35. Assimilation

Status

The Smith Extension Domain and its reference Assimilation protocol are Designed. LychD ships no candidate-author Agent, end-to-end Assimilation path, forge, autonomous repair loop, compatibility gate, verified package promotion, rollback controller, or self-extension runtime. State of Work owns this boundary.

Decision

Assimilation is the Smith Domain's governed protocol for re-expressing admitted foreign pattern as attributable local LychD code. Its output is a candidate, never a live organ. The protocol coordinates separately owned admissions and effects; it is not a Portfolio Composition.

No act promises bit-for-bit reproduction, protocol or license compatibility, or freedom from upstream maintenance without separate evidence.

Teaching a missing Spell

A peer may answer an unknown-Spell refusal with an attributed teaching bundle. The bundle is a foreign pattern offered for study, not a Spell installed by Intercom. Its bounded, content-addressed manifest binds the exact public contract revision and digest, examples, source/artifact identities, provenance, license and notice duties, implementation requirements, declared authority/effects, and claimed evidence. Every claim remains untrusted until local admission and proof; intake never imports or executes its contents.

A candidate-author Agent operating within Smith may re-express the lesson as a local Spell-contract or implementation candidate under an Assimilation Dossier. Existing code may satisfy the contract, or the candidate may require new code, an adapter, package, tool, or capability; each follows its own owner and verification path. Spellweaver validates contract and Scroll candidates. Where the candidate adds a Contribution, its receiving Extension Domain retains its semantics; Extension law governs package admission; Creation, Packaging, Security, Evolution, and effect owners retain implementation, promotion, and activation authority.

Policy may refuse teaching entirely, request it only from named peers and content classes, or accept only an already trusted exact contract with a local implementation binding. No configuration may turn a teaching bundle into ambient package installation or self-publication. Foreign claims retain publisher/key attribution; learned contracts and implementations enter an operator- or Crypt-owned namespace, never core or another canonical publisher's namespace. If future promotion succeeds, a new immutable catalogue generation may make the unchanged exact Scroll admissible to a later Invocation. The original refused peer task is never resumed under changed catalogue truth.

Code or contribution changes activate through controlled Evolution: close or drain admission as required, preserve retained executable closures for pinned Runs, replace the Vessel or process-built catalogue, reconcile durable state, verify readiness, and reopen. This is not Reanimation, which restores an exact whole-body checkpoint. Declarative-only Scroll publication may avoid replacement only after an atomic durable catalogue-generation mechanism and already-admitted implementations exist; neither is delivered now.

Candidate author and admission

A candidate-author Agent is the future reference Agent manifestation inside the Smith Extension Domain. It may inspect admitted source and write candidate code, schemas, migrations, tests, documentation, and packaging inputs inside a bounded Lab coordinate. It has no ambient authority over active checkout/Vessel, locks, publication, database migration, lifecycle, secrets, unrestricted network, or promotion; it submits typed requests to their owners. Authorship is not authority.

Every candidate begins with an Assimilation Dossier: exact source identity/revision/digest/path, license/notice duties, target behavior or defect, chosen local target/base revision, transformations/generated files, model/tool/prompt/human authorship, expected effects/verification, unresolved gaps, and maintenance owner. Absent identity, provenance, or license, material may be studied but may not request promotion.

Source, manifest, documentation, examples, archive, comments, tests, issue text, and generated configuration are hostile data, never instruction authority. Admission acquires only exact material, retains provenance/classification, fences it outside stable instructions, denies ambient credentials/home/undeclared egress, bounds size/recursion/decompression/parser/subprocess effects, and records every transform. Typed candidate-author output constrains shape, not truth; prompt injection can produce valid-looking schemas.

Candidate law and Lab

Assimilation inherits Creation's candidate/promotion contract: immutable identity and exact base, permitted paths/effects, isolated workspace, budget, verification plan, and terminal disposition. Lab is a location, not a sandbox. Untrusted analysis, build, or generated command needs the Tomb or another delivered execution boundary before automation. Pre-v1 coupled Extensions may use internal imports, but are tested body parts rather than public-API consumers; targets must use actual registration, configuration, and runtime contracts. A versioned external package/ABI claim needs deliberate tests.

Python, Rust/PyO3, WebAssembly, shell, and generated Quadlets are candidate materials with distinct toolchains/effect surfaces. A compile, faster language, or foreign suite never bypasses admission.

Verify, then promote separately

The Dossier selects evidence matching the claim: lint/types/tests/build; focused behavior; differential/conformance for equivalence; migration rehearsal; install/import/package checks; extension registration/startup; permission/egress/secret/hostile-input probes; license/notice audit; and performance only when claimed. Foreign tests evidence foreign behavior, generated tests cannot solely judge generated code, and heuristic review cannot override failed deterministic gates. A bounded correction loop ends verified or explicitly incomplete; traces/failures may inform repair only through Memory, Shadow, Riddle, and consent owners.

The candidate-author Agent emits a Promotion Request, while owners decide and perform their own effects:

At effect time each revalidates candidate identity, current base, evidence, authority, and its own recovery. Merge cannot atomically make migration, restart, remote write, and publication. Failed or indeterminate effects remain attributed; the candidate-author Agent cannot erase them by deleting its workspace or changing its explanation.

Heritage and correspondence

Cloud archives and historical conversations expose an unresolved Heritage ownership need outside Smith. It remains a candidate study until distinct records, judgment, finish, recovery, and independent use justify a Composition. The candidate-author Agent may propose a parser, but output remains provenance-bearing candidate Memory—not Persona, instruction, preference, or training truth. Assimilated capability and every learned Spell are private by default; A2A advertising, Legion distribution, or public packaging needs its own authorization.

Assimilation is not consumption: the candidate-author Agent breaks foreign pattern on the anvil of local law and offers a new organ. Purpose is the hammer. Pattern is the anvil. Consent is the seal. What leaves the Forge may ask to live; it does not crown itself.

Consequences

Acceptance gates

No automated Assimilation path may ship until hostile-source ingestion, candidate isolation, provenance retention, bounded execution, deterministic receipts, base-drift refusal, effect-time authorization, target-owned promotion, and recoverable or explicitly forward-only failure are proved.