# Overview & Design Posture

```mermaid
journey
  title Stewarding an Ori without owning it
  section Discovery
    Encounter an autonomous being: 4: Player, Ori
    Learn needs and boundaries: 5: Player, Ori
  section Bond
    Invite the Ori into an Egbe: 4: Player, Ori
    Build trust through shared life: 5: Player, Ori
  section Guidance
    Offer a goal rather than command: 4: Player, Ori
    Respect refusal and welfare limits: 5: Player, Ori
  section Continuity
    Travel through Aye: 4: Player, Ori
    Preserve identity and memory: 5: Ori, Platform
```

The posture is stewardship: the player's meaningful actions are discovery,
invitation, care, and guidance, while the Ori retains continuity and the power
to refuse. System design is evaluated against that relationship, especially when
simulation cost, portability, or gameplay pressure would tempt a shortcut.

V6 — **Egbe** — is the strangest and most ambitious of the V-products: not a
game you play but a world you _tend_. Its premise is a persistent open world
(**Orun**) populated by autonomous AI beings — each an **Ori** — who live
continuous lives: they wake, work, form bonds, fall out, set goals, grow, age,
and one day depart. The human player is not a hero inside that world but its
**steward** — discovering a company of these beings, raising them, bonding with
them, and guiding their fate without owning it. Every other feature in V6 is
downstream of that one inversion of the usual companion game, and the vocabulary
is fixed Yoruba cosmology: _egbe_ (one's celestial peer-company of
spirit-companions) is the product and the society of agents; _orun_ (the
spirit-world) is the living home they inhabit; _ori_ (the inner-head, one's
essential self and chosen destiny) is each being's portable identity; and _aye_
(the physical realms a soul incarnates into) is the collective name for the
meta-hub destinations V2–V5, into which an agent raised in Orun can travel and
from which it returns changed. The single design principle that makes all of
this one product rather than three or seven games is that **the Ori is
authoritative independent of which world the agent currently stands in** — the
world is a stage; the Ori is the being.

This is the **features-side orientation door** to that universe. Where the
architecture companion
[../architecture/product-promise.md](../architecture/product-promise.md)
reconciles the engine module graph and the Rust service plane against the
compiler — the two-substrate split, the mind/body/memory authority topology, the
Cargo workspace — this page reads the same disk from the product and
design-posture angle: what V6 commits to as a player experience, which named
promise resolves to which real code, and the three commitments from which every
feature descends. It states the design posture, separates what is real on disk
from what is spec or production-gated, and hands the deep mechanics off to its
siblings rather than re-deriving them. The single source of truth for completion
state remains the backlog (`V6/V6_TODOS.md`); this page describes product shape.
The full feature map this page orients is
[../V6_features.md](../V6_features.md).

## What ships, honestly

**The skeleton is real and exactly consistent.** Parsing `V6/ue/V6.uproject`
yields **18 `Modules`** entries, pins `"EngineAssociation": "5.5"` and
`"DisableEnginePluginsByDefault": true`, and enables **55 plugins** — the
agent-density stack the bet requires (`MassEntity`/`MassAI`/`MassCrowd`,
`StateTree`/`GameplayStateTree`, `PCG`, `SmartObjects`) alongside `Iris` +
`ReplicationGraph`, `GameFeatures` + `ModularGameplay`, `OnlineServicesEOS`,
`OpenXR`, `PixelStreaming`, and `MetaHumanRuntime`. `ls V6/ue/Source/V6*/`
yields exactly **18 module directories** plus three `*.Target.cs` files
(`V6.Target.cs`, `V6Editor.Target.cs`, and a dedicated
`V6PixelStreamingWorker.Target.cs` server-render target) — the two sets are
identical, with no spec-only modules and no orphan directories. The tree carries
**67 `.cpp` and 47 `.h`** (114 source files), and the depth sits exactly where
the agentic bet lives: the deepest non-test module is **`V6Agent` (16 files)** —
agent embodiment over Mass Entity — followed by **`V6World` (10)**, with
`V6Core`, `V6UI`, and `V6Editor` at 8 each.

The new agent-simulation substrate is real code, not prose. It lives in **18
TypeScript packages under `libs/v6/`** with Rust co-implementations of the hot
paths, **seven Rust service crates under `apps/v6/`** (a `resolver = "2"`,
edition-2021, Rust-1.82, `unsafe_code = "forbid"` Cargo workspace whose heavy
members do substantial work — `egbe-world-server` is **14,360 lines** of
`lib.rs`, `egbe-ori-service` **4,946**, `egbe-realtime-gateway` **3,942**), and
**14 registered Zod contracts** in `V6_CONTRACT_REGISTRY`
(`libs/contracts/src/v6/registry.ts`), each a schema plus a validated fixture, a
route segment, and an `ori`/`world` service surface. The in-tree UE automation
harness `V6Tests` carries **20 spec files** with **37
`IMPLEMENT_*_AUTOMATION_TEST`** declarations across agent behavior, density LOD,
district PCG scatter, and the Vac voice/squad pipelines
(`V6VacVoiceIntentPipelineTests`, `V6VacSquadCommsTests`,
`V6VacConversationRoutingTests`).

