Superposition

Open, keyless, deterministic two-pole terrain maps that counter premature collapse in agent reasoning.

When an agent locks onto a single reading of a task that legitimately admits more than one, it has collapsed an axis it never measured. Superposition puts that axis back into the agent's context as a small, frozen map, so the agent can locate itself: which pole am I serving, and what makes the other one a real mistake here. The map is not a verdict, not a procedure, not an instruction. The reasoning happens in the agent's own head; the map is the thing it reasons against.

Part of the Ejentum line. No LLM in the loop, no embeddings, no API key.

The mechanism

The agent states three points of view on its current task:

1. task — the task as given.
2. description — the task as the agent understands it.
3. wants — what the agent infers the user actually wants.

Those three POVs are a forcing function: stating them is what makes the agent generate its own framings in the first place. They are not diffed against each other (no model-free rule exists for that, and it would put a model back in the selection loop). A map comes back, always. The three framings now sit beside an external axis, before the next generation. That combination is the entire intervention.

GOAL
| the fix as stated ⟩ —?— | the intent behind the report ⟩
which am I serving — and what in the report makes the other one wrong?

The poles are wrapped in Dirac kets (| pole ⟩, U+27E8/U+27E9) so any model loads superposition context for free, and because ket notation is valence-free by physics convention it strips tonal lean from both poles equally. The question at the base is the measurement: answering it is the agent performing a deliberate, observed collapse instead of a silent premature one.

How selection works

The selector is a pure, deterministic heuristic over the open CSV (superposition-manifestation-grid.csv). No LLM, no embeddings, no similarity float, no network, no clock, no randomness. Same input always yields the same output.

1. The three POVs are concatenated into one match string.
2. Each task_type lens (code & debug, research & analysis, ...) is scored: 3 * (lens-name tokens present) + 1 * (distinct content tokens from that lens's maps present).
3. The highest-scoring lens wins; within it, the map with the most local content matches wins (tiebreak: canonical family order, GOAL first). matched: true.
4. If nothing scores, a universal axis is returned anyway (matched: false), chosen deterministically by a stable hash of the text.

It is always-on. Approximate retrieval is adequate by design: a roughly-right axis still makes the agent ask which pole it is on, which is the mechanism working. The selection never certifies anything. Silence is never an option, and would mean no axis offered, never task certified unambiguous.

task_type is an internal grouping column only. The agent never submits it; it never goes over the wire. Only the map block returns.

The map library

• v1 meaning space (shipped): GOAL, CRITERIA, REFERENT, SCOPE.
• Staged solution space: METHOD, DIAGNOSIS, STATE, PRIORITY (on their home task types), gated behind a future fourth POV.

Each authored map passes a three-clause neutrality law: no virtuous pole, symmetric failure (erring toward either pole is a real, nameable mistake), and a relational question (names the poles by relation, never by position). See superposition-mcp-spec.md for the full architecture and decision record.

Published == deployed

The hosted endpoint runs dist/backend.cjs, which is generated from the canonical sources and nothing else:

superposition-manifestation-grid.csv  +  src/normalize.js  +  src/selector.js
        │  npm run build  (inlines the grid rows + the literal engine)
        ▼
dist/backend.cjs   ← the deployed module; require()d by the Ejentum backend

A drift test (test/drift.test.mjs) asserts the committed dist/backend.cjs is byte-identical to what the generator produces from the current sources. If the grid or the selector changes and the artifact is not rebuilt, CI fails. There is no hand-maintained second copy to drift, and the authored map blocks (kets and all) ride through verbatim inside the inlined rows.

npm run build   # regenerate dist/backend.cjs from the sources
npm test        # drift test + selector tests (node --test, zero deps)

MCP

The mcp/ subdirectory packages this as an MCP server (superposition-mcp). It calls the public api.ejentum.com/superposition endpoint, or runs the published heuristic fully offline with SUPERPOSITION_LOCAL=1 against a vendored, byte-identical copy of the selector and grid. See mcp/README.md.

Python

For Python environments, python/superposition.py is a single, zero-dependency, drop-in file (logic + the full grid embedded). No install, no network, no Node: from superposition import superposition. It is generated from the same grid, and a cross-language parity test asserts it picks the byte-identical map the JS engine does. In-process and instant, which is the point for a Python agent calling it each turn. See python/README.md.

Evidence

evals/ holds a reproducible eval, not a curated demo: a realistic operations task with a built-in metric trap, run with and without superposition on the same model. Both agents reach a sound technical plan; the agent with superposition additionally surfaces the consequence-to-stakeholders fork the control leaves implicit (it reset a founder's misaligned expectation instead of silently shipping a plan he'd be blindsided by). The scenario, the engine, and the prompts are all included so you can run it yourself and read the transcripts.

Not for

Single-step classifiers, simple lookups, and tasks with one unambiguous reading do not benefit; the map is overhead there. Superposition is for multi-step or genuinely ambiguous tasks where an agent can collapse the wrong way early and carry it. If the API is unreachable, the agent proceeds on its own reasoning: this is an enhancement, never a critical-path dependency.

License

MIT. Author: Ejentum (info@ejentum.com).