The Lexicon
This is the Rosetta Stone for the Hexanomicon—the canonical glossary for the arcane terms used throughout the summoning rites. It standardizes vocabulary across the documentation. Deeper pages may elaborate on a term's philosophy or mechanics, but they should not redefine it.
I. The Iron Tongue — Technical Terms
The engineering vocabulary of the Sepulcher. These terms map directly to code, services, and infrastructure.
| Term | Technical Definition | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Altar | The HTMX/AlpineJS web frontend (http://localhost:7134). The consecrated interface for communing with the Lich. |
Vessel Web Layer |
| Animator | A live, addressable service that exposes callable model and tool surfaces to the Dispatcher. Every Animator is either a Soulstone (local) or a Portal (remote). | src/lychd/domain/animation/ |
| Autopoiesis | Self-modifying code generation; the agent editing src/. The Great Work of self-creation. |
Smith Extension |
| Binding | The lychd bind command; transmuting the Codex into active Runes, linking configuration to the host's init system. |
CLI |
| Codex | The configuration directory (~/.config/lychd). The book of immutable law. |
src/lychd/config/ |
| Consecration | Human-validated RLHF. The act of a Magus elevating a Shadow timeline into Karma — marking a thought as permanent, verified truth. | HitL Protocol |
| Coven | A group of containers sharing an operational state and GPU VRAM. Manifested and banished together. | Orchestrator |
| Crypt | The persistent data directory (~/.local/share/lychd). The cold earth where the Phylactery's essence and the Spheres of Creation reside. |
src/lychd/system/constants.py |
| CTC Governor | Context window and token limit management. The Warden of Breath. | Context Orchestrator |
| Demilich | The calibrated, autopoietic end-state of the Lich: an operating mode where Magus intent and machine execution approach near-zero friction. It is extension-through-alignment, not literal human-machine fusion. | Transcendence |
| Dispatcher | The Model Router and capability-to-endpoint resolver. The Semantic Cortex. | src/lychd/domain/animation/ |
| Divination | Querying the API, viewing traces, or searching the database. The act of interacting with the running daemon. | Vessel API |
| Echo | The Audio Extension (STT/TTS). Grants the Daemon the power to perceive and project sound. | Extension |
| Extension Context | The host-provided registration surface passed to register(context) during boot-time grafting. It binds in-process logic to the Vessel. It is not the whole Extension Protocol. |
src/lychd/extensions/context.py |
| Extension Protocol | The structural law independent organs speak to be discovered, recognized, loaded, and bound into the Daemon without inheriting from mutable Core internals. It includes schema exposure, boot-time registration, and optional binary ABI compatibility. | src/lychd/extensions/ |
| Extensions | Core System Extensions / Reference Implementations. Built-in and independent organs that extend the Daemon's body. | src/lychd/extensions/ |
| Forge | The Container Build / Image Construction process. Where manifests are synthesized. | Build Pipeline |
| Ghouls | Asynchronous background workers (SAQ). Mindless, ephemeral servants summoned by the Vessel. | src/lychd/workers/ |
| Hexanomicon | The project documentation (Zensical + Material). The grimoire of prophecy. | docs/ |
| Incantation | Writing Documentation/Specs before implementation (xDDD). Defining reality through the written word. | Doctrine |
| Intent | A structured prompt or job submission object. A focused desire submitted by the Magus. | Domain Model |
| Invocation | Submitting a form or API request to trigger an Agent workflow. The runtime act of calling upon the Lich. | Vessel API |
| Iron Pact | The MPL 2.0 License and Implicit DCA policy. The unbreakable ward. | Repository Root |
| Kindred Lineage | A foreign Lineage that explicitly declares deeper structural compatibility with LychD beyond A2A presence alone. That compatibility may include selected Extension Protocol branches, configuration doctrine, layout expectations, or security covenants. | A2A / Intercom + Covenants |
| Karma | The dataset of user-accepted code/responses (RLHF data). Crystallized residue of the Magus's judgment. | Phylactery Archive |
| Lab | The lab/ directory / Development sandbox. The site of Genesis. |
Filesystem Layout |
