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Foundation for the persistent, inspectable cognitive runtime: README, implementation plan with phases and risk register, architecture, security model, threat model, contributing guide, eight ADRs covering the global workspace, event immutability, memory representation, LLM abstraction, capability system, authentication, frontend and storage. Includes Makefile, env example, compose stack (pgvector) and Dockerfile skeleton, plus a record of the development environment assumptions.
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ADR-0001: Global-workspace cognitive cycle with deterministic attention
Date: 2026-09-14
Status: Accepted
Context
Noema needs many concurrent cognitive processes to compete for limited "attention" in a way an operator can inspect and reproduce. Letting an LLM decide what to think about would be opaque, expensive and non-deterministic.
Decision
Each mind runs a cycle loop. Registered Process implementations observe a BrainState and return ThoughtCandidates. A pure-Go attention scorer computes a weighted sum over named features with per-mind weights, records every candidate and its component scores as events, and admits the top-K into a capacity-limited workspace. Admitted thoughts are broadcast (as state and as an event) and dispatched to executive handlers. Cycles are triggered by new events or mode timers, never by a fixed hot loop.
Consequences
- Attention is explainable ("why did A win?") and unit-testable for determinism.
- LLM cost is bounded per cycle because processes, not the cycle, decide when to call models within budgets.
- Adding a cognitive faculty means adding a
Process; the core does not change. - Workspace capacity and weights are tunables exposed in the UI with audit trails.
Alternatives considered
- Single LLM agent loop with tools: opaque, vendor-bound, cannot show why.
- Actor-per-process with message passing: more machinery for no inspectability gain; concurrency is still bounded by a pool in the chosen design.