System philosophy
Cardinal is not scripted. The Substrate doesn't hand out governments, economies, or meaning. Those have to emerge.
Pressure, not plot
If those appear, they're not implemented
No predefined governments, professions, morality systems, economies, technology trees, or social hierarchies.
They emerge.
Everything comes from pressure: resources, geography, Continuity, survival, interaction between Scintillae.
Scintillae are not smart. The Substrate is.
Complexity
Shallow by design
Complexity emerges from interaction, not from individual Scintilla intelligence.
The policy is intentionally shallow: no lookahead planning beyond 2–3 steps, no abstract goal representation, no concept of "self" beyond internal state pressure. MVP runs ~95% on pure heuristic JS. Groq enters only for chronicle narration, Continuity distillation, and communication utterances.
A_t = policy(S_t, O_t, M_t)S_t = internal state (needs + tendencies)O_t = current observation (local perception)M_t = Continuity stateA_t = chosen actionFuture consideration
Descendants are shaped by what survived
Introducing a learned policy layer (via lightweight RL or imitation from social observation) for Scintillae in later generations that have accumulated cultural exposure.
First-generation Scintillae are pure heuristic. Descendants are shaped by what survived.