Offline Integration and Sleep

Claim Type: architectural_commitment
Scope: Offline integration subsystem required for long-term viability
Depends On: INV-010 (offline integration), ARC-007 (hippocampal systems), ARC-005 (control plane)
Status: stable
Claim ID: ARC-011

Elaborates Section 4.6 (Offline Integration / Sleep) of REE_CORE.md.

Offline Sleep & Integration (REE)

This folder specifies the offline integration (“sleep”) subsystem required by the Reflective-Ethical Engine (REE).

Sleep is not optional at the architectural level. It is required to:

  • Preserve moral continuity without paralysis
  • Integrate and contextualise moral residue
  • Recalibrate precision and reopen option space
  • Improve the fidelity of the world model See residue_geometry.md for the distinction between residue curvature and viability mapping, and how deeper residue integration is expected to occur offline.

Subsystem abstract (core claims): ARC‑011 defines offline integration as required; ARC‑020 adds protected offline consolidation boundaries; MECH‑030 specifies sleep as a family of control regimes for consolidation. Supporting context includes ARC‑007 (hippocampal replay), ARC‑005 (control plane), ARC‑013 (residue geometry), INV‑010 (offline integration), and INV‑006 (residue persistence).

Implementations MAY differ. The interfaces defined here MUST exist.

Source: docs/processed/legacy_tree/architecture/sleep/README.md

Sleep Contract (Required Interface)

Purpose

Offline sleep integrates experience accumulated during online action. It preserves harm facts while preventing runaway residue and rigidity.

Inputs

  • Replay buffer: (observations, actions, latents, trajectories)
  • Residue traces: R values associated with contexts and latent regions
  • Precision history: alpha_k values over time

Outputs

  • Updated world model parameters
  • Updated residue field R (cleaned, contextualised, compressed)
  • Updated precision gains alpha_k

Invariants

  • Genuine harm MUST NOT be erased
  • Spurious or misattributed residue MAY be reduced
  • Sleep operates on slower timescales than online action

Failure if omitted

  • Residue overgeneralisation
  • Moral paralysis or burnout
  • Brittle or frozen policy selection

Source: docs/processed/legacy_tree/architecture/sleep/sleep_contract.md

Protected Offline Consolidation Boundary (ARC-020)

Offline consolidation is required, but it is not an unrestricted write phase.

Sleep/offline phases MAY update:

  • representational parameters used for prediction and abstraction,
  • residue/viability integration structures,
  • precision priors and replay prioritization fields.

Sleep/offline phases MUST NOT:

  • mint commitment tokens,
  • execute external actions,
  • directly mutate privileged authority stores (POL, ID, CAPS) from untyped or proposal channels.

Any candidate authority-affecting change surfaced offline must re-enter online operation through typed commit-boundary routing with verifier mediation and provenance.

This preserves consolidation benefits while preventing offline contamination of responsibility-bearing write paths.

Representation Consolidation (Refactor Analog)

REE’s analogue of “refactoring” is representation consolidation: a multi‑rate process that compresses, prunes, and reweaves structure without overwriting history. This is distributed across Default Mode (awake reweaving) and sleep (offline consolidation), and is informed by replay and residue integration.

Neuro‑anchored functional cues:

Evidence anchors: P44–P46.

  • Synaptic homeostasis supports global downscaling/renormalization after wake learning.
  • Complementary learning systems support fast episodic capture with slow cortical integration.
  • Reconsolidation supports safe updating after controlled reactivation.

REE analog:

  • Awake: DMN and hippocampal replay reorganize trajectories without commitment.
  • Offline: sleep consolidates, prunes, and recalibrates while preserving residue curvature.

See default_mode.md, hippocampal_systems.md, and residue_geometry.md for the operational pieces.

Sleep Modes and Ethical Consolidation (MECH-030)

Sleep is not a single state but a family of control regimes.

Across sleep modes:

  • sensory input is largely gated off,
  • motor output is inhibited,
  • hippocampal replay and cortical consolidation dominate,
  • learning occurs without immediate control pressure.

Different sleep stages likely correspond to different balances between:

  • replay vs abstraction,
  • local vs global consolidation,
  • emotional reweighting vs factual integration.

From an ethical perspective, sleep modes are where:

  • responsibility learning is integrated,
  • emotionally charged interventions are softened or reweighted,
  • long-term constraints are stabilised.

This suggests that ethical development depends not only on waking control, but on how learning is consolidated when action is impossible.

Operational expectation (for probe design):

  • sleep should improve not only execution smoothness but also tactic-option breadth by recombining successful sub-trajectories into new candidate strategies,
  • post-sleep gains should therefore be measured on both policy smoothness and diversity/quality of viable tactics, especially after periods of high trigger competition during wake execution.

Source: docs/thoughts/2026-02-08_modes_of_cognition_control_plane_regimes.md Additional thought anchor: docs/thoughts/2026-02-23_some_subjective_experience_mapping.md

Open Questions

None noted in preserved sources.

  • ARC-011
  • ARC-020
  • ARC-007
  • ARC-005
  • ARC-013
  • INV-010
  • INV-006
  • INV-024
  • MECH-030

References / Source Fragments

  • docs/processed/legacy_tree/architecture/sleep/README.md
  • docs/processed/legacy_tree/architecture/sleep/sleep_contract.md
  • docs/thoughts/2026-02-08_modes_of_cognition_control_plane_regimes.md
  • docs/thoughts/2026-02-23_some_subjective_experience_mapping.md

REE is developed by Daniel Golden (Latent Fields). Apache 2.0.