- T01: research/sufficiency-and-weighting-position.md — reject universal weights; necessity core (B1/B3), claim-relative P minimal profiles, continuity configuration classes with causal privilege; OpenQuestions RQ1/RQ2/RQ5 weighting bullets positioned - T02: research/coverage-matrix.md — nine INTENT entity types under the full vocabulary; success criterion verdict: pass with two strain points - T03: concepts/soul.md packaging resolved (enacted vs residual Soul); RQ4 no longer carries a paper-critical open item - SCOPE.md work-surface bullets updated; workplan finished Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com> Assistant: claude-code Assistant-Model: sonnet Assistant-Process: 234768@bnt-lap001 Assistant-Session: 91cdb0c1-a203-431c-b542-cf192b3930a6
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SCOPE
This file helps you quickly understand what this repository is about, when it is relevant, and when it is not. It is intentionally lightweight and may be incomplete.
Aspirational charter:
INTENT.md· Research agenda:ResearchProgram.md· Conceptual draft:SoulFrameIntroduction.md· Scope-vs-intent gap assessment:history/260928-scope-intent-gap-assessment.md
One-liner
A systems-theoretic research program and conceptual framework for person-like informational beings (Body = Action, Mind = Model, Soul = Relation) — through its foundational phases and holding a research-grounded paper draft.
Core Idea
Soul Frame develops a small, coherent vocabulary for describing biological, artificial, fictionalized, and potentially non-human Beings as interacting informational systems — without requiring a solved theory of consciousness, and without silently equating descriptive personhood with moral or legal status.
Central question:
When does an informational system become someone that another someone can know?
What the repo actually holds (as of 2026-09-28)
Phases I–IX are complete (SOUL-WP-0001 … SOUL-WP-0010, all finished):
- Concept set — 13 working definitions in
concepts/plus three criteria documents (concepts/criteria/), including itemized B1–B8 (autonomous individuality) and P1–P12 (descriptive personhood) profiles - Research instruments —
Terminology.md,Claims.md(H1–H10, all supported/revised through phase review),OpenQuestions.md(RQ1–RQ8 with working answers; itemized OQ registers),ThoughtExperiments.md(TE-01–09+ with working judgments) - Literature base —
sources/bibliography.md(SF-R### ledger), discipline-organized maps underresearch/for all 13 workstreams touched so far, five phase syntheses plusresearch/research-synthesis.md - Paper —
paper/draft.md: first research-grounded draft, adversarially reviewed (SOUL-WP-0009), publication pathway decided: internal circulation as paper-one for coulomb-research, then pre-print → journal - Companion line (moral/legal) — charter
(
research/law-governance/moral-legal-personhood-charter.md) plus first slice executed (legal personhood precedent survey); items 2–4 unstarted - Metrics groundwork — measurability scoping across all axes
(
research/metrics-scoping-note.md) and instrument scoping for B3 + psychological continuity; instrument build is founder-gated (open hub decision0401cf28)
In Scope (current work surface)
- Sufficiency/weighting position: taken (SOUL-WP-0011-T01,
research/sufficiency-and-weighting-position.md) — maintaining it against new edge cases remains in scope - INTENT's success criterion: exercised (SOUL-WP-0011-T02,
research/coverage-matrix.md— pass, two strain points at distributed / radically non-human rows, tracked as RQ1/RQ8 residuals) - Soul packaging: resolved (SOUL-WP-0011-T03 — enacted vs residual modes,
concepts/soul.md§ Packaging) - Further companion-line slices (charter items 2–4) and law/governance deepening — under the charter's own gates
- Instrument development for scoped metrics — only after decision
0401cf28is resolved - Carrying the paper through the coulomb-research internal-circulation stage
Out of Scope
| Concern | Belongs elsewhere |
|---|---|
| Production agent runtime / harness | agent-harness, activity-core, runtime repos |
| LLM provider routing and tooling | llm-connect, related infra |
| Claiming to solve consciousness | philosophy programs; not a gate here |
| Silent moral/legal personhood claims | companion line only (charter-gated); no premature derivation |
| Shipping product features as primary deliverable | downstream architecture repos after conceptual clarity |
| "Practical architecture for artificial beings" (INTENT det. 6b) | downstream repos; conceptual clarity feeds it, this repo does not build it |
Workplan prefix
SOUL-WP
Domain / hub
- Domain:
agents - Repo slug:
soul-frame - Secondary:
infotech(conceptual/platform adjacency)