Kernel

A cognet can't touch anything outside its own world. No files, no network, no clock of its own, no hardware. Everything that crosses the line goes through one object: the kernel.

the boundary

body→cognetkernelworldsystems→bodysensesthe kernel is its only dooractions

That restriction is the point. Because a cognet never reaches past the kernel, it never knows — or depends on — what is on the other side. The same mind runs against a chat window, a simulator, or a robot. It runs live or replayed from a recording, and can't tell the difference.

In: stimuli

What the body senses arrives as stimuli: one message per thing sensed, with the time it was sensed. A system that wants them declares stimuli as a read, and gets every stimulus since it last ran — so a slow system misses nothing.

export default defineSystem({
    reads: ["stimuli"],
    writes: ["temperature"],

    run({ stimuli }) {
        for (const felt of stimuli) {
            if (felt.data.channel !== "/temperature") continue
            ecs.set({ id: "room", components: { temperature: { celsius: felt.data.values[0]!, sensed: felt.time.ms } } })
        }
    },
})

Stimuli are never stored in the world. The session already records every one; a mind that wants to remember something writes what it made of it.

Out: the kernel's verbs

Everything else a mind can do is a verb on kernel:

Verb	Does
`output(type, data)`	Tells the body something: text, audio, a picture, a command.
`body()`	What the body says it is: its senses, its controls, how its parts sit.
`presence()`	Whether the body is the mind's to move right now, or held, or overridden.
`run(code)`	Asks for code to run in the agent's sandbox. Checked against policy.
`store`, `memory`, `knowledge`	Where a mind keeps what outlives a session.
`emit(type, data)`	The mind's own telemetry, for the debugger.

That is the whole surface. There is no escape hatch.

What a mind needs from outside itself — a model, speech, a map — is a second door beside the kernel: Services, asked for by what they do.

Find a sense by what it is

A mind never hard-codes a channel. It asks body() what the body has, and finds what it needs by what it is — a picture, an inner ear — so the same mind wears a different body without a change.

const eye = kernel.body()?.senses.find(sense => sense.kind === "visual")
const ear = kernel.body()?.senses.find(sense => sense.profile === "sensor_msgs/Imu")

The full reference is kernel.