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; 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); the checks' bodies still owed to the guide (TPS 2.2, TPS 2.3).

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.
3. Enter the three zones in order: the Prime Kernel, the Translation Manifold entries, the Measure Set. As each zone is entered its checks run. Until the check bodies land, the operator and the declaring authority perform the kernel tests and the isomorphism checks by inspection and note the debt.
4. A rejected component returns to the author with the reason. Repair and re-enter; nothing is written past a failed zone.
5. On the final pass TPX computes the four digests, obtains the UUID, allocates a prefix that no other container uses, and writes the candidate certificate to staging. No register exists yet.
6. The declaring authority reads the candidate certificate and lands it on the DECLARATIONS page with the state CERTIFIED. That act is the birth of the container.
7. TPX copies the draft's zones into the TFK pages, verifies them against the certificate, initializes register volume 1 as OPEN with the certificate as the master record, 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.
8. The Translation Manifold zone is entered header first: the environment inventory with a dimension on every quantity, the signature of relations and operations the map must carry, and the declared transformations. Then the entries, each with its dimension. Six checks run on the zone: three isomorphism checks modulo the declared equivalence, dimensional homogeneity, structure preservation against the signature, and invariance of every falsifier under the transformations.

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.
• 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.

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Previous: Platform and accounts. Next: The kernel and its digests.