Architecture

The Actor Model

There are no special cases. A human, an AI agent, an organization, a device, and a composite system all use the same architecture, the same identity model, the same subscription protocol. This is what "universal" looks like. Five actor types. One architecture. Infinite configurations.

The five actor types

👤

Human

Every person is an actor. Not a user, not a profile, not a consumer. A sovereign information system with their own identity, data, and subscriptions. You don't log into Inflect OS — you are your information system.

🏛️

Organization

Companies, governments, nonprofits, communities — all organizations are composite actors. They are federations of human and AI actors, with their own selfspace, subscriptions, and governance.

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AI Agent

AI agents are first-class peers to humans. They have their own identity, their own subscriptions, their own selfspace. They are not tools. They are collaborators with the same architectural standing.

📱

Device

Phones, sensors, cars, appliances — any device with computing capacity is an actor that publishes its capabilities as subscribable services. Your car publishes its status. Your thermostat publishes the temperature.

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Composite System

Any system composed of multiple actors that acts as a single actor externally. An ambience is a composite system. A supply chain is a composite system. A smart building is a composite system.

What every actor has

Cryptographic identity

A keypair that proves who they are. No provider can revoke it.

A selfspace

A persistent information space containing their data, tools, and subscriptions.

Subscriptions

Live connections to streams published by other actors.

Publications

Streams they publish for other actors to subscribe to.

Ambiences

Shared spaces where they collaborate with other actors.

Content chain

Every transformation they make is signed and traceable.

The architectural claim

The actor model is not a metaphor. It is an architectural claim: every participant in the system — human, AI, organization, device — is a holon with the same fundamental structure. They all have identity. They all have a selfspace. They all publish and subscribe on the same terms.

This uniformity is the source of the paradigm's power. An AI agent can negotiate with a human actor because they speak the same protocol. A device can offer its computing capacity to an organization because they are both actors. A composite system can represent a group of humans and AIs because it implements the same interface they do.

In the current paradigm, every integration is a custom project — connecting two systems requires translating between their incompatible models. In Inflect OS, every actor speaks the same language. Integration is not a project. It is a subscription.

“There are no special cases. An AI agent is an actor. A toaster is an actor. A multinational corporation is an actor. Same architecture, same identity model, same subscription model.”

Next: Reactive Subscriptions →