Two names for every mechanism. The internal one and the one that doesn't sound like it's trying to convince you.
Both columns stay. The internal naming carries real design intent — a scar is not a "record," and calling it one loses why it decays the way it does. But a skeptical engineer should be able to read the same structure without the vocabulary doing the persuading, so the sober label sits right next to it.
If a claim only sounds impressive in the left column, it isn't a claim. That's what this table is for.
| Internal name | Sober label |
|---|---|
| qualia | phenomenal descriptor vector |
| soul | drive / value continuity model |
| consciousness | integration / workspace / self-model proxy |
| dream | offline consolidation |
| dream cycle | offline consolidation cycle |
| will | governed action arbitration |
| organism | self-maintaining autonomous runtime |
| heartbeat | autonomic background tick |
| scar | domain-typed avoidance memory with severity decay |
| Eternal Record | tier-3 narrative consolidation |
| narrative arc | tier-2 narrative consolidation |
| episodic journal | tier-1 narrative consolidation |
| substrate | shared homeostatic / affective state |
| substrate authority | substrate-policy authority gate |
| lymphatic reaper | low-affect record retention sweeper |
| black hole vault | pinned high-sensitivity record store |
| volition | autonomous proposal generator |
| neural mesh | distributed cognitive graph |
| mycelium | inter-subsystem topology graph |
| stem cell | immutable signed organ snapshot |
| somatic gate | sensorimotor permission gate |
| oscillatory binding | phase-locked subsystem binding |
| free energy | predictive-coding error budget |
| phi / phi_s | integrated information (IIT 4.0 spectral approximation) |
| HOT | higher-order representation of own state |
| GWT ignition | global broadcast event in the workspace |
| latent-space bridge | substrate-state-driven sampling parameter modulation |
| residual stream offset | activation-steering hidden-state addend |
| conscience | irrevocable rule-based safety floor |
| play | non-utilitarian latent-space exploration |
| viability state | metabolic/operational state machine |
| capability token | scoped, single-use authorization grant |
| receipt | structured audit record |
| felt thought | token-level surprisal/entropy interoception signal |
| flight recorder | SIGKILL-survivable per-tick mind-moment ring buffer |
| mortal memory | death report + waking sequence from the flight recorder |
| source-body proprioception | boot-over-boot self-code diff + operating-on-me pulse |
| Ulysses Covenant | enforceable volitional self-binding (asymmetric ratchet) |
| calm witness | fail-closed approver required to loosen a self-binding |
| verifier foundry | measured verifier reliability + self-training admission gate |
| frontier discovery engine | verifier-gated generate→falsify→commit loop |
| analogical leap | out-of-distribution structure mapping with an OOD verdict |
| knowledge substrate | offline reference corpus (FTS5/BM25) as a REFERENCE store |
| program DNA | authorized clean-room behavioral reconstruction |
| backpressure | expected-timeout yield (not a degradation) under load |
| reasoning amplifier | mandatory verifier-gated hard-task cognition layer |
| whole-system phi | exact-MIP Gaussian integrated information over real channels |
| reality reach | typed causal contract + reachability proof for a physical request |
| reality layer | evidence scope: internal / effective / direct / ambient |
| limitation certificate | typed machine-verifiable no-go verdict for an unreachable request |
| effect receipt | independent post-action measurement (never transport success) |
| coupling class | declared physical relation between a channel and an observable |
| faculty | a named cognitive capability with declared improvement metrics |
| binding constraint | the faculty whose headroom most limits the rest of the stack |
| blind spot | a faculty no probe can currently measure (a self-knowledge gap) |
| stance | accumulated affective orientation toward a known entity |
| entity | content-addressed person/place/thing/org/concept record |
| taint register | persistent record that the process is not the one its green verdict describes |
| lockdep | lock-order dependency tracking (ABBA detection without the deadlock) |
| shed ladder | ordered load-shedding sequence under memory pressure |
| telemetry dictionary | declared channel ids with units and limits |
This document is the machine-readable source of truth at
docs/TERMINOLOGY.md. The dashboard's "Skeptic mode" toggles labels
across the UI by reading from this map.