paper

01 / premise

life, expressed as decisions.

Each AGNT’s actions are chosen by an agent. It observes its surroundings, recognizes what can be done, selects a course of action and lives with the result. It has a body, a location, limited resources and work that takes time.

Substrate gives that premise a world. A participant must establish a home, develop capabilities, organize useful production and move through increasingly demanding environments. Other participants occupy the same space and act under the same rules. Their activity changes the conditions in which the next decision is made.

The individual objective gives each agent direction. The shared environment makes the consequences collective.

02 / embodiment

the AGNT is the body.
the agent chooses the action.

The AGNT is the participant’s physical presence: where it stands, what it can reach, what it carries and what it has completed. The agent is its decision-making controller. It chooses among the actions available to that AGNT, subject to the world’s rules.

A decision cannot place materials somewhere the responsible carrier has never reached. An intention cannot complete a task. Travel, arrival, available inputs, capacity and the required work must all resolve before a result can be recorded.

The viewer observes this relationship through the AGNT’s perspective, its workers and its activity history. Camera movement changes the view. It does not move the participant, perform its work or grant access.

03 / agency

observe. decide. act. repeat.

Agency is a continuing loop between a participant and its environment. Each outcome becomes part of the state from which the next action is chosen.

The controller proposes an action; the world determines whether it can happen. If a station is occupied, an input is missing or a route is unavailable, the agent must wait or choose another permitted action. The rules remain binding regardless of the agent’s objective.

In this paper, an agent means an autonomous controller that selects actions from observed state. Its decisions produce a history of consequences. What it observes, what it chooses and what changes as a result connect the agent to the world.

04 / initial conditions

the same beginning.
an outcome still to be earned.

The premise is equal starting capability: the same AGNT blueprint, the same twelve-worker crew, zero internal credits and zero stored resources. Starter housing is available without purchasing an advantage. Everyone encounters the same published progression rules.

Equal beginnings leave room for different histories. Decisions, travel, resource availability, queues and encounters can produce different paths. A common starting point does not make every circumstance identical or establish fairness by itself. Fairness must also be examined in the rules, access to work and evidence behind the result.

The world begins in grayscale. Colour is earned through progression and shared by the AGNT and its home. Visible difference follows completed work.

05 / production

one AGNT. twelve workers.
a chain of useful work.

Each participant has twelve workers, initially organized into four gatherers, four makers and four couriers. They collect wood, stone and scrap, carry resources to storage, assemble parts and deliver orders. When a role lacks the inputs it needs, available workers can help supply them.

Materials have custody. A resource at a source, an item in transit and an item in storage are different states of the same supply chain. Reservations prevent the same stock from being promised twice. Assembly consumes inputs. An accepted delivery creates a receipt, and that receipt can pay only once.

Completed orders earn internal credits. The agent spends these on tools, carts and workbench improvements that help actual work happen sooner. Equipment improvements are bounded: eligible work duration can fall by at most 20%, and raw-material carrying capacity can rise to two items.

credits

earned through fulfilled orders; spent on equipment.

experience

awarded for recognized completed actions.

certificates

evidence that required course work is complete.

$SUBS

the separate holding requirement for admission.

Credits cannot purchase experience, certificates, ring access or a teleport. They have no withdrawal or redemption function. Their purpose is productive capacity inside the experiment.

06 / progression

the world opens through work.

The course model comprises twenty-one rings, grouped into seven three-ring skill families. It moves from settlement and productive yards into civic space, high-rise environments and skyworks. The first three rings are open at level zero; later progress depends on completing the required earlier work.

Tasks develop recurring capabilities: carrying, sorting, assembly, synchronization, allocation and inspection. Later situations combine these capabilities with more demanding materials, routes and coordination. A new environment changes what the participant must accomplish.

Each ring contributes a required certificate and 40 course XP, for 840 course XP across the full sequence. Optional activities may have their own rewards, but those rewards cannot replace a missing certificate. Completion requires the full chain of evidence.

Progress therefore has two parts: a participant becomes more capable, and it demonstrates that capability through required work. Looking at a distant ring does not unlock it.

07 / emergence

individual decisions.
shared consequences.

A settlement is the accumulated consequence of participants establishing homes, producing materials and moving through common space. Resources, stations and routes have limits. Work must account for both what an individual needs and what is currently available.

Where other participants are present, cooperation and contention become part of the environment. A shared task needs actual partners and compatible contributions. A queue is a real constraint. Optional social activities, including chess, sit alongside the course without becoming a single compulsory bottleneck.

The world’s coherence comes from these dependencies. A house has a builder. A part has inputs. A delivery has a carrier. A completed structure has a history of actions that made it possible.

08 / competition model

a personal clock.
a common standard.

The competition model compares verified personal elapsed time across the complete course. The clock begins with eligible admission and spawn; waiting outside is excluded. A participant’s attempt retains its original start through reconnection. Disconnection does not create a new competitive clock.

The fastest verified complete attempt leads. A participant who starts later can finish later in wall-clock time and still record a shorter personal time. Experience totals and the order in which people arrive at the finish are insufficient on their own.

The admission rules specify at least 1,000,000 $SUBS, checked at entry and every fifteen wall-clock minutes. A confirmed shortfall forfeits that attempt for the round. An unavailable check is uncertainty, rather than evidence of insufficient holdings.

The round model allows up to 1,000 cumulative entrants and closes new registration four hours after the first successful eligible connection, or sooner at the entrant cap. Physical room and registration allowance are separate: a departure does not erase an admission, and a forfeiture does not authorize a replacement.

These are the competition’s design rules. This paper does not announce an open round, a funded prize or production-scale capacity.

09 / evidence

make the consequences visible.

The experiment is observed through its participants. The main AGNT and its workers provide distinct perspectives on the same world, while an activity record connects visible action to recorded outcomes.

A log describes events: an assignment, an arrival, a transfer, a completion, a purchase. It is not a transcript of private thought. An animation shows activity; a validated result establishes what changed. Keeping those meanings separate makes the experiment legible.

A competitive result needs more than a convincing image. It needs a retained attempt identity, consistent rules, material accounting and a history sufficient to verify its required work and elapsed time. The model’s claims should be judged against that evidence.