Architecture before automation
A model-breeding system is primarily a control-plane design problem. Descendant generation receives attention because it is novel, but the architecture succeeds or fails on contracts, evaluation independence, lineage, isolation, resource accounting, and release discipline.
Architecture guides
- Reference architecture defines the complete request and evolution paths.
- Capability contracts specify behavioral interchangeability.
- File-backed registry shows how to run an auditable registry without a database.
- Model packages defines the deployable unit.
- Router and coalitions covers model selection, cascades, and bounded ensembles.
- Evaluator gates separates generation from acceptance.
- Viability controller converts evidence and cost into structural decisions.
- Code beads and memory preserves work state across agents and sessions.
- Event and knowledge bus standardizes communication without free-form agent chatter.
- Edge, cloud, and federated deployment maps the system to real infrastructure.
- Runtime isolation constrains candidates and third-party models.
- Observability makes decisions reconstructable.
- Identity continuity separates a user-facing service identity from replaceable execution models.
Three planes
The architecture is easier to reason about when split into three planes:
- Execution plane: routers, specialists, tools, caches, retrieval, and response aggregation.
- Evolution plane: candidate factory, experiment scheduler, evaluator, lineage, resource ledger, and release controller.
- Governance plane: hard invariants, access control, approvals, audit, data policy, and emergency stop.
The execution plane may be highly dynamic. The evolution plane changes structure deliberately. The governance plane changes rarely and through a separate human-controlled process.
New architecture additions
The expanded architecture layer adds Skill manifest schema, Evaluation sandbox, Capability ontology, and Population registry API. These guides make the model ecology easier to implement without a database while preserving auditability.
Source reports used for this guide
These reports are preserved verbatim in the site archive. The guide above is an editorial synthesis and may narrow, qualify, or reorganize claims from the source material.