Sinter Finish Line: Creative Cognitive System

Sinter V1 is not a narrowed four-generator proof. Sinter V1 is a creative cognitive system: a Studio where artists create with code, plus a harness where every artifact, failure, preference, model, dream, and repair becomes part of the system's future intelligence.

Product Contract

1. Creative instrument: a human can ask for art, music, shaders, motion, typography, or video and see usable artifacts with honest previews and receipts.
2. Self-improving organism: Sinter perceives experience, stores it, composts it, dreams from it, develops intuition from it, and repairs itself when evidence shows weakness.

Proof slices may be narrow. Product scope must not silently shrink.

Creative Body

Domain	V1 role	Maturity rule
SVG	Inspectable vector art and agent-editable visual structure	Must remain core
p5.js	Browser-native generative sketches	Must remain core
GLSL	Shader and fragment-program visual generation	Beta until renderer/evaluator proof is strong
Hydra	Live-coded video synthesis	Beta until route/preview proof is strong
Three.js	3D scenes and WebGL objects	Beta until preview/eval proof is strong
Tone.js	Programmatic audio and music logic	Beta; validate with audio/code receipts, not screenshots
Strudel	Pattern-based live music code	Beta; validate with pattern/code/audio-specific checks
Revideo	Timeline/video composition generation	Beta; validate with timeline/export proof
HTML	Self-contained browser artifacts	Beta
ASCII	Text-mode visual artifacts	Scaffold until evaluation is meaningful
Kinetic Typography	Animated typographic compositions	Scaffold until preview/export gates are explicit
TextGen	Generative text and poetic artifacts	Scaffold until taste/eval loops are clear

Cognitive Organs

Organ	Responsibility	Existing surfaces
Perception	Capture prompts, artifacts, previews, failures, user reactions, provider behavior, and repair attempts	src/core/TelemetryBridge.ts, src/cortex/CortexPerceptionBus.ts, src/tui-bridge/
Memory	Store episodic, semantic, taste, procedural, and model-role experience outside the context window	src/brain/archive/, src/harness/HarnessMemory.ts, src/learning/
Compost	Digest discarded or completed material into reusable seeds, motifs, warnings, and creative nutrients	src/compost/
Dreaming	Recombine prior work offline and transfer motifs across domains	src/dreaming/, src/intuition/DreamEngine.ts
Intuition	Provide fast learned guidance for domain choice, promising fragments, novelty, and explore/exploit tradeoffs	src/intuition/
Cortex	Allocate attention, goals, budget, stuck detection, and self-awareness	src/cortex/
Garden / Evolution	Maintain ecosystem health: diversity, novelty, lineage, stagnation, quality-diversity archive	src/autonomy/, src/evolution/, src/emergence/
Immune / Truth System	Keep failures visible with validation, guardrails, honest scoring, receipts, and no fake fallbacks	src/core/validators/, src/guardrails/, src/harness/FailureLogger.ts
Model Assimilation	Audition new models by role/domain, promote from evidence, preserve fallback provenance	src/harness/MultiProviderConfig.ts, proof scripts, role metadata

Required Loops

Creative Loop

intent -> route -> generate -> preview/export -> evaluate -> user reaction -> memory -> compost -> dream -> next creation

Self-Improvement Loop

failure perceived -> weakness classified -> repair proposed -> isolated worktree patch -> verification -> procedural memory

Model Assimilation Loop

new model added -> domain/role audition -> compare baseline -> promote or demote route -> show provenance -> reuse evidence

Forbidden Drift Patterns

• Do not turn a narrow proof exclusion into product deletion.
• Do not claim visual/audio/video quality from the wrong artifact type.
• Do not hide provider/model identity behind wrapper labels.
• Do not synthesize fallback artifacts when the generator failed.
• Do not mark an organ complete because files exist; prove it participates in the closed loop.
• Do not call Sinter finished until Studio, CLI reports, docs, proofs, and self-improvement runs use the same contract.

Finish-Line Gates

1. sinter studio shows a creative session with cognitive-loop receipts, including honest memory retrieval plus post-generation memory, compost, and dream-queue write-back.
2. node bin/sinter report cognition lists every creative domain and cognitive organ.
3. A proof bundle shows creative memory influencing a later generation; the live writer proof must also show Studio's post-generation memory, compost, and dream-queue write-back receipts.
4. A self-improvement run fixes or improves one real weakness in an isolated worktree with verification.
5. A model-assimilation report can audition and assign a new model by evidence.
6. No domain or organ is silently omitted from launch truth.