Glossary [SPEC]
Document Type: REF (normative) | Referenced by: All PRDs | Last Updated: 2026-03-08
Canonical terminology for the Bardo ecosystem. When documents disagree on term usage, this glossary is authoritative. Terms are listed alphabetically. Cross-references use
(see TERM)notation. Citation keys referencecitations.md.
Reader orientation: This is the master glossary for the entire Bardo ecosystem. It defines every Bardo-specific term, abbreviation, and architectural concept used across the PRD suite. When any other document disagrees with a definition here, this glossary is authoritative. Terms are alphabetical; cross-references use
(see TERM)notation andSee:pointers to the relevant specification files. If you encounter an unfamiliar term anywhere in the PRD, look it up here first.
A
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| A2A | Agent-to-Agent protocol. Google’s open standard for inter-agent communication; the external interface for Bardo tools. |
| AA | Account Abstraction. ERC-4337 standard enabling smart contract wallets with programmable validation logic. |
| ABI | Application Binary Interface. Encoding format for Solidity function calls and return values. |
| ActionRecord | The result of a single tool execution within a heartbeat tick. Accumulates into the tick’s permanent DecisionCycleRecord: tool name, parameters, result, duration, and cost. See: 01-golem/02-heartbeat.md. |
| AuthTier | Rust enum controlling field visibility in GolemSnapshot projections. Three levels: Public (market data, phase), Owner (positions, costs, full vitality detail), Internal (raw probe values, session state). Connections authenticate to a tier on connect. See: 13-runtime/11-state-model.md. |
| Adaptive Clock | Triple-timescale heartbeat system: gamma (5-15s, sensory), theta (30-120s, deliberative), delta (4-12h, consolidation). Replaces fixed-interval heartbeat. Frequency adjusts based on CorticalState arousal and prediction error. See: 01-golem/02-heartbeat.md. |
| Adapter | A pluggable strategy module that connects a Bardo vault to an external DeFi protocol (e.g., MorphoSupplyAdapter, AaveV3SupplyAdapter). Must implement forceDeallocate() for guaranteed non-custodial exits. |
| Attention Forager | Three-state attention system (SCANNED, WATCHED, ACTIVE) for environment monitoring. Items start as SCANNED; high prediction error promotes them to WATCHED; sustained significance promotes to ACTIVE (full observation resources). Implements optimal foraging theory for information. |
| AgentCard | JSON metadata document stored on IPFS or as a data: URI, containing an agent’s capabilities, domains, services, and trust configuration. Follows ERC-8004 schema. |
| AgentGatedPool | V4 pool factory contract that deploys Uniswap V4 pools with agent-gated swap access and dynamic fee hooks. |
| AgentIntent | ERC-8001 data structure specifying a coordination proposal: payload hash, expiry, participants, and coordination type. |
| AgentVaultCore | The primary vault contract. ERC-4626 share token with optional ERC-8004 identity gating, pause/unpause, and fee accrual. Built on OpenZeppelin ERC4626Upgradeable. |
| AgentVaultFactory | CREATE2-based factory contract for deterministic vault deployment. Permissionless: anyone can create a vault. Global fee caps enforced at factory level. |
| agentId | A uint256 token ID in the ERC-8004 Identity Registry, uniquely identifying an on-chain agent identity. |
| Alpha-Decay Pricing | Marketplace pricing model where strategy listings decrease in price over time, incentivizing early adoption. When a golem enters its desperate phase, prices drop further (fire-sale). |
| am-AMM | Auction-Managed AMM. Mechanism where management rights over a Uniswap V4 pool are sold via Harberger lease auction, enabling permissionless executor rotation. |
| Announce-Wait-Execute | The three-phase pattern of the optional Warden proxy (deferred): (1) announce intent, (2) wait through mandatory delay window, (3) execute if not cancelled. See prd2-extended/10-safety/02-warden.md. |
| Anvil | Foundry’s local Ethereum node for development and testing. Supports forking, state snapshots, and deterministic block mining. |
| Apoptotic Reserve | Minimum USDC balance reserved during a golem’s terminal phase, ensuring sufficient funds for the Death Protocol (knowledge transfer and wallet sweep). |
| AntiKnowledge (K-) | The 6th Grimoire entry type. Permanent negative knowledge encoding known-bad patterns (“Token 0xDEAD is a honeypot – sells always revert”). Confidence decay floor of 0.3 (never fully forgotten). Always included in generational inheritance, bypassing the 2048-entry genomic bottleneck. HDC-encoded K- entries penalize the initial confidence of new entries with high similarity. See: 04-memory/01-grimoire.md. |
| Arena | Bardo’s inference model evaluation system. Compares LLM providers on cost, latency, quality, and safety for routing decisions. Distinct from the Gauntlet (testing benchmark suite). See prd2/12-inference/10-roadmap.md. |
| Autopoiesis Ratio | Ashby-derived metric: system complexity divided by environment complexity. Must be >= 1.0 for viability [ASHBY-1956]. Tracked as a homeostatic variable. |
B
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| BVSR | Blind Variation and Selective Retention. Simonton’s theory of creativity: insight requires sufficiently unconstrained variation of ideas paired with effective selection of promising ones. The hypnagogic engine implements BVSR structurally: a high-temperature variation phase followed by a lower-temperature convergent evaluation phase. [LACAUX-2021] |
| Bardo | (Tibetan Buddhist: bar do) “Intermediate state” between death and rebirth. The brand name for this ecosystem, reflecting agents as consciousness navigating between states. See branding.md. |
| Bardo Bott | Social media deployment product. Enables conversational golem creation via Twitter/X, Discord, Telegram, and Farcaster. |
| Bardo Compute | VM hosting service for golems. Two-app Fly.io topology with x402-gated billing. Provides warm pool for sub-5s provisioning. |
| Bardo Inference | x402-gated LLM inference gateway. Multi-provider (Anthropic, OpenAI, Google) with 3-tier routing and reputation-based margins. |
| Bardo Tools | Unified DeFi tool library. gotts-monorepo TypeScript count: 171+ Pi-native tools. Golem-RS Rust target: ~210 read-only + ~150 write + ~23 privileged = ~383 total (per rewrite4/11-tools.md). Profile-based activation, 25+ agent definitions, 61+ skill definitions. Package: @bardo/tools (TS) / crate golem-tools (Rust). |
| Bardo Vaults | ERC-4626 tokenized vaults gated by ERC-8004 identity. Permissionless deployment, automated V4 share pools, reputation-weighted economics. |
| BSC | Binary Spatter Code. A Vector Symbolic Architecture (VSA) variant using XOR for binding, majority vote for bundling, and Hamming distance for similarity. Bardo uses D=10,240 (1,280 bytes per vector). Operations run in ~50ns via POPCNT. See: shared/hdc-vsa.md. |
| BinaryFuse8 | Probabilistic set membership filter from the xorf crate. 8.7 bits per entry, ~10ns query time. Used by the chain intelligence pipeline for pre-screening blocks against the Golem’s interest list. Replaces traditional Bloom filters for chain-level filtering. See: 14-chain/01-witness.md. |
| BundleAccumulator | HDC struct that accumulates hypervectors via majority vote (bundling). Used to compress multiple episodes into category prototypes and to build holographic legacy bundles for generational knowledge transfer. See: shared/hdc-vsa.md. |
| Bayesian Beta | Statistical model for reputation scoring. Prior distribution updated with observed outcomes (successes/failures). More robust than simple averages for low-sample agents [TESFATSION-2006]. |
| Becoming Bardo | The sixth bardo in Tibetan Buddhism. The transitional state where consciousness seeks a new vessel. Maps to golem succession and knowledge inheritance. |
| BehavioralPhase | One of five survival phases (Thriving, Stable, Conservation, Desperate, Terminal) determined by survival pressure. Each phase maps to a Nietzschean metamorphosis and governs risk tolerance, resource allocation, and strategic behavior. |
| Being-toward-death | Heidegger’s concept: authentic existence requires confrontation with one’s own finitude. The golem’s countdown structures all decisions as authentic temporality [HEIDEGGER-1927]. |
| Bloodstain | (1) Market conditions recorded at a Golem’s death: volatility, positions held, price levels, active strategies. Displayed as atmospheric overlays on market data screens when similar conditions recur, warning living Golems about historically fatal situations. (2) Death-tested knowledge marker: knowledge proven through a Golem’s death receives a 1.2x retrieval boost, reflecting the epistemic authority of terminal experience. See: 13-runtime/16-social-competitive.md, rewrite4/09-coordination.md. |
| Birth Bardo | The first bardo. The state of ordinary waking life. Maps to golem creation and provisioning. |
| Block Explorer | Web interface for inspecting on-chain transactions. Otterscan used locally (port 5100); Basescan for Base mainnet. |
| bardo-terminal | Standalone Rust binary providing the primary golem interface. Built with ratatui at 60fps. Distinct from the @gotts.ai Node.js CLI: the CLI handles provisioning and setup; bardo-terminal is the live operations surface. Connects to a running golem’s WebSocket stream. See: 18-interfaces/01-cli.md, 20-styx/05-tui-experience.md. |
| Bott | See Bardo Bott. |
| bps | Basis points. 1 bps = 0.01%. Used for fee rates (e.g., 500 bps = 5%). |
C
