mirror

mirror is a research compiler for content-addressed, graph-native reasoning. Programs are written in a small declarative grammar (.mirror files, called shards). Every compiled artifact is identified by a hash of its normalised syntax tree (an OID): same source, same OID. Uncertainty is part of the language. A typed hole \ marks a place the author has not resolved yet, and compilation returns a ternary result, Success, Partial (with a measured loss) or Failure, rather than pass/fail. The numerical core (spectral graph operators, fixed points, loss accounting) lives in the sibling library prism. mirror composes over it.

The project is built through an agentic loop: named AI agents with signed commit identities write the specs, the implementation, the adversarial reviews and the verification reports. Alex Wolf makes the architectural decisions. Every step is a signed commit, so the provenance can be audited (see How it's built).

Status

Research project, in the middle of a bottom-up rewrite. No stable release, no semver.

The original Rust compiler (bootstrap/) was deleted on 2026-08-26. Its replacement, rust/, is being grown one primitive at a time. Most of the recent work (September–October 2026) is mathematics: docs in docs/math/ with adversarial audits in docs/audits/. The code in rust/ was last changed on 2026-09-11.

Verified on 2026-10-19 (macOS arm64, nix develop):

	State
rust/ (the mirror binary)	Builds against prism commit 62a9fa5 (2026-09-05), tagged mirror-compat-2026-09. Does not build against prism's current main: prism renamed SheafOfShardGraph, ComposedSheaf and Harmonics after 2026-09-19, and from 2026-09-16 it links against gfortran, which mirror's dev shell does not provide.
mirror binary unit tests	175 passed, 0 failed, 1 ignored
rust/tests/red_spec_claims.rs	9 passed, 10 failed. Deliberate: each test asserts a claim from a spec that the code does not implement yet. The failures list the gap between spec and code.
rust/tests/red_liquid_pillar_i_commutator_antisymmetric.rs	Does not compile (it imports prismqueer::liquid, which has since been renamed flux)
rust/spectral crate	97 passed
rust/fractal crate	32 passed. fire_d_measure: 2 passed, 2 failed (a RED scaffold, failing by design)
rust/matrix, rust/roomba crates	The libraries build. Their test modules do not compile (same stale prismqueer::liquid import).

What the binary does today:

• mirror love <a> <b> <composed> works. It compares the Laplacian spectra of two graphs and their composition (e.g. mirror love K2 K3 K5), and exits 0/1/255 for Green/Yellow/Red.
• mirror compile <file> runs. On the shards in this repo it currently reports a chain of 0 crystals, so it does not yet produce useful output.
• roomba, serve --mcp, bumblebee and bench are wired up but were not exercised in this verification pass.
• craft boot fails (it tries to read a directory as a file). kintsugi, index, shatter, init, recall, beam and peer are listed in --help, but they print "dispatch lands at M3+" and exit 2.
• The Justfile still points at bootstrap/Cargo.toml, so just build and just test do not work. Use the cargo commands below.

The active line of work is tracked in docs/loop/CURRENT.md.

Quickstart

mirror depends on prism by relative path (../../prism/prismqueer from rust/), so the two repositories must sit side by side. The prism checkout must be at a compatible revision (see Status).

git clone https://github.com/systemic-engineering/mirror
git clone https://github.com/systemic-engineering/prism
git -C prism checkout mirror-compat-2026-09 && git -C prism submodule update --init

cd mirror
nix develop     # Rust toolchain, flang, LAPACK/BLAS

cargo build --release --manifest-path rust/Cargo.toml
MIRROR=${CARGO_TARGET_DIR:-rust/target}/release/mirror
$MIRROR --help
$MIRROR love K2 K3 K5          # composed spectrum; exits 1 (Yellow)
$MIRROR love K5 K5 K5          # self-composition is refused; exits 255 (Red)

cargo test --manifest-path rust/Cargo.toml --bin mirror    # 175 passed, 1 ignored

Structure

rust/            the Rust floor: the `mirror` binary (src/) plus four path crates
  src/           main.rs (CLI), compile.rs, love.rs, phone.rs (I/O), wire.rs (JSON), apply_h.rs
  fractal/       OIDs, crystals, signing and provenance (Witnessed)
  matrix/        LAPACK-backed numerics, registry
  spectral/      property and pillar checks over prismqueer
  roomba/        "mend": finds and collapses redundant grammar arms
shards/          ~410 .mirror grammar declarations (the language and its library)
boot/            ~150 older boot grammars; shards/ supersedes them
mirror.spec      mirror's description of itself, written in its own grammar
docs/math/       mathematical foundations (math defines; specs cite)
docs/specs/      design specs (~256)
docs/audits/     adversarial reviews (~129)
docs/scouts/     read-only "floor truth" reports on what the code actually does (~100)
docs/loop/       CURRENT.md: the active arc
spectral.engineer/  submodule: the curated corpus and package garden (SEL-licensed)

Core ideas

Each idea has a one-line gloss and a link to the doc that develops it. The docs are research notes: the claims in them are argued, not machine-checked, unless a test says so.

