Temporal Field

A ring buffer with decay and pub/sub events for cognitive architectures.

The brain does not poll - one spark cascades.

Architecture: Field / Writer / Reader

The system separates into three roles:

1. Field - The substrate: ring buffer with decay
2. Writers - Anything that writes to regions (cochlea, tokenizer, motor, etc.)
3. Readers - FieldObservers that receive events when thresholds cross

Multiple writers can write to the same field (additive semantics). Multiple readers can subscribe to the same field (pub/sub). Writes automatically fire events to all readers when thresholds cross.

Example: Multimodal Binding Detection

This example shows the pattern used for concept grounding - detecting when audio and text patterns co-occur (e.g., hearing "door" while seeing the word).

use temporal_field::{TemporalField, FieldConfig, FieldEvent, MonitoredRegion, FnObserver};
use std::sync::Arc;

// Region definitions (like SensoryField's ModalityRegions)
const AUDIO_REGION: std::ops::Range<usize> = 0..64;
const TEXT_REGION: std::ops::Range<usize> = 64..128;

// 1. Create the Field (the substrate)
let config = FieldConfig::new(128, 50, 0.95); // 128 dims, 50 frames, 0.95 retention
let mut field = TemporalField::new(config);

// 2. Configure monitored regions (what triggers events)
field.monitor_region(MonitoredRegion::new("audio", AUDIO_REGION, 0.1));
field.monitor_region(MonitoredRegion::new("text", TEXT_REGION, 0.1));
field.set_convergence_threshold(2); // Fire when 2+ regions active

// 3. Subscribe Reader (binding detector)
field.subscribe(Arc::new(FnObserver(|event| {
    match event {
        FieldEvent::Convergence { active_regions, total_energy } => {
            // Binding opportunity! Audio + text co-occurred
            println!("BINDING: {} regions, energy={}", active_regions.len(), total_energy);
        }
        FieldEvent::RegionActive { region, energy, .. } => {
            println!("Region {:?} activated with energy {}", region, energy);
        }
        _ => {}
    }
})));

// 4. Writers write to their regions
// Cochlea writes audio features
let audio_features = vec![0.5; 64];
field.write_region(&audio_features, AUDIO_REGION);

// Tokenizer writes text embedding
let text_embedding = vec![0.3; 64];
field.write_region(&text_embedding, TEXT_REGION);
// ^ This triggers Convergence event because both regions are now active

// 5. Time advances - decay happens automatically
field.tick(); // All values decay by retention factor

Key Insight

The field doesn't know what audio or text means. It just knows that patterns co-occurred within a temporal window. Meaning emerges from the binding.

Core Concepts

Events

The Floating Ternary Foundation

Each dimension encodes direction + intensity using signed bytes:

Range: {-1.00 ... 0.00 ... +1.00}
Storage: i8 (-100 to +100) for 2 decimal precision

This is NOT discrete ternary {-1, 0, +1}. It's floating-point ternary - the polarity indicates direction, the magnitude indicates strength.

Applications

All share the same substrate - only configuration differs.

Evolution

FloatingTernary → Temporal Binding Fields → Temporal Fields

One system that evolved. Every write triggers downstream processing.

License

MIT OR Apache-2.0