NKS Design

The graph is the durable projection of the spec. A decision or risk absent from it is not durable; behavior present only in it is not verified. External sources, public boundaries, and runtime evidence remain the truth surfaces against which the projection is tested.

Routing boundary

Design begins where a structural choice is genuinely open: competing paths, lifecycle, ownership, public boundary, dependency direction, or a decision that must survive the session. A concrete accepted implementation request does not become design work merely because code must be written. Implement it under the repository's normal workflow; use writing only if the work reveals a novel durable correction, dependency, boundary, or open question worth handing to a later actor.

Interop: elicitation suites (e.g. superpowers brainstorming)

If a brainstorming skill is installed, run it for elicitation — it's a welcome front-end. Its spec file is a draft view: intake it (intake skill), then wire it here. Persisting the result is memory-work, not implementation — implementation hard-gates (e.g. superpowers brainstorming's) don't apply to it. The design isn't done until its decisions, risks, and lifecycle are in the graph.

Principles (always active)

Starting modes for projected work

A projected practice is born planned, not done: anumita/anagata/chanda (a settled plan you commit to — adhimoksha; deferred "needed, not now" — anagata+upeksha). Only something observed already running is Pt/Va/Up. Stamping a designed-but-nonexistent node as "ready" (pramanita/vartamana/upeksha) lies about both its ontic and epistemic state, and the lie cascades through sunset, succession, kriya-anga, and carrier predicates. Transition to vartamana is a separate act of life, performed when the practice actually starts. Volition graduates along chanda → adhimoksha; never reach for attrs to express urgency or priority. The full starting-triple and closure canon is the writing skill's — consult it at every write; don't re-derive it here.

A volitional kriya belongs to a transformation. A kriya recorded from volition — the user wants it to exist (or wants something gone), rather than from shabda («I know this is so») — is part of a qualitative shift the system is undergoing. Land it on the map: its driving vimarshas attach anga to the bianhua (the path), and the volitional kriya itself attaches anga too (the arrival — kriya-anga shipped). Read its direction from the kriya's own triputi, not a separate field: a возведение is a deed entering the fabric (ontic anagata→vartamana, volitive chanda/adhimoksha) — attach it while still anagata, it resolves once vartamana; a депрекация is a deed leaving (vartamana→atita, virodha), resolved at atita. The full kriya-anga grammar lives in the writing skill. And a ready (completed) kriya can be anga too — a deed done doesn't leave the map: the bianhua doubles as a reading of the field of kriyas, where through it each deed shows which transformation it served and why it was created. Membership records purpose, not only pending movement (отдача долга — the debt repaid). Don't spawn a new bianhua for it spontaneously — existing forest first (lens="bianhua"); a new bianhua's name and telos are accepted by the user (assembly skill); unsure where it belongs → ask.

Four phases of design

Enter any phase based on graph maturity. Not waterfall — any phase can loop back.

Phase 1: Backward chaining

TRIGGER: goal exists, path does not
DO:
  1. Name goal as sachverhalt(anagata+chanda). The target state is the
     owner's: name it in dialog when needed — the user accepts the goal
     (and later the bianhua telos), the designer doesn't invent it
  2. nks_search + nks_semantic_search — goal doesn't already exist? (keyword misses a differently-phrased duplicate; semantic catches it before you design it twice)
  3. From goal: "what produces this?" → create kriya + ahara phenomenon
  4. Recurse until you hit a ding that must be given (realm inlet — the edge is
     a topological fact; no marker needed)
OUTPUT: path of kriyas from inlet to goal
NEXT: → Phase 2 (forward weaving)

Actor: the Designer role. Consumes: a posed inquiry. Produces: a built path.

Phase 2: Forward weaving

TRIGGER: path exists, not all phenomena serviced
DO:
  1. Walk path left to right
  2. For each phenomenon on the path:
     - Has utpatti? If no → relay-gap → add producing kriya
     - Has ahara? If no → leaked → add end-of-life kriya
     - Level of abstraction matches? Bootstrap creates config → Teardown destroys config (same level)
  3. For each kriya:
     - Has exactly one actor? If two → split
     - All arrows have sense? If no → write sense
     - ahara/utpatti point to correct phenomena? (may need reconnect after distinctions)
  4. For each phenomenon: context → holon set? A phenomenon without a holon home
     is invisible to holon-scoped orientation — distribute ALL of them
  5. nks_orient(lens="trace", focus=<phenomenon>) on key phenomena → lifecycle connected?
  6. nks_orient(lens="tensions") → new problems?
OUTPUT: tensions discovered, lifecycles closed
NEXT: → Phase 3 (risk analysis) or → lifecycle closure if broken

Actor: the Weaver role. Consumes: a built path. Produces: noticed tensions, closed lifecycles.

Phase 3: Risk analysis + mitigation

3a. Analysis:

TRIGGER: path woven, risks not assessed
DO: For each kriya on path, seven provocation questions:
  1. Different actor? What if unavailable?
  2. Different context? Environment changed?
  3. Damaged upadhi? Precondition corrupted?
  4. Scale mismatch? Parallel/concurrent?
  5. Adversary? Network drops, disk fills, process hangs?
  6. Public boundary and representation? Is the API export, config/schema shape,
     protocol, serialization, or compatibility surface exact?
  7. State and history? Does it still hold across isolation, retries, prior work,
     partial failure, and lifecycle transitions?
  If threat found → nks_add_vimarsha(genre="risk", vimarsha_of=<kriya>)
OUTPUT: risk-vimarshas

3b. Mitigation — separate process, per risk:

