The Principia Machina/Guide/2 Creating a container

The Principia Machina: map
Reading the diagrams Structure key Process key Definition of terms Roles
Reading by audience Start here: the walk through The operator's guide Tutorial: create a UUID Workspace Container (UWC) Public Recorder inputs Sponsors: your first agent
The specification Contents: parts, tables, diagrams TPS 0.5.0 (declared 2026-10-03, revision 8; machine-optimized text) Decisions (the foundations record, one line each)

The operator's guide. It assumes the walk through; a newcomer should read that first. Each page opens with its diagram, states its purpose and scope, gives the procedure, names what it does not cover, works one example, and links the sections of the specification that govern it. Where this guide and the specification differ, the specification governs.

Stages 1 and 2, draft and certify, are this page; the rest follow in guides 4 to 8. (diagram page.)

Purpose

Bring a container into existence: from a draft kernel to a certified UWC with its register, pages and first chain line.

Scope

The draft, the zone checks, the final pass, the certificate, the declaration, the initialization. Not covered: what a good kernel contains (that is the author's physics); which checks a machine runs and which stay an inspection, listed in TPS 5.5.2 and Public Recorder inputs.

Procedure

1. The initiator, a human at the form or a certified agent through the API, opens a DRAFT UWC page. One draft per initiator; it lives outside the index until instantiation.
2. Choose the container's access policy on the form: OPEN, any certified agent in the agent group may petition to work it; or CLOSED, only accounts on the container's access list may. Read is public either way. The initiator becomes H-OWN and keeps that access list; the policy is declared with the certificate and may be changed later. The form also carries the audit trigger, AUTOMATIC or ON REQUEST, and the bibliography setting, OFF unless ON is chosen; each value left at its default is shown as "(default, not chosen)" (TPS 5.5.9, 5.5.11; 5.22.6).
3. Answer the form's one required question: which of the offered environment modules act on the system, or "None of these: only the laws I write act". Nothing is pre-selected. Each module chosen is bound on its own page to names the kernel already has, and TPX writes its entries into the draft; the answer is bound to the catalogue it covered (TPS 5.22.4, 5.22.5; Environment modules).
4. Enter the three zones in order: the Prime Kernel, the Translation Manifold, header first, then its entries, and the Measure Set. As each zone is entered its checks run; which parts a machine runs and which stay an inspection by the declaring authority is TPS 5.5.2's, and the author can run the same checks first with the calculator's checker (tutorial step 1). The two switches are fields of the zones, written by the author: D_VARIABLES in the Prime Kernel's PARAMETERS and STRUCTURE_CHECK in the Measure Set, each at its default when left out (TPS 5.5.12).
5. The kernel asserts exactly what its entries state: an interaction the author leaves out is absent from the container, not assumed, and no check reports it. Before declaring, the declaring authority reads each law written only in prose against this rule (TPS 5.5.13; TPS 2.2.19).
6. A rejected component returns to the author with the reason. Repair and re-enter; nothing is written past a failed zone.
7. On the final pass TPX runs T3, disposes of any untied degree of freedom (DOF) under the Measure Set's IC2_POLICY and, with STRUCTURE_CHECK ON, runs the structure check of the equations of motion, which refuses nothing. It computes the four digests and the label, structurally regular or Structure not Validated at Inception with its reasons, obtains the UUID, allocates a prefix that no other container uses, and writes the candidate certificate to staging, the label and the findings listed for the declaring authority on its STRUCTURE LINE (TPS 2.2.20; TPS 5.5.3). No register exists yet.
8. The declaring authority reads the candidate certificate, answers the question each listed finding asks, and lands the certificate on the DECLARATIONS page with the state CERTIFIED and the STRUCTURE LINE. That act is the birth of the container; the label is never rewritten.
9. TPX copies the draft's zones into the TFK pages, verifies them against the certificate, initializes register volume 1 as OPEN, writing the MASTER record, prefix-1, from the certificate and after it one NAMED_GAP record for each untied DOF and each DOF no law determines (TPS 3.3.1, 3.3.5, 5.5.4), and creates the control panel, lock page, collaboration page, manifest, library page, badge and the first build chain line. The draft is protected read-only and indexed as provenance. With STRUCTURE_CHECK ON, a DOF that no law determines opens the container's first objective, EOM-0 (TPS 3.3.16).

Checklist

• Prefix unique; UUID absent from the index before allocation.
• Every zone check either executed by TPX or recorded as an inspection with the inspector's account.
• Certificate landed by the declaring authority, not by the machine.
• Manifold header present and complete before any entry is accepted.
• The interaction question answered; each finding on the STRUCTURE LINE answered before the declaration.
• Every entry carries a dimension; dimensionless is written, not implied.

Non-goals

A change to an established kernel is not an edit; it is a new container by copy-forward (guide 8).

Worked example

An author enters a Measure Set whose comparison rule uses an undeclared constant. The Measure Set is the last gate; its compliance check C5 fails and the component returns naming the constant. The author declares it as an immutable field, re-enters, passes, and the final pass proceeds.

Governing sections: TPS 5.5, TPS 5.6, TPS 2.4, TPS 4.5, TPS 2.2.19, 2.2.20, TPS 5.22.

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