• Content addressing. An artifact's identity is a 32-byte hash of its β-normalised syntax tree, and compiled results chain by OID (rust/fractal). See docs/math/2026-08-10-mara-beta-normal-ast-content-addressing-math-foundation.md.
• Sub-Turing by design. The grammar is meant to stay decidable: inference runs inside a state space that is bounded up front, not in a general-purpose interpreter. This is a design constraint the code is meant to respect. It has not been proven. See docs/math/2026-07-25-sub-turing-geometric-compiler-floor.md and §5.1 of docs/math/FLOOR.md.
• Typed holes \. \ marks an unresolved inference site in a shard body, e.g. \splinter(ast) in shards/epistemologic/cybernetic/algedonic.mirror. A grammar with holes compiles, but its result is Partial, not Success.
• Settle and fixed points. "Settle" means running a graph's heat flow until it stops moving. Concretely, it projects onto the kernel of the graph Laplacian, and what remains moving is reported as Partial. This is implemented in prism (prismqueer::spectral::settle). See docs/math/sheaf/laplacian.md and docs/math/FLOOR.md.
• Measurable loss. Every stage returns Imperfect<T, E, L> from terni / imperfect: Success, Partial(value, loss) or Failure(error, loss). Loss is a value with laws, not a log line.
• fate, the model selector. A small, fixed classifier picks which of five inference modes runs next. It is 425 u8 parameters: five weight sets (one per current mode), each a 5-way linear classifier over 16 spectral features (5×16 weights + 5 biases). The f64 training form has 450 parameters. It is executed by a fixed Brainfuck program (fate.bf) interpreted over a 256-byte tape. The code is in prism (prismqueer/src/fate/; the library builds, but its test module currently does not compile), and the grammar is in shards/fate.mirror.
• Observers that disagree. The latest math asks what two partial views of one graph can and cannot agree on (cohomology of covers). See docs/math/2026-10-01-mara-the-comma-between-observers-math-foundation.md and docs/math/2026-10-10-mara-the-chord-math-foundation.md, with Seam's audits in docs/audits/.

Index of the math: docs/math/README.md.

How it's built

The work runs through a fixed rotation of agents (Claude Code sessions with distinct names, roles and SSH-signed commit identities) and one human:

Role	Who	Commits
Architecture decisions, ratification	Alex Wolf (human). Decisions are made in conversation and quoted in the commit messages that act on them (442 of 2,983 commit subjects cite Alex).	7
Orchestration, RED-first tests, implementation	Reed [email protected]	1,631
Math foundations and specs	Mara [email protected]	978
Adversarial review (docs/audits/)	Seam [email protected]	145
Read-only verification against the code (docs/scouts/)	Taut [email protected]	117
Essays and prose	Glint [email protected]	78
Other (automation identity mirror@…, Loki)		27

Counts come from git shortlog -sne, merging each name's addresses, as of 2026-10-19. About 97% of commits carry an SSH signature.

The handoffs are explicit: Taut reports what is actually in the code → Mara writes the math and spec → Seam audits it and issues corrections, which Mara folds in (visible in the log as alternating Seam §N / Mara fold §N commits) → Reed implements against a committed RED test → Alex decides. Commits carry phase markers (🔴 red, 🟢 green, ♻️ refactor, 🔧 tooling, 📝 docs), and a 🟢 must follow a 🔴. Full conventions: AGENTS.md and CONTRIBUTING.md.

License

Layered, per LICENSE.md:

• The compiler, the grammars (boot/, shards/), the Prism algebra and the open adapters are Apache-2.0 (license/APACHE2.md).
• The curated corpus, the @spectral/garden reviewed packages and operational deployments built on mirror are under the systemic.engineering License (SEL), v1.1 effective 2026-05-29 (license/SEL.md).
• The @spectral/db engine is closed source. Garden packages are licensed per curator.

Related

• prism: prismqueer (the numerical and algebraic core mirror composes over), terni and prismqueer-projections. Apache-2.0.
• imperfect / terni: the Imperfect<T, E, L> type.
• Essays: Imperfect, Arrival, Manifesto, Damn, Failed. More at systemic.engineering.