Infrastructure · Primitives

Act

Root primitive for state modification

Definition

Mechanism

The fundamental primitive for any operation that modifies state external to the actor's private memory. It is the root interface for tool invocations, API calls, and physical actuation. All Acts must be authorized, logged, and potentially reversible (or explicitly marked irreversible).

Preconditions

  1. Actor has decided to act
  2. Target system is available
  3. Permissions grant access

Postconditions

  1. External state is modified
  2. Action log is updated
  3. Resources (energy/credits) are consumed

Invariants

  1. Authorization: Action must be permitted by the current Context constraints.
  2. Observability: All Acts must produce a signal (Success/Failure/Result) observable by the actor.
  3. Causality: An Act cannot precede its Cause (the Selection of action).

Risks

Failure modes

  1. Unintended Side-effect

    The action changed state in a way not predicted by the actor.

  2. Partial Execution

    The action failed midway, leaving the system in an inconsistent state.

  3. Authorization Failure

    The actor attempted an action it lacks permission to perform.

Relationships

Builds on

References

Context

Portable execution environment with inherited constraints

Select

Generic selection of items from a set based on criteria

Used by

Composes with

Actor

A capability-bearing entity

Mind

Agent

Autonomous Goal-Directed Entity

Society

AtomicBid

Declaration and execution in a single turn

Society

Award

Acceptance of bid and contract creation

Society

Deploy

Release to production

Mind

OODA

Rapid decision cycle: Observe, Orient, Decide, Act

Mind

Reason

Execute a cognitive topology

Sign

Attest to authorship or agreement

References

Mind

Build

Low-cost prototype generation

Mind

EpistemicROI

Calculating the economic value of reducing uncertainty

Society

Rollout

Progressive deployment with canary gating and recorded compensation

Work

The application of effort to reduce entropy

Reference

Identity

Ref
Act#2dfe
Sema ID
sema:Act#mh:SHA-256:2dfedd75a396f2639ce949b9f5270766350b9c7404d404c11c57140fcf030455
Ring
0
Tier
1
Updated
2026-11-11
Supersedes
  • sema:Act#mh:SHA-256:5d55ad7db734254e55dfcb82c83b32a4fd5ac955428e3ff95706f9c3bfc787cd
  • sema:Act#mh:SHA-256:7616721cda9e81613f7c97d4ac93ba49291f97d7c7fe6fd7c49588c33d4d3b3d