Roles, not components

As Thicket Web Mind grows, it becomes increasingly clear that its building blocks are not best understood as components. Components suggest fixed purpose, static responsibility, and predefined position in a larger mechanism. TWM takes a different view.

Machines — or more precisely, Symbionts — are defined by the roles they take on, not by rigid identities.

A Symbiont is a running machine with its own state, events, and persistence. What gives it meaning inside a Thicket is not its internal structure, but how it participates in the life of the system.

Roles as context

A role is not something permanently assigned. It is contextual and relational. The same Symbiont can play different roles depending on where it is placed, what it connects to, and which boundaries it faces.

Roles describe how a Symbiont is used, not what it is made of.

This distinction matters. It keeps the system flexible without becoming vague. Symbionts remain concrete, executable machines, but their interpretation shifts with their surroundings.

The Tree

A Tree is a Symbiont whose role is to hold and persist data.

It communicates only inside the Thicket, through the Mycelium. A Tree does not expose Membranes and does not interact with the outside world directly. Its responsibility is local continuity: storing state, providing access to it, and participating in event-driven evolution.

By constraining Trees to internal communication, TWM ensures that data remains owned, contextual, and protected by the structure of the Thicket itself.

The Avatar

An Avatar is a Symbiont whose role is to represent a human within a Thicket.

It is the point where human intent enters the system and where system state becomes visible or actionable for a person. Avatars speak through Membranes, adapt to human-facing protocols, and translate between event streams and human expectations.

An Avatar is not special because of its implementation, but because of its position: it faces outward toward a human and inward toward the Thicket at the same time.

The Sentry

A Sentry is a Symbiont that guards a boundary.

Its role is deliberately narrow. It authenticates, authorizes, and decides whether another Symbiont may start or continue running. A Sentry does not manage application logic, state transitions, or user workflows. It protects entry points and enforces rules about access.

By keeping the Sentry simple, the system avoids spreading security concerns across the entire Thicket.

Roles in combination

Roles become most visible when they work together.

A common pairing is a Sentry guarding an Avatar. The Sentry stands at the boundary, handling credentials and trust, while the Avatar focuses solely on representing and serving the human once access is granted. Each Symbiont does one thing, and their cooperation produces a coherent whole.

Neither role makes sense in isolation. An Avatar without a Sentry would be exposed. A Sentry without an Avatar would guard nothing of interest. Together, they form a stable and understandable pattern.

This composability of roles is intentional. Instead of building large, multifunctional units, TWM encourages small Symbionts that cooperate cheaply and predictably.

Finale

Thinking in roles rather than components shifts attention from structure to behavior. It allows Symbionts to remain simple while systems grow expressive. As more roles emerge, they do so not by adding new kinds of machines, but by recombining existing ones in meaningful ways.

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