Foci and kinds

A focus is a node you reason about. Declared directly:

focus cache-is-safe
  kind claim
  The new cache layer is safe to ship today.

or, more concisely, with a typed header — a built-in kind used as the header word, which desugars to exactly the same focus + kind:

claim cache-is-safe
  The new cache layer is safe to ship today.

Either form works anywhere a focus does (including nested in a scope). A focus can also be created implicitly by a focus-creating posture.

Anatomy

Kinds

The ten kinds:

An unknown kind warns (unknown focus kind), unless a profile declares it.

How a kind is set

In priority order:

1. Explicit kind field — authoritative and sticky. Once set explicitly, nothing overrides it silently.
2. Posture inference — a focus-creating posture implies a kind: noticed→observation, considers→option, holds/chooses→decision, remembers→memory, infers→claim. This is soft: a later posture can refine it.
3. Decision-graph inference — the endpoints of leads-to / option-of edges get provisional kinds: the source of either is an option; the target of leads-to is an outcome; the target of option-of is a decision. Only applied to foci that still have no kind.

If two explicit kinds disagree on the same focus, the first is kept and a warning is emitted. An explicit kind always beats an inferred one; an inferred kind can be refined by a later posture (e.g. considers X then chooses X moves X from option to decision).

Status — the belief lifecycle

A status field records where a focus stands:

Status is a fold marker: a settled / superseded / abandoned focus (and the thought-tree it opens) is kept with its reasoning intact but folds by default in the viewer. Nothing is deleted — the path not taken stays inspectable.

Thought-trees — nesting

A focus (like a scope, and like a question) can contain other records by nesting them under it:

focus ship-decision
  kind decision
  Ship the new cache layer this week.

  focus load-test-passed
    kind observation
    p99 held under 2× peak traffic.

  focus rollback-ready
    kind assumption
    One-command rollback is wired up.

The members are recorded on the container’s includes, in document order, and inherit the container’s provenance and temporal context (member-wins: an explicit value on the child is kept). This turns a flat list of foci into a thought-tree — a claim and the reasoning that hangs off it, as one unit.

Merging

A focus id mentioned more than once refers to one focus — the mentions merge:

• body, quantity, and formula are first-wins (a later mention doesn’t overwrite a value already stated).
• fields accumulate.
• kind follows the priority rules above.

This is what lets you declare a focus once with full detail and then refer to it freely by id elsewhere, even from another agent’s stance.

Divergence is kept, not dropped. If a later mention states a different body, quantity, or formula (not just a repeat), the alternative is not silently discarded — it’s retained on the focus’s divergent list and the mirror raises a definition-divergence conflict. Concurrent authors (or agents) can each write their version; reconciliation is surfaced, never forced.