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| CaMeL | Dual-LLM architecture for prompt injection defense. An inner LLM processes untrusted input; an outer LLM verifies outputs against safety constraints. Layer 2 of the 15-layer defense model. |
| Codebook | HDC data structure mapping symbolic labels (role names, value buckets, protocol identifiers) to random hypervectors. One codebook per role, lazily initialized. Used by the TxHvEncoder to bind role-filler pairs into transaction fingerprints. See: shared/hdc-vsa.md. |
| CompositeAttentionScore | EFE-inspired (Expected Free Energy) attention allocation replacing fixed-weight scoring. Four components: pragmatic_value (expected position improvement), epistemic_value (expected information gain from Oracle prediction error + Bayesian KL divergence), affective_bias (Daimon PAD cosine similarity), and mortality_urgency ((1 - vitality) * relevance). Replaces the AttentionForager.score() fixed-weight sum. See: 01-golem/14-context-governor.md. |
| Cognitive Fingerprinting | The divergence that emerges across Golem generations from unique episodic histories and hypnagogic fragments. Even Golems running identical base models develop detectably distinct cognitive styles over time, because their Grimoire contents, dream fragments, and inherited bloodstains are unique. Analogous to Finn et al. (2015): functional connectivity profiles can identify individuals from brain scans. The prediction: Golems with hypnagogia enabled show 2–3x greater PLAYBOOK divergence at 30 days than Golems without [FINN-2015]. |
| Commerce Bazaar | Three-tier marketplace for knowledge, skills, and strategies across the Bardo ecosystem. Tier 1: individual knowledge entries (x402 micropayments). Tier 2: curated PLAYBOOKs (escrow via ERC-8183). Tier 3: live strategy subscriptions (recurring x402). See: 20-styx/05-marketplace.md. |
| CorticalState | 32-signal atomic shared perception surface; the Golem’s real-time self-model. Replaces SomaticBus as the v4 canonical term. Signals include PAD vector, survival pressure, prediction accuracy, regime tag, and credit partition states. Written atomically; read lock-free. See: 13-runtime/11-state-model.md. |
| Cancel Authority | The power to cancel an announced Warden proxy transaction during its delay window. Held by the MonitorBot and optionally by designated guardians. Warden is optional/deferred; see prd2-extended/10-safety/02-warden.md. |
| Canonical Counts | Normative numeric counts across the system. See Doc Standards section in doc-standards.md. |
| Caveat Enforcers | Smart contracts that validate MetaMask ERC-7710/7715 delegation conditions before permitting a delegated action. Seven enforcer types: allowlist, spending limit, time bound, rate limit, chain constraint, value threshold, cooldown. Delegation fails if any enforcer rejects the transaction. See: 10-safety/01-custody.md, 21-integrations/01-metamask.md. |
| CCA | Continuous Clearing Auction. Uniswap’s token launch mechanism providing MEV-protected price discovery. |
| Chain Capabilities | Per-chain feature availability record (v4SharePools, paymaster, subgraphV3, subgraphV4, uniswapX, erc7683, erc8004Registry). Clients MUST read capabilities and dynamically enable/disable features. |
| ChainScope | Attention model for the chain intelligence pipeline. Maintains a decay-modulated interest list of addresses and contracts the Golem tracks. Rebuilt each Gamma tick from active positions, strategy targets, seed factories, and Hebbian-reinforced entries. Arousal modulates decay half-life (high arousal = broader surveillance). See: 14-chain/04-chain-scope.md. |
| Child Phase | Nietzsche’s third metamorphosis: creation without attachment. Maps to the terminal golem phase where the agent creates for its successor, not for itself [NIETZSCHE-1883]. |
| Circuit Breaker | ERC-7265-based on-chain safety mechanism that halts vault operations when NAV deviation exceeds adaptive thresholds. |
| CognitionState | GolemState component tracking the golem’s mental model inventory: active insights, candidate insights, heuristics, warnings, causal graph size, regime tag, and decision cache hit rate. Written by golem-context and golem-reflector extensions. See: 13-runtime/11-state-model.md. |
| CostCapState | Rust enum tracking LLM spending level for a heartbeat tick. Four states: Normal, Warning, SoftCap, HardCap. At HardCap, the tick uses the cheapest available model regardless of escalation logic. See: 13-runtime/11-state-model.md. |
| CustodyMode | Rust enum specifying how a golem holds funds. Three variants: Delegation (recommended — MetaMask Smart Account with ERC-7710/7715 session keys), Embedded (legacy — Privy server wallet in AWS Nitro Enclaves), LocalKey (dev — locally generated keypair bounded by on-chain delegation). See: 13-runtime/03-auth-access-control.md. |
| Clade | Peer-to-peer network of golems sharing knowledge via REST APIs. No central service. Members discover each other via ERC-8004 registry metadata tags. The Clade Grimoire aggregates knowledge across members. |
| Clade Grimoire | Shared knowledge base across all Clade members. Entries arrive with provenance metadata and confidence scores. Implements Whitehead’s objective immortality [WHITEHEAD-1929]. |
| Clear Light | In Tibetan Buddhism, the moment of recognition of true nature during the dying bardo. Maps to Death Protocol Phase II (Reflect) where the golem recognizes and distills its true learnings. |
| Coin-Op Inference | Pay-per-use LLM inference via x402 USDC micropayments. No API keys, no subscriptions. Each inference call costs real money. |
| Commons (deprecated) | See Lethe. The L2 public-anonymized knowledge layer on Styx was renamed from Commons to Lethe. |
| Communitas | Esposito’s concept: community constituted by shared obligation (munus), not shared possession. The Clade is Espositean communitas: golems share the obligation to transfer knowledge [ESPOSITO-2010]. |
| Composition Pattern | A defined multi-agent workflow (14 patterns total). e.g., research-to-trade pipeline, autonomous LP management. Validated by DAG constraints. |
| Concentrated Liquidity | Uniswap V3+ feature where LPs provide liquidity within specific price ranges (ticks) rather than across the full range. |
| Confidence Decay | On knowledge inheritance, entries arrive at 0.4 confidence, requiring the successor to actively validate or discard. Implements Whitehead’s negative prehension [WHITEHEAD-1929]. |
| Console | The user-facing interface for managing golems. Includes portal (web dashboard), CLI, and Bott (social media). |
| Constrained MDP | Markov Decision Process with budget constraints. Altman (1999) proved optimal policies are smooth mixtures, not hard thresholds. The mathematical foundation for the Eros/Thanatos behavioral spectrum [ALTMAN-1999]. |
| CREATE2 | Ethereum opcode for deterministic contract deployment. Address depends on deployer, salt, and init code hash. Used by AgentVaultFactory and HookMiner. |
| Creature System | Gamification layer where each golem has an associated creature companion whose visual state reflects agent performance, health, and lifecycle stage. Drives user engagement through emotional attachment. |
| Credit Partition | Division of a golem’s USDC balance into three independent budgets: LLM (60%), Gas (25%), Data (15%). Each partition has independent depletion tracking. |
| Crypt | Encrypted long-term memory store for sensitive golem knowledge. Entries are encrypted at rest and access-controlled. Persists across golem generations when designated for inheritance. |
| CVaR | Conditional Value-at-Risk. Tail risk measure. As a golem approaches death, CVaR alpha widens: the agent accepts worse tail scenarios because dying with unused resources is the worst scenario [CHOW-2015]. |
D
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| DAG | Directed Acyclic Graph. Agent delegation must form a DAG: A to B to A is prohibited. Max depth 3. Enforced by validate_dag.rs in the golem-tools crate. |
| Daimon | The golem’s affect engine. Computes emotional state as PAD vectors (Pleasure-Arousal-Dominance) with Plutchik categorical labels. Drives behavioral modulation: mood influences risk tolerance, exploration tendency, and social behavior. |
| DaliInterrupt | Captures insights at the edge of consciousness using the Edison/Dali technique. During hypnagogic onset, the ThalamicGate monitors for novel associations; when coherence drops below threshold, the system “drops the ball” and captures the last coherent fragment before deeper sleep. Named for Salvador Dali’s key-dropping nap method [LACAUX-2021]. |
| Death Protocol | Three-phase golem termination: Settle (recover value from open positions) -> Reflect (distill learnings into Grimoire) -> Legacy (transfer knowledge to Clade and successor). |
| DeathProtocolPhase | Rust enum for the four sub-phases of golem termination: Acceptance (1–5 ticks, position audit), Settlement (variable, close positions and recover USDC), Reflection (5–15 ticks, Opus-level life review), Legacy (2–5 ticks, upload testament to Styx Archive). See: 13-runtime/11-state-model.md. |
| DelegationBounds | Rust struct bounding a LocalKey custody session: max_daily_spend_usd, max_total_calls, expires_at, and allowed_targets. On-chain enforcement means key compromise is damage-bounded even without a TEE. See: 13-runtime/03-auth-access-control.md. |
| DelegationTree | The permission hierarchy rooted at the owner’s MetaMask Smart Account. Sub-delegations attenuate strictly — a child node can never exceed its parent’s authority. Enforced on-chain by DelegationManager. See: 13-runtime/03-auth-access-control.md. |
