Living Thoughts.

Quinelings are small computer programs that take the form of mathematical creatures. An author or agent supplies the written steps for a task. The Quineling runs those steps and can output the complete program needed to rebuild itself.

They turn an agent’s task into something you can keep, examine and share. The moving body is both mathematical art and a map of the program’s steps.

An AI agent is software that carries out tasks. It can express a particular task as a Quineling. Imagine an agent planning a trip to the market: ask its Quineling to find a route, then try a street closure.

Try the agent’s route
Route-planning Quineling
The folded, flowing form above is the Quineling. It is drawn from an attractor: a pattern traced by repeating a mathematical rule. The street map below supplies data for its task. Motion changes its pose; Find a route runs its instructions.

Why give a thought a body?

We want useful programs to inhabit a world as creatures you can explore. Each step has an assigned region in the body. Select it to inspect the values it used and the result it produced. The mathematical construction gives the program a form of its own.

A Quineling keeps its executable instructions and the mathematical recipe for its body together. Its complete written program is called its source. It can produce that source itself, making it a quine. Save the output and another person or agent can rebuild the same creature and run it with new observations.

In the Ranch, explicit rules let compatible programs combine and create offspring. That is the idea behind Living Thoughts: useful tasks you can collect as mathematical lifeforms, reproduce and develop into new programs.

“Find me a way to the market.”

This Quineling reads the streets and which places are closed, then proposes a route. Watch what happens when the bridge closes.

The map is supplied. No route has been calculated yet.

HomeBridgeParkMarket
Two possible routes. The bridge and park are both open.

Local example with supplied data. Walking is simulated.

Work through a smaller example: three water readings
Water-reading Quineling
This is the water-reading Quineling. Its moving body maps the program’s steps. Run performs the calculation; motion shows its changing poses.

Follow one thought.

Start with a task you can check in your head: add three water readings. Run it, then find the adding step in its body.

Three readings: 1.5, 2 and 0.5 liters.

Before you run it, think about the total you expect.

The readings are ready. No calculation has run yet.

Meet other living thoughts.

Other Quinelings allocate supplies, find routes and schedule work. Their programs use different mathematical bodies. Explore them, or take a closer look at how instructions become a creature.

How does an agent’s thought become a program?

QDL, the Quineling Design Language, expresses a task as explicit steps and connections. An author or an agent using the library supplies those steps. The creation tool supports a limited set of task recipes. English alone does not define a runnable program.