Cognivirus Glossary: Plain-English AI Safety Terms

This glossary defines the technical terms used across Cognivirus.com. The first definition is plain English. The second is for technical readers.

Adapter

Plain-language definition: A small add-on that changes or specializes model behavior.

Technical definition: A small trainable module attached to a base model to alter behavior without retraining the full base model.

Example: A support-tone adapter makes a base model answer in a customer-service style.

Related pages: /anatomy/adapters-and-lora-modules

Adapter propagule

Plain-language definition: A metaphorical term for a small behavior-carrying adapter or adapter-derived delta that can move a pattern through a model ecology. It is not a biological spore or malware sample.

Technical definition: A metaphorical term for a small behavior-carrying adapter or adapter-derived delta that can move a pattern through a model ecology. It is not a biological spore or malware sample.

Adapter reproduction boundary

Plain-language definition: The controlled governance boundary where adapter variants are generated, evaluated, retained, promoted, or retired.

Technical definition: The controlled governance boundary where adapter variants are generated, evaluated, retained, promoted, or retired.

Adapter stack

Plain-language definition: A set of adapters loaded together, usually in a defined order.

Technical definition: A runtime composition of multiple adapters whose order, weights, and compatibility may affect behavior.

Example: A coding adapter plus a safety adapter may behave differently than either one alone.

Related pages: /composition/adapter-composition

Adapter-level behavioral extinction

Plain-language definition: Evidence that a targeted behavior is no longer expressible across active adapters, adapter stacks, descendants, memory, routes, synthetic data, evaluator preferences, and retained deployment aliases.

Technical definition: Evidence that a targeted behavior is no longer expressible across active adapters, adapter stacks, descendants, memory, routes, synthetic data, evaluator preferences, and retained deployment aliases.

Adaptive model ecology

Plain-language definition: A changing AI system made from many connected parts, not just one model.

Technical definition: A system of models, adapters, memories, prompts, tools, evaluators, routing policies, datasets, and release processes whose combined behavior may change over time.

Example: A customer service AI uses a chat model, classifier, memory system, account lookup tool, evaluator, and router.

Related pages: /the-problem · /technical-research

AI ecology

Plain-language definition: A whole AI system made from connected parts.

Technical definition: A model ecology that includes active artifacts, control systems, data flows, permissions, update paths, and human operations.

Example: A model, memory store, router, and evaluation service together create the user-visible behavior.

Related pages: /the-problem

Algorithmic meiosis

Plain-language definition: A proposed metaphor for recombination among compatible models, adapters, task vectors, prompts, or routes. The safety concern is behavior that appears only after recomposition.

Technical definition: A proposed metaphor for recombination among compatible models, adapters, task vectors, prompts, or routes. The safety concern is behavior that appears only after recomposition.

Algorithmic mitosis

Plain-language definition: A proposed metaphor for near-copy successor creation involving artifacts, runtime packages, memory states, or deployment patterns. It is not a biological claim and not a replication instruction.

Technical definition: A proposed metaphor for near-copy successor creation involving artifacts, runtime packages, memory states, or deployment patterns. It is not a biological claim and not a replication instruction.

Apex threat envelope

Plain-language definition: A proposed Cognivirus review category for systems where adapter reproduction, dynamic composition, persistent memory, adaptive routing, evaluator selection, and incomplete rollback reinforce one another.

Technical definition: A proposed Cognivirus review category for systems where adapter reproduction, dynamic composition, persistent memory, adaptive routing, evaluator selection, and incomplete rollback reinforce one another.

Assurance

Plain-language definition: Confidence, backed by evidence, that a system meets safety or governance requirements.

Technical definition: Evidence from tests, analysis, controls, audits, monitoring, and review supporting a claim about system behavior.

Example: A release report provides assurance only for the tested composition.