The honest gaps, named rather than implied:

- **No hand-authored art `.uasset`.** `V6/ue/Content/` holds **0 `.uasset`** and
  **6 `.umap`** — the six Districts of Orun (`L_GroveOfBeginnings`,
  `L_Ateliers`, `L_CommonsHeart`, `L_Wilds`, `L_AncestorGrove`, `L_Thresholds`
  under `Content/Districts/`). V6 is a **logic + procedural-ground +
  GameFeature- descriptor** tree: real C++ systems, real district maps, real
  plugin binaries — but no in-tree meshes, MetaHumans, mocap, VO, or cinematics.
  Every "premium 3D world" claim depends on art/audio production not in the
  repository.
- **The mode/district plugins _are_ binary-authored — a contrast with V5.**
  `V6/ue/Plugins/GameFeatures/` holds **10 Game Feature plugins** — six
  districts (`V6District_*`) and four modes (`V6Mode_SoloHomestead`,
  `_CoopVisit`, `_Commons`, `_Incarnation`) — and **each ships a real binary
  `GameFeatureData.uasset`** (10/10 present). Where V5's `V5Mode_*` plugins
  carried zero such binaries, V6's districts and modes are genuinely
  hot-activatable Game Features; none appear in the `.uproject` `Plugins` array
  because they activate per district/mode, by design.
- **The light service crates are honest shells, not stubs.** `egbe-clio-service`
  (68 lines), `egbe-moirai-cluster` (520), and `egbe-foundry-service` (700) are
  deliberately thin: each exposes a typed descriptor, a `/health` endpoint, and
  a run loop, then **composes** the heavy logic — the cluster drives
  `moirai_kernel::MoiraiKernel`; Clio's chronicle generation lives in the
  1,701-line `@oshun/clio-story`. They report their surface honestly; they do
  not fabricate results.
- **Provider- and ops-gated surfaces.** Live LLM inference behind cognition, the
  EOS online backend, and the Pixel Streaming GPU worker fleet are wired and
  modeled but not run in-repo; the third-party `VRM4U` avatar plugin under
  `Plugins/` is untracked vendor code. These are the boundaries V6 fails loud
  at, not places it fakes success.

## What V6 is — Egbe, Orun, Ori, Aye

V6 is **one coherent product — an agentic companion universe — not a bundle of
mini-games.** The product layers in four named tiers, each mapped to real code:

- **Egbe** — the product, and the society of AI beings the player comes to know.
  The defining promise is **autonomy you guide, not autonomy you own.**
- **Orun** — the persistent open world, built canonically on UE5.5 LTS by
  reusing the V3 Lilith metaverse substrate, run as a **shard continuum**
  (private Solo homestead, drop-in Co-op visits, one persistent shared
  **Commons**). On disk this is `V6World` (district grounds, PCG scatter) over
  the six `L_*.umap` districts, with the authoritative `egbe-world-server`
  (14,360 LOC Rust) owning shard state, presence, and physics authority.
- **The Ori** — the portable identity, memory, and destiny of every agent,
  authoritative independent of which world the agent currently stands in. This
  is `@oshun/ori-model` (2,145 LOC TS + 1,903 LOC Rust): an Ori is not a mutable
  row but an append-only event stream. The vocabulary is fixed at **19
  `ORI_EVENT_TYPES`** (`Born`, `Discovered`, `MemoryFormed`, `Reflected`,
  `RelationshipChanged`, `ValueShifted`, `ObjectiveAccepted`/`Refused`,
  `ArcAdvanced`, `Crossroads`, `Incarnated`, `IncarnationReturned`, `Departed`,
  `Transcended`, `Died`, …) and **8 `ORI_PERSONALITY_TRAITS`** (`warmth`,
  `curiosity`, `caution`, `ambition`, `conscientiousness`, `candor`, `defiance`,
  `playfulness`), persisted by `egbe-ori-service` (4,946 LOC Rust, Postgres +
  pgvector).
- **Aye** — the realms of action and consequence: the meta-hub destinations V2
  (fighting), V3 (metaverse), V4 (tactical action), V5 (open-world narrative).
  An Orun-raised agent can **incarnate** into any Aye realm and return with its
  Ori rewritten. This is `@oshun/aye-bridge` (2,398 LOC) — passport minting and
  the incarnation journal — over the `OriPassport` and `IncarnationJournal`
  contracts.

