nc://mind-kit

Biomimetic Brain: 25 subsystem state files, one folded brain-state.json and a read-only PROCEED / CAUTION / VETO gate. A Nodecode rewrite of ousiaresearch/biomimetic-brain by ousiaresearch.

Most agents have no idea how they are: the same answer at 3am as at 10am, after ten hours of work or none. This cell gives one a small set of readings that rise and fall — energy, fatigue, circadian phase, motivation, novelty, attention, conflict, open questions — folds them into one file the rest of the agent reads, and gates a decision on them. It decides nothing by itself: it reads and writes files, and says stale or missing rather than guessing.

Get it

Tell the agent "add the mind-kit cell", or run nodecode add nc://mind-kit.

Set it up

One setting, in /settings or the settings page:

• agent_dir — the directory this agent's own state lives in. The cell reads <agent_dir>/brain/<subsystem>/<name>.json and writes <agent_dir>/brain-state.json.
• mode (optional, default standard) — the gate's default rule set: standard, low_scope, minimal or essential. Only essential changes a verdict: it bypasses quiet hours.

No key, no network, no model call. Then seed it once, from the conversation or from eval:

(mind-kit:seed)    ; copies the 25 shipped example files in, leaving any file already there

The shipped files carry structure, not truth. Filling them with what is actually true for this agent is the install, and no pass can do it.

Use it

Read the aggregate.

(mind-kit:state)    ; folds every subsystem file, writes brain-state.json, answers the health summary
(mind-kit:health)   ; the same, one line: "2/25 healthy, 0 stale, 23 missing"

Every reading carries its age and the age it is allowed to reach, so a subsystem that stopped updating reads stale instead of asserting an old number — and one whose file is gone reads missing, never stale. The aggregate also names what is critical: fatigue that needs recovery, a fear reading above 0.7, conflict, an urge above 0.8, prediction accuracy under 0.3.

Gate a decision.

(mind-kit:gate)                              ; PROCEED / CAUTION / VETO with the numbers behind it
(mind-kit:gate :now "23:30")                 ; pin the clock to assert the quiet-hours rules
(mind-kit:gate :mode "essential")            ; bypass quiet hours

It answers a plist: :verdict, :reason (one of the 26 documented reason codes), :exit-code (0 PROCEED, 2 CAUTION, 1 VETO), :detail (the inputs that caused it), :read and :defaulted (which files it actually read), and :warnings. It is read-only: gating never mutates the state that produced it, and every value it had to default because a file was absent is reported as a default.

The model gets the same two things as tools, brain_state and decision_gate, and the operator gets /mind. (help :mind-kit) carries the same guidance to the model.

The original's four maintenance passes are shell and Python scripts on a schedule; here the agent's own passes write the subsystem files and the cell only reads them. Seeding, folding and gating are the whole cell.

Tests

From the cells repository:

.github/test-cell.sh tools/nodecode-mind-kit

Offline: a scratch agent directory per test, no provider, no network, the clock pinned where quiet hours are asserted.

MIT. See NOTICE and LICENSE.