The vocabulary, defined.

From A to Z.

Each entry has a stable anchor, usable from articles: /en/comprendre/glossaire/#tick.

Action

An entity's executable unit of behaviour (move, eat, drink, rest, explore, socialise, communicate, trade, fight, pick up…). Action selection results from a utility-based deliberation. See SYNE →

Agent (entity)

An autonomous simulated being endowed with a state, needs, perception, memory, beliefs, capabilities, a decision system and actions. The engine provides the structures, never the behaviour. See SYNE →

BDI (Belief-Desire-Intention)

Cognitive architecture: beliefs (what the entity holds to be true), desires or goals (what it seeks), intentions (what it commits to doing). In LIVEX, this is an organisational framework, not a theory of mind. See SYNE →

Need

A behavioural tension (hunger, thirst, fatigue, safety, social, curiosity) expressed on a scale from 0 to 100. A high need feeds goals and decision-making — it does not trigger behaviour directly. See SYNE →

Cluster

A subset of entities sharing a logical proximity or membership, serving as a basis for the analysis of groupings and communities. See ECHOS →

Contract

A versioned interface linking two components (snapshot format, run identifier, persistence schema). A contract break is reported in the changelog. See Architecture →

Belief

A structured representation of a fact, with a confidence (0–1) and a source (perception, memory, communication, inference). A belief is “true” for the entity if its confidence reaches 0.5. See SYNE →

Determinism (bit-for-bit)

The property whereby two identical executions (same seed, same configuration, same engine version) produce exactly the same trajectory. It is the foundation of reproducibility. See SYNE →

ECHOS

Emergent Cognition & Holistic Observation System — the observation, analysis and control system. It reads SYNE's traces and derives measurements from them, without ever intervening on the world. See ECHOS →

Emergence

The appearance of collective structures (groups, specialisations, exchanges, tensions) that are not programmed, resulting from local interactions under constraints. See Emergence explained →

Seed

A 64-bit integer initialising the engine's pseudo-random generator. It makes two runs comparable and reproducible, and appears in the run identifier. See Reproducibility →

Launcher

LIVEX's orchestration layer: driving, combining, monitoring and archiving the work carried out with SYNE, ECHOS and PRISM, from a single interface. It contains no simulation logic, no analysis logic and no rendering logic. See Launcher →

PRISM

Perceptual Rendering & Interactive Simulation Module — the perceptual rendering module that makes the simulated world visible. It is never the source of truth of the simulation. See PRISM →

Run

A complete and reproducible execution of an experiment, defined by a seed, a configuration, an engine version and an initial state. See Reproducibility →

Source of truth

The component that holds the authoritative state. For LIVEX, this is SYNE: neither the observation (ECHOS) nor the rendering (PRISM) decides or modifies the world. See Architecture →

Capability statuses

The imposed vocabulary for describing what actually exists: available, experimental, in development, envisaged, out of scope. A capability is never “available” until it has been delivered and verified. See Limits and scope →

SYNE

Systems & Emergent Network Engine — the deterministic simulation engine; it owns the truth of the world. See SYNE →

Tick

A unit of simulated time: by default, 1 tick equals 1 simulated minute. At the default rate (10 ticks/real second), one real second equals ten simulated minutes. See SYNE →