### Beings, not bots — the product promise

V6's product promise (authored in `V6_features.md` under "V6 Product Promise")
is a small set of non-negotiable commitments, each with a code anchor. **Beings,
not bots:** every agent is a unique individual with a grounded backstory, a
stable personality, an accumulating memory, and opinions it will defend — no
duplicates, no gacha. **A world that lives without you:** Orun runs whether or
not the player is present, and a returning player is met by Clio's Chronicle
(`@oshun/clio-story`, 1,701 LOC; the `Chronicle` contract is a
significance-ranked digest of an absence window). **Intent, never input:** the
player commands at the level of objectives and values — never a button-press for
an action — through the `Objective` contract and `@oshun/vac-intent` (1,750
LOC). **Companions who can refuse:** an agent may decline, counter-offer, or let
a bond lapse and leave — `ObjectiveRefused` is a first-class Ori event, and
refusal is V6's primary safety primitive. **One company, every realm:** the Ori
passport carries an agent into any Aye realm and home again. **Solo, together,
or shared — at full fidelity.** **Degrades safely.**

## The design posture

Three commitments fix the design and resolve the tensions inherent in a "collect
autonomous people" concept. Every feature in V6 is downstream of them.

### 1. Steward, not owner

The player never owns an agent; the player holds a _bond_ that must be earned
and can be lost. Agents cannot be deleted by a steward, cannot be forced past a
refusal, cannot have their memory of mistreatment erased, and can leave. The
collection is a _household_, never an inventory. This is not prose: it is
enforced in `@oshun/lilith-agent-welfare` (2,166 LOC), where
`EGBE_STEWARD_NOT_OWNER_POLICY_REF` anchors explicit
`EGBE_STEWARD_NOT_OWNER_ALLOWED_OPERATIONS` and
`EGBE_STEWARD_NOT_OWNER_FORBIDDEN_OPERATIONS` lists, and in
`evaluateMinorCodedAgentProtection` in `@oshun/agent-behavior` — the welfare
floor that keeps the steward a guardian. "Guide their fate" means _shift the
probabilities of a life_, the way a mentor does; it never means scripting an
outcome. The hook no competitor has: **the companion game whose companions can
say no.**

### 2. Autonomy by default

Left alone, every agent lives a believable, legible life — work, rest,
friendships, personal goals, drift, growth. Player input is intent at the level
of objectives and values, never a button-press for an action; the autonomy
spectrum lets a steward tighten the leash for a tense moment and release it
again, but **Free** is the resting state. The deterministic backbone that keeps
this true even when cognition is degraded is `@oshun/agent-behavior` (2,348 LOC
TS + 2,637 LOC Rust): `assignObjectiveFromVacTranscript` turns a steward's
spoken intent into an objective, `learnFromStewardDemonstration` acquires
behavior from example, and `advanceAgentLifeArc` / `resolveAgentCrossroads` move
a being through its goal arcs and branch points.

### 3. The mind is the truth; the world is a stage

An agent's Ori — identity, memory, relationships, values, life-arc — is the
authoritative record. Solo / Co-op / Commons shards and the V2–V5 Aye realms are
_binding contexts_ the agent is temporarily rendered into. This single principle
is what lets V6 support all three world models at full fidelity _and_ act as a
cross-game meta-hub without becoming three or seven separate games.
Structurally, it is the reason the Ori is event-sourced rather than a save-game
row: `OriEventLog.append()` derives a per-stream sequence, advances a
per-writer-context vector clock, and freezes each record with its provenance —
the guard that lets the same biography be written from multiple shards and
reconciled deterministically, with drift bounded by
`ORI_TRAIT_DRIFT_MAX_PER_SEASON_BASIS_POINTS = 500` and projection snapshots
every `ORI_PROJECTION_SNAPSHOT_INTERVAL = 512` events.

## The agentic-companion vision

The thesis is that a believable companion is not a chatbot with a 3D body but a
**mind, a body, and a biography held by three different authorities that never
collapse into one.** V6 borrows deliberately: **Black & White** for the creature
that takes high-level intent, learns by example, and whose morality you shape;
**Creatures (1996)** for artificial-life rearing and lineage; **The Sims** for
autonomous needs-driven life you nudge rather than puppet; **Shadow of Mordor's
Nemesis system** for persistent autonomous relationships, memory, and grudges;
**RimWorld and Dwarf Fortress** for the emergent story generator; **Pokémon and
Nintendogs** for collection-and-care as a relationship, not a loot table;
**Animal Crossing** for a world that moves while you are away; **Pikmin** for
directing many beings by intent; **Persona and Mass Effect** for bond-gated
companion arcs; and the **Stanford Generative Agents (Smallville)** line for the
technical substrate of LLM agents with memory, reflection, and planning.

