Noesis

Noesis is the Abraxas latent-representation research module: a contract-first system for measuring, comparing, falsifying, aligning, and settling claims about model representations without assuming those representations form a universal hidden language.

Posture

• Canonical status: CANON-SHADOW
• Governance effect: ADVISORY_ONLY
• Runtime: SLICE-001 + SLICE-002A + SLICE-003 + SLICE-004 + SLICE-005 + SLICE-006 + SLICE-007 + SLICE-008 + SLICE-009 + SLICE-010 + SLICE-011 + SLICE-012 + SLICE-013 + SLICE-014 + SLICE-015 + SLICE-016 + SLICE-017 + SLICE-018 + SLICE-019 + SLICE-020 + SLICE-021 + SLICE-022 + SLICE-023 + SLICE-024 + SLICE-025 + SLICE-026 + SLICE-027 IMPLEMENTED
• Specification: COMPLETE
• N5 latent communication: BLOCKED pending AC-N4 + explicit operator authorization

System boundary

Hyperlexical        Noesis                  Abraxas
------------        ------                  -------
lexical forms  ->   latent evidence   ->    settlement/governance
slang               embeddings              SHADOW
symbols             hidden states           FORECAST
register            sparse features         canon decisions
transforms           probes/interventions
                    alignment/channels

Hyperlexical does not own latent truth. Noesis does not own Abraxas canon.

Canonical specification

Read in this order:

1. CONSTITUTION.md
2. specs/NOESIS-SYSTEM-SPEC.md
3. specs/REQUIREMENTS.md
4. specs/JOURNEYS.md
5. specs/WORKFLOWS.md
6. specs/STATE-MACHINES.md
7. specs/CONTRACTS.md
8. specs/DATA-MODEL.md
9. specs/SECURITY-GOVERNANCE.md
10. ARCHITECTURE.md
11. specs/ACCEPTANCE.md
12. TRACEABILITY.md
13. specs/TASKS.md
14. specs/VERIFICATION.md
15. docs/RESEARCH.md
16. STATUS.md and PLANS.md

Experiments:

• specs/EXP-001-SEMANTIC-INVARIANCE.md
• specs/EXP-001-GEOMETRY-PROFILE.md (optional curvature-aware profile; no preferred geometry)
• specs/EXP-002-LATENT-COMMUNICATION.md

Machine-readable contracts live under contracts/.

Provenance vocabulary

• OBSERVED: direct measured/recorded evidence.
• INFERRED: conclusion supported by evidence but not directly observed.
• SPECULATIVE: explicit hypothesis with insufficient confirming evidence.
• NOT_COMPUTABLE: required signal/evidence is missing or inadequate.

Scientific guardrails

Noesis does not treat vector similarity, SAE feature labels, probe accuracy, steering success, latent task performance, or cross-model alignment as automatic evidence of consciousness, intent, semantic identity, universal neuralese, or a faithful hidden chain-of-thought transcript.

Negative evidence, failed captures, contradictory controls, and failed replications are first-class outputs.

Current next gate

EXP-001 INPUT FREEZE — OPERATOR APPROVAL REQUIRED

AC-N0 and AC-N1 are accepted. The Hyperlex adapter and preregistration boundary are implemented. EXP-001 compilation requires an approval receipt bound to the exact corpus and transform/control catalog hashes. Noesis does not invent or self-approve those semantic inputs.

Validation

Run:

python scripts/validate_specs.py

CI runs the same canonical specification validation on pull requests and pushes.

Shared research program (candidate)

Noesis participation in persistent-agent research maps this component into ABX-NOEMA-REP-001. Advisory specification only; existing contracts and gates remain authoritative.

License

This repository is licensed under the MIT License. See LICENSE. This matches license = {text = "MIT"} in pyproject.toml.