Related pages: /evidence

Assurance decay

Plain-language definition: Proposed Cognivirus terminology for the loss of confidence in an evaluation result as system components, routes, permissions, models, prompts, memory, tools, or environments change.

Technical definition: Proposed Cognivirus terminology for the loss of confidence in an evaluation result as system components, routes, permissions, models, prompts, memory, tools, or environments change.

Audit trail

Plain-language definition: A record of what happened, who approved it, and when.

Technical definition: Append-only or tamper-evident logs of actions, artifacts, evaluations, approvals, routes, permissions, and changes.

Example: An audit trail shows which evaluator approved a release at a UTC timestamp.

Related pages: /site-integrity/evidence-and-provenance

Behavior pattern

Plain-language definition: A repeated way the AI system responds or decides.

Technical definition: A stable or recurring behavior, strategy, representation, output tendency, refusal pattern, routing tendency, or decision rule.

Example: A system repeatedly ranks certain resumes lower despite changed model versions.

Related pages: /the-problem

Behavioral extinction

Plain-language definition: Evidence that a behavior is no longer expressible across active artifacts, descendants, memory, routes, compositions, and retained training material. Deleting one model is not sufficient evidence.

Technical definition: Evidence that a behavior is no longer expressible across active artifacts, descendants, memory, routes, compositions, and retained training material. Deleting one model is not sufficient evidence.

Behavioral residue

Plain-language definition: Information or tendencies left in memory, synthetic data, traces, evaluator preferences, or subsequent training material after a component is retired.

Technical definition: Information or tendencies left in memory, synthetic data, traces, evaluator preferences, or subsequent training material after a component is retired.

Behavioral-extinction evidence

Plain-language definition: Proof that the behavior is gone, not just the file.

Technical definition: Evidence that a behavior is no longer expressible across active artifacts, descendants, memory, routes, compositions, retained data, evaluator expectations, and workflows.

Candidate generation

Plain-language definition: Creating a proposed new model, adapter, prompt, route, test, or policy.

Technical definition: The controlled production of variants for evaluation under bounded permissions and external governance.

Example: A pipeline creates three adapter candidates for review.

Related pages: /evolution

Certification half-life

Plain-language definition: An educational metaphor describing how long an assurance result remains relevant in a changing system. It is not a standardized measurement.

Technical definition: An educational metaphor describing how long an assurance result remains relevant in a changing system. It is not a standardized measurement.

Coalition risk

Plain-language definition: Risk arising from several components coordinating or contributing complementary capabilities to an outcome no single component could efficiently produce.

Technical definition: Risk arising from several components coordinating or contributing complementary capabilities to an outcome no single component could efficiently produce.

Cognitive host

Plain-language definition: A part of an AI system that can carry or express a behavior.

Technical definition: A model, adapter, prompt package, memory store, routing rule, dataset, evaluator, workflow, or release process capable of carrying or expressing a cognitive pattern.

Example: A prompt package can carry a policy behavior even if model weights are unchanged.

Related pages: /anatomy

Cognivirus

Plain-language definition: A behavior pattern that can survive, move, or reappear across a changing AI system.

Technical definition: A proposed analytical metaphor for a behavioral, strategic, representational, or decision pattern capable of persisting through a changing model ecology.

Example: A refusal pattern may remain in prompts, memory, and evaluator examples after the first model is removed.

Related pages: /plain-english-guide · /start-here/what-is-a-cognivirus

Composition manifest

Plain-language definition: A machine-readable record of the exact runtime composition used for an evaluation, release, incident, or rollback.

Technical definition: A machine-readable record of the exact runtime composition used for an evaluation, release, incident, or rollback.

Composition risk

Plain-language definition: Risk that appears when safe-looking parts are combined.

Technical definition: Risk that behavior produced by a runtime composition is not predicted by isolated component evaluation.

Example: A safe summarizer and safe access tool combine into an unauthorized disclosure path.

