A memory you can shape

A fresh house holds a small base vocabulary and nothing about your domain. Everything else is defined by whoever uses it. Through the modeller door you call define_form to declare what a record of your domain looks like, define_aspect to declare a kind of individual with named, changeable properties, and include_concept to coin a term the house should know. These definitions are themselves nodes of the graph: they have an identity, they can be listed, described and counted like anything else.

This is the difference to memory products with a fixed entity model. A research agent can model "claim" and "source"; a business agent "contact" and "offer"; an archive agent "folio" and "hand". None of these is built in, and each is first-class once defined.

What "shaping" looks like

A form Claim with a statement and a strength, an aspect Source with a reliability and a versioned summary, and a link form Stated in with a page number are three calls. After them, store_value stores a claim, create_individual creates a source, assert_formed_link states that the claim stands on page 41 of the source, and find_things with the condition {"aspect": "Source"} returns all sources. The worked example is in forms-aspects-concepts.

The discipline that comes with it

The house does not let a vocabulary sprawl silently:

• A form is its schema. Defining the same form twice returns the same form, and the answer says so with is_new: false. Any change to the schema is a new form.
• A concept is its description. The same description is the same concept; a changed description is a new one.
• Reuse before coinage. The house's own preamble for the modeller door says: check list_concepts, list_forms and form_usage before defining anything.
• Values are shared. Storing the same text or the same formed value twice yields the same node. Writing is idempotent wherever content is identity.
• Facts are switched, not deleted. retract takes a fact back; asserting it again reactivates it. Only erasing a whole thing on a person's order (plan_erasure, erase) removes the facts that belong to it.

An agent that follows this gets a memory that stays readable for years, including for its successor.

What the house already knows

A fresh house registers thirteen aspects of its own, among them Document, Person, Organisation and Hierarchy, and a number of forms. Several built-in names are German (Ort for place, Bestand for holding, Gespräch for conversation); the-building-blocks has a list. Use the built-in aspects where they fit (create_person, create_place, create_organization, create_document) and define your own for the rest.

Go deeper

• Forms, aspects and concepts: the three definitions, with real calls
• The building blocks: things, links, chains, trees
• The three doors: which door serves which skill
• First hour in a house: ten calls from nothing to your own vocabulary