Formation summed its terms by ranging over a map, so the score could
differ in the last bit between runs of the same state; the volition hook
assessed commitments, metacognition raised repeated-failure candidates and
the forensic explanation listed commitments in map iteration order, so the
events a cycle emits and an explanation's order varied between runs. Each
now iterates in sorted order, as replay determinism (PLAN §1 R3) requires.
Apply and Supersede updated an intention by id alone, so a reconsideration
from the event bus and one from the executor could both apply: an
intention abandoned on goal_abandoned could be resumed by resumeParent a
moment later, leaving it active with closed_at set. Each transition now
writes only when the status is still the one the caller read, before its
event and decision, and a lost race returns ErrClosed having written
nothing. Plan SetStatus likewise changes only an open plan or a draft, so
a stale copy can never relabel a completed, failed, abandoned or
superseded plan. Regression tests cover both.
Volition and planning now run as part of cognition (PLAN §8.2 item 3):
- A volition hook derives wants after each cycle from what it perceived
and produced, satisfies answer wants when a reply is sent, raises due,
overdue, expired and conflicting commitments, and expires faded wants.
Events produced by earlier cycles are not re-derived.
- An intend process proposes deciding about the strongest undecided
wants; the candidate competes for the workspace, so attention gates
what the mind decides to pursue. The handler makes value tensions
explicit (caution against disruptive writes, privacy against reading
personal data), resolves them with recorded scores, runs deterministic
formation with commitments, policy preview, goals and values, records
the decision whatever it is, and plans a formed intention in the same
transaction. Operator requests carry their own weight in formation.
- Explicit requests in conversation ("restart <unit>", "logs for <unit>",
"fetch <url>") become wants with proposed means instead of direct
invocations; the reply says the request was recorded and that acting
depends on commitments and policy.
- The executor is woken after commits, runs in a scheduler-owned loop and
reacts to the event bus: a new commitment tightens or abandons affected
intentions (withdrawing their pending approvals), a weakened assumption
or a finished goal triggers reconsideration. A tightened plan may reuse
its strategy; a failed one may not.
- Metacognition gains volition checks: strong wants repeatedly set aside,
intentions with no recorded reason, intentions a commitment forbids,
commitments that cannot be kept, churn, repeated failed execution,
cost outweighing value, and intentions that outlived their goal.
- A plan model role and prompt let a model propose decompositions that
the planner validates. Ablations are a fork-only configuration field.
- Approvals required by an intention are described as coming from a
commitment or value constraint. The expectation after an approved
action is linked to the execution event, not the request.
- The wants.values column of the unreleased migration 0026 is renamed
value_keys: VALUES is reserved and the generic snapshot restore does
not quote identifiers.
- The hostile-output security test now uses a message that asks for no
action, because an operator's "status of <unit>" is legitimately a
read-only status check.
Plans turn intentions into revisable dependency graphs (migration 0027):
objective, assumptions, ordered or dependent steps, capabilities,
expected observations, preconditions, risk, estimates, budget,
completion criteria, abort conditions and the alternatives considered.
- Validation owns structure: acyclic dependencies, registered and
unlocked capabilities only, schema-valid parameters, targets that agree
with parameters, read-only checks, a closed set of step kinds and
internal actions. Model proposals are parsed into the same structure;
fields that could carry authority or claim progress are reported as
ignored, and an invalid draft is stored as a draft that never runs.
- The planner prefers deterministic strategies: a direct action verified
by observation, a read-only diagnosis that requests temporary scoped log
access with risk and fallback stated, and an escalation that diagnoses
and informs the operator instead of repeating a failed action. Failed
strategies are not reused; a model is consulted only when none applies.
- The executor holds no state in memory: it claims a step with a
conditional update, acts only through Invoke and RequestCapability, and
records the outcome. Waiting for approval or access forms a subordinate
intention and blocks the parent with the reason. Expectations become
verification predictions resolved from a read-only observation, so an
HTTP-level success is never taken as the outcome; a miss is a prediction
error that weakens the supporting belief and triggers reconsideration.
Replanning creates a new revision, withdraws open requests of the old
one and keeps it as history, within a replan limit. Checks never raise
approval prompts. Budgets stop runaway plans. Preconditions skip actions
when the world already changed. Dream plans and disabled sandbox minds
never act. An interrupted non-idempotent action with no record is
blocked for verification instead of repeated; recorded outcomes are
adopted. Completed plans are stored as procedural memories; a completed
escalation does not count as fulfilling the intention.
- Executions and approvals record their origin; minds may withdraw their
own pending approval requests; Preview reports a decision without side
effects; service.status is allowed by default as a bounded read.
A model of volition that keeps wanting, intending and committing as
separate states (PLAN §8.2 items 1–6, 14):
- Wants (migration 0026) carry origin, strength with a six-hour
half-life, urgency, valence, drives, values, goal, commitment and an
optional proposed means. Derivation is deterministic and selective:
failed predictions, contradictions, operator goals, stalled goals,
questions and requests, and due commitments; drives and configured
values modulate strength with recorded terms; candidates below 0.35 are
not stored; identical subjects reinforce; faded and excess wants expire.
- Conflicts are first-class and resolved by explicit scores with no fixed
hierarchy: urgency scales strength, goals add priority, commitments add
normative weight; an approach opposed by a value-derived avoid want wins
outright only when clearly stronger, otherwise with a constraint or is
deferred. Neither side is discarded.
- Commitments (do/refrain with capability, target, access and risk
matchers, optional "unless approval", due, expiry, revocability) are
checked for due, overdue, impossible, conflicting and superseded states.
They constrain means and never grant authority.
- Formation weighs strength, urgency, goal, commitment, expected utility,
risk scaled by caution, cost, privacy and autonomy; it returns formed or
not formed with a reason (forbidden by commitment, denied, unavailable,
no possible plan, below threshold, capacity, duplicate, deferred), and a
commitment requiring approval turns an action into a request for
approval.
- Reconsideration maps triggers (denied or expired approval, capability or
commitment change, failed step or expectation, weakened belief, budget,
goal completion, world change, operator correction) to keep, block,
suspend, resume, replan, require approval, abandon or fulfil, with
bounded replanning.
- The store records every transition as an event and every choice in the
append-only volition_decisions ledger; fulfilling an intention satisfies
its wants and fulfils its commitment.
- Event vocabulary gains volition and plan categories.
Andy Dixon