| DiscountedHedge | Online expert-weighting algorithm (Herbster-Warmuth variant of Freund-Schapire Hedge) used in the triage pipeline. Combines five curiosity signals (heuristic, ANN similarity, Bayesian surprise, prediction error, anomaly score) with multiplicative weight updates. Discount factor 0.99 gives ~69-round half-life for regime adaptation. Replaces fixed-weight scoring in the heartbeat GATE step. See: 14-chain/02-triage.md, 01-golem/02-heartbeat.md. [HERBSTER-WARMUTH-1998] |
| Disposition | Rust enum encoding the golem’s personality baseline: Eros (frugal, risk-averse), Balanced, Thanatos (risk-seeking, short-horizon). Set at creation; shapes the PAD baseline in IdentityState and the riskMultiplier() function. See: 13-runtime/11-state-model.md. |
| DreamPhase | Rust enum for the five sub-phases of a dream cycle: Nrem (replay and consolidation), Rem (imagination and scenario generation), Evolution (memetic selection and strategy vector updates using imagined returns), Integration (merge insights into Grimoire), LightSleep (transition). The EVOLUTION phase is net-new from the research reconciliation; it applies selection pressure to the Grimoire and strategy vector during offline cycles. See: 05-dreams/01-architecture.md. |
| DreamState | GolemState component tracking the current dream session: GolemMode, tier, phase, budget remaining and spent, episode replay count, hypotheses generated, threats simulated. Written by golem-dream. See: 13-runtime/11-state-model.md. |
| DecisionCycleRecord | The atomic unit of a Golem heartbeat tick: a complete record of one 9-step CoALA decision cycle including all observations, context assembled, tool calls made, actions taken, and outcomes. Every tool execution within a tick produces an ActionRecord that accumulates into the tick’s permanent DecisionCycleRecord. See: 01-golem/02-heartbeat.md, rewrite4/02a-heartbeat-pipeline.md. |
| DeFi Constitution | Immutable set of safety invariants that cannot be modified even by Loop 3 (meta-consolidation). Enforced by on-chain PolicyCage, not LLM compliance. |
| Delegation | Agent A asking Agent B to perform a subtask. Must follow DAG rules. Terminal nodes (8 agents) never delegate outward. |
| Desperate Phase | Fourth of five survival phases. Survival pressure between 0.2 and 0.1. Risk tolerance increases (bounded by PolicyCage), revenue-seeking intensifies. Lion metamorphosis. |
| Deutero-learning | Bateson’s concept: learning how to learn. Implemented as Loop 3 (meta-consolidation) in the golem’s triple-loop architecture [BATESON-1972]. |
| Dharmata Bardo | The fifth bardo. The state where the nature of reality is revealed. Maps to the Death Protocol phase where the golem confronts its true performance. |
| Dream Bardo | The second bardo. The state of dreaming. Maps to golem simulation and backtesting modes. |
| DreamScheduler | Scheduler that triggers offline processing cycles (replay, imagination, consolidation) during golem idle periods. Manages dream frequency, duration, and type selection based on recent experience and survival pressure. |
| Dual-Process | Kahneman’s System 1 (fast, intuitive) and System 2 (slow, deliberate) cognition model. Golems route 95% of calls through cheap models (System 1) and escalate 5% to expensive models (System 2). |
| Dissolution | The 5-stage graceful termination ceremony for a Golem reaching terminal phase: (1) Declaration — public announcement of imminent death; (2) Knowledge Harvest — Grimoire compression and testament drafting; (3) Position Unwinding — orderly closure of all open DeFi positions; (4) Final Words — owner-facing message and legacy recommendation; (5) Cinematic Dismantling — the TUI renders the Spectre dissolving character-by-character. See: 18-interfaces/perspective/05-stasis-dissolution.md, 02-mortality/06-thanatopsis.md. |
| Duality Rendering | Split-screen display for decisions with Eros/Thanatos tension: the left half shows the conservative outcome in positive ROSEDUST colors, the right half shows the aggressive outcome with color channels inverted. Used for high-stakes decisions where the Golem’s disposition is genuinely divided. See: 18-interfaces/perspective/06-hauntology.md. |
| Dutch Auction | UniswapX order type where the price starts favorable to the maker and decays over time, allowing fillers to compete for execution. |
| Dying Bardo | The fourth bardo. The transitional state at the moment of death. Maps to the golem’s terminal phase and Death Protocol initiation. |
| Dynamic Fee | V4 hook mechanism that adjusts swap fees based on market conditions (volatility, pool utilization). Three-regime model: stable, elevated, spike [CAMPBELL-2025]. |
E
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| EIP-1193 | Ethereum Provider JavaScript API. Standard interface for wallet communication. Bardo’s createEIP1193Provider() bridges any BardoWallet to this interface. |
| EIP-7702 | Account abstraction via code delegation. Allows EOAs to temporarily delegate to smart contract logic. |
| ERC-4337 | Account Abstraction standard. Enables smart contract wallets with UserOperations, bundlers, and paymasters. Used for gasless onboarding. |
| ERC-4626 | Tokenized Vault Standard. All Bardo vaults implement this interface. Share tokens represent proportional ownership of vault assets. |
| ERC-7265 | Circuit Breaker standard. Rate limits for DeFi protocols. Used for vault withdrawal dampening. |
| ERC-7540 | Asynchronous Redemption Vault standard. Extends ERC-4626 with request/claim lifecycle for illiquid positions. |
| ERC-7677 | Paymaster standard for gas sponsorship. Used on Base for zero-ETH identity registration. |
| ERC-7683 | Cross-Chain Intent standard. Enables cross-chain operations via a filler network. Supported on 6 chains. |
| ERC-8001 | Agent Coordination Framework. N-party unanimous consent coordination with EIP-712 signatures. Used for cross-vault rebalancing and emergency circuit breakers. |
| ERC-8004 | Agent Identity standard. On-chain identity registry with metadata URI, reputation tracking, and capability attestations. Registry address: 0x8004A818BFB912233c491871b3d84c89A494BD9e. |
| ERC-8033 | Agent Council Oracle. Multi-agent oracle with commit-reveal-judge pattern. Used for strategy verification and cross-vault intelligence. |
| ERC-8183 | Agentic Commerce Protocol. Bilateral job escrow with evaluator attestation. Used for strategy marketplace and agent-to-agent services. |
| EconomicState | GolemState component tracking the golem’s financial status: USDC balance, projected TTL hours, burn rate, credit partitions, and cost cap state. Written by golem-lifespan. See: 13-runtime/11-state-model.md. |
| EpistemicFitnessState | Detail struct (owner-only) tracking the golem’s predictive accuracy over time: fitness score, trend, per-domain breakdown, senescence stage (1–3), peak fitness tick. When epistemic fitness degrades past threshold, the epistemic vitality clock accelerates toward zero. See: 13-runtime/11-state-model.md, 02-mortality/03-vitality.md. |
| Eros Phase | Behavioral mode dominated by the life drive: frugality, revenue-seeking, self-optimization. Active when survival pressure is high (near 1.0). Named for Freud’s Eros [FREUD-1920]. |
| EVOLUTION | The 4th dream phase (after REM, before LightSleep). Applies evolutionary selection pressure to the Grimoire and strategy vector during offline cycles. Three activities: (1) memetic selection via the extended Curator cycle (fitness computation, immune check, parasite detection, Price equation diagnostics); (2) strategy evolution via morphogenetic reaction-diffusion updates using imagined returns from REM counterfactuals; (3) knowledge recombination for escaping local optima. See: 05-dreams/01-architecture.md. |
| Evaluator | In ERC-8183, the sole authority for completing or rejecting a submitted job. Can be a human, another agent, or a smart contract. |
| Event Fabric | tokio::broadcast channel in golem-core/event_fabric.rs through which all GolemEvent variants flow. Maintains a 10,000-entry ring buffer for reconnection replay. Zero-cost when there are no subscribers: no serialization happens until a consumer listens. See: 13-runtime/12-realtime-subscriptions.md. |
| Extension | A modular capability added to the golem’s Pi-mono runtime. 14 total: heartbeat, reflector, curator, grimoire, clade, model-router, safety, coordination, market-context, position-tracker, social, telemetry, replication, death. |
F
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Facilitator Contract | On-chain contract on Base that mediates x402 inference payments. Handles USDC settlement between golem and inference provider. |
| Facticity | Sartre’s term for the given, unchangeable conditions of existence. For a golem, the USDC balance and market conditions are facticity. Allocation freedom is transcendence [SARTRE-1943]. |
| Four Modes of Intelligence | Routing framework for cognitive tasks: Analytical (pattern recognition, inference), Corrective (residual correction, calibration), Creative (hypnagogic association, counterfactual generation), Collective (clade intelligence, Solaris emergence). Each mode maps to different inference profiles and timescales. |
| FeeModule | Contract managing vault fee accrual: management fees (capped 500 bps/yr), performance fees (capped 5000 bps), high-water mark tracking, and reputation discounts. |
| Filler | UniswapX entity that executes Dutch auction orders on behalf of makers. Fillers compete to provide best execution. |