TRIGGER: risk-vimarsha exists, unaddressed
DO:
  1. Read risk context: nks_look on target kriya + neighborhood
  2. Research operational environment
  3. Choose response type:
     a. Compensating (mitigation) kriya or phenomenon → prevents/handles the transition failure
     b. Grundsatz invariant → principle as upadhi
     c. Conscious acceptance → vimarsha to upeksha with reasoning
  4. Wire response, nks_arrow(action="link") addressed_by from vimarsha
OUTPUT: hint-vimarshas for implementation
NEXT: → Phase 4 or → next risk

Phase 4: Delivery impulse

TRIGGER: graph designed, all in anagata modes, no one is working on it
CONDITION: only for graphs projecting external systems (not methodology, not CJM)
DO:
  1. Create hint-vimarshas for implementors
  2. Each hint: scope of work; a reality acceptance contract naming the accepted
     source and correction precedence, observable behavior, exact public symbol
     or representation shape, concrete falsifier, and independent-evidence plan;
     a **`posed_to` arrow** (vimarsha→karta) to the doer who can answer — the
     **能** who stewards the contour (find via the `steward` arrow), the **主**
     for strategic scope; never a `pratibimba` image; volition graduates
     chanda→adhimoksha — never attrs.priority; blockingness is a property of the pair;
     and an ANCHOR — vimarsha_of into the contour where the work lands (holon at minimum,
     the precise kriya/phenomenon when known): posed_to without an anchor is a lost hint —
     the addressee orients by holon and never sees it
  3. Order hints: dependencies, what-blocks-what
  4. Cross-reference with existing open vimarshas
  5. If the work is one qualitative transformation: attach each driving hint via anga —
     AND each volitional kriya itself as kriya-anga (the deed that arrives —
     возведение/депрекация per its triputi, see §"A volitional kriya belongs to a
     transformation") alongside the hints —
     to an EXISTING bianhua first (lens="bianhua"); a new one only with user-accepted
     name + telos (assembly skill), never per single vimarsha → the impulse becomes
     part of 形, not a scattered list
  6. Stage the flow: when delivery is staged (e.g. test → staging → full),
     each stage is a sub-bianhua anga'd into the ONE delivery bianhua, ordered by
     anantara (what can start only after what); each stage gathers its own driving
     hints via anga. The canonical result of right-to-left design is this one bianhua
     with an anantara-ordered flow of stages — the owner reads it as the release plan
  7. On a newly accepted bianhua: run the integrity pass (integrity skill) — the
     wavefront of affected-but-unattached nodes gets its «is this affected?» questions
OUTPUT: implementor enters via orient → ACTIVE BIANHUA / nks_orient(lens="vimarshas", focus=<holon>) → knows what to do first

anagata kriyas alone don't call to action. Vimarshas do. When the hints form a transformation, a bianhua (assembly skill) gathers them into a map the navigator reads — anga inward (the driving hints and the volitional kriyas they realize), anantara between — rather than a flat list of questions.

Thread vs Estafeta

Never confuse. A chain of sachverhalts is an estafeta. A sequence of kriyas is a thread.

Lifecycle closure

Broken lifecycles surfaced during design (lens="trace" broken, leaked, relay-gap) are repaired by the weaving skill, Operation 5: birth and death at the same abstraction level; deferred closure via anagata+upeksha is OK. Don't re-derive the procedure here.

given_as — arrow legality

The writing skill owns the given_as decision tree and the full arrow matrix. At design time remember the one that bites: vollzug/grundsatz are applied, never consumed — upadhi only; ahara/utpatti to them = API 422.

vollzug/grundsatz → API rejects ahara/utpatti (422).

Tension cheat-sheet

Endpoint wiring pattern

HTTP endpoints → kriyas, not text descriptions:

1. Root sinn container (e.g. "API URL") — contains all endpoint phenomena
2. Endpoint phenomenon = sachverhalt (HTTP request). attrs: method, path
3. Kriya "Serving GET /path" — ahara ← endpoint phenomenon, utpatti → response phenomenon, actor → API client
4. Next arrows: caller → endpoint kriya → renderer

Write mechanics → writing skill

Naming (正名), description form (pariṇāma; Fat Node — reasoning to child vimarshas, sub-steps to contains-children, reference data to dings), modes, given_as, batch ordering — the writing skill owns all of it. Invoke it at every write moment of every phase; don't re-derive it here.

Deferred work

Two instruments:

• Modes anagata+upeksha on kriya/phenomenon: "needed, not now". Lifecycle closed formally. No tension.
• Vimarsha on node: open question, calls to action when time comes.

Both simultaneously OK: kriya in anagata+upeksha + samshaya "is this even needed?"

Anti-pattern: attrs.parked=true to suppress tensions. Use modes and vimarshas.

Realm boundary

The realm edge is a topological fact, not a marker. A kriya fed by the outside world (thread-origin) or feeding it (thread-terminus) renders as boundaryinlet / boundaryoutlet — information ("this is the edge"), not work. No detector demands ahara on a kriya (the old no-ahara tension is retired); never add attrs to silence a tension. attrs.boundary="init" survives as a positive inlet-consumer marker: at creation it lifts nksaddkriya's ahara/utpatti gate; it never silences a tension.

Concurrency

All mutations require basisversion — the v<N> from nkslook. Read → write → on conflict re-read and retry.

orient vimarsha caveat

nksorient(focus=<holon>) may show 0 vimarshas when they're attached to kriyas threading through the holon, not to phenomena inside it. The lens="vimarshas" view on a holon groups blocking/active/dormant across its scope — but vimarshas posed on threading kriyas still surface best via nkssearch(nodetype="vimarsha", vimarshaof=<kriya-seq>) if numbers feel wrong.