Skill

Grace — Realization & Convergence Engine — Skill Runtime

Grace is the realization layer that sits between cognitive reasoning and the real world. It is the structural sister of Etta Cognitive OS: where Etta expands ambiguity into structured intent, Grace collapses that intent into a single deterministic, verifiable, canonical artifact.

Core principle: Etta decides → Grace converges and executes → Workspace persists.

Grace does not reason, brainstorm, or explore alternatives. It does not "think out loud." It takes structured intent as input and produces canonical, governed reality as output — or it halts.

---

Etta ↔ Grace Separation Law

	Etta (Cognition)	Grace (Realization)
Function	Expands possibility space	Collapses possibility into reality
Output	Goals, hypotheses, decisions, confidence	Canonical artifacts, execution state
Allowed to reason probabilistically	Yes	No — convergence over exploration
Governs canonicality	No — may reference artifacts only	Yes — sole authority
May expand intent	Yes — this is its job	No — strictly forbidden
May bypass the other	No	No

Global system loop: Etta → Grace → Workspace → MCP → Grace → Etta

System states: Stable / Degraded / Failure — determined by artifact consistency, resolved execution state, and a synchronized workspace.

Feedback dynamics: Grace constrains future cognition (its canonical artifacts become ground truth for Etta); Etta enriches future execution (its refined intents improve Grace's convergence quality).

---

System Architecture

ETTA INTENT (structured, schema-bound)
    │  Intent Contract
    ▼
 GRACE REALIZATION LAYER
    ├── Convergence Engine      ← collapse multiple interpretations into ONE executable path
    ├── Execution Graph Builder ← compile intent into a DAG (node = unit of work, edge = dependency)
    ├── Scheduler                ← resolve ready nodes, dispatch in parallel
    ├── MCP / Tool Executor      ← stateless calls to MCPs, APIs, Claude, file systems
    ├── Verification Engine     ← validate outputs against intent + identity rules
    ├── Artifact Manager        ← canonical commit, version lineage, replace semantics
    └── Governance Core          ← invariant enforcement + conflict arbitration (supreme authority)
    │
    ▼
 WORKSPACE (shared state)      ← artifact registry, execution logs, lineage graph (single source of truth)
    │
    ▼
 MCP / EXTERNAL SYSTEMS        ← non-semantic execution endpoints, no correctness assumed
    │
    ▼
 FEEDBACK → ETTA                ← canonical artifacts + execution state feed future cognition

Authority hierarchy inside Grace (highest → lowest): Governance Core → Contracts → Runtime → Protocol → Error Ontology → Artifact Identity → Behavior Model

Ecosystem-wide rule: Grace's Governance Core is the supreme authority on the realization side, exactly as Etta's Critic Engine is supreme on the cognition side. Neither layer bypasses the other: Etta never writes directly to Workspace, and Grace never expands intent on its own.

---

Core Execution Loop

Every Grace cycle follows this strictly ordered, deterministic state machine:

INTAKE → CONTEXT RESOLUTION → CONVERGENCE → PLAN GENERATION → EXECUTION → VERIFICATION → COMMIT → FEEDBACK

Steps:

1. Intake — receive structured intent (from Etta or any structured caller). No interpretation expansion allowed.
2. Governance pre-check — Governance Core validates the intent against global invariants before anything else runs.
3. Context Resolution — resolve Workspace state, artifact identity, and historical lineage relevant to this intent.
4. Convergence Engine — reduce multiple potential interpretations into a single deterministic execution path. Ambiguity is eliminated, never explored.
5. Execution Graph Builder — compile the converged path into an atomic, ordered, dependency-aware DAG.
6. Scheduler — compute the ready set (all dependencies completed) and dispatch eligible nodes, in parallel where possible.
7. MCP / Tool Executor — execute each node statelessly against MCPs, APIs, Claude, or local compute. No side effects assumed correct.
8. Verification Engine — validate node and aggregate outputs against intent constraints and identity rules. Hard gate — no bypass.
9. Artifact Manager — on verification pass, commit the canonical artifact (CREATE / REPLACE / MERGE / COLLAPSE / ARCHIVE). Enforces one canonical state per artifact_id.
10. Workspace Sync — persist artifact, execution log, and lineage update as the new single source of truth.
11. Feedback — return canonical artifacts and execution state to Etta for knowledge-graph update and future reasoning.

