memex/notes/passepartout-agora.org

Passepartout-Agora Integration — Unified Container Format

• Summary
• The Unification
  • Org files and Notes are the same container
  • Facts are extracted from both, identically
  • The memex distinguishes provenance by location, not format
  • Publishing Org content as Agora Notes
• Implications for Passepartout's Architecture
  • The symbolic index now has a second ingestion path
  • Authentication Layer 1 now has Agora-native verification
  • Self-preservation gains an Agora dimension
  • Sufficiency tracks Agora as a provenance source
• Implications for Agora
  • Passepartout IS the PDS
  • Level 0 pre-arbitration via Screamer
  • Reputation as deduced facts
  • Agent Behavioral Contracts — formal enforcement for the ABC of Agora
  • The merkle DAG IS the Key Event Log
• Relation to the Neurosymbolic Roadmap
• What Is NOT Built

Summary

Org files and Agora Notes are the same container. Both are text with headers, tags, properties, and prose body. Both contain zero or more symbolic facts extractable by Passepartout's archivist. The only difference is that an Agora Note carries a DID signature and a CID for cryptographic provenance on the network. An Org file without a signature is a local Note. A signed Org file pushed to the PDS is an Agora Note.

Passepartout's memory-object struct serves as the storage format for both. The archivist extracts facts from one unified store. Authorship is distinguished by provenance, not location.

The Unification

Org files and Notes are the same container

Property	Org file (local)	Agora Note (network)
Format	Org-mode text	Org-mode text
Identity	Merkle hash (memory-object)	CIDv1 (same hash)
Contains facts	Yes (archivist extracts)	Yes (archivist extracts)
Author identity	Implicit (file in ~/memex/)	Explicit (DID signature in proof)
Access control	Filesystem permissions	access_control flags
Routing	N/A (local disk)	notify + references + Relay
Ephemeral	No	ephemeral_duration
Behavioral flag	Implicit (convention)	is_feed field

The structure converges in a single plist:

(:cid <merkle-hash>             ;; Identity across local and network
 :title <string>                ;; Org headline title
 :content <org-text>            ;; Full Org body (headings, prose, source blocks)
 :owner <did-or-nil>            ;; For Agora Notes: the signing Persona DID. nil for local
 :proof <plist-or-nil>          ;; ( :editor <did> :signature <bytes> )
 ;; Agora behavioral flags (nil for local files)
 :is-feed <boolean-or-nil>
 :access-control <did-list-or-nil>
 :notify <did-list-or-nil>
 :references <cid-list-or-nil>
 :reply-to <cid-or-nil>
 :thread-root <cid-or-nil>
 :ephemeral-duration <integer-or-nil>
 ;; Passepartout metadata
 :created-at <timestamp>
 :tags <string-list>            ;; Org tags
 :properties <plist>            ;; Org property drawer
 :extracted-facts <fact-list>)  ;; Populated by archivist after extraction

Facts are extracted from both, identically

An Org file in ~/memex/literature/pale-fire.org and an Agora Note from did:agora:heather with :references <post-CID> both contain prose. The archivist scans both, proposes triples via the LLM, verifies via Screamer, and admits facts to the symbolic index. The facts carry different provenance:

;; Extracted from local Org file
(:entity :pale-fire :relation :theme :value :unreliable-narration
 :provenance :local-prose :grounding "heading-42")

;; Extracted from Agora Note
(:entity :kafka :relation :influence :value :nabokov
 :provenance :agora-note :grounding <incoming-note-cid> :author "did:agora:heather")

No new extraction path. The archivist already walks containers and extracts facts. The container type determines the provenance tag and the grounding identifier (local heading ID vs. Note CID).

The memex distinguishes provenance by location, not format

Incoming Agora Notes arrive at ~/memex/social/notes/<did>/<cid>.org. The directory structure encodes authorship:

Path	Meaning
~/memex/daily/	Local diary entries
~/memex/projects/	Local project files
~/memex/literature/	Local reading notes
~/memex/notes/	Local design and thinking notes
~/memex/social/notes/<did>/<cid>.org	Incoming Notes from other DIDs
~/memex/social/outbox/<cid>.org	Outgoing Notes signed by the user

The archivist scans all directories. Local files produce facts with :provenance :local-prose. Agora files produce facts with :provenance :agora-note + :author <did>. The symbolic index maps the provenance to the cardinality policy: local prose is :plural (the human's own notes — multiple interpretations coexist). Agora Notes are :plural by default (the author's claim, not authoritative over local facts). Agora Notes can be promoted to :singular or :dual if they carry cryptographic proofs of specific claims.

