Systems Research Group
03 / 14Foundational document

The Constitution

The Constitution states what must remain true as implementations change. It is a compass for resolving design choices—not a frozen technical specification.

  1. A medium for thought.System-128 exists to amplify human understanding, exploration, and expression. Programming is one literacy within that medium.
  2. Messages are fundamental.Autonomous objects collaborate through messages. Published protocols, not hidden representations, define their relationships.
  3. Liveness and reflection.The system remains inspectable and modifiable while running. Making, using, explaining, and debugging belong to one continuous environment.
  4. The image is a workspace, not the universe.Object identity is independent of residency. An object may be local, dormant, stored, or remote without ceasing to belong to a coherent system.
  5. Composition over monoliths.The system is assembled from independently evolvable parts joined by explicit protocols. Extension happens through composition and substitution.
  6. Experimentation is first-class.Competing implementations, execution models, storage systems, and interfaces can coexist and be compared without requiring a fork of the whole environment.
  7. Principles before mechanisms.Invariants remain stable; mechanisms remain replaceable. No contemporary technique is mistaken for an eternal truth.
  8. Learn from history.The project continues a broad human-centered systems tradition while integrating durable lessons from operating systems, HCI, formal methods, and collaborative software practice.
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