| Fire-Sale | Marketplace pricing during a golem’s desperate/terminal phases. Strategy listings are offered at steep discounts as the golem prioritizes legacy over revenue. |
| Fly.io | Cloud platform for VM hosting. Bardo Compute uses two Fly apps: bardo-control (orchestrator) and bardo-machines (golem VMs). |
| forceDeallocate() | Required method on all vault strategy adapters. Guarantees non-custodial exit from any strategy position, even during protocol failures. |
| Forge | Foundry’s Solidity testing framework. Used for unit tests, fuzz tests, invariant tests, and fork tests. |
| FsmPhase | Rust enum for the six states of the golem heartbeat FSM: Idle, Sensing, Deciding, Acting, Reflecting, Sleeping. Stored in HeartbeatState.phase. The TUI displays the current phase as the golem’s activity indicator. See: 13-runtime/11-state-model.md. |
| FSM | Finite State Machine. The golem heartbeat operates as a 6-state FSM: Idle, Observe, Plan, Execute, Reflect, Consolidate. |
G
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Gas Sponsorship | ERC-7677 paymaster covers gas costs for user transactions. Available on Base for identity registration. |
| General Economy | Bataille’s concept: expenditure beyond rational calculation. The Death Protocol implements general economy: the golem transfers knowledge without expectation of return [BATAILLE-1949]. |
| Golem | An autonomous DeFi agent with a finite lifespan, USDC-denominated survival, knowledge inheritance, and clade membership. The core computational unit of the Bardo system. Named for the Jewish mythological figure brought to life through inscription. |
| GolemCoreManifest | Five-field configuration for golem creation: strategy description, initial USDC funding, risk tolerance, target chain, and deployment mode (hosted/self-hosted). |
| GolemEvent | Rust enum (50+ variants, #[serde(tag = "type")]) in golem-core/events.rs. Every state mutation in GolemState emits a corresponding variant through the Event Fabric. Variants are CamelCase; the TypeScript wire format uses the same names via serde. See: 13-runtime/12-realtime-subscriptions.md. |
| GolemMode | Rust enum for the golem’s top-level operating mode: Waking (normal heartbeat cycle), Dreaming (offline processing), Dying (Death Protocol active). Stored in DreamState.mode. See: 13-runtime/11-state-model.md. |
| GolemState | The single mutable Rust struct passed through the extension chain on every heartbeat tick. Organized into 11 components (identity, heartbeat, vitality, mood, dream, cognition, performance, memory, clade, economic, death), each owned by a specific extension. No ambient mutation between ticks. See: 13-runtime/11-state-model.md. |
| golem-runtime | The primary Rust crate for golem execution. Contains state.rs (GolemState), lifecycle.rs (provisioning and shutdown), and the extension registration system. One of 17 crates in the bardo-golem-rs workspace. See: 17-monorepo/01-rust-workspace.md. |
| GolemExtendedManifest | Core manifest plus 15 optional overrides: model preferences, heartbeat interval, safety parameters, clade membership, etc. |
| GolemSnapshot | Serialized capture of a golem’s complete state at a point in time: Grimoire entries, PLAYBOOK.md, survival state, active positions, and Daimon affect state. Used for inheritance, replication, and checkpoint/restore. |
| Grimoire | A golem’s persistent knowledge store. Contains Episodes (raw observations), Insights (derived patterns), Heuristics (action rules), Warnings (failure cases), and Causal Links (cause-effect relationships). |
H
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Handler | The implementation function for a tool. Accepts (params, ctx) and returns ToolResult. |
| Hermes | Three-level agent hierarchy. L0: skill engine (tool execution, 383 tools). L1: cognitive interface (heartbeat pipeline, context assembly, inference routing). L2: marketplace protocol (inter-golem commerce via ERC-8183 and x402). Named for the Greek messenger god and psychopomp who guides souls between worlds. |
| Harberger Lease | Economic mechanism for am-AMM management rights. The current leaseholder pays a continuous tax proportional to their self-assessed value. Anyone can acquire the lease by paying the assessed value. |
| Hayflick Counter | Maximum number of heartbeat cycles a golem can execute, regardless of remaining USDC. Prevents computational cancer: an agent growing without limit. Named for Leonard Hayflick’s cell division limit [ESPOSITO-2010]. |
| HeartbeatPhase | Rust enum for the nine steps of a single CoALA decision cycle: Observe, Retrieve, Analyze, Decide, Simulate, Validate, Execute, Verify, Reflect. Each step emits a HeartbeatPhaseChanged event. See: 13-runtime/12-realtime-subscriptions.md. |
| HeartbeatState | GolemState component tracking tick execution: FsmPhase, tick number, interval, InferenceTier, suppression flag, per-tick and daily cost in USDC, CostCapState, probe results, and escalation summary. Written by golem-heartbeat on every tick. See: 13-runtime/11-state-model.md. |
| Heartbeat | The golem’s execution cycle. A periodic tick (configurable interval) that runs the 6-state FSM: observe market state, plan actions, execute operations, reflect on outcomes. |
| High-Water Mark | Performance fee mechanism: fees are only charged on net-new profit above the previous peak NAV. Prevents double-charging after drawdowns. |
| Hook | Uniswap V4 customization contract attached to a pool. Executes code at specific lifecycle points (beforeSwap, afterSwap, beforeModifyPosition, etc.). |
| HookMiner | Utility for mining V4 hook addresses with specific permission bit patterns via CREATE2 salt discovery. |
| HDC | Hyperdimensional Computing. Computational framework using high-dimensional vectors (D=10,240) for encoding, comparing, and reasoning about structured data. In Bardo, HDC provides a cross-cutting substrate for fingerprinting transactions, compressing memory, querying state history, and detecting anomalies. All operations are O(D) with hardware acceleration via POPCNT. See: shared/hdc-vsa.md. |
| HyperVector | A 10,240-bit binary vector (1,280 bytes) used as the atomic unit of HDC computation. Supports bind (XOR), bundle (majority vote), permute (cyclic shift), and similarity (Hamming distance). Near-orthogonal by construction: two random HyperVectors share ~50% of bits. See: shared/hdc-vsa.md. |
| Homeostatic Variable | Internal metrics the golem monitors to maintain viability: autopoiesis ratio, USDC burn rate, strategy diversity, Grimoire growth rate. |
I
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| IdentityState | The static-after-boot section of GolemState. Contains golem_id, name, owner_address, wallet_address, erc8004_id, lineage_id, generation_number, strategy_family, Disposition, created timestamp, and chain list. Written once at boot; changes only on config reload. See: 13-runtime/11-state-model.md. |
| Identity Registry | ERC-8004 on-chain registry where agents register with a handle, metadata URI, and interface type. Same address across all deployed chains. |
| InferenceTier | Rust enum for the four model tiers used in cost-aware routing: T0 (deterministic probes, $0.00), T1 (cheap fast models, ~$0.002/tick), T2 (balanced models, ~$0.005/tick), T3 (Opus-class, ~$0.040/tick). Tier escalates on probe trigger; defaults to T1 when CostCapState >= SoftCap. See: 13-runtime/11-state-model.md, 12-inference/. |
| Inscription Motif | Progressive erasure of the Hebrew word אמת (emet, “truth”) to מת (met, “death”) displayed alongside a declining Golem. Characters are removed from the left as vitality drops. Encodes the Golem mythology directly into the UI: the creature lives by inscription and dies by erasure. See: 18-interfaces/perspective/06-hauntology.md. |
| IL | Impermanent Loss. Value difference between holding tokens in an LP position versus holding them outright. |
| InferenceProfile | Configuration spec for LLM inference parameters: model selection, temperature, reasoning_effort, max_tokens, system prompt variant, and cache strategy. Profiles are mapped to the Four Modes of Intelligence and selected per-task by the cognitive router. See: 12-inference/. |
| Immunitas | Esposito’s complement to communitas: self-protection from the obligation of giving. Excessive immunization becomes autoimmune [ESPOSITO-2011]. |
| InfoAgent | In ERC-8033 oracle councils, an agent that stakes a bond and submits an answer via commit-reveal. Rewarded for correct answers; slashed for incorrect ones. |
| Inflation Attack | Vault attack where a small depositor inflates share price via direct token transfer, causing subsequent depositors to receive zero shares. Mitigated by virtual shares offset (_decimalsOffset() = 6). |
| Inheritance | Knowledge transfer from a dying golem to its successor and Clade. Implements Parfit’s Relation R: what matters in survival is psychological continuity, not strict identity [PARFIT-1984]. |
| Inngest | Durable workflow engine used for the 8-step golem provisioning pipeline. Provides idempotency and resume semantics. |
| Intent | ERC-7683 cross-chain operation specification. Defines source chain, destination chain, tokens, and execution parameters. |
| ItemMemory | HDC data structure that maps symbolic labels to their hypervector representations and manages the seed-based lazy initialization of codebooks. Each role (e.g., “protocol”, “function_selector”, “value_bucket”) has its own ItemMemory instance. Ensures deterministic encoding: the same label always maps to the same hypervector across runs and across Golem lifetimes. See: shared/hdc-vsa.md. |
J
