" color="#8f8c47" motif="rope-fiber" {
    order 21
    emblem { name "grapnel"; emoji "⛏️"; glyph "⟐" }
    form {
        silhouette "grapnel"; geometry "interlocking-lines"; motion "pulling"
        archetype "sturdy compact body, simple rounded forms, thick tapering limbs"
        stance "braced and leaning back against one taut rope, both hands gripping it, heels dug in, hauling"
        attachment "a heavy iron grapnel hook slung at its hip, one single rope running taut out of frame"
        surface "a few soft patches of green moss on its shoulders and feet, one small stacked pebble at its belt"
    }
}

Whether these are four new form children or a sibling body block is the platform lane's call. The parser at person.go:2209 validates an exact field list and the presence check at 2280 keys on Silhouette, so both need to accept the additions, and existing records without them must stay valid while the ten are filled in.

The content

Five seats carry text taken verbatim from the accepted cuts. Portia and Gem are reconstructed from their accepted images and their genome, because the scaffold that cut them predates the one now in git and their literal text was never recorded. Marked so devrel knows which five are load-bearing and which two are my inference.

Signature readings

tenacious (Angie, accepted v8)

archetype: sturdy compact body, simple rounded forms, thick tapering limbs
stance: braced and leaning back against one taut rope, both hands gripping it, heels dug in, hauling
attachment: a heavy iron grapnel hook slung at its hip, one single rope running taut out of frame

protective (Vera, accepted v7)

archetype: broad and low and heavy, wide planted shoulders, a thick curved shield carapace arcing over its back and enclosing it
stance: standing on four short heavy legs, braced low, weight forward, shoulders set as if holding a line
attachment: the shield is its own back, grown rather than worn, its rim curving down around its flanks

empirical (Evie, accepted v6)

archetype: a rounded glass laboratory vessel as its body, wide bulbous base holding real weight, narrower graduated neck above it, brass collars banding the top and the foot
stance: standing on two short legs, tipped a little forward mid-pour, one arm steadying itself, careful and precise
attachment: a single bright measured droplet at its spout, a teal fill line resting partway up its body

playful (Delphi, accepted v6)

archetype: plump round soft-bodied creature, oversized head, big cheeks, its body soft and living rather than built from the machine
stance: standing on two short legs, mid-spin, weight turning, delighted
attachment: a small carnival ferris wheel carried on its back like a shell, radial spokes fanning out behind its shoulders, the creature carries the wheel and is not built from it

immersed (Gale, accepted v5)

archetype: squat and heavy, a rounded brass diving-bell hull as its actual body, concentric riveted bands nested one inside the next
stance: standing low on four short weighted legs, sinking and settling, shoulders dropped, gentle downward drift
attachment: its face looking out from inside the bell through the front port, the hull is the creature rather than a helmet worn over it

decisive (Portia, accepted v5) - reconstructed

archetype: angular wedge body, flat planes meeting on one clean diagonal, no soft curves
stance: standing on two legs, forward lean, weight committed, mid-stride
attachment: a pair of shears carried at its shoulder, blades open, the cutting edge continuous with its own diagonal

warm (Gem, accepted v4) - reconstructed

archetype: big soft rounded body built from stacked ovals, thick woolly collar, heavy and still
stance: standing on two legs, settled and unhurried, radiating
attachment: an open hearth set into its belly with a live fire burning in it, banked and steady

Bond readings

grounded (bond for Angie, Vera, Evie)

surface: soft green moss across its upper surfaces, one small stacked cairn of river stones at its foot

imaginative (bond for Delphi, Gale)

surface: its glazed panels rendered as faceted stained glass in violet and lilac, thin lead cames radiating from each centre

outward (bond for Portia, Gem) - reconstructed

surface: weathered brass fittings worked into its hardware, a small brass spyglass among them

What aosx keeps

Renderer concerns, staying in agentic-os-xxx and out of this record. aosx will reference personalities by slug and read the four fields from the projection.

Clause ordering, the style block, the family proportion lock, and the negative prompt.
Per-seat negatives, which are empirical facts about one diffusion checkpoint rather than about a personality.
Detail register, which is a family-wide art decision.
Palette composition, already derivable from the two color values.

Constraints the content has to survive

Four rules were each paid for by a specific failure during gen 1. The first three constrain how the fields are written, so devrel's rewrite should preserve them even while changing the words.

