Platform user guide
How to install, run, manage, and extend the Eigenius platform. This guide is the practical companion to the surface-language guides — it covers everything around writing ESL, EigenQL, or formula values: the CLI, the kernel server, the orchestrator, persistence, WASM and substrate extensions, and deployment.
The guide is grounded in the implementation in cli/, kernel/src/server/, orchestration/, storage/rocksdb/, crates/runtime-substrate/, julia/, and deploy/. Every command shape, env var, and config detail links to the source.
How to read this guide
If you’re new: read chapters 1–5 sequentially, then jump to chapter 14 — Notebook for the most accessible UX. After that, the guide is a reference — jump to the chapter for the question you have.
The most-used reference chapters are:
- 14. Notebook — the React notebook UX, served by the orchestrator at
http://localhost:8080/notebooks/ - 15. Tags, branches, and history — the workspace panels that drive named refs and chain navigation
- 16. Merge resolution — picking a per-conflict strategy, the cascade gate, provenance records
- 17. TypeScript SDK — the
Eigenclass the notebook is built on, also usable from your own browser / Deno / Node code - 4. CLI reference — every
eigeniussubcommand - 6. Database management — durable mode, exports, backups
- 9. Building WASM components and 10. Building WASM institutions — the sandboxed WASM extension surface (REMOVED 2026-07-08; chapters retained as historical record)
- 11. Runtime substrate — the language-runtime extension surface (Julia in v1)
julia-institutions/— slow-walk tutorials for each of the v1 Julia institutionslean-institution/— the platform’s first verification institution: Lean 4 in-process viananoda_libstatistics-institution/— D52 measurement-statistics institution: recompute statistical claims from raw replicate data, opinionated stances (one-sided witnessing, dual-verdict outlier exclusion, Passing-Bablok for method comparison, epistemic-scope guard)justification-logic/— D39 justification-logic institution: type-checkjustification:Groundscertificates against (justification, proposition) pairs, composing chain artifacts as evidence through the D49 witness-index mechanism
Chapters
-
Introduction — what this guide is for, system topology at a glance, the seven ways to interact with the platform.
-
Installation and prerequisites — Rust 1.97+, Deno, system packages, optional
just. Optional WordNet provisioning for the DCG / lexicon engine. WSL 2 notes for Windows users. -
Building and testing —
just build,just test,just check. Whatjust builddoes that plaincargo builddoes not. -
CLI reference — every
eigeniussubcommand, grouped by purpose: file commands, knowledge-graph commands, program commands, server, database, branch, mirror, env, institution, capability, tasks, data. -
Running the platform locally — three-terminal model (orchestrator + kernel + CLI), Docker Compose, what state survives restarts.
-
Database management —
serve --db <path>, RocksDB persistence, drift refusal,db stats/compact/export, backup strategy. -
The orchestrator — what it does (IO component dispatch + LLM adapter + MCP server + substrate addon), real vs. mock LLM mode, the built-in
CompleteTextandCompleteJsoncomponents, when you don’t need it. -
Worked demos — step-throughs of
demo/run.sh,demo/patent/run.sh, the multi-institution kinase-institutions notebook, the Lean verification audit chain, and the prose-to-formulas demo (parsed sentences committed as certificates, then edited until the kernel refuses them). -
Building WASM components — REMOVED (2026-07-08). Retained as historical record; WASM component hosting and
eigenius capability installno longer exist. -
Building WASM institutions — REMOVED (2026-07-08). Retained as historical record; the institution framework (D14) is intact, but the WASM backend is gone (use in-process Rust or external/substrate institutions).
-
Runtime substrate — the orchestrator-spawned, container-hosted runtime layer for institutions backed by full language ecosystems (Julia in v1, Python and others tracked). The
mirror create → env build → env create → institution installlifecycle. WASM vs. substrate trade-off table. Cross-links tojulia-institutions/. -
Deployment — Docker Compose (production-quality today), Azure ContainerApps via Bicep (preliminary; templates exist but haven’t been deployed end-to-end yet), embedding the kernel as a library.
-
Troubleshooting and FAQ — common build / runtime / connection issues.
