The Meaning Model

Construct worlds coarsely, then develop the parts that matter. The Meaning Model connects world records, concepts, descriptions, understanding, and story text in one addressed representation. Finer detail must respect an accepted account or revise it explicitly.

This repository brings together the theory, its compact grammar appendix, the Rust engine and MCP interface, and The Book of Conditions, a worked construction with a complete twelve-chapter manuscript.

See the changelog for release changes, upgrade notes, and unreleased work.

Read first

• Meaning Model paper - the argument, grammar, construction method, examples, and numerical portrait.
• Grammar appendix - a focused reference to the same rules, not a separate theory or additional set of requirements.
• The Book of Conditions
  • the completed story; Markdown and model sources are also included.

The six world-record forms are Concept, Thing, Event, Binding, Cut, and Realization. A Cut divides one declared unit among exclusive sibling answers and an explicit remainder; its weights sum to one. Ordinary process links are unweighted. Dates, money, counts, and physical measurements keep their external units. Understanding Nodes and Document Nodes share the address space without acquiring the authority of accepted world facts.

Try it

The smallest demonstration requires only Node.js:

node --test examples/refinement-trial/example.test.mjs

It shows a refinement that fits its parent, a locally valid refinement that contradicts the parent, and an explicit revision. The example is synthetic, not evidence that the full implementation or learning proposal is complete.

For the Rust engine and MCP tools, install Rust/Cargo, Node.js 22.18 or newer, and npm, then run:

make install
make build
make test

For a native example, run node examples/progressive-authoring/run.mjs after building. Progressive authoring in Rust opens a Cut after accepted history, rejects incompatible detail, completes a partial temporal contract, and explicitly revises and continues the same world.

Start the MCP server after building:

cd mcp-server
npm start

See the MCP guide, engine guide, and modeling protocol. Existing life-sim command, schema, resource, and binary identifiers are retained for compatibility with saved artifacts. They do not identify a second engine.

The package name is @emergent-wisdom/meaning-model-mcp. Its official MCP Registry identity is io.github.emergent-wisdom/meaning-model, described by server.json. Registry-based clients must supply the path to an explicitly installed or built engine. Install the engine matching the package version. meaning-model-mcp --install-engine explicitly downloads and verifies that version's published release engine. Alternatively, use meaning-model-mcp --build-engine to build the included Rust source. Neither npm installation nor normal server startup downloads or builds an engine. To prepare a local npm tarball, run make npm-package. See the package installation guide. Creating a tarball does not publish it or establish ownership of the npm scope.

What is demonstrated

The Book is a bounded example of model-assisted authorship: macro accounts, complete lives, local Cuts, event descriptions, linked construction rationales, and prose were developed and revised together. Its accepted sources can be imported into Rust and the manuscript rendered from document nodes. That retrospective import is not a recovered transaction log of the original authoring process.

The engine implements typed records, immutable revisions, persistence, candidate acceptance, normalized Cuts, and bounded narrative graph operations. Optional temporal Cut contracts check explicit answer projections and duration mixtures, including whether partial detail leaves a feasible remainder. An accepted world can move to its direct next model revision after time has advanced, with an explicit refinement or revision, a compare-and-swap check, and an immutable receipt preserving both heads. Portable narrative training and project checkpoint exports across that revision boundary remain unsupported; the session database retains the complete history. It does not implement every contract in the paper. The implementation boundary distinguishes implemented checks, authoring conventions, and missing behavior. The preregistered matched comparison and independent read-back study remain prospective. Neither a passing validator nor an authored numerical portrait establishes historical truth, psychological validity, or an advantage over ordinary writing.

Repository map

Meaning Model owns the representation and joint construction method. The separate Life Simulation project studies process-history generation, inference, learning, and their empirical evaluation. It consumes this engine; it does not maintain a second implementation. A digest-bound copy of its paper is included only as a companion MCP reading resource under docs/companions/life-simulation/.

Build the documents

With latexmk and a LaTeX installation containing the imported packages:

make paper
make grammar
make book

To check the code, examples, resources, and documents together:

make check

Release packaging

make release checks and builds the package, then exports an allowlisted clean directory beneath build/. The export includes the three PDFs and their sources, but not .git, build caches, private planning, review transcripts, or earlier constructions.

See the release guide for packaging and provenance details. Exporting files does not push to GitHub or publish a package.

License and citation

Original code is MIT licensed. Original papers, documentation, authored model data, and the Book are CC BY 4.0. NOTICE preserves the boundary for third-party material. CITATION.cff identifies the author and preferred paper citation; the repository URL is recorded there, and a DOI will be added when assigned.