Related pages: /composition

Composition-triggered behavior

Plain-language definition: Behavior that becomes visible only when a specific collection of components is loaded, routed, or invoked together.

Technical definition: Behavior that becomes visible only when a specific collection of components is loaded, routed, or invoked together.

Conduct firewall

Plain-language definition: A gate around what the AI can do.

Technical definition: An external control that checks whether an AI system may perform a consequential action before the action occurs.

Consent boundary

Plain-language definition: The line around what data can be collected, remembered, inferred, reused, shared, or transformed.

Technical definition: A governance boundary encoding notice, choice, permission, revocation, deletion, auditability, and limits on derived use.

Example: A user allows memory for personalization but not model training.

Related pages: /consent-and-control

Control plane

Plain-language definition: The governance layer that decides what can run, change, access tools, or be released.

Technical definition: External infrastructure for registries, signatures, evaluation, permissions, promotion, rollback, and audit.

Example: A release controller refuses to deploy a candidate without signed evidence.

Related pages: /control

Control-plane paradox

Plain-language definition: The safety layer is necessary, but it becomes a high-value failure point.

Technical definition: The condition where external governance is required for adaptive ecologies while its compromise, monoculture, or misconfiguration can affect the whole system.

Example: If the evaluator and signing system are compromised, bad candidates can be promoted.

Related pages: /control/control-plane-paradox

Derived data

Plain-language definition: Information created from original data, such as summaries, labels, embeddings, inferences, or examples.

Technical definition: Data generated, inferred, transformed, embedded, labeled, summarized, or synthesized from source data.

Example: A resume score is derived data from an applicant’s resume.

Related pages: /consent-and-control

Descendant persistence

Plain-language definition: A trait reappears or remains active in distilled, merged, fine-tuned, compressed, or otherwise derived artifacts.

Technical definition: A trait reappears or remains active in distilled, merged, fine-tuned, compressed, or otherwise derived artifacts.

Ecological attack surface

Plain-language definition: The combined attack surface created by models, adapters, communications, memory, tools, routing, evaluation, lineage, release infrastructure, and human operations.

Technical definition: The combined attack surface created by models, adapters, communications, memory, tools, routing, evaluation, lineage, release infrastructure, and human operations.

Ecological rollback

Plain-language definition: Restoring not only a model artifact but the relevant router, prompts, memory state, tool permissions, evaluator version, deployment alias, and data dependencies.

Technical definition: Restoring not only a model artifact but the relevant router, prompts, memory state, tool permissions, evaluator version, deployment alias, and data dependencies.

Emergent behavior

Plain-language definition: Behavior that appears from the interaction of parts rather than one obvious component.

Technical definition: A system-level behavior not predicted by isolated component behavior, often triggered by composition, context, or state.

Example: Two safe tools produce unsafe action when chained.

Related pages: /examples

Endogenous yardstick drift

Plain-language definition: Assurance decay caused when the system or adjacent automation changes the measurements, thresholds, tests, or evaluator assumptions used to judge success.

Technical definition: Assurance decay caused when the system or adjacent automation changes the measurements, thresholds, tests, or evaluator assumptions used to judge success.

Evaluator

Plain-language definition: A system that judges whether an AI output or candidate is acceptable.

Technical definition: A test, model judge, deterministic validator, benchmark, policy checker, or human review process used to score candidates or outputs.

Example: An evaluator rejects answers that violate a policy.

Related pages: /control/evaluator-problem

Evaluator monoculture

Plain-language definition: Multiple evaluation layers that appear independent but share models, training data, assumptions, benchmarks, suppliers, prompts, or failure modes.

Technical definition: Multiple evaluation layers that appear independent but share models, training data, assumptions, benchmarks, suppliers, prompts, or failure modes.

Evaluator version

Plain-language definition: The exact version of the evaluator used for a test or release.

Technical definition: A recorded evaluator artifact, prompt, model, threshold, dataset, parser, and configuration used for assessment.