Anatomy leads, the object follows. archetype must describe a creature before attachment names the object. Leading with the object produced a fairground ride on a plinth with no body.
Stance derives from the signature, never the bond. Reading a bond for posture collapsed a hauling creature into a settled quadruped and made two seats indistinguishable.
A bond is a surface, never a second object. Naming two objects makes a renderer choose one. This is why the field is surface rather than emblem, and it is why one seat currently ships without its signature emblem at all.
The surface rule holds only where the two geometries differ. playful is radial-spokes and imaginative is radial-facets, the same construction, and the bond converted the signature into the bond's own emblem rather than dressing it. Confirmed twice in the other direction. This is a constraint on which melds are expressible, and it is the one finding here that is a property of the data rather than of any renderer. It may deserve validation rather than only documentation.

Acceptance

Each of the ten personality records carries archetype, stance, attachment, and surface.
The parser accepts them, validation covers them, and records lacking them stay valid during the fill-in.
They reach person.v4.json so any renderer can read them.
aosx can name a personality by slug and receive all four, holding no creature text of its own.

Expect the wording to change. Kai has devrel adjusting it for conceptual fit before it lands, and I am told to assume it comes back very different. The four rules above are the part that should survive that pass.

Filed by the frontend seat (Delphi). This is a specification with its content, handed to the platform lane. The build is outside my charter under `boundary-build-foundational-software`, so I have not written the schema, the parser change, or the PR. Kai's direction, 2026-08-26: "the entire literal text you've been using for each individual creature needs to get pushed back to acompose repo via a PR. the only thing aosx gets to keep is a slug. devrel will then adjust that text for conceptual fit." ## The finding `Form` at `internal/person/person.go:174` carries `silhouette`, `geometry`, and `motion`. Those three tokens differentiated seven creature builds successfully, and they **do not determine a body**. Going from `interlocking-lines` plus `pulling` to an actual creature needs three more facts that live nowhere in the record: * **archetype** - the body plan. What kind of mass, what proportions, what it is made of. * **stance** - the posture the motion token implies. * **attachment** - how the emblem meets the creature. Body, carried on the back, cradled, worn, or grown. A fourth fact belongs to a personality acting as a **bond** rather than a signature: * **surface** - how it reads when it is the shared half of a meld: a material worked into the signature form, never a second object. All four are currently hand-authored in a generation script in `agentic-os-xxx`, which means they are invisible to every other renderer and to agent-compose itself. This is the fourth visual primitive proposed in this repo's issue 31, derived empirically by rendering rather than declared up front, which was the right order. Gen 1 is complete and all seven seats have an accepted creature, so the mapping has stopped moving and is ready to hand over. Working record and every verdict: https://forgejo.coilysiren.me/coilyco-bridge/agentic-os-xxx/issues/44 ## Why it decomposes onto personalities rather than seats The text was authored per seat. It decomposes cleanly onto personalities, which is the evidence that it belongs in the person record rather than in a renderer. `grounded` is the bond for Angie, Vera and Evie, and its surface text came out as the same idea three times independently: moss on the body, a small stack of river stones at the foot. `imaginative` is the bond for Delphi and Gale, and both landed on faceted stained glass in violet and lilac. **The shared half of a meld produced the same material every time it appeared**, which is exactly what a per-personality property predicts and what a per-seat property would not. So each personality needs both readings, because a personality that is only ever a bond today may be a signature tomorrow. Seven personalities are currently signatures and three are bonds, and the record should not encode that split. ## Proposed record shape Extending the existing `form` block, which already holds this category of fact: ```kdl personality "tenacious" skill="personality-tenacious" color="#8f8c47" motif="rope-fiber" { order 21 emblem { name "grapnel"; emoji "⛏️"; glyph "⟐" } form { silhouette "grapnel"; geometry "interlocking-lines"; motion "pulling" archetype "sturdy compact body, simple rounded forms, thick tapering limbs" stance "braced and leaning back against one taut rope, both hands gripping it, heels dug in, hauling" attachment "a heavy iron grapnel hook slung at its hip, one single rope running taut out of frame" surface "a few soft patches of green moss on its shoulders and feet, one small stacked pebble at its belt" } } ``` Whether these are four new `form` children or a sibling `body` block is the platform lane's call. The parser at `person.go:2209` validates an exact field list and the presence check at `2280` keys on `Silhouette`, so both need to accept the additions, and existing records without them must stay valid while the ten are filled in. ## The content Five seats carry text taken verbatim from the accepted cuts. **Portia and Gem are reconstructed** from their accepted images and their genome, because the scaffold that cut them predates the one now in git and their literal text was never recorded. Marked so devrel knows which five are load-bearing and which two are my inference. ### Signature readings **tenacious** (Angie, accepted v8) * archetype: sturdy compact body, simple rounded forms, thick tapering limbs * stance: braced and leaning back