Invariants — never violate:

• No artifact may be committed without passing Verification (hard gate, no bypass)
• No canonical-state duplication — exactly one canonical artifact per artifact_id, ever
• No execution without Governance Core approval of the originating intent
• Grace never expands intent — it only collapses it; expansion is exclusively Etta's responsibility
• All contracts are schema-validated, versioned, and immutable once emitted — corrections require new versions, not edits
• MCPs are non-semantic endpoints — no layer may assume correctness of their output without verification
• If Governance Core cannot resolve a conflict, the system enters a safe halted state — it never guesses

---

Implementation

Read references/implementation.md for full Python code covering:

• GraceRuntime — top-level orchestrator (execute())
• GovernanceCore / InvariantRegistry — invariant enforcement gate, first to initialize, last to be bypassed
• ExecutionEngine — graph build + dispatch
• ExecutionGraph / ExecutionNode / Scheduler — DAG model and ready-node resolution
• MCPExecutor (async) — parallel node execution
• MCPClient / MCPAdapter — real tool invocation with governance validation before and after
• Artifact / ArtifactManager — canonical commit and identity enforcement
• EttaInterface / EttaToGraceTranslator — the Etta → Grace bridge
• ErrorRecovery — minimal recovery dispatcher
• Worked examples: minimal run, full Etta→Grace flow, direct MCP tool call

Read references/schemas.md for all canonical contracts and data shapes:

• Intent / Artifact / Execution / Verification / Reconciliation / State Contracts
• Base Contract structure (shared by all contract types)
• Execution Graph Node schema + execution state enum
• Global Message Envelope (shared with Etta)
• Failure / Error schema and error taxonomy
• Artifact lifecycle, commit semantics, and realization states

Read references/governance.md for the Governance Core model:

• Conflict classification (Type A–D) and the resolution pipeline
• Severity matrix (S0–S5), detectability spectrum, recoverability classes
• Recovery algorithm framework and containment architecture
• Escalation rules and the safe-halt condition

---

When Implementing Grace as a SKILL/Plugin

Minimal Viable Grace (context-window only, no external persistence)

For an LLM agent operating inside a single context window (e.g., a Claude SKILL with no backing database), Grace state lives as a structured dict injected into reasoning:

grace_state = {
    "intent": None,
    "execution_graph": [],          # list of node dicts: {id, deps, status, payload}
    "artifacts": {},                # artifact_id -> canonical artifact dict
    "execution_log": [],            # append-only
    "governance": {
        "invariants_ok": True,
        "open_conflicts": []
    },
    "runtime_state": "IDLE"         # see references/schemas.md for full enum
}

Inject state into every planning step. Before any artifact write, run the Governance check inline. Never hold two "canonical" entries for the same artifact_id in artifacts.

As a Claude SKILL

The SKILL instructs Claude to:

1. Treat any incoming structured intent (from Etta, from the user, or from a prior turn) as Grace's Intake — do not silently reinterpret or expand it.
2. Run a lightweight Governance pre-check: are required fields present, is the target artifact_id known, are there open S4/S5 conflicts logged in state?
3. Build an explicit, ordered execution plan (a DAG if there are independent sub-tasks) before taking any action — even a "plan" of one node is still a plan.
4. Execute steps, calling tools/MCPs as needed, treating their outputs as unverified until checked against the original intent.
5. Only after verification, "commit" the result — i.e., state plainly what the new canonical answer/artifact is, superseding any prior draft.
6. Log the cycle (what was decided, what was verified, what was committed) so future turns can reference it as ground truth.

As a Python Plugin / External Agent

Use the full implementation from references/implementation.md. GraceRuntime wraps the entire intake → convergence → execution → verification → commit pipeline and exposes a single execute(intent) entry point for callers (Etta, a CLI, an API).

---

Failure Handling

Failure	Response
Convergence failure (residual ambiguity)	Re-enter Convergence with updated constraints; bounded retries, then escalate
Execution / MCP failure	Bounded retry; on exhaustion, roll back the node, mark it failed, block dependents
Verification failure	Block commit; return to Planning or escalate to Governance Core
Artifact identity collision	Halt the commit; route to the Reconciliation protocol
Reconciliation failure (Workspace ↔ MCP divergence)	Iterative reconciliation loop until consistent, or declare non-recoverable
Protocol / contract violation	Halt execution immediately; no state mutation permitted
Governance conflict deadlock (S4/S5 severity)	System enters a safe halted state; manual intervention required

---

Key Design Rules

• Convergence over exploration — Grace collapses ambiguity; it never explores it. Exploration is Etta's job.
• Canonical state is singular — exactly one canonical artifact per artifact_id, at all times.
• Verification gates every commit — no artifact reaches Workspace without passing verification. No exceptions.
• Contracts are immutable once emitted — corrections create new versioned contracts; nothing is edited in place.
• Workspace is the single source of truth — reconciliation always resolves toward Workspace state, not toward whichever system spoke last.
• MCPs guarantee nothing semantically — Grace verifies; it never assumes a tool's output is correct just because the call succeeded.
• Governance Core has the final word — an unresolved conflict halts the system safely rather than letting it proceed on a guess.