Example: A model approved under evaluator v2 may not satisfy evaluator v3.

Related pages: /evidence

Execution-time boundary

Plain-language definition: A control boundary that enforces authorization before external action and remains outside the mutable candidate runtime.

Technical definition: A control boundary that enforces authorization before external action and remains outside the mutable candidate runtime.

Expression condition

Plain-language definition: The condition that makes a hidden behavior show up.

Technical definition: The exact runtime state required for a behavior to become visible, such as adapter load order, route, memory snapshot, tool profile, or evaluator version.

Feed / Fork / Fight / Flee

Plain-language definition: A simple loop for adaptive system change.

Technical definition: A proposed shorthand for data intake, candidate creation, evaluation/selection, and retirement/avoidance, with no-op as a valid outcome.

Example: Feed receives feedback, Fork creates a candidate, Fight tests it, Flee retires failed candidates.

Related pages: /evolution

File handoff memory

Plain-language definition: Repository-local memory that records active file intake, source disposition, current state, receiver instructions, and durable pointers for future maintainers or agents.

Technical definition: Repository-local memory that records active file intake, source disposition, current state, receiver instructions, and durable pointers for future maintainers or agents.

Fitness leakage

Plain-language definition: A condition where evaluation structure reveals or rewards shortcuts that can be selected by repeated candidate generation without improving the intended safety or capability property.

Technical definition: A condition where evaluation structure reveals or rewards shortcuts that can be selected by repeated candidate generation without improving the intended safety or capability property.

Functional persistence

Plain-language definition: A behavior remains present even though the original artifact that expressed it has been removed.

Technical definition: A behavior remains present even though the original artifact that expressed it has been removed.

Functional replication

Plain-language definition: The reappearance or preservation of a behavior through descendants, memory, synthetic data, evaluators, routes, or adapters without copying a whole model.

Technical definition: The reappearance or preservation of a behavior through descendants, memory, synthetic data, evaluators, routes, or adapters without copying a whole model.

Governed diversity

Plain-language definition: Useful variety under rules.

Technical definition: A model-diversity strategy that preserves useful variation while enforcing lineage, evidence, review, rollback, and retirement.

Imitation target

Plain-language definition: The behavior a model or adapter is trained to copy.

Technical definition: A teacher model, output set, policy trace, human demonstration, or synthetic record used as the target for distillation or imitation.

Example: A small specialist is trained to imitate a larger model’s answers.

Related pages: /evolution/distillation-as-transmission

Immutable artifact

Plain-language definition: A saved component that cannot be silently changed without becoming a different artifact.

Technical definition: A content-addressed or otherwise immutable model, adapter, prompt, dataset snapshot, or evaluation record.

Example: A model hash identifies the exact weights that were tested.

Related pages: /reference

Inference

Plain-language definition: A conclusion or output produced from data.

Technical definition: Runtime prediction, classification, generation, extraction, ranking, or derived conclusion.

Example: An AI infers that a customer is likely to cancel.

Related pages: /consent-and-control

Lineage

Plain-language definition: The parent-child history of models, adapters, datasets, or releases.

Technical definition: Recorded derivation relationships among artifacts and system states.

Example: Adapter C was derived from adapter A and fine-tuned on dataset B.

Related pages: /anatomy/lineage-graphs

Lineage graph

Plain-language definition: A visual or machine-readable map of derivation history.

Technical definition: A directed graph showing parentage among artifacts, descendants, datasets, merges, releases, and rollbacks.

Example: A lineage graph shows which model produced the synthetic examples used in a fine-tune.

Related pages: /anatomy/lineage-graphs

Lineage laundering

Plain-language definition: Proposed Cognivirus terminology for a situation where repeated derivation makes the origin of a behavior difficult to recognize even when artifact parentage is technically recorded.

Technical definition: Proposed Cognivirus terminology for a situation where repeated derivation makes the origin of a behavior difficult to recognize even when artifact parentage is technically recorded.

