Unboxed Patterns
Elements of Composable Locus-Oriented Software. What recurring structures appear when computation is organized around persistent identity, locality, composition, authority, progress and observable semantic state — rather than around the class, the thread or the service?
Every pattern here is a named problem, the forces that make it costly, one invariant, and — where the tree has one — a check you can run on this page. Labels are derived, never typed: WITNESSED means a recorded run of a check exists for the exact bytes on disk at rung in_tree or above; STATED means the tree says it and no run proves it; PROPOSED means the book names it and the tree does not. 13 witnessed · 14 stated · 3 proposed · 12 anti-patterns. Plan and open rulings: ProjectAmp2/UNBOXED_PATTERNS.md.
The two numbers this catalog is least comfortable with, up here rather than at the back. 0 of 32 patterns have been reproduced outside this tree — every check on this site is ours, run against our own code. And of the 8 counterexamples that point at a file, 1 resolves a law id against the suite's own index, 1 is scoped to its law's declaration, and 6 check only that a string is present — which proves a file mentions something, not that it refuses anything. Both numbers are derived on every build, and the conclusion carries the rest.
The Locus
Active Locus definition
An agent is an active locus in a world.
Record at a Boundary WITNESSED
A record describes a locus at a boundary; it never is the locus.
Locus Is Not Its Carrier STATED
A locus is not the thread running it; the thread is a replaceable embodiment.
Identity Is a Seal WITNESSED
An artifact's identity is the hash of its canonical form, the same on every host.
Continuity Through Reconstruction STATED
A locus continues across a replacement only if a minimal, causally established support set for each declared capability is retained.
Composition
Refusing Join WITNESSED
A join that cannot be made is refused, and the refusal names the field.
Shared Observable WITNESSED
Every state variable that can determine the future must be in the observable bytes.
Semantic Membrane PROPOSED
A composed subsystem exposes exactly the state that affects externally observable future behaviour — and no more.
Capability-Bounded Composition WITNESSED
Feasible, then permitted, then best — over a floor that composition cannot weaken.
Carrier Confinement STATED
A Carrier starts with exactly the filesystem and descriptor authority its Worker's grant names.
Projection, Not Duplication WITNESSED
Every view of an artifact is derived from it by a declared, recomputable function.
Refusable Divergence WITNESSED
A divergence between two implementations is refused by name, not passed in silence.
Progress
Progress Over Utilization WITNESSED
Measure admitted transitions per cost, never carrier busyness.
Dormant But Alive STATED
A locus that consumes no compute can be fully live.
Carrier Multiplexing WITNESSED
More loci than slots, carried by rotation, and no locus is lost by not holding one.
Progress-Aware Placement STATED
Place a locus where the semantic progress it can make is greatest, not where fairness among carriers is.
Proven Quiescence PROPOSED
Silence is not completion: quiescence is established by a sweep over the loci, never read off idle carriers.
Three-Valued Outcome STATED
Every attempted intervention resolves to APPLIED, REFUSED or INDETERMINATE — and INDETERMINATE is never rewritten.
Persistence and World
Orthogonal Persistence STATED
Whether a locus's state is in cache, RAM, disk or a remote node is an implementation choice below its semantic level.
Three Sizes of World STATED
WORLD, WORLD VERSION and WRL GRAPH are three sizes with three names; a head is always qualified.
World Boundary PROPOSED
A world is a coherent domain of authority, state and observation — and the tree has not yet defined its boundary.
Meaning Is a Hash WITNESSED
The meaning of a WRL world is its SemanticArtifactID.
Exact Replay STATED
A run of a sealed world is a film that replays byte-identically; a divergence on replay is the world's, not the player's.
Cross-Machine Skill Replay STATED
A skill taught on machine A replays on machine B with the declared fidelity; the InteractionTrace is the unit of transfer.
Confidentiality Under Content Addressing STATED
If the key is the hash of the content, knowing the content is knowing the key — and where confidentiality comes from is unruled.
Agency
Established, Not Known definition
Establish, never know or detect: an observation can be stale, forged or partial, and establishing is what survives that.
State Does Not Grant Authority WITNESSED
A fact about a locus never constitutes a power.
Evidence Before Claim WITNESSED
A proposition is admitted only with a named witness that exists.
Refusal Gate STATED
Below material sufficiency the page is not written, and the reason is published.
Intervention Provenance STATED
Every intervention carries the Worker and generation that made it and the evidence it acted on; an unattributable intervention is inadmissible.
Descent Is Not Dependence WITNESSED
A lineage edge generates a candidate support set and establishes none.
Understanding Boundary STATED
A locus keeps apart what exists, what it can observe, what it believes, what it understands, what it intends and what it may alter.
Patterns that should disappear
- Carrier IdentityTreating a thing as the process, thread or container currently executing it.
- Location LeakEncoding physical placement into identity when placement is not semantic.
- False QuiescenceDeclaring completion because no currently observed worker has work. · paid for at REVISION_REGISTER.md:99 (CompletedScan renamed CompletedSweep; doesNotAssert added)
- Invisible StateAllowing state that affects future behaviour to remain outside the shared observable. · paid for at TRVM/LAWS.md:80 (Law 6 witnesses: rotor, receipt, once-latch)
- Replica TheaterCalling independent mutable copies 'the same thing'. · paid for at CLAUDE.md: the served box-and-box copy is a MANUAL COPY and nothing syncs it
- Busywork SchedulingMaximizing resource utilization while semantic progress stalls. · paid for at computedriven/receipts/R7-EXECUTED.md title: the busiest Carrier makes the least progress
- Agent OmniscienceLetting an agent's claims exceed its evidence boundary. · paid for at AGENCY.md §6 (what is established vs a reading)
- A Number in Two PlacesA count or definition typed where it is displayed instead of derived from its source; the two drift. · paid for at STACK_COMPLETION.md corrections §1 (law counts 129→116→118); UNBOXED_PATTERNS.md v0.1 (32 labels over 30 rows; 890 vs 924)
- Record Is LocusInferring that X is a locus because X carries the locus fields. · paid for at AGENCY.md §1 corollary; caught on review of the factory page
- Provenance as SupportTreating a lineage edge as causal support for a capability. · paid for at mosaic/embodiment.json; scripts/emb-support.mjs refuses it
- The Quiet CorrectionFixing a published error without retracting it by name where it was published. · paid for at DOCTRINE.md rule 5
Findings from this build
- shared-observable: marker "Law 6" occurs 3× in TRVM/forge/binding_run3k.py — it does not pick out one place, so it is weaker evidence than a resolved law id
- capability-bounded-composition: the marker is scoped to L10's declaration, but AmpersandBoxDesign/box-and-box/test/laws.mjs exports no law index (BB_LAW_INDEX) — the id itself could not be resolved against the suite that runs
- progress-over-utilization: marker "fair arm" occurs 2× in computedriven/receipts/R7-EXECUTED.md — it does not pick out one place, so it is weaker evidence than a resolved law id
- carrier-multiplexing: marker "fair arm" occurs 2× in computedriven/receipts/R7-EXECUTED.md — it does not pick out one place, so it is weaker evidence than a resolved law id