BraInference

Mind · Strategy

ComputeBudget

Economic governor for cognitive spend

View in the graph

Definition

Mechanism

The cognitive governor that prevents analysis paralysis. It acts as a dual-ledger Gate, weighing the Value of a Task against the Budget to ensure return on investment (ROI). It enforces stopping rules when the cost of thinking exceeds the value of the solution.

Preconditions

  1. Current resource balance available
  2. Task value estimated

Postconditions

  1. Budget constraints injected into Task context
  2. Execution strategy Selected (Direct vs Recursive)

Invariants

  1. Hard ceiling: total execution cost cannot exceed `max_budget`.

Risks

Failure modes

  1. Analysis Paralysis

    Spending more on estimation than the task is worth.

  2. Penny Wise

    Rejecting necessary deep thinking for high-stakes/high-complexity problems.

  3. Cost estimation is itself costly (meta-cost problem).

  4. Uncertainty about uncertainty makes expected_gain hard to calculate.

  5. Risk of penny-wise pound-foolish

    refusing decomposition on hard problems because estimate was wrong.

Relationships

Builds on

References

Infrastructure

Budget

Resource allocation limit

Infrastructure

Gate

Filter payload if the target condition is not met

Infrastructure

Task

The atomic unit of intent

Infrastructure

Value

A measure of utility

Used by

References

Society

Bid

Binding offer from solver to execute task

EpistemicROI

Calculating the economic value of reducing uncertainty

Reason

Execute a cognitive topology

Composes with

PolymorphicSolver

Solver implementing the five-surface contract (polymorphic across substrates)

Reference

Parameters

max_budget PositiveInteger, unspecified
The ceiling, in `unit`. Deliberately uncapped.
roi_threshold Float, [0.1, 2.0]
Expected value required per unit spent before work proceeds. Scales how demanding the gate is; it does not license spending past the ceiling.
estimation_share Ratio, (0.0, 0.5]
Share of the budget estimation may consume before it must return.
unit Enum, {Tokens, USD, Ms}
Cost unit

Identity

Ref
ComputeBudget#4091
Sema ID
sema:ComputeBudget#mh:SHA-256:4091ac7c6677342920dc53808d02830e35c5849f2af1bb9ba7749c576d37478e
Ring
0
Tier
1
Updated
2026-11-11
Supersedes
  • sema:ComputeBudget#mh:SHA-256:3b9875661465a1a0cdc12e60774114d0ac69510b4fae677c81c47ea3a84b99b1
  • sema:ComputeBudget#mh:SHA-256:47c6eb12f7537f418cdfa9358a501b394d3b4460dd2f8c85560687b1e782b8c2
MarkdownJSONThis version (ComputeBudget@4091)Index of all patterns