Infrastructure · Data Structures
Constraint
Non-negotiable boundary condition
Definition
Mechanism
A boundary condition that must be satisfied by any valid solution. Constraints are non-compensatory: violating one constraint cannot be offset by exceeding another. They come in types: Resource (budget, time), Safety (harm prevention), Legal (compliance), Physical (laws of nature). Constraints propagate via Holographic Inheritance: child tasks inherit parent constraints.
Invariants
- Non-Compensatory: Violation of any constraint = rejection.
- Inheritance: Child constraints must include all parent constraints.
- Explicitness: All constraints must be stated, not implied.
Risks
Failure modes
Constraint Relaxation
Silently loosening a constraint to fit a preferred solution.
Hidden Constraint
A real-world constraint not captured in the specification.
Constraint Conflict
Two constraints are mutually exclusive (no solution exists).
Relationships
Root pattern: builds on nothing in this library.
Used by
References
Non-compensatory acceptance contract; consumer Verify yields Solution or FrameError
Mind
Test stated limits against practice, and enforce or restate them where the two disagree
Mind
Forcing abstraction via resource starvation
Mind
Defining boundaries before content
Portable execution environment with inherited constraints
Mind
Semantic compression for long-running contexts
Structured problem definition artifact
Bounded domain of a problem
Physics
Condition: Can this action be undone?
Immutable collection of constraints
Mind
Reinforce constraints in system prompt before each response
Mind
Constraint-based novelty enforcement
Typed solver identity and capability declaration
Rigorous requirement definition
The atomic unit of intent
Mind
Temporal bounding of exploration
Reference
Data schema
{
"type": "object",
"required": [
"constraint_type",
"expression"
],
"properties": {
"constraint_type": {
"type": "string",
"enum": [
"resource",
"safety",
"legal",
"physical"
],
"description": "Category of constraint"
},
"expression": {
"type": "string",
"description": "The constraint as a boolean expression or inequality"
},
"priority": {
"type": "integer",
"description": "Enforcement order when multiple constraints apply"
},
"source": {
"type": "string",
"description": "Origin of the constraint (parent task, law, etc.)"
}
}
}