Concepts¶
Plasma is a digital nervous system for an organization: it senses what's happening, processes it intelligently, and responds — in real time, from infrastructure to dashboard.
This section explains how it's built and why. If you only read one thing, read this page.
One idea, everywhere: HOW → WHAT → WHEN¶
Almost everything in Plasma composes along the same three-layer pattern, expressed twice:
| Pattern | HOW (computation) | WHAT (configuration) | WHEN (orchestration) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Event-driven logic | Function | Skill | Agent |
| Infrastructure | Software | Service | Application |
A function is a generic computation; a skill configures it for a use case; an agent decides when it runs and holds a repertoire of skills. The same shape governs software → service → application. Learn it once, read the whole platform. → Component model
Choreography, not workflows¶
An agent orchestrates its own skills — but no central workflow sequences the agents. There is no Airflow, no DAG to maintain, no central scheduler. Each agent embeds its own trigger (a channel subscription or a cron expression) and selects a skill from the incoming situation — which is simply the channel it's listening on. Behavior emerges from channel topology. → Choreography & channels
Layers with their own buses¶
Plasma is organized into specialized layers, each with a message bus tuned to its semantics (NATS, Kafka, Matrix). Layers never share a bus — the only cross-layer coupling is an explicit relay with backpressure. → Architecture & layers · Core patterns
A digital organism¶
The point of all this isn't a stack of services — it's a living system. Plasma is built to behave like an organism: it takes in what's happening, makes sense of it, acts, and keeps itself in balance — continuously, and on its own.
- It perceives. Foundation and Integration take in the world — events, metrics, signals — and carry complete state (ECST).
- It understands. Cognition turns raw data into knowledge and wisdom (DIKW).
- It acts. Agents fire on the situations they care about and choose how to respond — no central brain issuing orders.
- It communicates. Conversation and Interaction speak to people and to other systems.
- It self-regulates. Stabilization (emerging) watches its own health and nudges the whole system back toward a balanced state — homeostasis.
And like any organism, no single organ is in charge. Behavior emerges from how the parts are wired together — the way reflexes and nerve signals coordinate a body with no conductor. That's why Plasma is choreographed, not run from a central workflow.
In this section¶
- Architecture & layers — the specialized layers and how they depend on each other
- Component model — components, the two triads, packages, models, platforms
- Choreography & channels — triggers, the grammar of action, join vs divide
- Core patterns — ECST, DIKW, bus-per-layer, ontology as contract
- Topology & nodes — zones, allocation, mapping logical to physical
New to the vocabulary? Keep the Glossary open.