36. Vision

Status

Vision admission is Partial. The current v1 compatibility spine carries immutable ArtifactRef metadata in an Intent, projects image media types to the image modality, distinguishes the closed vision family from image-capable chat, and filters declarations by required input modality. Those family labels prove schema and routing metadata only, not an executable visual interface.

It does not upload, store, authorize, materialize, decode, normalize, or transport image bytes. Bridge does not forward artifact modalities into dispatch. No Prism package, Reliquary backend, OCR tool, or managed visual provider ships. State of Work owns that boundary.

Decision

Prism is the visual-grounding and transformation Domain. It turns an admitted source artifact into bounded derivatives and observations while retaining source identity, classification, provenance, and declared information loss.

Visual language is typed per job, not inherited from the host or Altar locale. Original prompt, requested model-facing language, permitted detection, translation or enhancement revision, and declared loss remain separate facts. A translated prompt is a derivative instruction, not a replacement for the operator's visual direction; a model that happens to understand a language has not passed the image, video, typography, or control bake for that language.

A Coven may group compatible local services for operation. It is not a dispatch unit: manifesting one visual faculty does not manifest the rest.

Form does not establish a universal spatial Dispatcher family. Each future implementation must declare its exact operation, accepted modalities, produced artifact facets, tool or effect semantics, and recovery contract; a repository that can emit a mesh is not thereby a general 3D runtime.

Sight likewise does not establish another capability family or turn image-capable chat into precise perception. A finite Sight result binds every estimate to original source pixels and, for video, exact frame identity, PTS, and rational timebase through the full transform chain. Masks, depth and flow remain typed derivative artifacts; confidence is model evidence rather than a universal probability; a local track id is not identity; and an uncovered region or skipped frame cannot prove absence.

A camera or feed is not a finite SightJob extended indefinitely. Its future session binds capture purpose and authority, source and stream epoch, privacy masks, active window, viewers, retention, bounded queues, sampling and drop policy, gaps, and downstream consumers. A proved contiguous transport reconnect may continue the same epoch; otherwise reconnect closes it, and every new epoch receives a new track namespace. Observation grants no PTZ, recording, robot, game, or other effect authority.

Form owns the exact skeleton, hierarchy, rest and bind pose, skinning, morph controls, and rig revision. Kinesis owns structured curves and their technical motion derivatives. A pose observation is not a motion clip; a rig is not proof of compatible animation; moving pixels are not reusable curves; and a clip is not an engine controller or an authorized world effect. KinesisJob@1 acts on finite admitted material and returns a typed MotionAssetSet@1 or, for validation, MotionFindingSet@1; later live motion requires a separate LiveKinesisSession@1 with bounded queues, clock and calibration epochs, drop policy, consent, retention, and consumers. Neither contract inherits source capture, creative acceptance, engine, avatar, robot, or publication authority.

A portable Form assembly remains spatial material rather than a playable engine world. Foundry owns engine-native scene hierarchy, placements, collision and physics meaning, navigation, streaming, animation-controller use, gameplay bindings, scenario evidence, and build derivatives. Import or a beauty render proves none of those facts.

Custody before sight

The Reliquary owns source bytes before Prism acts. Its durable reference binds artifact identity and SHA-256 digest, media type and byte size, classification and owning Principal, plus custody and retention policy. The future materializer rechecks authority on every read. ArtifactRef is neither byte custody nor a bearer token; a provider URL is neither durable custody nor permission.

Decoders receive hostile input. Admission bounds supported formats, dimensions, frames, pages, geometry, vertices, faces, nodes, materials, textures, scene depth, animation channels, bone influences, points, splats, voxels, archive expansion, decompression, metadata, and parser or compute resources. Media-type labels are claims to verify. Embedded links, external URIs, profiles, scripts, drivers, plug-ins, scene procedures, and metadata receive no network or execution authority.

One optic path

admit source → authorize materialization → inspect and decode → admit declared transform or effect
→ resolve an exact finite tool or dispatch an eligible provider → retain grounded observation or derivative

Each Lens transformation records its exact parent, operation and implementation revision, parameters, result artifact and digest, and loss from crop, resize, compression, frame selection, or color conversion. The source remains available according to retention policy; a thumbnail, OCR result, or caption cannot silently replace it.

Provider adapters may use Pydantic AI BinaryContent, Base64, a tensor, or a provider handle. Those are request representations, never the universal artifact format.

Dispatch, egress, and result

A Pattern asks for an exact semantic interface, operation, typed material, and feature facts. Current v1 can only project general analysis as vision plus image and general reasoning as chat plus image; precise Sight, Scanner, Lens, Image, Video, Form, and Kinesis work requires its own declared service or tool contract. Generated visual output never arises merely because a chat capability accepts visual input. The Dispatcher admits only an eligible capability. For an otherwise eligible managed binding that is not WARM, Dispatcher returns HardwareTransitionRequired; the requesting Run enters Graph Stasis while Orchestrator converges readiness, then re-dispatches. In current source, however, even a WARM v1 vision declaration fails closed at grant issue because no typed visual surface exists; readiness convergence cannot manufacture one. A live pause need not become a Reanimation boundary. Prism cannot evict a provider, revoke a lease, raise priority, or infer remote fallback. Declared coexistence and measured operator evidence, not a universal VRAM formula, decide whether visual and reasoning providers can remain resident together.

A Portal additionally needs source-and-derivative classification eligibility, explicit egress policy, consent where required, and a cost bound. A caption cannot launder restricted pixels; Security evaluates every source and derivative.

A grounded observation names the source and derivative chain; relevant page, frame, time, or region; task; producing provider or deterministic revision; output; and suitable uncertainty. It also says whether it is extraction, deterministic geometrical measurement, learned estimate, or interpretation. OCR is attributed extraction, a caption interpretation, and generated or edited image, video, audio-video, mesh, scene, voxel, or structured-motion material a new artifact set with effect provenance. Fluent output never becomes source truth, and conversion between spatial or motion representations creates a new derivative with declared loss.

A provider that returns synchronized audio and video still creates one technical attempt and one compound provenance parent. Prism records the container, stream digests, shared timebase, and technical settlement; semantic adoption then follows the declared role. Voidlight owns visual/VFX acceptance, Riffmaw music, Language Edition timed-language material, and Broadcast picture-bound sound and the final audiovisual relation. Inseparable streams must be accepted or refused for the declared compound use. Provider shape and a generate_sound flag grant none of those judgments.

Consequences and acceptance

Prism keeps vision, multimodal chat, OCR, transforms, and generation composable while preserving the path from result to source. It also makes custody, safe decoding, derivative storage, retention, and provider loss first-class costs.

It cannot move beyond the current schema seam until focused evidence proves upload and custody, principal-bound materialization, hostile-media limits, transform lineage, modality forwarding, local and Portal policy, provider conversion, grounded results, retention/deletion, and failure recovery.