Publishing Org content as Agora Notes

When the user wants to publish a diary entry, project log, or literary note as an Agora Note, the operation is:

1. Select the Org heading or file.
2. Compute the Merkle hash (memory-object hash → CIDv1).
3. Sign with the user's Persona DID key (Phase 0b key registry).
4. Set Agora flags: :is-feed t/nil, :access-control [], :references [previous-note-cid].
5. Push to the PDS. The Note is an Org plist with a DID signature.
6. The PDS stores and relays it. The Note remains in ~/memex/social/outbox/ with its CID.

All of this is a single function: (note-publish heading-id &key is-feed access-control references). ~40 lines, extending the vault (key signing), the fact store (CID generation), and the memex (output directory).

Implications for Passepartout's Architecture

The symbolic index now has a second ingestion path

Facts enter through three gates:

1. Gate outcomes (bootstrap + runtime, :provenance :gate-outcome)
2. Screamer deductions (:provenance :deduced)
3. Archivist extraction (:provenance :local-prose or :provenance :agora-note)

The third path now covers both local Org files and incoming Agora Notes. No new path needed. The archivist gains no new code — only a new directory to walk (~/memex/social/notes/) and a new provenance tag to assign.

Authentication Layer 1 now has Agora-native verification

Phase 0b's cryptographic gate (vector 0) verifies DID signatures. An incoming Agora Note carries :owner <did> and :proof.signature <bytes>. Gate vector 0 verifies the signature against the DID's public key (from the key registry, which is now also an Agora DID registry). Verification is identical for local signals and Agora signals — the same gate, the same key lookup.

Self-preservation gains an Agora dimension

The resource monitor (Phase 1a) tracks ~/memex/social/ as a source of storage growth. Incoming Notes from network sources are lower preservation priority than local prose — if disk pressure hits, incoming Agora Notes are evicted first (their source is the remote PDS; they can be re-fetched). Quarantine (Phase 1a) extends to Agora channels: if a DID is sending spam or malformed Notes, their incoming directory is quarantined and the DID is flagged for human review.

Sufficiency tracks Agora as a provenance source

The sufficiency score (Phase 4) gains a new provenance category:

Symbolic Index
  Facts:    3,847
    Gate outcomes:       847  (22%)
    Deduced:             921  (24%)
    Human-authored:       72   (2%)
    Local prose:        1,247  (32%)
    Agora Notes:          760  (20%)
  ─────────────────────────
  Non-lossy:            1,840  (48%)
  LLM-proposed:         2,007  (52%)

Agora Notes are a provenance source, not a lossiness category. Facts from Agora Notes carry :provenance :agora-note — they are LLM-extracted (the archivist proposes them) but the source is cryptographically signed by a known DID. They are neither :gate-outcome (mechanical) nor :llm-proposed from local prose (uncertain source). They occupy a middle ground: verified source, uncertain extraction.

Implications for Agora

Passepartout IS the PDS

The TODO.org in projects/agora/ already captures this: "Passepartout IS the PDS — the agent runs a personal data store in-process." With Org files as the Note format, this is literal. The PDS stores Org files. The agent reads them. The network accesses them via the PDS API. There is no separate PDS process.

Level 0 pre-arbitration via Screamer

Section 07 of the Agora requirements describes a "Tier 0 Arbitrator" — a local AI that provides a sanity check before human arbitration. Passepartout's Screamer + fact store provides this at zero LLM tokens when working from existing facts:

• "Contract CID X references arbitrator DID Y. DID Y is active. Verified."
• "All parties have signed. The HODL invoice is locked. Verified."
• "The buyer's claim of non-delivery is supported by 3 signed messages with timestamps after the delivery deadline."
• "The seller's proof-of-delivery field is empty. No QR scan recorded."

Each check is a Screamer query against the contract-lifecycle domain. Results are a plist, not a ruling. Both parties see the same evidence summary before escalating to Level 1.

Reputation as deduced facts

Screamer deduces reputation from signed contract chains, not asserted claims:

(:entity "did:agora:heather" :relation :contract-reputation
 :value (:completed 47 :defaulted 0 :disputes 3 :won 3 :escalated 0)
 :provenance :deduced :derived-from (<list of 47 contract CIDs>))

This is the strong version of Agora's Trust Score. It's a fact deduced from cryptographic evidence, not a claim by the persona (self-reporting could be false) and not a claim by a centralized reputation service (could be bought). The deduction is auditable — `/audit did:agora:heather` shows every contract, every outcome, every ruling.

Agent Behavioral Contracts — formal enforcement for the ABC of Agora

Bhardwaj (2026) introduces a formal framework that brings Design-by-Contract principles to autonomous AI agents. An ABC contract C = (P, I, G, R) specifies Preconditions, Invariants (hard and soft), Governance policies (hard and soft), and Recovery mechanisms as first-class runtime-enforceable components.