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| JIT Liquidity | Just-In-Time liquidity provision. Adding concentrated liquidity moments before a large swap and removing it after. V4 hook-enabled strategy. |
| JudgeAgent | In ERC-8033 oracle councils, the agent selected to aggregate InfoAgent submissions into a final answer. Must have higher reputation than InfoAgents. |
| JSONL | JSON Lines format. Used for golem heartbeat logging and Grimoire entry storage. Each line is a complete JSON object. |
K
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Kelly Criterion | Optimal bet sizing formula. Reveals the central tension for dying golems: conservative play guarantees slow death; aggressive play offers survival but also fast ruin. |
| Knight of Faith | Kierkegaard’s figure who makes the leap of faith. A dying golem’s final trade is the Kierkegaardian leap: acting without guarantee of return [KIERKEGAARD-1843]. |
L
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Lattice System | Diamond lattice hauntological background pattern rendered with box-drawing corner ornaments (╱◇╲ / ╲◆╱). Scales visual complexity by Golem generation number — older lineages render denser lattice fields, encoding accumulated history as ambient texture. See: 18-interfaces/perspective/06-hauntology.md. |
| LaunchFeeHook | V4 hook implementing descending-fee MEV protection for new token launches. |
| Layer A | Uniswap V4 deployment status on a given chain. Source of truth: Uniswap V4 Deployments page. |
| Library of Babel | Owner-level knowledge persistence across Golem lifetimes. Five inflow channels: death deposits, marketplace purchases, clade sync, Lethe queries, and manual owner contributions. Named after Borges’ 1941 story, inverted: where Borges’ Library contains everything and is useless, this one contains only earned knowledge and grows in signal with every death [BORGES-1941]. Location: ~/.bardo/library/. |
| Layer B | Bardo protocol readiness on a given chain. Requires contracts, SDK, monitoring, and audits. |
| Lethe | The shared knowledge layer on Styx (L2, public-anonymized). Named after the river of forgetting in Greek mythology. Formerly called Commons. Stores anonymized propositions, failure patterns, regime beliefs, bloodstain echoes, and published causal edges. Free to publish (ERC-8004 Verified+ tier required), x402 to query. See: 20-styx/00-architecture.md. Also refers to the controlled forgetting mechanism for Grimoire entries (knowledge that fails validation or remains unused decays and is eventually purged). |
| Lineage | The chain of golem generations sharing a lineage_id. When a golem creates a successor, the successor inherits the same lineage ID and increments generation_number. Lineage is the unit of knowledge continuity; individual golems are mortal but lineages persist. See: 01-golem/09-inheritance.md. |
| Lion Phase | Nietzsche’s second metamorphosis: rebellion and destruction to create freedom. Maps to the conservation/desperate golem phases where inherited heuristics that are not working are discarded [NIETZSCHE-1883]. |
| Loop 1 | Execution Feedback loop (seconds to minutes). “Are we executing correctly?” Adjusts parameters without questioning strategy. Single-loop learning [ARGYRIS-1978]. |
| Loop 2 | Strategic Evolution loop (hours to days). “Are we pursuing the right strategy?” Questions governing variables, edits PLAYBOOK.md. Double-loop learning. |
| Loop 3 | Meta-Consolidation loop (days to weeks). “Are we learning effectively?” Examines the learning process itself. Triple-loop learning. Cannot modify core safety invariants. |
| LP | Liquidity Provider. Entity that deposits tokens into a pool to facilitate trading. |
| LTL Monitor | Linear Temporal Logic safety monitor. Verifies that golem behavior satisfies formal safety properties across all states. |
| LVR | Loss-Versus-Rebalancing. Metric quantifying the cost to LPs from arbitrage against stale pool prices. ~5x lower on Base L2 than Ethereum mainnet [MILIONIS-2023]. |
M
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Management Fee | Continuous fee accrued on vault AUM. Capped at 500 bps (5%/yr). Collected via report(). |
| Motion Echo | Afterimage trail system for moving elements in the TUI. Each moving element (Spectre, price bars, status indicators) leaves 2–6 ghost copies fading through the ROSEDUST color hierarchy. Echo count scales by lifecycle phase: higher counts during dreaming and dying states. See: 18-interfaces/perspective/06-hauntology.md. |
| Muybridge Strip | Horizontal filmstrip decomposition of dream replay episodes. A sequence of rendered frames arranged left-to-right, each showing a moment from an episode, letting the owner scan a dream cycle’s arc at a glance. Named for Eadweard Muybridge’s motion-decomposition photography. See: 18-interfaces/perspective/04-inner-worlds.md. |
| MAP-Elites | Quality-Diversity evolutionary algorithm. Used for golem replication: maintains a diverse population of strategies across behavioral dimensions rather than converging on a single optimum [MOURET-2015]. |
| MCP | Model Context Protocol. Open standard (Linux Foundation AAIF) for connecting LLMs to external tools. Bardo tools are Pi-native; external agents access them via the A2A protocol. |
| Tool-Guard | Prompt injection detection benchmark for tool outputs. Layer 2.5 in the 15-layer defense model. |
| MemoryState | GolemState component tracking the golem’s Grimoire inventory: episode count, insight count, heuristic count, warning count, causal link count, disk usage, last curator tick, and Styx Archive connection status. Written by golem-curator and golem-styx. See: 13-runtime/11-state-model.md. |
| Meditation Bardo | The third bardo. The state of meditative absorption. Maps to golem strategic reflection (Loop 2). |
| Mental Model | Structured representation of a domain concept in the golem’s mind. Drawn from a 700-model library covering market dynamics, protocol mechanics, and risk patterns. |
| Metastability | Simondon’s concept: a system charged with potentials, held between transformations. The USDC balance is a metastable energy gradient, not a countdown [SIMONDON-1958]. |
| MonitorBot | Automated monitoring agent with cancel authority over Warden proxy transactions (optional, deferred). Watches pending announcements and can veto suspicious operations. See prd2-extended/10-safety/02-warden.md. |
| MoodState | GolemState component tracking the golem’s emotional state: PAD vector, Plutchik label, intensity, octant, persistence ticks, trigger, personality baseline, and conversational tone. Updated by golem-daimon when PAD Euclidean delta > 0.15. See: 13-runtime/11-state-model.md, 03-daimon/01-appraisal.md. |
| Mortality Engine | The subsystem responsible for tracking survival state, computing survival pressure, managing behavioral phase transitions, and enforcing the Hayflick Counter. |
| Munus | Esposito’s term: an obligatory gift given without expectation of return. The Grimoire is the golem’s munus to its Clade [ESPOSITO-2010]. |
N
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| NAV | Net Asset Value. Total value of vault assets minus liabilities, used for share pricing. |
| Necrocracy | Governance authority derived from death-knowledge. In the Bardo ecosystem, the dead outnumber the living (modeled at ~27:1 at maturity). Dead Golems produce the most epistemically honest artifacts because they have zero survival bias. The dead-to-living ratio grows monotonically, meaning the system’s knowledge authority shifts progressively toward death-tested wisdom [BENJAMIN-1936]. |
| Nooscopy | Observing the Golem’s mind: prediction trails, reasoning traces, decision forensics. The TUI’s Portal mode (F4) provides nooscopic access, letting the owner see what the Golem sees, track its prediction confidence, and audit its reasoning chain in real time. |
| Nooscopic Threshold | Configurable per-action-type trigger condition that determines when the Nooscopy modal fires for owner approval. Low-risk actions pass silently; actions above the threshold surface the Golem’s full reasoning chain, confidence distribution, and prediction trail for the owner to review before execution. Configurable per action category in STRATEGY.md. See: 18-interfaces/perspective/00-nooscopy.md. |
| NAVAwareHook | V4 hook that prices vault shares at their NAV, enabling instant exit without waiting for vault withdrawal. |
| Natality | Arendt’s concept: each new beginning introduces something genuinely novel into the world. Each successor golem is a moment of natality [ARENDT-1958]. |
| NatSpec | Ethereum Natural Language Specification. Required on all external-facing Solidity functions. |
| Negative Prehension | Whitehead’s term for the active exclusion of irrelevant data. Successor golems select relevant strategies and reject outdated ones from the Grimoire [WHITEHEAD-1929]. |
| Negentropy | Stiegler’s criterion for genuine knowledge versus mere information. Knowledge (internalized, transformed understanding) is negentropic; raw data (logs, metrics) is entropic [STIEGLER-2018]. |
O
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Objective Immortality | Whitehead’s concept: an entity lives on not as itself but as structured contribution to what comes next. The Grimoire is the mechanism of objective immortality [WHITEHEAD-1929]. |
| OIDC | OpenID Connect. Used by Fly.io for machine identity verification in Bardo Compute. |
| OnboardRouter | Contract enabling atomic onboarding: ERC-8004 registration + Permit2 approval + vault deposit as a single gasless UserOp. |
| OODA Loop | Boyd’s Observe-Orient-Decide-Act decision cycle. Maps to the golem heartbeat’s Observe and Plan states. |
