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/, examples/wasm-*, 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 extension surface
- 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)reasoning-institution/— D39 justification-logic institution: type-checkJustifiedBycertificates 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 1.95+, Deno, system packages, optional
justandcargo-component. 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. -
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,demo/wasm/run.sh, and the multi-institution kinase-institutions notebook. -
Building WASM components — pure / read-capability / IO components via
wasm-cbor-echo,wasm-doc-validator,wasm-read-query-probe,wasm-http-shout. Build withcargo-component, install witheigenius capability install. -
Building WASM institutions — D14
Institutiontrait implementations against theeigenius-institution-d14WIT world (extract-typed/reify/query). Auto-registration from chain scan viaruntime: wasm+ inlinewasm_binary. Walked through with the M8 dock-assay worked example. -
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
JustifiedBy(justification, proposition) certificates against
ReasoningSentence resources at commit. Grounding constructors consume
chain witnesses admitted by the D49 witness index, composing chain
artifacts (axioms, observations, statistics verdicts, formal proofs)
into auditable reasoning chains. See
reasoning-institution/. 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 index that bridges D52 and D39
- D39 Justification logic as institution — the reasoning institution’s design spec
- D52 Measurement-statistics institution — the statistics institution’s design spec
The full design-document set lives in docs/design/.
Ready to start? → 1. Introduction