nimmerworld.eachpath.local/architecture/gates.md

Gate Layer

Upstream layer between sensors and the lemniscate. Gates admit signals based on thresholds. Each gate is registered; every decision validates against the register.

Gate state

Each gate has one registry row and one state row.

• impulses: count since last summary.
• threshold: value shifted by the L1 decision.
• last_opened: cycle index of last opening.
• last_decision_cycle: cycle_uuid of the last decision that shifted this gate.
• counters: per-gate counters (e.g. dropped_pings).
• tier: T0-T3 declared importance.

Injection loop

1. sensor emits impulse (event_uuid, gate, timestamp, payload).
2. gate summary at L1: table columns: gate, impulses, threshold, last_opened, drives, last_decision_cycle, tier.
3. L1 decision: open/hold gates; threshold delta; optional evidence request.
4. opened gates compose content at L2 (frames, text, rows).
5. L2 answer + action calls; answer is next summary's salience signal.

Cycle closure guard

Injection is only allowed while the lemniscate is CLOSED: both crossings complete and gate state snapshotted.

Properties:

1. Validation: the close is the validation point; a bad cycle is diagnosed from the summary table.
2. Staleness: summary and composed input use the same frozen snapshot.
3. Latency: crossing callbacks that block inference hold the cycle open; no desync.

Exceptions (re-run, not mid-cycle):

• threshold breach during an open cycle: summary rebuilt, cycle re-runs before inference lands.
• safety gate (T0): pierces the closed state; immediate cycle.
• starvation: a gate unseen for K cycles is force-opened at the next cycle boundary.

Identity and causality

ID	Assigned	Carries
event_uuid	sensor, at impulse	(the origin)
cycle_uuid	lemniscate, at open	admitted event_uuids
decision_uuid	L1 decision	event_uuids opened

• L2 answer carries cycle_uuid + decision_uuid; output traces to its admitted impulses.
• UUID v7: 48-bit timestamp prefix; sort order = causal order.
• No record enters Phoebe without its causal UUIDs.
• Gate history keyed by cycle_uuid is replayable.

Intake tiers

• Summary (poll): aggregate table each cycle.
• Evidence (pull): raw impulse rows for one gate, since last cycle, on request. The request is part of the L1 decision; rows are validated against the registry; they arrive as L2 composed input in the same cycle.

Impulse row: (event_uuid, gate, timestamp, payload). Created at the sensor; UUID v7; immutable. Failed ping is an emitted impulse, never inferred from absence.

Policy layers

Higher layers cannot be overridden by lower ones; lower layers cannot close what a higher one opened.

Layer	Owner	Decides
Hard floor	operator (dafit)	T0 gates; never closable
Presence policy	harness/switchboard, rule-bound	all closed / task-relevant open
Attention policy	runtime L1	remainder

Presence is a gate input above the L1 policy. It is rule-bound and has no LLM in the loop. Presence is the physical form of operator override.

Gate tags (declared importance)

Importance is declared, never inferred.

Tier	Meaning	Guarantee	Example
T0 critical	safety	pierces the closed cycle; hard floor; never closable	fire alarm, operator channel
T1 relational	operator presence	presence-owned; guaranteed attention share; cannot be attention-closed while active	chat/text gate, sofa camera
T2 standard	normal attention	tunable thresholds; starvation sampling	keepalive, host monitors
T3 ambient	background	poll-only; summary trend, on-demand evidence	telemetry

Tag row: (gate, tier, why, mode_overrides).

• Registry-declared and signed. T0/T1 immutable at runtime.
• T2/T3 may shift per mode (e.g. webcam T3 -> T1 in sofa mode); each shift is a UUID-logged decision.
• why is the audit reason string.
• Attention budget never starves a tier: T0 pierces, T1 holds a guaranteed share; L1 allocates the remainder.

Adaptive timing

• L1 round-trip: decision capacity.
• L2 round-trip: synthesis capacity.
• Both derived from v7 timestamps; no new instrumentation.
• Cycle interval = mean(L1_RTT) + mean(L2_RTT) + margin.
• Animation duration >= L2_RTT; holds the gesture through synthesis.
• Estimator: sliding mean with hysteresis.
• RTT values feed schedule parameters, not gate thresholds.

Long-running probes and heartbeat integrity

• Probes are async: issued at the crossing, not awaited. Result returns as an impulse into the next cycle's summary.
• RTT measures decision capacity only; probe wall-clock never enters the cycle interval.
• Probe latency is gate metadata; results accumulate losslessly into the next window.
• Silence must be manufactured: a probe's absence cannot be inferred. The deadline emits a timeout impulse (event_uuid, tiered); escalation rides a real signal.
• Pierce is for inspection, never effect-side arbitration: T0 forces the cycle to see; actions still resolve under mutex/priority.

Persistence and restart

• Gate table in Phoebe, checkpointed after each cycle. The table is the resumable self; restart restores attention profile and thresholds.
• Raw impulses: bounded in-RAM ring buffer per gate; flushed to Phoebe at checkpoint. Evidence reads the buffer; audit reads the store.
• Truncation is explicit: an evidence request older than the buffer returns the buffer's lower bound; the gate table records the truncation.

Attention semantics

Gates that close under sustained noise are the noise suppression: the gate stops mattering, rather than filtering smarter. Attention is a first-class resource with a budget and decay. The trait algebra at L2 tunes attention itself.

Version: 0.9 | Updated: 2026-11-04