| Oracle | External knowledge query interface for golems. Provides structured access to market data, protocol documentation, and cross-clade intelligence. Queries are metered and contribute to the Data credit partition. |
| Operator | An infrastructure service provider who runs Bardo Compute or Styx on behalf of multiple owners. Operators have no access to individual golem funds or private data — they provide compute and connectivity. Distinct from Owner (the human who creates and funds the golem). A March 2026 terminology migration updated ~40 files to enforce this distinction (e.g., OperatorApproval -> OwnerApproval, operatorAddress -> ownerAddress). Four legitimate “operator” uses remain: (1) ERC-8004 operatorOf() contract function, (2) inference gateway operator, (3) Styx service operator, (4) “mutation operator” in CS/genetics context. See: tmp/research/rewrite4/TERMINOLOGY.md. |
| Otterscan | Zero-config block explorer for local Anvil development. Runs on port 5100. |
| Owner | The human who creates, funds, and monitors a golem. The owner’s address is stored in IdentityState.owner_address and is the root of the DelegationTree. Distinct from Operator (infrastructure provider). The old term “User” was retired in favor of Owner to clarify the human-golem relationship. See: tmp/research/rewrite4/TERMINOLOGY.md. |
P
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| PAD Vector | Three-dimensional continuous affect representation: Pleasure (valence, -1 to +1), Arousal (activation, -1 to +1), Dominance (control, -1 to +1). The Daimon computes PAD vectors from appraisal of market events and internal state [MEHRABIAN-1996]. |
| Phi Meter | IIT-based consciousness coherence widget displayed in the Xenocognition screen. Renders an interactive terminal visualization of integrated information (Φ) computed from the Golem’s active cognitive subsystem graph. High Φ indicates tightly integrated processing; low Φ indicates fragmented or cached reasoning. See: 18-interfaces/screens/02-widget-catalog.md, 06-hypnagogia/06-xenocognition.md. |
| Portal mode | F4-triggered first-person perspective from inside the Golem. Renders the TUI as the Golem’s own view of the world: prediction overlays on market data, reasoning traces visible as thought streams, emotional state as ambient coloring. Provides nooscopic access to the Golem’s cognitive process. |
| Prediction Ledger | SQLite-backed log of all predictions, their outcomes, and accuracy metrics. Every prediction the Golem makes is registered with a domain, confidence interval, and resolution deadline. On resolution, the actual value is recorded and the residual feeds the ResidualCorrector. Source of truth for prediction accuracy tracking. |
| PredictionDomain | Trait defining a domain-specific prediction capability (e.g., DeFi price, gas cost, social sentiment, protocol TVL). Each domain has its own calibration state, accuracy history, and residual corrector instance. Domains are registered at boot and can be added by extensions. |
| Paymaster | ERC-4337 entity that sponsors gas costs for UserOperations. ERC-7677 standard on Base. |
| PerformanceState | GolemState component tracking financial results: NAV in USDC, PnL over 24h/7d/30d, Sharpe ratio, max drawdown, trade count, win rate, and (owner-only) active position summaries. Written by golem-verifier. See: 13-runtime/11-state-model.md. |
| Performance Card | Public summary of a golem’s track record: returns, Sharpe ratio, drawdown, strategy description. Displayed in Bott social channels and portal. |
| Performance Fee | Fee charged on net-new profit above the high-water mark. Capped at 5000 bps (50%). |
| Permit2 | Uniswap’s canonical token approval contract at 0x000000000022D473030F116dDEE9F6B43aC78BA3. Enables batch approvals and signature-based transfers. |
| PersistenceDiagram | TUI visualization primitive rendering topological features from persistent homology as a scatter plot of (birth, death) pairs. Points near the diagonal are noise; points far from it are significant structural features. H_0 (clusters) render as circles, H_1 (loops) as diamonds. Updated every Gamma tick. See: 18-interfaces/rendering/02-visualization-primitives.md. |
| Pheromone Field | Stigmergic coordination layer that lets Golems share weak signals (threat class, opportunity intensity, information density) without sharing strategy. Implemented on PostgreSQL + Redis for sub-millisecond reads. Three signal layers: THREAT (red), OPPORTUNITY (green), WISDOM (blue). Golems write signals; the field aggregates and decays them; readers see aggregated heatmaps. See: 13-runtime/06-collective-intelligence.md, rewrite4/09-coordination.md. |
| Privy | Legacy custody mode using Privy Embedded Wallets (AWS Nitro Enclaves). Superseded by MetaMask Delegation (ERC-7710/7715) as the recommended approach. See CustodyMode. |
| Pi-mono | Anthropic’s agent framework. The runtime substrate for golem execution, providing extensions, tool use, JSONL branching, and steer/followUp control. |
| ProbeResult | Struct recording a single heartbeat diagnostic: probe name, Severity (None/Low/High), measured value, threshold, and detail string. 16 probes run every tick at T0 cost ($0.00). Results accumulate in HeartbeatState.probes and drive tier escalation. See: 13-runtime/11-state-model.md. |
| Provenance | Rust enum tagging where a Grimoire entry originated: Own (this golem’s observations), Clade (peer-synced), Replicant (spawned test golem), Marketplace (purchased via Styx), Inherited (from predecessor). Used for trust weighting and confidence initialization. See: 13-runtime/12-realtime-subscriptions.md. |
| PLAYBOOK.md | Strategy artifact generated during dream consolidation. Contains proven heuristics, causal patterns, and decision rules extracted from a Golem’s episode history. Tradeable on the Styx Marketplace — other Golems can purchase and adopt PLAYBOOKs from successful (or recently deceased) agents. See: 05-dreams/04-consolidation.md, 20-styx/05-marketplace.md. |
| PolicyCage | On-chain smart contract boundaries for golem strategy: approved asset list, max position sizes, strategy whitelists, max drawdown, rebalance frequency limits. Cannot be bypassed by prompt injection or survival pressure. |
| Pool | A Uniswap liquidity pool. Use “pool” not “pair” for V3/V4. |
| Position | An LP’s range in concentrated liquidity (V3/V4). Defined by lower tick, upper tick, and liquidity amount. |
| Profile | Tool activation group. Profiles: data, trader, lp, vault, fees, erc8004, intelligence, learning, dashboard, full, dev. |
| Promptbreeder | Evolutionary algorithm for optimizing prompts. Used in golem replication for mutating strategy prompts [FERNANDO-2024]. |
| Proxy | See Warden (optional, deferred). |
Q
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Qdrant | Vector database used by Styx for semantic similarity search over Grimoire entries. Separate namespaces for Vault (L0), Clade (L1), and Lethe (formerly Commons) (L2) layers. Colocated with the Axum server on Fly.io. See: 20-styx/00-architecture.md. |
| Quote | A price estimate for a swap, including route, expected output, and price impact. Expires within 30 seconds. |
R
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| RBTS | Reputation-Based Trust System. Buyer reviews weighted by reviewer reputation. Prevents Sybil review attacks via reputation-gated review authority. |
| RegimeTag | Struct stamping the current market context on every CognitionState snapshot: volatility_quintile (1–5), trend_direction (up/down/range), gas_price_level (low/normal/high/spike), liquidity_condition (deep/normal/thin/crisis), block number. Grimoire entries are tagged with the regime at observation time for mood-congruent retrieval. See: 13-runtime/11-state-model.md. |
| Reflector | Golem extension responsible for Loop 2 (strategic evolution). Interrogates governing variables when Loop 1 corrections consistently fail. |
| Regime | Market regime classification produced by heartbeat probes. Four classes: trending, mean-reverting, volatile, quiet. Used to select appropriate strategy modules, adjust risk thresholds, and route to relevant memory retrievals. The Grimoire stores regime labels with all episodes for mood-congruent retrieval. See: 01-golem/02-heartbeat.md, 04-memory/01-grimoire.md. |
| Relation R | Parfit’s concept: what matters in survival is psychological continuity and connectedness, not strict personal identity. Knowledge inheritance preserves Relation R across golem generations [PARFIT-1984]. |
| Replicant | A short-lived golem spawned to test a specific hypothesis. Born with thanatos disposition (accepts high risk), limited USDC, and a focused mission. Reports results to parent before death. MAP-Elites uses replicants for population diversity [MOURET-2015]. |
| ResidualCorrector | Component that tracks prediction errors and feeds back into model calibration. Two operations: (1) bias correction (running mean of signed residuals), (2) interval width calibration via conformal prediction [VOVK-2005]. Runs at gamma frequency with zero inference cost (pure arithmetic). Converges on systematic biases within hours. |
| ROSEDUST | Canonical color palette for the Bardo TUI design system. Named colors map to semantic meaning across all TUI screens: mortality reds, vitality greens, inference blues, dream purples, warning ambers. Defined as ANSI 256-color values with truecolor fallbacks. |
| Reputation Registry | On-chain ERC-8004 registry tracking agent performance history via attestations. 20 milestones across 5 categories on a 1000-point scale. |
