Mycelium and Membranes

Once machines exist, the next question is not what they do, but how they relate. In Thicket Web Mind, this relationship is not accidental or implicit. It is structured, named, and constrained. Two distinct layers emerge: the Mycelium and the Membrane.

Mycelium

The Mycelium is the internal connective layer of a Thicket. It is strictly local to the Thicket and exists only to enable cooperation between machines that already belong together.

Technically, the Mycelium is an RPC-only layer.

This constraint is intentional. Within a Thicket, machines are peers that share context, trust boundaries, and a common lifecycle. Communication here is not about exposure or compatibility with the outside world; it is about coordination. RPC fits this role well: explicit contracts, structured calls, and clear expectations about responsibility.

The Mycelium is not a network in the usual sense. It is closer to a nervous system. Messages do not wander; they are directed. Machines know whom they are talking to and why. There is no discovery by accident, no ambient broadcast, no anonymous traffic.

This locality has important consequences. Failures are contained. Latency assumptions are realistic. Security is simpler because trust is explicit. Most importantly, the Mycelium makes cooperation cheap enough to be the default.

Machines inside a Thicket do not try to be self-sufficient monoliths. They rely on each other — openly and deliberately.

Membranes

Where the Mycelium connects machines within a Thicket, the Membrane defines how a Thicket interacts with everything else.

A Membrane is a boundary. It is not just an API surface; it is a translation layer between two very different worlds: the internal, event-driven, stateful life of machines and the external, protocol-driven expectations of users and systems.

Unlike the Mycelium, the Membrane is not limited to a single protocol. In practice, it most often uses HTTP, SSE, or RPC, but this is a matter of suitability, not dogma. The Membrane exists to adapt, not to enforce uniformity.

• HTTP is used where request–response semantics are natural.
• SSE is used where streams need to be observed over time.
• RPC is used where structured interaction across boundaries makes sense.

What matters is not the protocol itself, but the fact that the Membrane is explicit. Nothing “just leaks out” of a Thicket. Every external interaction is a conscious crossing of a boundary.

This keeps the internal model intact. Machines remain event-based and reactive. State remains local and coherent. The outside world does not get to reach in and poke at internals; it speaks to the Thicket through forms it already understands.

Inside and outside

The distinction between Mycelium and Membrane is one of the key stabilizing forces in Thicket Web Mind.

Inside the Thicket, machines cooperate through a narrow, trusted, RPC-based layer. Outside the Thicket, interaction happens through adaptable protocols designed for heterogeneity and distance. This separation allows each side to evolve independently, without collapsing into either rigid isolation or uncontrolled exposure.

The result is a system that is both cohesive and permeable — dense on the inside, accessible on the outside.

Finale

With machines as the foundation and the Mycelium and Membranes defining how they connect, a Thicket begins to take shape as a living structure rather than a deployment artifact.

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