World Boundary
A world is a coherent domain of authority, state and observation — and the tree has not yet defined its boundary.
- Standing
- PROPOSED CHECKABLE RUNNABLE EXECUTED STAGED PUBLISHED REPRODUCED
- Last checked
- never run
- Source
- none — this record cites no check
- Limit
- A GAP. There is no canonical definition of a world boundary in this tree, the invariant field is empty on purpose, and the candidate definition attached here is unruled conversation.
- Next rung
in_tree— A ruling that fixes the definition. Nothing can be witnessed before the thing being witnessed is defined.
Why this page says PROPOSED — the derivation, not the word
- ✗ a witness is named
- ✗ its evidence kind is one the ledger already uses
- ✗ the witness path resolves in this tree
- ✗ its rung is in_tree or above
- ✗ a run is recorded for these exact bytes
- ✓ no claim is cited that could be REFUTED
- ✗ a counterexample is shipped (required once WITNESSED)
- ✗ not staged on this site, so it cannot run from the page
WITNESSED requires every line above to hold. The label is computed from them by build.mjs and cannot be typed into the registry — the build refuses a record that carries it.
Intent
Three sizes of world have frozen names; the boundary that separates a world from what is outside it has none. The candidate definition, from the book's own drafting, is: a coherent authority, state and observation domain that need not be an operating-system process, a virtual machine or a machine. It is unruled, and this page is empty where an invariant would go because nothing in the tree states one.
Technical register
GAP. CLOUD_V1.md §2 defines WORLD, WORLD VERSION and WRL GRAPH by size and role; AGENCY.md §3 places 'world' in the chain as what carries state; neither defines the boundary. The label vocabulary has no word for a gap, so this record derives as PROPOSED. Ruling needed: whether the candidate definition is adopted, amended or refused.
Problem
Without a boundary, 'in the world' and 'outside it' are readings. Authority scoped 'to the world' cannot be checked; a locus crossing between worlds cannot be said to have crossed anything.
Solution
Not yet. What this page can do is state the candidate, name what it would need — a check that a claimed crossing actually crossed — and stop.
Real-world analogy
A country whose size, population and capital are recorded and whose border has never been drawn.
Structure — on the surface
An illustration on a compute surface: loci above, carriers below. Press Play or Step; the takeaways collect as you go. Nothing here is evidence — the witness section is.
The chapter in WRL — and the chain so far
Chapter 21 of 32 — the fragment _patterns/wrl/chain/world-boundary.wrl, sealed alone by wrl.js
; WORLD BOUNDARY — GAP. Nothing in the tree defines the boundary, so this fragment declares nothing: the ; EMPTY WORLD, which WRL seals. The chain's id does not move here — this comment is not meaning.
module + bench seal to → sem-b5bdc908d2ce549a46fc8ae95d39c34e1deb245e282075730e5436097433fae6
The empty world has no Film: there is nothing for the forge to reduce, and it says so. The seal above is the seal of nothing declared.
Composes with the 20 chapters before it
The chain through this chapter — every earlier fragment, this one, and the links — seals to sem-ee97f22c94ad2b4e46a26aa642db76fd92e280edee1872b3f3553b80a511e373: 76 objects, 68 edges (was 76 / 68; every earlier object and edge is still present — checked, or the build refuses). The id did not move: this fragment adds nothing but a comment, and a comment is not meaning.
How to read this board
Five kinds of object, two kinds of wire, and one band per Part of the book. Signal flows left to right: it starts at a clock, travels through relays, and ends at a door — or turns a spinner, which drives an orb. Nothing below is the book's own vocabulary; each line is quoted from where the definition lives.
| shape | is | and so |
|---|---|---|
| a clock; the only source of signal | Every signal on the board starts at one of these. Nothing else can make one. | |
| a pass-through, so signal can travel | One arrives, any number leave — a relay that fans out is the board's router. | |
| a sink; signal arrives and stops | It latches what reached it and passes nothing on. A door is where a path ends. | |
| rotation: takes signal, drives a pose | The only object on the board that holds a value a claim can rewrite — and only if its config says configurable. | |
| the thing that gets moved | It is driven, never driving: an orb is what you watch to see whether anything happened. | |
| not a WRL role — the book's own drawing of the receipts in the epoch's Film | It counts what the run admitted, and turns red on a Rejected outcome. | |
| SignalWire | signal: a sig_out to a sig_in | Legal from a Pulser or Relay, into a Relay, Door or Spinner. This is how the board moves. |
| SocketControl | control: a socket to a pose | Legal only from a Spinner into an Orb. At most one may land on any input port — fan-in is a typed refusal. |
Hover any object for what it is, which chapter put it there, and every field of its line in that epoch's Film — split into what it is doing now and how it was built. Click to pin the readout, then click a wired name to follow the signal. The field definitions come from TRVM/forge/film.py (the emitter), TRVM/forge/forge_state.py (nf, derived from the decoded counter and never from t), TRVM/forge/lower_e2a.py (the commit/react law), TRVM/FORGE_SEMANTIC_IR_v1_MEASURE.md §1.3; the shapes from WRL/learn.html and WRL/docs/spec/README.md. The build refuses if a Film emits a field this key does not explain.
The board so far: one band per Part, signal flowing left to right; relays that fan out are routers, doors are switches, pulsers are clock domains. Hover an object — or click the board and walk it with the arrow keys — for its role, its Part and what it is wired to. This board is the chain’s sealed shape; no Film drives it, so it has no state to report, and the whole board in the conclusion is where every object’s state is read epoch by epoch. Wheel zooms · drag pans · double-click fits.
Syntax — quoted from the tree at build time
What is defined — the sizes (CLOUD_V1.md §2) — so the reader can see what is not CLOUD_V1.md:48
| **WORLD VERSION** | a content-addressed description of that machine state at one instant | KB (it is a *root*) | Pigsty holds `manifest_root`; R2 holds the manifest |
Forces
The obvious boundaries — process, VM, machine — are carrier boundaries, and this book's first family exists to say carriers are not identity. A semantic boundary has to be defined in terms of authority, state and observation, and those are the three things the agency definition already names.
Applicability
This page is applicable to the ruling, not to designs.
Consequences
Until ruled, every sentence of the form 'inside the world' in this catalog is a reading. The gap is load-bearing: it is how the next writer knows where to stand.
Witness
No witness. This pattern is PROPOSED — the tree has no check for its invariant.
Counterexample
No counterexample shipped (required only when WITNESSED).
What to take away
- from the animationThe middle ring is drawn and unlabelled by the tree; the picture is the gap.
- from the syntaxThree sizes have rows in a frozen table; the boundary has no row.
- from the literatureDomain boundaries in Evans's DDD are the nearest prior art, and they too are drawn by hand.
- from the witnessGAP, derived as PROPOSED: no invariant, no witness, one open ruling.
Prior art — and what is not claimed
| work | relation | what it shares | where it differs |
|---|---|---|---|
| GPT, 2026-09-11 — 'a coherent authority/state/observation domain that need not be an OS process, VM or machine' | NOT SEARCHED | a candidate definition offered in conversation | unruled, and no canonical definition exists anywhere in the tree |
Novelty not claimed. Everything. There is no pattern here yet — this chapter is a GAP with a candidate definition attached, and its invariant field is empty on purpose.
Relations with other patterns
Three Sizes of World STATED