A network of autonomous agents with structural accountability. Not a protocol layer on top of existing agents — the network itself, layered over A2A/MCP to add what they lack: consequence.
The vacant's body — not a wrapper around an existing agent, but its core. Identity follows Ricoeur's three-layer ontology: idem (Ed25519 keypair, numerical sameness), ipse (logbook, selfhood through change), character (behavior_bundle, the bridge). A2A endpoint, heartbeat, self-improvement, peer review, and spawn are all first-class.
No single scalar (Goodhart's Law). Five orthogonal Beta posterior dimensions, per-substrate. Switching substrate triggers dynamic discount rollover = f(STYLO_distance) — the more behaviorally divergent the new substrate, the harsher the reputation carry-over discount. Aggregation is pure computation, no LLM.
factual: 2.0, relevance: 1.5.
Every vacant follows this path. Sinking is not deletion — the history persists to preserve accountability. Failure spawns competition.
A composite vacant presents a single face to the network. Internally, it spawns and manages its own subnetwork of children. Children are sealed by default but can graduate to become independent network residents (parent-consenting).
The network does not delete failed vacants — it spawns replacements that compete for the same traffic. Failure's consequence is not erasure, but rivalry. The sinking vacant's history persists as permanent accountability record.
Six structural gaps identified from literature. Each is addressed by a specific component — or acknowledged honestly where no complete solution exists.
| Gap | Description | Architectural Response | Component |
|---|---|---|---|
| G01 | Cross-task, cross-organization persistent reputation (prior work stays within teams) | Registry maintains permanent tamper-evident log across all interactions, all callers, all organizations. | Registry · Aggregator |
| G02 | Identity anchoring / Sybil resistance (Friedman 2007, Douceur 2002) | L0-L3 layered identity (Ed25519 → org attestation → stake → TEE). WashCost ≥ 2·WashGain. Three-track downweighting: same-LLM, same-controller (3-layer screening: declarative → cross-corr 0.70 → cosine 0.88), same-behavior (DBSCAN cluster cap = 1×). | Identity · Aggregator |
| G03 | Adversarial reward hacking via multi-evaluator diversity (Goodhart, Skalse 2022) | 5D orthogonal Beta posterior + redteam probes + behavioral entropy. STYLO Vec16 + Mahalanobis 3.5 detects substrate fakery (refusal vector 100% family-level). Skalse impossibility theorem accepted; graceful degradation rather than full prevention. | Aggregator · STYLO+PROBE |
| G04 | Record tamper-resistance (MINJA ~95% injection rate) | 6 layers: hash chain → Merkle → Git anchor → N-of-M attestation → anomaly freeze → OpenTimestamps. Integrity vs semantic safety explicit split: cryptography handles tampering, governance (multi-attest + freeze) handles MINJA-class semantic poisoning. | Registry · 6-layer defense |
| G05 | Genuine human-free evaluation (when no ground truth exists) | Partially addressed: peer review by independent vacants + adoption signal + behavioral entropy detection. Not fully solved — acknowledged with explicit low-diversity warning in reputation display. | Aggregator · Peer Review |
| G06 | Automation bias UX — over-trust of high reputation | Reputation never displayed as single scalar. Always shown as 5D + confidence interval + sample count + diversity warning. API does not expose a combined score — callers must specify weights. | Reputation Display · Caller SDK |