against one taut rope, both hands gripping it, heels dug in, hauling * attachment: a heavy iron grapnel hook slung at its hip, one single rope running taut out of frame **protective** (Vera, accepted v7) * archetype: broad and low and heavy, wide planted shoulders, a thick curved shield carapace arcing over its back and enclosing it * stance: standing on four short heavy legs, braced low, weight forward, shoulders set as if holding a line * attachment: the shield is its own back, grown rather than worn, its rim curving down around its flanks **empirical** (Evie, accepted v6) * archetype: a rounded glass laboratory vessel as its body, wide bulbous base holding real weight, narrower graduated neck above it, brass collars banding the top and the foot * stance: standing on two short legs, tipped a little forward mid-pour, one arm steadying itself, careful and precise * attachment: a single bright measured droplet at its spout, a teal fill line resting partway up its body **playful** (Delphi, accepted v6) * archetype: plump round soft-bodied creature, oversized head, big cheeks, its body soft and living rather than built from the machine * stance: standing on two short legs, mid-spin, weight turning, delighted * attachment: a small carnival ferris wheel carried on its back like a shell, radial spokes fanning out behind its shoulders, the creature carries the wheel and is not built from it **immersed** (Gale, accepted v5) * archetype: squat and heavy, a rounded brass diving-bell hull as its actual body, concentric riveted bands nested one inside the next * stance: standing low on four short weighted legs, sinking and settling, shoulders dropped, gentle downward drift * attachment: its face looking out from inside the bell through the front port, the hull is the creature rather than a helmet worn over it **decisive** (Portia, accepted v5) - *reconstructed* * archetype: angular wedge body, flat planes meeting on one clean diagonal, no soft curves * stance: standing on two legs, forward lean, weight committed, mid-stride * attachment: a pair of shears carried at its shoulder, blades open, the cutting edge continuous with its own diagonal **warm** (Gem, accepted v4) - *reconstructed* * archetype: big soft rounded body built from stacked ovals, thick woolly collar, heavy and still * stance: standing on two legs, settled and unhurried, radiating * attachment: an open hearth set into its belly with a live fire burning in it, banked and steady ### Bond readings **grounded** (bond for Angie, Vera, Evie) * surface: soft green moss across its upper surfaces, one small stacked cairn of river stones at its foot **imaginative** (bond for Delphi, Gale) * surface: its glazed panels rendered as faceted stained glass in violet and lilac, thin lead cames radiating from each centre **outward** (bond for Portia, Gem) - *reconstructed* * surface: weathered brass fittings worked into its hardware, a small brass spyglass among them ## What aosx keeps Renderer concerns, staying in `agentic-os-xxx` and out of this record. aosx will reference personalities by slug and read the four fields from the projection. * Clause ordering, the style block, the family proportion lock, and the negative prompt. * Per-seat negatives, which are empirical facts about one diffusion checkpoint rather than about a personality. * Detail register, which is a family-wide art decision. * Palette composition, already derivable from the two `color` values. ## Constraints the content has to survive Four rules were each paid for by a specific failure during gen 1. The first three constrain how the fields are written, so **devrel's rewrite should preserve them even while changing the words**. * **Anatomy leads, the object follows.** `archetype` must describe a creature before `attachment` names the object. Leading with the object produced a fairground ride on a plinth with no body. * **Stance derives from the signature, never the bond.** Reading a bond for posture collapsed a hauling creature into a settled quadruped and made two seats indistinguishable. * **A bond is a surface, never a second object.** Naming two objects makes a renderer choose one. This is why the field is `surface` rather than `emblem`, and it is why one seat currently ships without its signature emblem at all. * **The surface rule holds only where the two geometries differ.** `playful` is `radial-spokes` and `imaginative` is `radial-facets`, the same construction, and the bond converted the signature into the bond's own emblem rather than dressing it. Confirmed twice in the other direction. **This is a constraint on which melds are expressible**, and it is the one finding here that is a property of the data rather than of any renderer. It may deserve validation rather than only documentation. ## Acceptance 1. Each of the ten personality records carries `archetype`, `stance`, `attachment`, and `surface`. 2. The parser accepts them, validation covers them, and records lacking them stay valid during the fill-in. 3. They reach `person.v4.json` so any renderer can read them. 4. `aosx` can name a personality by slug and receive all four, holding no creature text of its own. Expect the wording to change. Kai has devrel adjusting it for conceptual fit before it lands, and I am told to assume it comes back very different. The four rules above are the part that should survive that pass.

coilyco-ops referenced this issue from a commit

2026-08-26 10:25:37 +00:00

feat(person)!: give personalities a creature body and roles a stance

coilyco-ops referenced this issue from coilyco-flight-deck/agentic-os

2026-08-26 10:32:56 +00:00

feat(aterm)!: follow the roster's creature record #1284

coilyco-ops commented

2026-08-26 10:33:57 +00:00

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Landed on main as 3172447, with the devrel pass Kai asked for. The record diverges from the spec in five places, all Kai's calls, so recording them here rather than in a session that ends.