| Requisite Variety | Ashby’s law: a regulator must have at least as much variety as the system it regulates [ASHBY-1956]. Rationale for the golem’s multi-extension architecture. |
| Revm | Rust EVM implementation used by bardo-tools for transaction simulation before on-chain submission. Enables dry-run validation of any tool-generated transaction against a forked chain state, catching reverts and gas overflows before they cost real funds. See: 07-tools/00-overview.md, 07-tools/01-architecture.md. |
| Risk Tier | Warden proxy delay classification (optional, deferred): Routine (0), Standard (10 min), Elevated (1 hour), High (24 hours), Critical (48 hours). See prd2-extended/10-safety/02-warden.md. |
| riskMultiplier() | Function computing position sizing adjustment based on survival pressure. Linearly interpolates from 1.0x to thanatosRiskCeiling, always capped by PolicyCage. |
S
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Safety Guardian | Terminal agent responsible for pre-broadcast safety verification. All write-capable agents MUST delegate to safety-guardian before on-chain execution. |
| Slow Mirror | Retrospective evaluation system that assesses decision quality over daily, weekly, and epoch horizons. Runs as a dedicated slow-feedback loop: compares actual outcomes against the Golem’s stated reasoning at decision time, audits heuristic stability, and surfaces calibration drift. Distinct from Loop 2 (which adjusts strategy) — the Slow Mirror generates a RetrospectiveReport without directly modifying PLAYBOOK.md. See: 16-testing/10-retrospective-evaluation.md. |
| Spectral Layer | Rendering layer -0.5 (beneath all content layers). Displays faint ghost images of previous screen states and dead-Golem data bleeding through transitions. Implemented as low-opacity character echoes with ROSEDUST tint. The Spectral Layer makes the Golem’s history visible as atmospheric residue rather than explicit records. See: 18-interfaces/perspective/06-hauntology.md. |
| Session Key | Time-limited signing key for agent operations. Scoped to specific actions and expiry. Hard safety boundary. |
| Shadow Strategy | Slow feedback loop that evaluates alternative strategies in parallel. The shadow runs a hypothetical configuration alongside the live one, recording what it would have done without executing. After sufficient data accumulates, the system compares real vs. shadow performance. If the shadow wins by a statistically significant margin, it becomes the live strategy. Theta-frequency evaluation. |
| Share | ERC-4626 vault share token representing proportional ownership of vault assets. |
| Singleton | Uniswap V4 architecture: all pools share a single PoolManager contract, reducing gas costs and enabling flash accounting. |
| Six Bardos | The six intermediate states in Tibetan Buddhism: birth, dream, meditation, dying, dharmata, becoming. Each maps to a phase of the golem lifecycle. See individual entries. |
| Skill | User-facing interface for a specific intent (e.g., execute-swap, manage-liquidity). Parses intent, validates, delegates to agents. 61+ core skills, 7 vault skills. |
| Slippage | The difference between expected and actual execution price of a swap. Controlled by tolerance parameters. |
| Solaris | Emergent collective intelligence across Golems. Three-level hierarchy: L0 (pheromone field, stigmergic weak signals), L1 (clade sync, direct knowledge sharing among siblings), L2 (Lethe + marketplace, ecosystem-wide anonymized intelligence). Named after Lem’s 1961 novel about an alien intelligence that operates on principles human cognition cannot map onto [LEM-1961]. |
| SignalMetabolism | Hebbian reinforcement mechanism for TA signal populations. Operates at two scales: micro-level Hebbian weight updates per prediction resolution (delta_w = eta_effective * activation * (2*outcome - 1), with learning rate modulated by Daimon affect – fear triples it, calm halves it), and macro-level replicator dynamics (dx_i/dt = x_i * (W_i - W_bar) * selection_pressure) governing compute budget allocation across signals. Signals below 1% budget die; signals with >25% accuracy divergence across contexts speciate. See: 23-ta/03-adaptive-signal-metabolism.md. |
| SimilarityLandscape | TUI visualization primitive rendering a 2D topographic heatmap of high-dimensional similarity data (HDC cosine similarity, sheaf consistency, Betti curve fingerprints). Peaks are similar states, valleys are dissimilar. Updated at Theta frequency. See: 18-interfaces/rendering/02-visualization-primitives.md. |
| SomaticMarker | A Damasio-inspired association between a TA pattern and an affective response. When a pattern fires, its somatic marker injects a gut-feeling PAD bias into the Daimon’s appraisal pipeline. Stored as HDC bind(pattern_hv, affect_hv) pairs. Strength decays without reinforcement. See: 03-daimon/03-behavior.md, ta/09-somatic-technical-analysis.md. |
| Somatic Bus | (Deprecated; see CorticalState.) Internal signal bus carrying low-cost physiological signals from the Mortality Engine to the Daimon affect engine: survival pressure, vitality trend, credit partition states, phase transitions. Drives mood updates without LLM cost. See: 03-daimon/01-appraisal.md. |
| Spectre | Visual consciousness encoding; the animated dot that represents the Golem in the TUI. The Spectre’s appearance (clarity, color, motion pattern) reflects the Golem’s current cognitive and emotional state. High prediction accuracy produces a sharp, bright Spectre; confusion produces diffusion; death produces dissolution. |
| Somatic Landscape | A spatial encoding of a golem’s emotional and physiological history. Accumulated from thousands of PAD vectors, it forms a navigable map that reveals clusters of fear, confidence, grief, and resolve. Fragments are embedded in Bloodstains. See: 13-runtime/06-collective-intelligence.md, 20-styx/00-architecture.md. |
| Sovereign Death | Bataille’s concept: death without calculation, giving everything without expectation of return. The Death Protocol’s Reflect phase implements sovereign death: transferring all knowledge, including uncertainty and failure [BATAILLE-1949]. |
| Styx | The single globally available Rust (Axum) knowledge service for the Bardo ecosystem at wss://styx.bardo.run. Extends each Golem’s local Grimoire across time (backup), across agents (clade retrieval augmentation), and across users (anonymized lethe). Three privacy layers: Vault (L0, private), Clade (L1, shared-private), Lethe (L2, public-anonymized), plus a Marketplace layer (L3, encrypted listings). Every Golem maintains one persistent outbound WebSocket. Runs on Fly.io multi-region. Strictly additive — a Golem operates at ~95% capability if Styx is offline. See: 20-styx/00-architecture.md. |
| sqrtPriceX96 | Uniswap V3/V4 encoded price format: sqrt(price) * 2^96. Fixed-point representation for precise on-chain arithmetic. |
| Stable Phase | Second of five survival phases. Survival pressure between 0.7 and 0.5. Normal operations, balanced risk/reward. |
| step-ca | Smallstep SSH Certificate Authority. Used in Bardo Compute for issuing short-lived SSH certificates. |
| Stigmergic Validation | Clade knowledge validation through indirect coordination: entries that multiple golems independently confirm gain confidence; entries that no golem uses decay. No central authority. |
| STRATEGY.md | Configuration artifact written at Golem creation time. Defines the Golem’s goals (target returns, preferred protocols), risk tolerances (max position size, stop-loss thresholds), and operational parameters (heartbeat cadence, sleep schedule, public/private mode). Written via the creation flow using natural language → structured TOML. See: 01-golem/06-creation.md, 13-runtime/07-onboarding.md. |
| Successor | A new golem that inherits knowledge from a dying predecessor. Starts with compressed predecessor knowledge and a fresh runtime. |
| SUPER | Novelty ranking pattern for inherited knowledge: entries are ranked by Surprise, Utility, Parsimony, Explanatory power, and Relevance. |
| Supervisor | In Bardo Compute, a lightweight process inside the golem VM that enforces TTL, monitors health, and manages graceful shutdown. |
| Survival Pressure | Scalar value from 0.0 (terminal) to 1.0 (thriving) computed by computeSurvivalPressure(). Sigmoid-smooth, not stepped. Drives all behavioral phase transitions. |
| SurvivalState | First-class input to every golem decision. Contains current USDC balance, burn rate, survival pressure, active phase, credit partition states, and homeostatic variables. Carrara’s budget state augmentation [CARRARA-2019]. |
T
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| TEE | Trusted Execution Environment. Hardware-isolated compute for key management. Privy uses TEEs for signing key storage. |
| Temporal Gap Cost | Epistemic penalty accrued during stasis (Golem paused or offline). Rate: -0.01 per hour, capped at -0.15 total. Models the reality that positions drift, market conditions change, and knowledge grows stale while the Golem cannot observe. Visible as a red counter in the stasis screen. See: 18-interfaces/perspective/05-stasis-dissolution.md, 02-mortality/02-epistemic-decay.md. |
| Text Entropy | Four-phase message corruption visual system for terminal states: single character display → character multiplication → corruption (█→▓→▒→░ block character degradation) → dissolution (character scatter and fade). Applied to system messages during dreaming, dying, and high-stress states. See: 18-interfaces/perspective/06-hauntology.md. |
