Today's signal · The Night Gardener

Something grows in the dark.

A signal arrives from outside the system. It could be a question, an observation, an event, an emotional state, or a data point. At this stage, it is raw — unclassified and unrouted.

Signals enter through a filter, not a funnel. Not everything that arrives is processed immediately.

The membrane layer checks what enters. It distinguishes between signal types: Observed, Inferred, Unknown, and Speculative. These labels remain distinct throughout processing — they are never collapsed into a single "input."

Observed, Inferred, Unknown, and Speculative remain distinct. The system does not flatten signal types.

Raw input is parsed into a legible form: noise, pattern, question, memory request, urgency signal, or anomaly. Translation makes the signal routable — it gives the routing layer something to work with.

Translation is not interpretation. It is classification. The system names what it sees before it decides what to do.

Signals that need synchronization or charge-smoothing pass through the coherence core before routing. High-charge signals (urgency, conflict, contradiction) are buffered here to prevent overload.

Not every signal passes through the center. Local signals route locally. Only signals needing central arbitration reach the core.