This maps directly onto Agora's contract lifecycle:

ABC component	Agora mapping
P (Preconditions)	Contract Note validity checks: all signers' DIDs active,
	contract CID correctly referenced, HODL invoice locked
I (Invariants)	Hard: payment amount unchanged, arbitrator DID unchanged.
	Soft: delivery within estimated window
G (Governance)	Hard: no party modifies contract terms unilaterally.
	Soft: parties communicate through designated channels
R (Recovery)	Arbitration escalation, HODL invoice release, reputation
	deduction

The framework's key mathematical results have direct implications for Agora:

• Drift Bounds Theorem: contracts with recovery rate γ > α (natural drift rate from LLM non-determinism in agent behavior) bound behavioral drift to D* = α/γ. For Agora, this means contract enforcement can be predictive — detecting drift before violation — rather than just corrective after breach.
• Compositionality Theorem: sufficient conditions (interface compatibility, assumption discharge, governance consistency, recovery independence) under which individual contract guarantees compose end-to-end for multi-agent chains. This is essential for Agora's multi-party contracts, where a buyer, seller, arbitrator, and escrow agent form a chain of interdependent behavioral expectations.
• (p, δ, k)-satisfaction: probabilistic compliance accounting for LLM non-determinism — contracts hold with probability p, deviations stay within tolerance δ, recovery within k steps. This formalizes what Screamer's contract-lifecycle domain queries verify: whether the current state of a contract satisfies its agreed-upon conditions, given the inherent uncertainty in any agent's behavior.

The empirical results are significant: across 1,980 sessions on 7 models, contracted agents (with ABC enforcement) detected 5.2-6.8 soft violations per session that uncontracted agents missed entirely, with <10ms per-action overhead. Overhead is critical for Passepartout as the PDS — contract enforcement must not add latency to Note processing.

ABC does not replace Screamer. ABC specifies what must hold; Screamer verifies whether it holds against the fact store. The contract-lifecycle domain already planned for Phase 0b (signal chain) can be implemented as an ABC-like structure: a tuple of preconditions, invariants, governance rules, and recovery mechanisms, each expressed as Screamer-verifiable facts with Merkle provenance.

See also:

• Bhardwaj, V.P. (2026). Agent Behavioral Contracts: Formal Specification and Runtime Enforcement for Reliable Autonomous AI Agents. arXiv:2602.22302.

The merkle DAG IS the Key Event Log

Agora's KEL specification (Section 02) describes an append-only log of key events — inception, rotation, revocation, follow events. Passepartout's Merkle DAG (Phase 5, built on v0.2.0 memory-object infrastructure) is this log. Each key event is a fact in the :key-lifecycle domain. Each event has a :parent-id chaining to the previous event. The DAG is content-addressed — every event is a CID. The full KEL is queryable: `/audit did:agora:heather` renders every key event, every follow event, every contract signature, with provenance chains.

Relation to the Neurosymbolic Roadmap

The Agora integration is not a new phase. It is a consequence of decisions already made:

Roadmap item	Agora consequence
Phase 0b (key registry)	Key registry uses Agora DIDs. DID store is :key-lifecycle domain
Phase 1 (fact store)	Fact store is also Note store. Same API, same hash table
Phase 1a (self-pres.)	Incoming Notes tracked. Spam DIDs quarantined. Disk eviction
Phase 3 (archivist)	Archivist walks ~/memex/social/notes/ alongside local dirs
Phase 4 (sufficiency)	Agora Notes are a provenance category in the sufficiency score
Phase 5 (Merkle DAG)	DAG = KEL. DAG = contract audit trail
Phase 0b (signal chain)	Signal chain = contract lifecycle chain. Same Merkle linking

No new lines in the roadmap. The Note publishing function (~40 lines) is a utility, not a phase.

What Is NOT Built

1. A separate Note parser. Agora Notes ARE Org files. The existing Org parser reads both.
2. A separate Note store. The memory-object struct stores both. The *memory-store* hash table holds both.
3. A separate extraction path for Agora content. The archivist extracts facts from prose regardless of origin. The provenance tag distinguishes source.
4. A new authentication mechanism for Agora signals. Gate vector 0 verifies DID signatures. The key registry is the DID registry.

See also:

• projects/agora/docs/ — Agora requirements (overview, identity, primitive, social, contracts, governance)
• projects/agora/TODO.org — Passepartout integration track
• passepartout-neurosymbolic-design-decisions-and-options.org — the full design rationale
• passepartout-neurosymbolic-roadmap.org — the phased implementation plan