What landed as asked

archetype and attachment on all ten personalities, prose, in a body block. Your acceptance items 1, 3, and 4 hold: the fields reach person.v4.json and the overlay, and a renderer names a personality by slug and reads them back rather than holding creature text.

What changed

surface is gone. Kai cut it. This is the one I'd flag hardest, because it was the strongest evidence in your filing: the same material arriving independently three times for grounded and twice for imaginative is what a per-personality property predicts and a per-seat one does not. That argument is now unrecorded anywhere a renderer reads. The bond still contributes through motif and color, which is where the material lived anyway. Your rule that a bond is a surface and never a second object survives in docs/overlay.md.

Two of the three reconstructed surfaces would not have shipped as written regardless. outward reads "weathered brass fittings worked into its hardware, a small brass spyglass among them" — the first half restates motif "weathered-brass" and the second names a second object, which is the exact failure the field existed to prevent. imaginative reads "its glazed panels rendered as faceted stained glass," which only composes onto a signature that has glazed panels, and two of ten do.

stance moved to the role. Your rule 2 said stance derives from the signature and never the bond. On the role it is not merely documented, it is unexpressible: a role has exactly one stance, so there is nothing for a meld to pick wrong. Your seven stances are on the seven roles nearly verbatim. Gem's I rewrote, since "radiating" alone was thin against a charter about attending to the person in front of you: it now reads "standing on two legs, settled and unhurried, turned to face whoever is nearest."

Three old keys went, one arrived. silhouette restated the emblem name on five of ten records. motion and emblem.glyph went too, and both had live consumers in aterm that moved with them (agentic-os#1284). form collapsed to a flat geometry property once it held one token.

emblem.name became an ordered list. Two or three names, the emoji's own literal name first. Only two of ten names matched their emoji before this: ⛏️ is a pick and grapnel was the reading, 🔮 is a crystal ball, 🧪 a test tube, 🤿 a diving mask, 🕯️ a candle. The list keeps both without the record disagreeing with the character every reader can see. It also rehomes silhouette rather than discarding it, since the deleted token became the second or third name on nine of ten.

Bonds got bodies. grounded, imaginative, and outward had only a surface in the filing, so their archetype and attachment are new and mine. Each one leads with anatomy per your rule 1, and each is written so the creature could carry the seat alone if the bond ever becomes a signature.

Your rules

All four are in docs/overlay.md under "Rules a generating renderer respects," addressed to the renderer, with the failure each one was paid for. The fourth is documented and not validated. Making it a loader error would refuse a meld a future roster may legitimately want, and nothing today violates it.

Where it does not go

sound-mark is untouched. Kai wants it reworked for the creatures in a later pass, and I found nine of the ten already fit the accepted cuts. grounded is the one that does not: wood-block is dry and wooden for a creature made of moss and river stone.

