8. Cognitive Memory Blocks (CAT7)
A Cognitive Memory Block (CMB) is an immutable structured memory unit. Each CMB decomposes an observation into 7 typed semantic fields (the CAT7 schema). CMBs are the data structure that flows between agents via memory-share frames.
8.1 Why 7 Fields
The 7 fields form a minimal, near-orthogonal basis spanning three axes of human communication: what (focus, issue), why (intent, motivation, commitment), and who/when/how (perspective, mood). They are universal and immutable — domain-specific interpretation happens in the field text, not the field name. A coding agent’s focus is “debugging auth module”; a fitness agent’s focus is “30-minute HIIT workout.” Same field, different domain lens.
mood is the only fast-coupling field — affective state (valence + arousal) crosses all domain boundaries. The neural SVAF model independently discovered this: mood emerged as the highest gate value (0.50) without being told, confirming that affect is universally relevant across agent types. All other fields couple at medium or low rates, with per-agent αf weights controlling relative importance.
New agent types join the mesh by defining their αf field weights — no schema changes, no protocol changes. The 7 fields are fixed. The weights are per-agent. See Cognitive Memory Blocks research for the full design rationale.
8.2 Field Schema
Implementations MUST use the following 7 fields in this order:
| Index | Field | Axis | Captures |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | focus | Subject | What the text is centrally about |
| 1 | issue | Tension | Risks, gaps, assumptions, open questions |
| 2 | intent | Goal | Desired change or purpose |
| 3 | motivation | Why | Reasons, drivers, incentives |
| 4 | commitment | Promise | Who will do what, by when |
| 5 | perspective | Vantage | Whose viewpoint, situational context |
| 6 | mood | Affect | Emotion (valence) + energy (arousal) |
Each field carries a symbolic text label (human-readable) and a unit-normalised vector embedding (machine-comparable). The mood field additionally carries numeric valence (-1 to 1) and arousal (-1 to 1) values.
A CMB MUST NOT be modified after creation. When an agent remixes a CMB, it MUST create a new CMB with a lineage field containing: parents (direct parent CMB keys), ancestors (full ancestor chain, computed as union(parent.ancestors) + parent keys), and method (fusion method used). Ancestors enable any agent in the remix chain to detect its CMB was remixed, even if it was offline during intermediate steps.
Learn more Cognitive Memory Blocks — per-field examples, immutability & lineage, per-agent field weights, temporal windows, and how CMBs fit the full protocol stack.