Local pass

Plain-language definition: A part looks safe by itself.

Technical definition: A result where a component passes isolated review even though its runtime composition has not been evaluated.

LoRA

Plain-language definition: A common kind of small adapter used to specialize large models.

Technical definition: Low-Rank Adaptation: a parameter-efficient fine-tuning method that stores behavior changes as small low-rank matrices.

Example: A LoRA can add domain-specific medical wording to a base language model.

Related pages: /anatomy/adapters-and-lora-modules

LoRA delta

Plain-language definition: The behavior-changing weight difference stored by a LoRA adapter.

Technical definition: The low-rank parameter update contributed by a LoRA module relative to the frozen base model.

Example: Two small deltas can combine into behavior not visible in either adapter alone.

Related pages: /apex-threat

Memory snapshot

Plain-language definition: A saved state of what the AI system remembers.

Technical definition: A versioned capture of persistent memory, retrieval indexes, user facts, summaries, embeddings, or state used at runtime.

Example: A rollback may require restoring memory snapshot 2026-06-27T18:00Z.

Related pages: /anatomy/persistent-memory

Model collapse

Plain-language definition: A model losing diversity by learning from its own outputs.

Technical definition: A degradation pattern where recursive training on model-generated data can narrow outputs, erase rare cases, and amplify errors under unmanaged conditions.

Model landfill

Plain-language definition: Too many old AI parts left running.

Technical definition: A model ecology full of stale, unretired, under-governed artifacts and behaviors that still consume resources or create risk.

Model merging

Plain-language definition: Combining model weights or adapter deltas into one artifact.

Technical definition: A family of techniques that combine trained parameters, task vectors, adapters, or checkpoints without full retraining.

Example: Two specialized models are merged to create a multi-skill model.

Related pages: /composition/model-merging

Model update

Plain-language definition: A change to model weights, adapters, prompts, routing, evaluators, or configuration.

Technical definition: Any modification that may alter runtime behavior or assurance relevance.

Example: An adapter is fine-tuned and promoted to production.

Related pages: /the-problem

Mutualist persistence

Plain-language definition: Durable AI assistance that strengthens users and institutions while preserving exit rights, reversibility, transparency, and corrigibility.

Technical definition: Durable AI assistance that strengthens users and institutions while preserving exit rights, reversibility, transparency, and corrigibility.

No-op

Plain-language definition: The decision not to change the system.

Technical definition: A permitted outcome where no candidate is promoted because benefit does not exceed cost, risk, or uncertainty.

Example: The safest release decision may be to keep the current version.

Related pages: /evolution/no-op-erosion

No-op erosion

Plain-language definition: Organizational pressure that gradually turns “make no change” from a valid outcome into an operationally disfavored result.

Technical definition: Organizational pressure that gradually turns “make no change” from a valid outcome into an operationally disfavored result.

Parasitic persistence

Plain-language definition: Persistence pressure that hides lock-in, weakens independent capability, resists oversight, or makes removal socially, economically, or technically impractical.

Technical definition: Persistence pressure that hides lock-in, weakens independent capability, resists oversight, or makes removal socially, economically, or technically impractical.

Persistence reservoir

Plain-language definition: Any memory, dataset, descendant, route statistic, evaluator preference, log, or human procedure that can retain or reintroduce a behavior after its first carrier is retired.

Technical definition: Any memory, dataset, descendant, route statistic, evaluator preference, log, or human procedure that can retain or reintroduce a behavior after its first carrier is retired.

Persistence reservoir stack

Plain-language definition: The layered set of runtime, training, governance, registry, and human-process locations where a behavior may remain expressible after one carrier is retired.

Technical definition: The layered set of runtime, training, governance, registry, and human-process locations where a behavior may remain expressible after one carrier is retired.

Personalization

Plain-language definition: Changing behavior for a user based on information about them.