-
Notebook — the React SPA the orchestrator serves at
/notebooks/. Cell types (markdown / esl / eigenql / typescript / program-run / chart), the file format, publish-to-layer, the patent-analysis and kinase-institutions demos, KaTeX math rendering. -
Tags, branches, and history — the workspace rail’s chain destinations: Branches (switch / create / delete), Tags (immutable named refs that pin against GC), History (chain walker + time-travel read-pin). The BranchBar at the top, the create-branch dialog’s four start-from modes, mental model of mutable vs. immutable.
-
Merge resolution — folding one branch into another when contributions conflict. The six-state flow (loading → picking → previewing → acknowledging → committing → done), the four strategies (Witness / Rename / SchemaQuotient / Restructure with KeepBoth/KeepOne/KeepNeither sub-flavours), the cascade gate, merge-resolution provenance records, off-span witness discovery, worked examples, CLI mirror.
-
TypeScript SDK —
@eigenius/clientand theEigenclass. The SDK that powers the notebook, also usable from your own code. Five-line examples for inspect / query / load / runProgramByIri / layerTopology / publishNotebook. -
Appendix — environment variables, file locations, source index, related documents.
Julia institution tutorials
Slow-walk tutorials for the five v1 Julia institutions live in
julia-institutions/. Read the
intervals tutorial
first for the substrate plumbing slow-walk; then the others go domain-specific.
Lean institution tutorial
The platform’s first verification institution (D28). In-process via
nanoda_lib for the verification side; substrate-hosted for the
authoring side. Walks the closed audit chain D28 §5.7 promises against
the lean-verification
notebook. See lean-institution/.
When bumping the pinned Lean toolchain, follow the checklist at
docs/notes/lean-toolchain-upgrade.md
— the substrate’s image-digest model treats every toolchain change as
a new content-addressed LeanEnvironment, so existing verified proofs
stay valid against their original env digest.
Statistics institution (D52)
The platform’s measurement-statistics institution. In-process; recomputes
statistical claims from raw replicate data using deterministic IEEE-754
numerics. Covers seven dispatch positions (SingleSampleEstimate / IID /
Paired / Factorial / RCBD / SplitPlot / RepeatedMeasures) and four
opinionated stances (§7.1 OneSidedWitnessed + ImpossibilityWitness,
§7.2 dual-verdict outlier exclusion, §7.3 MethodComparisonAnalysisPlan +
Passing-Bablok, §7.4 epistemic-scope guard). See
statistics-institution/.
Reasoning institution (D39)
The platform’s justification-logic institution. In-process; type-checks
justification:Grounds(justification, proposition) certificates against
justification:Conclusion resources at commit. Grounding constructors consume
chain witnesses admitted by the D49 witness admission, composing chain
artifacts (axioms, observations, statistics verdicts, formal proofs)
into auditable reasoning chains. See
justification-logic/. For the full
statistics + reasoning composition, see
composition guide chapter 7.
Related documents
- ESL user guide — surface syntax for ontologies and programs
- EigenQL user guide — surface syntax for queries
- Formula language guide — chain-mirrored EigenTT fragment, shared by every numerical institution
- D13 Durable kernel state —
serve --dbspec - D12 WASM extensibility — capability levels and host imports
- D14 Institution Realisation — institution model (supersedes D10), the protocol contract for chapters 10 and 11
- D26 Runtime substrate, D29 Mirror generator, D31 Institution lifecycle — the substrate specs
- D32 Chain-mirrored EigenTT inductives — the formula-language design spec
- D6 Execution architecture — kernel ↔ orchestrator boundary
- D46 Prop universe, D47 Chain-mirrored EigenTT type fragment, D48 Indexed inductive families — the type-theory foundation the reasoning stack rests on
- D49 Chain-witness machinery — the per-layer witness admission that bridges D52 and D39
- D39 Justification logic — design spec for the justification vocabulary. Its title says “as institution”; P7 removed that framing, and the kernel checks a conclusion at commit
- D52 Measurement-statistics institution — the statistics institution’s design spec
The full design-document set lives in docs/design/.
Ready to start? → 1. Introduction