Epiphany/schemas/dossier-profiles.md

Dossier Profiles

Epiphany uses one Ghostlight-shaped storage schema with two explicit operating profiles.

This split exists because "what makes a coding organ effective" and "what makes a public-facing or dramatic personality feel embodied and fallible" are not the same problem, even if they share a skeleton.

Profiles

lane_core

Intended for:

• Self
• Imagination
• Eyes
• Body
• Hands
• Soul
• Life

These organs need:

• sharp role identity
• stable working values
• durable mission-relevant memory
• enough personality texture to steer rumination, timing, and self-modification
• resistance to personality sludge and faux-human overfitting

They do not need every old Ghostlight trait slot populated just to cosplay depth.

Recommended shape:

• one standing canonical trait per family minimum
• goals, values, semantic memory, and private notes always present
• relationship and perceived-overlay surfaces optional and narrow
• self-modification primarily through:
  • reviewed selfPatch
  • heartbeat rumination pressure
  • sleep/distillation
  • birth-time repo personality/memory seeding

Failure mode if overbuilt:

• the organ becomes theatrical instead of useful
• working memory fills with fake interiority instead of sharper judgment
• every lane starts behaving like a roleplay goblet with a compiler strapped to it

embodied_actor

Intended for:

• Face
• future multiple Faces or perspective-mouths (for example faction-facing Aetheria interlocutors)
• Ghostlight scene characters
• any future public, social, or dramatic agent that must react as a situated person rather than a narrow work organ

These agents need:

• denser canonical personality surfaces
• relationship pressure
• perceived-state fallibility
• episodic accumulation that actually colors reaction
• response shaped by appraisal, not just policy
• room to misread, overread, hesitate, overcompensate, or project

Recommended shape:

• dense Ghostlight family maps using the canonical label inventory
• active use of relationship_summaries
• meaningful perceived_state_overlays
• character-loop interpretation and reaction as first-class behavior
• growth through:
  • events
  • relationships
  • appraisal/reaction cycles
  • reviewed self-memory mutation
  • sleep/distillation

Failure mode if underbuilt:

• Face becomes a status printer with eyeliner
• Ghostlight characters become omniscient utility daemons wearing skin

Current State

Right now the storage schema supports both profiles, but the live standing Epiphany role shells are still mostly sparse. That is acceptable for the lane organs and a current limitation for Face.

So the policy is:

• sparse lane-core dossiers are fine when they improve work
• Face should trend toward embodied-actor richness
• the current singular face role is an MVP constraint, not a metaphysical law
• do not pretend those are the same requirement

Wire Visibility

The distinction should be visible to tools, not hidden in a footnote.

Current typed surfaces expose dossier profile classification through:

• epiphany-agent-memory-store status
• epiphany-character-loop packets

If a future surface consumes role dossiers without surfacing profile kind, it is already drifting back toward folklore.