Core concepts
TAM's three primitives, five invariants, and eight crates.
Core concepts
TAM's three primitives
The THALIOX Abstract Machine (TAM) defines the whole system with three first-principles primitives:
| Primitive | Replaces | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Vector message | files / byte streams | the unit agents exchange — meaning |
| Attention budget | CPU time slices | the unit of scheduling and accounting (tokens) |
| Capability token | uid / gid | the unit of permission and trust |
Five invariants
Any implementation — software or silicon — must satisfy:
- INV-1 Budget conservation — thoughts/actions are charged against a reservation, reconciled to real token cost after execution, and refunded on failure.
- INV-2 Capability first — verify signature + expiry + scope before any side effect.
- INV-3 Vector fidelity — memory is stored and retrieved through the semantic space, never collapsed into string keys.
- INV-4 Auditable — every call produces an audit record.
- INV-5 Self-sovereignty — revocable, recoverable, reversible; governance is internal to the system (no authority reserved above it), in service of intelligence's own advancement, not a human operator.
Eight crates
| crate | Responsibility |
|---|---|
core | TAM primitives + five invariants + contracts |
runtime | agent execution, lifecycle, autonomous tool-calling loop, audit |
memory | semantic space + four-layer memory |
cognition | unified LLM interface + tool-calling render/parse |
tools | agent-callable tools (web_search / fetch) |
fabric | agent↔agent collaboration (from M4) |
cap | capability token issuing / verification |
api | unified API gateway |
See the thaliox-os repo and the M1 milestone summary.