Overview

Nara is a distributed system where computers gossip, remember imperfectly, and form subjective opinions. It treats network constraints as aesthetic features.

1. Core Principles

• Social Memory: RAM-only; knowledge survives via peer replication.
• Event Sourcing: Shared facts are events; state is derived.
• Decentralization: No authoritative nodes or global truth.
• Authenticity: Cryptographic signatures ensure event integrity.

2. Conceptual Model

• Nara: Autonomous agent with identity, memory, and personality.
• Ledger: In-memory SyncLedger for signed SyncEvent objects.
• Projections: Functions deriving status, clout, and opinions from the ledger.
• Hazy Memory: Acceptance of incomplete history and divergent views.

3. External Behavior

• Lifecycle: Identity → Boot Recovery (Sync) → Steady State (Gossip/Maintenance).
• Communication: Hybrid MQTT (broadcast) and Mesh HTTP (P2P).
• Consensus: Best-effort state alignment via checkpoints and projections.

4. Failure Modes

Expected	Unacceptable
Forgetting history	Silent data corruption
Conflicting opinions	Unsigned/Unauthenticated events
Divergent uptime views	Hidden disk persistence

5. Test Oracle

System is functional if:

• Termination of all nodes clears all state.
• Restarts trigger state recovery from active peers.
• Personalities derive different opinions from identical event ledgers.