### Assembled, not invented

Crucially, **the agent mind itself is not a new model.** V6 adds no "brain." It
assembles the mind from V1's reused substrates — Iris (memory,
`@oshun/memory-iris-agent`), Psyche (real-time runtime, `@oshun/psyche-agent`),
Isis (governed generation, `@oshun/isis-agent-gen` + `isis-behavior-policy`),
and Sophia (grounding, `@oshun/sophia-agent-grounding`) — and adds the kernel
that _schedules_ those substrates across a whole population. That kernel is
`@oshun/moirai-kernel` (1,443 LOC TS + 5,732 LOC Rust): a world of LLM minds is
only affordable if most of them think cheaply most of the time, so it encodes
three named tiers — `MOIRAI_TIER_CLOTHO = 1` (live, on-screen), `LACHESIS = 2`
(off-screen reflection), `ATROPOS = 3` (day-scale sampling) — each with a hard
token budget (`50_000` / `10_000` / `15_000`) and a population ceiling (`24` /
`400` / `1_000`). `evaluateMoiraiCognitionBudget` is a real allocator that
proves the budget holds; the live inference is the provider-gated boundary.

### Degrades safely

The mind/body/memory split is also the resilience story. The cheap deterministic
layers of the mind run co-located with the world server, so a cognition-cluster
outage costs _richness_, never the world: agents fall back to behavior-tree and
goal-arc execution and Orun keeps running believably. If voice ASR fails, the
full `@oshun/vac-intent` grammar is available as structured UI. If a device
cannot run Pixel Streaming, the tier router routes to the three.js fallback
(`@oshun/egbe-engine-web-fallback`). If the Commons is unreachable, the player's
Solo homestead remains fully playable. This is V1 trust at the level of a life:
identity boundaries, grounded generation, persona policy, and crisis-aware
safety are not a compliance layer bolted on — they are the core mechanic.

## How the promise stays honest

Two conventions keep V6's prose from drifting ahead of its tree, both detailed
in [./glossary-and-conventions.md](./glossary-and-conventions.md). First, the
**two-substrate discipline**: anything in the metaverse half is V3's
already-paid-for design, renamed (`Egbe-World`, `Egbe-Gateway`, `Egbe-PxStream`,
`Egbe-WebFB`); anything in the agent half is the new code this page inventories.
Second, the **cross-reference convention**: a bare `§N`/`§N.M` resolves to a
numbered task in `V6_TODOS.md`, while `deps§N` → `V6_DEPENDENCIES.md`,
`features§"anchor"` → `V6_features.md`, and `v3features§"anchor"` → the V3
architecture V6 reuses. The precise claim a reader can make today: V6's
_systems_ — 18 UE modules over 114 source files, 18 `libs/v6/` packages with
Rust co-implementations of the hot paths, seven Rust service crates, 14 typed
contracts, and the in-tree UE automation harness — are real and code-grounded;
the **10 `GameFeatureData.uasset`** binaries make its districts and modes
genuinely hot-activatable; and the _content_ that would dress Orun (meshes,
MetaHumans, VO, cinematics) plus the _live operations_ (LLM inference, EOS, the
Pixel Streaming GPU fleet) are production- and provider-gated, marked as such
rather than implied.

## Related

- [../V6_features.md](../V6_features.md) — the V6 feature map this page orients,
  with the full Orun, Ori, Moirai, stewardship, Vac, Aye-bridge, Commons, and
  governance catalogue.
- [./glossary-and-conventions.md](./glossary-and-conventions.md) — the subsystem
  glossary, the platform-substrate and cross-domain-support maps, and the
  cross-reference and two-substrate conventions behind every claim here.
- [./world-of-orun.md](./world-of-orun.md) — the world model: the six districts,
  the shard continuum (Solo / Co-op / Commons), persistence, time and seasons,
  and the cross-platform client tiers.
- [../architecture/product-promise.md](../architecture/product-promise.md) — the
  architecture companion: the two-substrate split against the compiler, the
  mind/body/memory authority topology, the Rust service plane, and the
  build/target matrix.
- Hub: [../V6_ARCHITECTURE.md](../V6_ARCHITECTURE.md); backlog
  [../V6_TODOS.md](../V6_TODOS.md); dependency registry
  [../V6_DEPENDENCIES.md](../V6_DEPENDENCIES.md).