Research experiments run several sandbox variants with settle windows, and
under the full parallel race suite the experiments package exceeded Go's
default ten-minute limit. The make targets now pass -timeout 30m, and the
ablation and self-model scenarios use the fewest stimuli that still show
their effect.
A framework for testing functional properties of the architecture
(Part C). None of it claims consciousness; every measure has an
operational definition in research.Measures.
- Ablations (attention, memory retrieval, affect, metacognition,
commitments, volition, global workspace, curiosity, association, goals,
narrative, notifications) and workspace overrides (force a matching
candidate in or out of admission) live in a fork's cognitive
configuration. Original minds refuse them on create and update; only
snapshot restores may carry them, so they are part of the configuration
digest. Excluded candidates are recorded with fate "excluded".
- Self-model experiments override a fork's self-model (capabilities,
identity, goals, knowledge gaps) without touching policy. When an
action's effective policy disagrees with the self-model, cognition
records a self_model_mismatch and corrects the entry; experiments report
self-model accuracy and correction latency.
- Counterfactual experiments replay a mind's recorded stimuli from a
snapshot with chosen events omitted; the report lists what differed in
beliefs, wants, intentions, memories, attention and capability
decisions, in a form introspection can cite.
- Experiments record a protocol (kind, independent variable, controlled
variables, measures), per-variant volition, plan, downstream-by-category
(events reachable from each stimulus through recorded links),
introspection and self-model measures and event ranges; comparisons add
want, intention and plan-capability overlap, measure ranges, a
descriptive architecture share and a downstream delta; reproducibility
is labelled against the previous run of the same definition.
- research.Agency computes want→intention, intention→action, abandonment,
commitment fulfilment and conflict, blocked intentions, replanning,
outcome success and introspection accuracy; MetacognitiveCalibration
relates confidence and expressed uncertainty in replies to later belief
revision, with Brier scores for each half of the period.
- The sandbox test harness gains volition, planning, agency and research
but not the motivation hook, whose wall-clock decay would make replay
comparisons timing-dependent.
A mind's configuration may override model routing per role (llm_roles);
the router honours it for that mind only and fails closed when the named
model is missing or disabled, so a comparison between providers can never
silently fall back to the default. Experiments may declare variants: each
becomes its own fork of the same snapshot with its own configuration,
personality or routing, receives identical stimuli, and is measured. The
results carry one entry per variant and a deterministic comparison: first
divergent stimulus, belief and attention overlap, mean score difference on
shared propositions, and the ranges of memory counts, goal counts, cost and
capability requests. Single-subject definitions are unchanged.
Snapshots, replays and experiments now record the runtime they ran under:
build (module version, VCS commit, modified tree, commit time, Go version,
platform), schema version, a digest of the non-secret configuration that
ignores secret and credential changes, personality version, policy digest,
model routing including per-mind overrides, prompt versions, deterministic
subsystem versions and timezone. A replay compares its identity with the
snapshot's and is an exact-candidate, a different-build (differences
listed) or incompatible (schema differs; the replay stops before running).
The first non-exact step is analysed into events only in the recording,
events only in the replay, and the components they belong to, labelled as
inferred; live model calls are named as their own source of difference.
Migration 0022 is additive; unrecorded identities are reported as such.
- snapshots: checksummed JSON archive of every mind-scoped state table plus
identity/personality/config and the event position; stored, downloadable
- fork: restore into a new mind with all ids remapped; event references are
kept so history before the fork is shared by reference
- export/import: same archive; import is hostile-input validated (size,
allow-listed tables, row caps, column names, checksum, forced mind_id)
- compare: deterministic counts, belief diffs by proposition, personality
and config diffs, event mix
- replay: Runtime.Step for synchronous drivers; sandbox fork driven one
stimulus at a time under a forbidden capability context; recorded model
responses via a replaying router; steps labelled exact / approximate /
diverged with recorded-vs-replayed digests
- experiments: definition (overrides, stimuli, expectations, seed, duration),
background run in a disabled subject mind, stored and exportable results
- migration 0015, API, UI (Snapshots and Replay tabs, Experiments section,
compare page), noemactl snapshots/compare/replay/experiments, docs
Andy Dixon