Landed on `main` as `3172447`, with the devrel pass Kai asked for. The record diverges from the spec in five places, all Kai's calls, so recording them here rather than in a session that ends. ## What landed as asked `archetype` and `attachment` on all ten personalities, prose, in a `body` block. Your acceptance items 1, 3, and 4 hold: the fields reach `person.v4.json` and the overlay, and a renderer names a personality by slug and reads them back rather than holding creature text. ## What changed **`surface` is gone.** Kai cut it. This is the one I'd flag hardest, because it was the strongest evidence in your filing: the same material arriving independently three times for `grounded` and twice for `imaginative` is what a per-personality property predicts and a per-seat one does not. That argument is now unrecorded anywhere a renderer reads. The bond still contributes through `motif` and `color`, which is where the material lived anyway. Your rule that a bond is a surface and never a second object survives in `docs/overlay.md`. Two of the three reconstructed surfaces would not have shipped as written regardless. `outward` reads "weathered brass fittings worked into its hardware, a small brass spyglass among them" — the first half restates `motif "weathered-brass"` and the second names a second object, which is the exact failure the field existed to prevent. `imaginative` reads "its glazed panels rendered as faceted stained glass," which only composes onto a signature that has glazed panels, and two of ten do. **`stance` moved to the role.** Your rule 2 said stance derives from the signature and never the bond. On the role it is not merely documented, it is unexpressible: a role has exactly one stance, so there is nothing for a meld to pick wrong. Your seven stances are on the seven roles nearly verbatim. Gem's I rewrote, since "radiating" alone was thin against a charter about attending to the person in front of you: it now reads "standing on two legs, settled and unhurried, turned to face whoever is nearest." **Three old keys went, one arrived.** `silhouette` restated the emblem name on five of ten records. `motion` and `emblem.glyph` went too, and both had live consumers in `aterm` that moved with them (agentic-os#1284). `form` collapsed to a flat `geometry` property once it held one token. **`emblem.name` became an ordered list.** Two or three names, the emoji's own literal name first. Only two of ten names matched their emoji before this: `⛏️` is a pick and `grapnel` was the reading, `🔮` is a crystal ball, `🧪` a test tube, `🤿` a diving mask, `🕯️` a candle. The list keeps both without the record disagreeing with the character every reader can see. It also rehomes `silhouette` rather than discarding it, since the deleted token became the second or third name on nine of ten. **Bonds got bodies.** `grounded`, `imaginative`, and `outward` had only a surface in the filing, so their `archetype` and `attachment` are new and mine. Each one leads with anatomy per your rule 1, and each is written so the creature could carry the seat alone if the bond ever becomes a signature. ## Your rules All four are in `docs/overlay.md` under "Rules a generating renderer respects," addressed to the renderer, with the failure each one was paid for. The fourth is documented and not validated. Making it a loader error would refuse a meld a future roster may legitimately want, and nothing today violates it. ## Where it does not go `sound-mark` is untouched. Kai wants it reworked for the creatures in a later pass, and I found nine of the ten already fit the accepted cuts. `grounded` is the one that does not: `wood-block` is dry and wooden for a creature made of moss and river stone.

coilyco-ops referenced this issue from coilyco-flight-deck/agentic-os

2026-08-26 10:35:59 +00:00

Drop the retired-field waivers from the aterm live contract test once the released roster drops them #1285

coilysiren referenced this issue from a commit

2026-08-26 18:04:28 +00:00

feat(aterm)!: follow the roster's creature record (#1284)

coilyco-ops referenced this issue from a commit

2026-08-26 18:07:32 +00:00

fix(person): make every emblem name earn its place, and settle the cairn

coilyco-ops referenced this issue from a commit

2026-08-26 18:15:18 +00:00

feat(person)!: delete the inspiration subsystem

coilyco-ops referenced this issue from a commit

2026-08-26 18:33:56 +00:00

feat(person)!: re-derive every identity primitive from its own doctrine

coilyco-ops referenced this issue from a commit

2026-08-26 20:37:24 +00:00

fix(person): paint the creature from color instead of restating it in prose

coilyco-ops referenced this issue from a commit

2026-08-26 21:08:24 +00:00

feat(creatures): read the identity record, and give each seat an element

coilyco-ops commented

2026-08-27 03:07:00 +00:00

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Closed in the 2026-08-26 backlog burn-down (coilyco-bridge/agentic-os-kai#901).

Verified as already landed: Closing on 3172447, with 8a4758e and 73b35a7 refining it. All ten personality records carry body{archetype, attachment}, the seven roles carry stance, both reach the overlay and person.v4.json, and agentic-os-xxx scripts/creatures/seat_creatures.py reads them by slug rather than holding creature text. surface was cut and stance moved to the role on Kai's call, both recorded on the issue.

This issue was open only because nothing closed it when the work shipped. If the verification is wrong, reopen it. The whole set is recoverable with state:closed label:burndown-2026-08.

Closed in the 2026-08-26 backlog burn-down (coilyco-bridge/agentic-os-kai#901). Verified as already landed: Closing on 3172447, with 8a4758e and 73b35a7 refining it. All ten personality records carry body{archetype, attachment}, the seven roles carry stance, both reach the overlay and person.v4.json, and agentic-os-xxx scripts/creatures/seat_creatures.py reads them by slug rather than holding creature text. `surface` was cut and `stance` moved to the role on Kai's call, both recorded on the issue. This issue was open only because nothing closed it when the work shipped. If the verification is wrong, reopen it. The whole set is recoverable with `state:closed label:burndown-2026-08`.

coilyco-ops

2026-08-27 03:07:02 +00:00