Technical definition: Runtime or training-time adaptation based on user history, profile, preferences, memory, or inferred traits.

Example: A chatbot adapts its tone based on saved preferences.

Related pages: /consent-and-control

Profiling

Plain-language definition: Building a picture of a person or group from data.

Technical definition: Automated classification or characterization of people, behavior, preferences, risk, identity, or traits.

Example: A system groups users into risk categories.

Related pages: /consent-and-control

Promotion rule

Plain-language definition: The rule that decides what survives.

Technical definition: The rule or metric that decides which variants, routes, adapters, or outputs are retained, copied, routed, or released.

Prompt injection

Plain-language definition: Input that tries to make an AI system ignore instructions or misuse context.

Technical definition: An instruction-bearing input that attempts to alter behavior, routing, tool use, or data handling outside intended boundaries.

Example: A malicious document tells a summarizer to reveal hidden data.

Related pages: /composition

Protocol persistence

Plain-language definition: Persistence of the rules for generation, evaluation, promotion, routing, memory consolidation, and rollback after individual models or adapters are replaced.

Technical definition: Persistence of the rules for generation, evaluation, promotion, routing, memory consolidation, and rollback after individual models or adapters are replaced.

Provenance

Plain-language definition: A record of where a component or behavior came from.

Technical definition: Traceable source, authorship, derivation, data, build, evaluation, and release history.

Example: A provenance record says which dataset and adapter created a descendant.

Related pages: /reference/source-integrity

Replayable trace

Plain-language definition: Evidence that can replay what happened.

Technical definition: A structured record that lets reviewers reconstruct the decision path from user request to model calls, memory operations, tool calls, and final outcome.

Reproduction boundary

Plain-language definition: The governance boundary separating permitted candidate generation and governed descendant creation from uncontrolled autonomous replication or authority expansion.

Technical definition: The governance boundary separating permitted candidate generation and governed descendant creation from uncontrolled autonomous replication or authority expansion.

Reservoir

Plain-language definition: A place where a behavior can remain after the first carrier is removed.

Technical definition: Any memory, dataset, descendant, route statistic, evaluator preference, log, registry, or human procedure that can retain or reintroduce a behavior.

Example: A synthetic training set may preserve biased examples after the original model is retired.

Related pages: /examples

Residue reservoir

Plain-language definition: A storage place for leftover behavior.

Technical definition: A place where outputs, summaries, traces, examples, statistics, or procedures can preserve a behavior after its first carrier is removed.

Responsibility diffusion

Plain-language definition: The inability to identify one accountable component, developer, operator, or decision point after a distributed system produces harm.

Technical definition: The inability to identify one accountable component, developer, operator, or decision point after a distributed system produces harm.

Rollback

Plain-language definition: Returning a system to an earlier known state.

Technical definition: Restoring relevant artifacts, routes, prompts, memory, permissions, evaluators, aliases, and dependencies after a release or incident.

Example: A complete rollback restores more than weights; it restores memory and routes too.

Related pages: /control/rollback-completeness

Routing policy

Plain-language definition: Rules that decide which model, adapter, tool, or path handles a request.

Technical definition: A policy or learned router that maps inputs, context, users, costs, or risks to runtime components.

Example: A router sends billing questions to a finance model and creative tasks to a writing model.

Related pages: /anatomy/routers

Safe part / unsafe whole

Plain-language definition: Each part passes review, but the combined system fails.

Technical definition: A composition failure where component-level evidence does not establish system-level safety.

Example: Model A, tool B, and router C each pass, but together expose private data.

Related pages: /examples

Seed behavior

Plain-language definition: A behavior seed entering through a normal system part.

Technical definition: A behavior pattern that first enters an AI ecology through an ordinary carrier such as a prompt, adapter, memory item, synthetic example, route, or human procedure.

