MAINTENANCE.md

Maintenance Notes — instinct-c

Design Constraints

• C11 only — no extensions, no POSIX, no platform headers beyond <stdint.h>, <stddef.h>, <string.h>
• No dynamic allocation — all state lives in the InstinctEngine struct passed by the caller
• No -lm — only integer arithmetic and simple float comparisons; no pow, sin, cos, etc.
• Deterministic — same inputs always produce same outputs (no randomness)
• Bare-metal safe — no syscall dependencies, no floating-point exceptions expected in normal operation

Extending

• Add new instincts by appending to the InstinctType enum (before INSTINCT_COUNT)
• Update instinct_name() and instinct_priority() switch statements
• Add evaluation logic in instinct_evaluate() in instinct.c
• last_reflexes[8] limits simultaneous reflexes; increase if more instincts can fire at once
• INSTINCT_HISTORY_SIZE 32 limits ring buffer; adjust for longer memory

Testing

• make test runs 15 tests covering all instincts, priority ordering, history, and simultaneous firing
• Add tests to test_instinct.c using the TEST/CHECK/PASS/FAIL macros