The bound test failed two runs in thirty under load, and not on the bound it was testing. Both failures were bootstrap: "a worker did not acknowledge every lifecycle reply". ipc-v1 section 5 says already released or unknown ids are ignored, and the contract type already holds the acknowledged list to a subset of the request. So the second Acknowledge of the same ids answers with an empty list by design -- and the section 6 resolution produces exactly that second Acknowledge whenever the first reply is slower than the probe. Demanding the whole list back turned a safe, contract-sanctioned retry into a failed epoch, which is a defect in the coordinator rather than in the test: a slow lifecycle reply would do it to a real session too. The test made itself easy to hit by installing a fifty-millisecond probe before bootstrap, so bootstrap's own lifecycle calls ran under a budget meant for the step under test. It now bootstraps at ordinary deadlines and tightens them afterwards. The two bounds are also separated by construction rather than by clock. Each half puts the bound it is not testing out of reach -- u32::MAX attempts against a fifth of a second, three attempts against an hour -- so no scheduling delay can flip which one fires, and the silent participant is ten minutes slow against a twenty-second test timeout, so returning at all proves a bound ended it. The wall-clock assertion is gone and the attempt count is asserted instead, which last_resolution_attempts now records. One agent per composition, so the participant the failure names is not a race either. |
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| .forgejo/workflows | ||
| .github/workflows | ||
| apps/stage | ||
| data/fafb-v783 | ||
| docs | ||
| infra | ||
| packages | ||
| services | ||
| tools | ||
| .gitignore | ||
| CLAUDE.md | ||
| CONTRIBUTING.md | ||
| LICENSE | ||
| LICENSES.md | ||
| Makefile | ||
| NOTICE | ||
| package-lock.json | ||
| package.json | ||
| README.md | ||
| ROM-POLICY.md | ||
flybrain
A simulated fruit-fly brain that plays video games. A connectome-constrained spiking network reads the screen, its population rates become controller inputs, and a scalar reward nudges a bounded set of Kenyon-cell to MBON gains.
The library is @flybrain/brain in packages/brain. It holds the connectome dataset format, the
LIF kernel, the plasticity rule, the population-rate readout and the activity-map geometry. It
holds no game, no emulator and no reward rules: those belong to whatever embeds it.
Workspace layout
| Path | Contents |
|---|---|
packages/brain |
the library (@flybrain/brain) |
data/fafb-v783 |
FlyWire-derived browser artifacts (CC BY-NC 4.0) |
tools/ |
the Python builder that regenerates data/ from official Codex exports |
docs/ |
overview, dataset format, model, plasticity, readout, integration, limitations, verification |
services/flysim |
the Rust service: brain, emulator, snapshot feed, control API, checkpoints |
apps/ |
planned: one directory per game demo |
infra/ |
planned: deployment for the 24/7 stream (see docs/streaming-plan.md) |
Quick start
npm ci
npm test
npm run typecheck
76 tests, about 7 seconds. There is no build step. npx tsx packages/brain/examples/node-random-frames.ts 60
runs the full 139,255-neuron brain with the Game Boy readout on noise frames in plain Node
(about 0.9x Game Boy real time single-threaded on a WSL laptop).
Usage
import { NeuralAgent, gameboyDecoderConfig, toButtonMask } from '@flybrain/brain';
import { loadBrainDatasetFromDir } from '@flybrain/brain/node';
const dataset = await loadBrainDatasetFromDir('data/fafb-v783');
const agent = new NeuralAgent(dataset, { decoder: gameboyDecoderConfig() });
agent.warmup(firstFrame); // 2,500 ms with plasticity off, then calibrate
// every emulator frame:
const { active } = agent.tick(framebuffer, { // RGBA 160x144 by default; any size via config
rewards: [{ value: 0.5 }], // scalar rewards your game adapter detected
boot: !inGame, // relaxes Start/Select throttling on title screens
});
emulator.setButtons(toButtonMask(active));
const checkpoint = agent.exportState(); // bit-exact resume, validated on import
The lower layers (LifNetwork, RewardModulatedStdp, PopulationDecoder) are exported too for
hosts that want to run the loop themselves.
integration.md has the full per-frame loop, the fractional frame timing and the checkpoint contract.
Documentation
- Overview: the pipeline, the layer map and the design principles.
- Dataset format: artifacts, CSR layout, weight encoding, every role and its count, fingerprinting, regeneration, license.
- Model: the 1-ms LIF kernel step by step, every default constant, the retina projection, the RNG, state export and version strings.
- Plasticity: edge selection, the eligibility and reinforcement equations, statistics, topology hash and the explicit non-claims.
- Readout: scores, exclusive groups, pulse channels, the blocked-direction cooldown, the Game Boy preset table and checkpoint versions.
- Integration: what a game must provide, the Pokemon Red integration as a worked example, and a sketch of a platformer adapter.
- Limitations: what is not claimed, what is unproven, measured throughput.
- Verification: the oracle-test strategy and what each test file covers.
- Streaming plan: headless capture, Twitch, VM design and the phased plan for a 24/7 stream.
- Artifact builder: how to regenerate and verify
data/fafb-v783. - Data attribution: source, license and citations.
Provenance
The network, plasticity rule, readout, FlyWire pipeline and activity viewer were extracted from
the fly-plays-pokemon prototype so several game demos can share one core. The default
configuration reproduces that prototype's kernel bit for bit, and verbatim copies of its modules
live in packages/brain/tests/legacy/ as oracles. Built with Astra.
Licensing
The data/fafb-v783 artifacts are derived from the FlyWire FAFB public Codex v783 exports and are
licensed CC BY-NC 4.0. That is a
non-commercial license, so a commercial demo needs a different data source or separate permission.
Citations and the list of modifications are in
data/fafb-v783/ATTRIBUTION.md.
No license has been chosen for the code in this repository yet.
ROMs and save states never enter this repository.