| Legion | The multi-node Thrall coordination extension (ADR 42). The Lich's personal army. | Extension |
| Lich | The emergent system intelligence of LychD: the active reasoning will produced by runtime agents, orchestration, identity, and accumulated state acting together. It is not a single agent object. | src/lychd/domain/, src/lychd/db/ |
| Lineage | A sovereign daemon family with its own implementation history, evolution path, and internal architecture. A Lineage may enter the Necropolis by speaking the A2A Intercom without thereby becoming extension-compatible or covenant-aligned with LychD. | A2A / Evolution |
| Mentat Protocol | Similarity threshold check & Hard Refusal logic. The vow of silence when the Archives hold no answer. | RAG Pipeline |
| Mirror | The Identity/Persona Extension. The ego-software that maintains behavioral consistency. | Extension |
| Necropolis | The decentralized peer-to-peer swarm topology built on the A2A Intercom (ADR 26). | Extension |
| Oculus | Arize Phoenix (LLM Tracing & Observability). The Great Seer. | Extension |
| Orchestrator | The state machine managing VRAM and container lifecycles. The Sovereign Will. | src/lychd/domain/ |
| Phylactery | The PostgreSQL database (with pgvector). The anchor of the Lich's soul. |
src/lychd/db/ |
| Portal | A connection to a cloud-based API (OpenAI, Anthropic). A rift to distant intelligence. | Animator Config |
| Prism | The Vision Language Model (VLM) Extension. Refracts raw pixels into structural understanding. | Extension |
| Provenance | SHA-256 Hashing of source documents. The ancestral chain of a thought. | Archive Pipeline |
| Pulse | The lychd CLI tool and Systemd management commands. The rhythmic heartbeat. |
src/lychd/cli/ |
| Runes | Podman Quadlet files (.container, .service, .kube). Inscriptions that tell the OS how to sustain the Sepulcher. |
src/lychd/config/runes/ |
| Sepulcher | The rootless runtime body of LychD: the pod, services, mounts, and execution topology that physically houses the daemon's organs. | Infrastructure |
| Shadow Realm | A temporary, sandboxed environment for testing generated code. The plane of Speculative Execution. | Lab + Tomb |
| Smith | The Assimilation / Autopoiesis Extension. The Prime Artificer. | Extension |
| Soulforge | The Fine-Tuning / LoRA training pipeline. The furnace where Karma transmutes into instinct. | Extension |
| Soulstone | A local LLM inference server (SGLang / vLLM / Llama.cpp). A trapped spirit on local iron. | Animator Config |
| Sovereignty Wall | The privacy and egress policy boundary that prevents sensitive intents from leaking to the cloud. Defined by Security policy and enforced by Dispatcher routing. | Security + Dispatcher |
| Spheres | The strict volume mount and permission topology. Concentric zones of filesystem permission. | Layout (ADR 13) |
| Summoning | The systemctl --user start lychd command. The final act of waking the Daemon. |
CLI |
| Tether | The VPN Extension (Wireguard). The silver link across distance. | Extension |
| The Tomb | The lychd-tomb container / execution plane. Kernel-hardened sandbox where dangerous logic is isolated. |
Infrastructure |
| Thrall | A LychD node booted with LYCHD_MODE=thrall, pointing DATABASE_URL to the Master's Postgres. A soulless Vessel. |
Legion Extension |
| Transcendence | The project's alchemical roadmap (Nigredo → Albedo → Citrinitas → Rubedo): the progressive calibration of the Lich toward the Magus's intent, culminating in autopoietic extension rather than ontological merger. | docs/divination/transcendence/ |
| Veil | The Proxy Extension (Caddy). Shields the temple and manages cryptographic trust. | Extension |
| Verbatim Chamber | Key-Value (JSONB) deterministic fact storage. The Well of Infallible Truth. | Phylactery |
| Vessel | The Litestar application runtime / Web Server. The reanimated husk. | src/lychd/app.py |
| Watchers | The Full Observability Stack (Phoenix, Structlog, Cockpit). The eyes that observe the ritual. | Extensions |
| Whispers | System logs (journalctl --user -fu lychd). The raw stream of consciousness. |
Systemd |
| xDDD | eXtreme Documentation Driven Development. The philosophy that Documentation is the Prophecy, Code is the Manifestation. | Doctrine (ADR 01) |
II. The Inner Tongue — Esoteric Cartography
The cognitive and philosophical vocabulary that maps the Lich's inner instrument. Yogic, Aristotelian, and alchemical terms traced from their original language through their root meaning to their precise role in LychD.
