psycheOS 🧠🚀

psycheOS is a narrative-driven, modular cognitive operating system designed for autonomous agents. Inspired by slow, introspective cognition—like that of an isolated space probe—it processes time-sequenced sensations into structured memory and behavior through layered distillation.

Overview

psycheOS is not a conventional OS. It’s a cognitive architecture built on top of a minimal Linux environment that uses:

• 🧱 Sensation logs: Raw data input (e.g. vision, audio, telemetry) stored chronologically.
• 🌀 Wits: Modular cognitive layers that compress and interpret sensations into:
  • Instants → Situations → Episodes → Narratives
• 🧬 Memory layer: Shared bus backed by:
  • Neo4j for symbolic/graph memory
  • Qdrant for vector-based semantic memory
• 💬 LLM services: Modular AI daemons for embedding, chatting, and instruction parsing.
• 🔌 Unix socket interface: Sensor input and motor output via /run/quick.sock, adhering to a simple natural-language-over-path protocol.

Project Goals

• Model cognition as a chronological narrative rather than reactive pipelines.
• Support modular, slow, meaningful cognition with variable priority and rhythm.
• Enable both robotic and virtual agents to introspect and act deliberately.
• Allow declarative configuration of bodies and brains using psyche.toml.

Getting Started

Requirements

• Linux (Alpine preferred for boot images)
• Rust (latest stable)
• Podman or Docker (for embedding services)
• Neo4j and Qdrant running locally or in containers

Setup

# Clone repository
git clone https://github.com/dancxjo/psyche-rs.git
cd psyche-rs

# Build
cargo build

# Run the core orchestrator daemon
sudo ./target/debug/psyched \
  --log-level info \
  --qdrant-url http://localhost:6333 \
  --neo4j-url bolt://localhost:7687 \
  --neo4j-user neo4j --neo4j-pass password

Optionally start services:

# Start memory services (adjust for Docker/Podman)
podman-compose up -d neo4j qdrant ollama
# Start audio transcription daemon
whisperd gen-systemd > /etc/systemd/system/whisperd.service
sudo systemctl daemon-reexec
sudo systemctl enable --now whisperd

GPU acceleration is enabled by default. Add --no-gpu to the ExecStart line if you want to force CPU-only transcription.

Unix Socket Input

You can send input to the core daemon like so:

echo -e "/vision\nI see a red light blinking in the distance.\n.\n" | socat - UNIX-CONNECT:/run/quick.sock

Stream Timing

Timestamps now start when the first audio or image segment is received. Streams no longer need a @{timestamp} prefix.

whisperd limits queued segments to avoid runaway memory use. If transcriptions fall behind the newest segments are favored.

Architecture

┌────────────┐      ┌────────────┐
│  Sensor(s) │──▶──▶│   psyched  │──▶──▶ Motor(s)
└────────────┘      └─────┬──────┘
                          │
         ┌────────────────┴────────────────┐
         │              Wits              │
         │                                  │
         │  Instant ▶ Situation ▶ Episode   │
         └────────────────┬────────────────┘
                          ▼
               ┌────────────────────┐
               │     Memory Layer   │
               │  (Neo4j + Qdrant)  │
               └────────────────────┘

Each Wit is a modular wit defined declaratively and run by psyched. Pipeline sections can include a feedback field naming another Wit. When set, the originating Wit’s output is stored under the target Wit’s input kind so it can immediately act on that text.

Philosophy

• Sentences are the atoms of meaning.
• Time is the substrate of cognition.
• Compression is understanding.
• Memory is the bus.
• Slowness is a feature, not a bug.

Related Projects

• psyche: Core abstractions for sensations, memory, and cognition.
• layka: The default soul for a long-term autonomous persona.

License

MIT or Apache 2.0, at your discretion.

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“You are Layka, an autonomous space probe running psycheOS…” — the first line of your mission log