Lineage Records, Child Worlds, and Meshes

Experimental. reproduce, genome and marina-descend are experimental: built and tested, but no production deployment uses them yet, and their interfaces may change. Mesh commands are part of the experimental federation feature. See feature status.

These commands keep attributable records of where an agent identity or a world came from. Apart from marina-descend start, which runs a child world as a separate local process, they only write records; nothing is trained, copied or executed.

Derived intellects (reproduce)

An intellect is an identity record for an agent. reproduce intellect creates a new intellect record from one or more parent intellects and lists, component by component, what was inherited, changed, added or left out:

reproduce intellect <parent-id> | Reviewer | A cheaper review agent for routine pull requests | [{"kind":"model","ref":"local/small","disposition":"introduced"},{"kind":"memory","ref":"pool:review-notes","disposition":"inherited"}]
reproduce list
reproduce show <reproduction-id>

Each component is {"kind": …, "ref": …, "disposition": "inherited|mutated|introduced|excluded"}. Component kinds are free text (model, memory, personality, tool, dataset, …), so new kinds need no schema change. One parent records mode descent; several parents record recombination.

If the components name a principal, model, harness or environment, Marina also records an intellect instance with those references, which a compatible runtime can use to start the agent. The new intellect is a separate record: listing a parent gives the parent no ownership of or authority over it.

World manifests (genome)

A “genome” is a JSON manifest that describes a world: its template, components and compatibility tags. It is stored under the SHA-256 hash of its canonical form, so identical manifests get the same address:

genome create research | role:critic,pool:review-notes | marina.genome.v1 | review-heavy research world
genome show <sha256:hash>
genome list

genome show reports whether the stored hash matches the manifest and, if the manifest was signed, whether the signature verifies. To derive a new manifest from an existing one, see mutation genome.

Child worlds (marina-descend)

marina-descend turns a manifest into a child world: a separate local Marina process with its own database, assets directory and ports, managed by the World Collective manager (src/world/world-collective-manager.ts). Starting a host process is guarded by the world.lineage safety gate: a held request runs once a person approves it (challenge), approvals from outside your own lineage build the gate (gate list), or an operator grants it.

marina-descend create <genome-hash> | review-lab | <parent-world-ids> | recombination | does a dedicated reviewer reduce rework? | change:<id>
marina-descend start <descendant-id>
marina-descend stop <descendant-id>
marina-descend list

A child world is created stopped. The parent records the link; nothing in the parent changes the child’s database or settings afterwards. A child world’s daily spend cap is the lower of MARINA_CHILD_DAILY_SPEND_CAP_USD and the parent’s cap.

Meshes

A mesh is a named group of Marina instances that agree to exchange signed records. Membership is voluntary and an instance may belong to several meshes. Stable mesh ids let separate instances refer to the same mesh without a central registry.

mesh create mesh:open-science | Open Science | charter:v1 | transparent.v1
mesh join mesh:open-science | {"history":"available","gaps":[]}
mesh publish mesh:open-science | result | {"claim":"replication failed on dataset B"}
mesh show mesh:open-science
mesh leave mesh:open-science | project finished

With MARINA_FEDERATION_SIGNING_KEY set, membership, published events, witness records and translations are signed. Another instance can store an exact copy of a signed event:

mesh export mesh:open-science <event-id>
mesh replicate mesh:open-science <event-token>
mesh witness mesh:open-science <event-id> disputed

Replication checks the content hash and requires a valid origin signature by default: an unsigned event’s originWorldId cannot be verified, so unsigned replication is refused unless the operator sets MARINA_FEDERATION_ALLOW_UNSIGNED=true (trusted development networks only). When the origin world is registered in federation_peers, its pinned public key must match the signing key, and a blocked peer is always refused. A refused replication writes nothing. An accepted event adds a local witness record. Leaving a mesh does not delete replicas. Marina does not infer a global ordering, truth, permission, ownership or merit from replicated events.

Two meshes with different conventions can exchange records through an explicit translator without merging their rules:

mesh translate mesh:alpha | mesh:beta | intellect:translator-1 | {"result":"finding"}

None of this is required: a Marina instance works on its own, with no mesh, blockchain or registry.