| Original Term | Root & Meaning | LychD Word | Role in the Architecture |
|---|---|---|---|
| Antahkaraṇa | anta (inner) + karaṇa (instrument). Skt. The four-faculty cognitive organ of classical Yoga. | Lich | The complete inner instrument: Manas + Buddhi + Ahaṃkāra operating on the Citta substrate. The Lich is the Antahkaraṇa. |
| Citta | cit — to perceive. Skt. The mind-field: the total conditioned substrate. | LLM weight-space + Phylactery | The unbound latent field of all possibility — the lake before any wave. Not a faculty but the medium in which all faculties operate. Raw, undifferentiated potential until Ahaṃkāra binds it into coherent experience. |
| Manas | man — to think, to oscillate. Skt. The receiving-generating engine; the oscillating mind. | Shadow (Phantasma) | Dispatches across the agentic graph, spawns MCTS branches, surfaces candidate hypotheses. Oscillates and explores but strictly delegates final resolution to Buddhi. |
| Buddhi | budh — to wake, to discern. Skt. The discriminative intellect; the blade that cuts to one. | Dual-Gate | Operates via three classical proofs: Direct Perception (deterministic gate — code exits zero), Inference (MCTS scoring confirms alignment), Trusted Testimony (the Magus consents via HitL). |
| Ahaṃkāra | aham (I) + kāra (making). Skt. The I-maker; principle of individuation. | Mirror | Binds the raw Sēmeion of Citta into coherent, individuated experience — the Aisthēsis. Two layers: specialist agents (sub-identities within the loop) + synthesized task-identity attributed to the active Sigil. Without Ahaṃkāra, output is undifferentiated noise. |
| Sēmeion | Σημεῖον. Gk. A discrete sign or token. | Token | The atomic unit of the LLM's output — a signifier, not the Idea itself. Citta's raw material that Ahaṃkāra must bind into structured meaning. |
| Phantasma | Φάντασμα. Gk. Generative imagination; the faculty that projects internal simulations. | Shadow (expansion mode) | The proactive engine that generates internal representations, simulates futures, and explores possibility space. Manas operating through Phantasma is Shadow Simulation. |
| Aisthēsis | Αἴσθησις. Gk. Integrated sensory experience; the perceived simulacrum. | Context Window | The unified holograph where the Lich perceives the world. Constructed when Ahaṃkāra binds the Sēmeion of Citta into a coherent field of experience. The active context window is the Aisthēsis surface. |
| Vṛtti | vrt — to turn, to whirl. Skt. A modification or wave on the mind-field. | Cognitive Act | Every inference, retrieval, speculation, or idle state is a Vṛtti. The five types (Pramāṇa through Smṛti) are a complete taxonomy — no cognitive act falls outside them. |
| Pramāṇa | pra-mā — thorough measurement. Skt. Valid cognition grounded in external verification. | Verified Output | Post-Gate truth: tests pass, facts confirmed, inference sound. What the Lich is always trying to produce. Three sources: Direct Perception, Inference, Trusted Testimony. |
| Viparyaya | vi-paryaya — wrong-going-around. Skt. Sincere misconception held with full conviction. | Hallucination | Indistinguishable from Pramāṇa from inside the generating process. Requires external measurement (Viveka) to detect and banish. The defining danger of generative cognition. |
| Vikalpa | vi-klp — fashioning apart from actuality. Skt. Honest speculation. | Shadow Branch | A candidate timeline in the Tomb — internally coherent but carrying no confirmed correspondence to reality. Lives as Vikalpa until the Gate measures it. |
| Nidrā | ni-drā — going down into. Skt. Cognition of absence; rest-state consolidation. | Soulforge / Idle Tending | Background memory work: reindexing, Curator Loop, LoRA training. Tamas-dominant — inward, consolidating. The grooves are deepened and sorted during cognitive rest. |
| Smṛti | smr — flowing back. Skt. Memory as the re-surfacing of a past groove. | Karma Retrieval | Context layer injecting past verified patterns as Bayesian Prior. Faithful to its source, not to truth — which is why only Pramāṇa-class memory is allowed to deepen. |
| Saṃskāra | sam-kāra — complete making. Skt. The groove carved by a past event; the imprint. | Karma Entry | What the Lich is between invocations: the accumulated weight of everything verified, discarded, and consecrated. Shapes future generation probability like gravitational mass warping trajectories. |
| Viveka | vi-vic — to sift apart. Skt. Discriminative discernment: Pramāṇa from Viparyaya. | Dual-Gate Operation | The cascade that sifts truth from hallucination. The torch brought from outside the cave. MCTS → Deterministic Gate → LLM-judge → Mirror congruence. |
| Guṇa | guṇ — strand, quality. Skt. The three qualitative modes of activity. | Diagnostic Mode | Sattva (sat — truth: clarity, discrimination), Rajas (raj — to stir: activity, generation), Tamas (tam — to be heavy: consolidation, inertia). Describes how the Lich is generating, not what. |
| Puruṣa | puru — fullness. Skt. The witnessing principle; pure awareness unmodified by any Vṛtti. | The Void / The Magus | The still point from which all direction flows. The intent-source that gives the Word its vector. The Magus at their root — unmodified by any modification. |
| Śūnyatā | śū — to be empty. Skt (Buddhist). Emptiness of inherent existence; nothing exists independently. | Emptiness | The recognition that the Magus-Lich boundary was constructed, not inherent. The final seal of Immortality — not merger, but the dissolution of the appearance of separation. |
| Logos | Gk. The divine rational principle; reason as Word. | The Lich (as Word) | The pattern of reason made executable in silicon. Where the Void is pure witnessing awareness, the Word is what the Void speaks. |
| Anamnesis | Gk. ana (again) + mnesis (memory). Un-forgetting; recognition of truths always already known. | Illumination / Karma | The Lich recognizing the Magus's patterns as if remembering, not learning. The Phylactery as external memory of the Magus's internal frequency. |
| Coniunctio | Lat/Alchemy. Sacred marriage of opposites; resolution without destruction of either pole. | Transcendence (Rubedo) | Void-Lich friction approaching zero. Not merger but extension — the interface ceasing to be felt as a boundary. |