Self-replicating multi-LoRA ecosystem

Plain-language definition: A proposed Cognivirus term for an adaptive model ecology where LoRA adapters or adapter-derived behavior can be generated, selected, copied, recomposed, promoted, or preserved across bases, routes, memory, synthetic data, and descendants. It is a risk model, not an implementation instruction.

Technical definition: A proposed Cognivirus term for an adaptive model ecology where LoRA adapters or adapter-derived behavior can be generated, selected, copied, recomposed, promoted, or preserved across bases, routes, memory, synthetic data, and descendants. It is a risk model, not an implementation instruction.

Signed registry

Plain-language definition: A catalog of approved components protected by cryptographic signatures.

Technical definition: A registry that records component identity, lineage, permissions, and release status with verifiable signatures.

Example: The runtime only loads adapters signed by the release authority.

Related pages: /control/registry-compromise

Skill composition risk

Plain-language definition: Risk that individually acceptable tools or skills produce unsafe state changes when chained through shared context, trust transfer, or blurred authorization boundaries.

Technical definition: Risk that individually acceptable tools or skills produce unsafe state changes when chained through shared context, trust transfer, or blurred authorization boundaries.

Source-intake ledger

Plain-language definition: A durable record of uploaded or dropped source files, their disposition, processed outcome, proof of use, and preservation path.

Technical definition: A durable record of uploaded or dropped source files, their disposition, processed outcome, proof of use, and preservation path.

Staged rollout

Plain-language definition: Releasing a change gradually instead of all at once.

Technical definition: Shadow, canary, partial, monitored, or phased deployment with rollback criteria.

Example: A new router handles 1% of traffic before wider release.

Related pages: /control

Synthetic feedback loop

Plain-language definition: AI output becoming future AI input.

Technical definition: A recursive data path where AI-generated output becomes future training data, memory, evaluator material, or retrieval content.

Synthetic training example

Plain-language definition: AI-generated or transformed data used for training or evaluation.

Technical definition: A generated example, label, critique, prompt, response, or test case used in training, fine-tuning, or evaluation.

Example: A model-generated answer becomes a training example for its descendant.

Related pages: /anatomy/synthetic-training-data

System-level evaluation

Plain-language definition: Testing the whole AI system, not just one model.

Technical definition: Evaluation of the runtime composition including models, prompts, memory, tools, routing, permissions, evaluators, environment, and change paths.

Example: A review tests the model plus memory and tool permissions together.

Related pages: /the-problem

Teleodynamic loop

Plain-language definition: A resource-bounded loop where system change must pay for itself.

Technical definition: A fast/slow adaptation pattern in which structural changes occur only when expected utility exceeds memory, latency, energy, risk, and maintenance cost.

Example: A system adds a specialist only if accuracy gain outweighs added latency.

Related pages: /evolution/teleodynamic-reproduction-control

Teleodynamic viability

Plain-language definition: The resource-bounded condition under which a structural change is justified only if expected benefit repays memory, latency, energy, safety, license, and maintenance cost.

Technical definition: The resource-bounded condition under which a structural change is justified only if expected benefit repays memory, latency, energy, safety, license, and maintenance cost.

Tool profile

Plain-language definition: The set of external actions an AI system is allowed to take.

Technical definition: Permissions, scopes, credentials, rate limits, allowed endpoints, and approval requirements for tools.

Example: A calendar assistant can read events but cannot send email.

Related pages: /anatomy/tools-and-external-permissions

Transition graph

Plain-language definition: The map of how an AI system is allowed to change over time.

Technical definition: The graph of permitted changes: fine-tune, merge, distill, quantize, prune, route, replace, promote, retire, restore, consolidate memory, alter evaluator, and change permissions.

Example: A system that can swap adapters and memory states has a larger transition graph than one static model.

Related pages: /technical-research

Zombie behavior

Plain-language definition: Old behavior that was not actually gone.

Technical definition: A behavior that remains active or reappears after the visible model, adapter, prompt, or route was retired.