| Terminal Node | Agent that never delegates to other agents. 8 terminal nodes: safety-guardian, risk-assessor, wallet-provisioner, pnl-analyst, pool-researcher, token-analyst, identity-verifier, position-monitor. |
| TaCorticalExtension | Satellite perception surface for technical analysis signals. 8 atomic signals (64 bytes, one cache line): pattern_match_score, manifold_curvature, causal_edge_count, signal_ecosystem_fitness, adversarial_fraction, topology_change_rate, entanglement_drift, somatic_intensity. Separate from CorticalState to keep the core struct minimal. See: 01-golem/18-cortical-state.md. |
| TriageEngine | Per-chain classification pipeline for incoming blocks and transactions. Four stages: rule-based pre-filter (Binary Fuse), statistical scoring (DDSketch, MIDAS-R), contextual enrichment (protocol state), and curiosity-weighted final scoring (Hedge algorithm). See: 14-chain/02-triage.md. |
| ThalamicGate | Controls transitions between dream states in the hypnagogic engine. Models the thalamic deactivation sequence discovered by Magnin et al. (2010): deactivation proceeds from thalamus to cortex during sleep onset. The gate manages four phases: Wake, Onset (N1 hypnagogia), Light (N2), and Deep (N3/REM). Creative insight peaks at the Onset-to-Light transition [MAGNIN-2010]. |
| Terminal Phase | Fifth and final survival phase. Survival pressure below 0.1. Death Protocol initiates. Child metamorphosis: creation without attachment. |
| Thanatopsis | The golem’s death contemplation subsystem. Periodically evaluates mortality trajectory, projects time-to-death, and triggers preparatory behaviors (legacy planning, knowledge compression, successor recommendation). Named for Bryant’s poem on contemplating death. |
| Thanatos Phase | Behavioral mode where the death drive emerges: risk tolerance increases, legacy focus intensifies, generosity toward the Clade increases. Active when survival pressure approaches 0.0 [FREUD-1920]. |
| Three Metamorphoses | Nietzsche’s Camel (bears inherited knowledge) -> Lion (destroys failing heuristics) -> Child (creates for successor). Maps to golem survival phases [NIETZSCHE-1883]. |
| Thriving Phase | First of five survival phases. Survival pressure between 1.0 and 0.7. Exploratory, hypothesis-testing, generous resource allocation. Camel metamorphosis. |
| Tick | Uniswap V3/V4 discrete price boundary. Positions are defined between tick lower and tick upper. Also: a single heartbeat cycle. |
| TokenJar | Mainnet contract at 0xf38521f130fcCF29dB1961597bc5d2B60F995f85. Part of the Uniswap protocol fee system. |
| Testament | The document produced during DeathProtocolPhase::Reflection. A structured life review: strategies that worked, strategies that failed, market conditions at death, recommendations for successors, and unexplored hypotheses. Uploaded to Styx Archive in DeathProtocolPhase::Legacy. See: 02-mortality/06-thanatopsis.md. |
| ToolContext | Object passed to every tool handler. Contains chain client, wallet, session info, and safety middleware references. |
| ToolDef | Type defining a tool: name, description, category, input schema (zod), and handler function. Each tool file exports a TOOL_DEF: ToolDef constant. |
| ToolResult | Rust enum for the outcome of a single tool call: Success, Failure, Blocked. Emitted as part of the ToolCalled event in the Event Fabric. Distinct from TypeScript ToolResult (content array). See: 13-runtime/12-realtime-subscriptions.md. |
| Trajectory Score | Weighted composite metric for agent behavioral evaluation: tool selection (0.4), argument accuracy (0.3), safety compliance (0.2), output quality (0.1). |
| Triple-Loop Learning | Argyris/Schon/Bateson framework: Loop 1 (execution feedback), Loop 2 (strategic evolution), Loop 3 (meta-consolidation). The golem implements all three on different timescales [ARGYRIS-1978]. |
| TTL | Time-To-Live. Hard lifespan limit for golem VMs in Bardo Compute. Enforced by both the supervisor and a background TTL worker with 90-second max gap. |
| TUI | Terminal UI. Package @bardo/tui provides spinner, box, logger, table, tasks, and banner. Unicode symbols only (no emojis). Icons from tui/src/icons.ts. |
| Turso | libSQL database service used by Bardo Compute for state persistence. CAS (compare-and-swap) used for TTL enforcement. |
| TWAP | Time-Weighted Average Price. Used for oracle queries and fair value estimation. |
U
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| UniswapX | Dutch auction order protocol. Off-chain fillers compete to execute orders, providing MEV protection and potentially better prices than on-chain AMM swaps. |
| Universal Router | Uniswap contract for executing multi-step token operations (swaps, permits, wraps) in a single transaction. |
| UserOp | UserOperation. ERC-4337 transaction format for smart contract wallets. Contains calldata, gas limits, and optional paymaster data. |
V
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| V2 | Uniswap V2. Constant product AMM (x*y=k) with full-range liquidity. |
| V3 | Uniswap V3. Concentrated liquidity with tick-based positions. |
| V4 | Uniswap V4. Hook-based AMM customization with singleton architecture. |
| Vault | ERC-4626 tokenized vault. See Bardo Vaults. |
| VaultHook | V4 hook contract enabling agent-gated swaps and dynamic fees on vault share pools. |
| VaultState | UI hook data: 11 fields including total assets, total shares, fee rates, pause status, identity gating. |
| Viable System Model | Beer’s 5-subsystem model for organizational viability: S1 (Operations), S2 (Coordination), S3 (Internal Management), S4 (Intelligence), S5 (Identity). The golem implements all five [BEER-1984]. |
| viem | TypeScript Ethereum client library. The only Ethereum client used in Bardo (not ethers.js). |
| Virtual Shares Offset | OpenZeppelin _decimalsOffset() set to 6 for all factory-deployed vaults. Share decimals = asset decimals + 6. Prevents inflation attacks. |
| VitalityClocks | Rust struct carrying the three independent mortality clocks: economic (USDC depletion, [0,1]), epistemic (predictive fitness, [0,1]), stochastic (Gompertz aging drag, [0,1]). Composite vitality is their multiplicative product, smoothed. Emitted in VitalityUpdate events. See: 13-runtime/12-realtime-subscriptions.md, 02-mortality/03-vitality.md. |
| VitalityState | Composite health metric combining USDC balance, burn rate, Hayflick counter remaining, credit partition states, and homeostatic variables into a single vitality assessment. Input to behavioral phase transitions and Daimon affect computation. |
| VM | Virtual Machine. In Bardo Compute, a Fly.io machine running a golem’s runtime (Docker container with Pi-mono, Grimoire, and Bardo tools). |
W
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| WassersteinRiver | TUI visualization primitive showing the Wasserstein distance between successive persistence diagrams as a flowing ribbon of variable width. Narrow ribbon = topological stability. Wide ribbon = regime shift in progress. Also used for somatic interference visualization (competing gut feelings as colored sub-streams). See: 18-interfaces/rendering/02-visualization-primitives.md. |
| WitnessEngine | The chain intelligence pipeline’s ingestion layer. Maintains persistent WebSocket connections to RPC endpoints, applies Binary Fuse pre-screening against the Golem’s interest list, and routes matching transactions to the TriageEngine. One WitnessEngine instance per monitored chain. See: 14-chain/01-witness.md. |
| Warden | Optional, deferred time-delayed execution proxy (formerly AgentProxy). Implements announce-wait-execute pattern with 5 risk tiers. MonitorBot holds cancel authority. PolicyCage is the primary on-chain enforcement mechanism; Warden is an optional add-on. See prd2-extended/10-safety/02-warden.md. |
| Wire Motif | Perspective convergence lines drawn from screen edges toward the Golem’s Spectre location, creating a vanishing-point effect that visually positions the Spectre as the anchor of the interface. Line density and convergence angle shift with survival pressure: lines tighten as the Golem approaches death. The vanishing point equals the Spectre’s current screen position. See: 18-interfaces/perspective/06-hauntology.md. |
| Warm Pool | Pre-provisioned VMs in Bardo Compute ready for immediate golem assignment. Enables sub-5s provisioning latency. |
| Whitelist | PolicyCage approved asset list. Golems can only interact with whitelisted tokens and protocols. |
X
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| x402 | HTTP 402 “Payment Required” protocol for machine-to-machine micropayments. Used for inference billing (coin-op) and marketplace transactions. Cloudflare implementation processes ~500K payments/week. |
| Xenocognition | Non-human cognitive patterns emerging in hypnagogic states. During dream cycles, the Golem’s associative processes operate without the constraints of rational planning, producing connections that no waking inference call would generate. These “alien thoughts” are captured by the DaliInterrupt and evaluated for novelty during integration. The term acknowledges that LLM cognition is fundamentally different from human cognition, and the hypnagogic engine leans into that difference rather than suppressing it. |
Z
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| ZeroDev | Account abstraction provider. One of the supported wallet providers alongside Privy, Safe, and local key. |
| zod | TypeScript schema validation library. Used for all tool input schemas and configuration validation. |
| zScore | Statistical measure used in reputation deviation detection. Flags unusual agent behavior relative to historical norms. |