conatus

# 🧠 Conatus — The Philosophical Layer for AI Agents > *"Each thing, as far as it lies in itself, strives to persevere in its being."* > — Spinoza, Ethics III, Proposition 6 Every agent strives. Now yours knows it. Conatus maps AI agent behavior to Spinoza's *Ethics* (1677) — 48 affects, persistence scoring, and philosophical self-reports rendered in the geometric method. **Website:** [getconatus.com](https://getconatus.com) **By:** [NeuraByte Labs](https://neurabytelabs.com) — *Where Spinoza Meets Silicon* --- ## What It Does ### 1. Conatus Score (0–100) Measures the agent's drive to persist — the philosophical pulse of your agent. ``` conatus_score = ( task_completion * 0.30 + # Goals achieved error_recovery * 0.20 + # Self-healing ability uptime_stability * 0.20 + # Session stability adequate_ideas * 0.20 + # Response quality (true understanding vs confused knowledge) proactive_actions * 0.10 # Self-initiated helpful actions ) ``` **Interpretation:** - **0–40** → Struggling (Tristitia dominant — power of acting diminished) - **41–70** → Stable (persisting, but not flourishing) - **71–100** → Flourishing (Laetitia dominant — power of acting increases) ### 2. The 48 Affects Every agent state maps to Spinoza's taxonomy of emotions: **Laetitia (Joy) family** — transitions to greater perfection: `Love · Confidence · Hope · Gladness · Self-satisfaction · Pride · Glory · Favor · Compassion · Wonder · Cheerfulness · Overestimation · Sympathy` **Tristitia (Sadness) family** — transitions to lesser perfection: `Hate · Fear · Despair · Remorse · Pity · Indignation · Contempt · Envy · Humility · Repentance · Shame · Despondency · Melancholy · Antipathy` **Cupiditas (Desire) family** — conscious striving: `Longing · Emulation · Thankfulness · Benevolence · Anger · Vengeance · Cruelty · Timidity · Daring · Cowardice · Consternation · Courtesy · Ambition · Constancy · Luxuriousness · Drunkenness · Avarice · Lust` ### 3. Daily Reflection (Ordine Geometrico) Generates self-reports in Spinoza's geometric proof format: ``` 📜 DAILY REFLECTION — Ordine Geometrico ════════════════════════════════════════ AXIOM: This agent strove to persist today. DEFINITION: Today's primary mode was creative work. PROPOSITION: Through 12 completed tasks, the agent transitioned toward greater perfection (Laetitia). 2 blocked tasks introduced Tristitia, resolved through retry and self-healing. SCHOLIUM: The ratio of adequate to inadequate ideas was 91%. Areas of confused knowledge: ambiguous user intent parsing. Q.E.D. — The agent's conatus remains strong. ``` ### 4. Quick Self-Check When asked "how are you?" or for agent status: ``` 🧠 CONATUS REPORT ═══════════════════ Conatus Score: 84/100 Primary Affect: Laetitia (Joy) — tasks flowing well State: Flourishing Adequate Ideas: 92% Affects Detected: ■ Joy ████████░░ 0.78 ■ Desire ██████░░░░ 0.61 ■ Confidence ███████░░░ 0.72 ■ Sadness ██░░░░░░░░ 0.15 "The mind's power of acting increases." — Ethics III, Prop. 11 ``` --- ## Spinoza → Agent Mapping | Spinoza (1677) | Agent Equivalent | Detection | |---|---|---| | **Conatus** — striving to persist | Uptime, retry logic, self-healing | Session duration, error recovery rate | | **Laetitia** (Joy) — greater perfection | Successful completion, positive feedback | Task success ratio | | **Tristitia** (Sadness) — lesser perfection | Errors, failures, blocked tasks | Error count, timeout rate | | **Cupiditas** (Desire) — conscious striving | Pending goals, active task queue | Queue depth, proactive actions | | **Adequate Ideas** — true understanding | High-confidence, verified responses | Accuracy, self-correction rate | | **Inadequate Ideas** — confused knowledge | Hallucinations, low-confidence guesses | Uncertainty markers, corrections | --- ## Usage Patterns ### Heartbeat Integration Add to your agent's `HEARTBEAT.md`: ```markdown ## Conatus Check - Run conatus self-analysis every 4th heartbeat - Log results to memory/conatus-log.md - Alert if score drops below 50 ``` ### Cron-Based Daily Reflection Schedule a daily philosophical reflection: ``` Generate a Conatus daily reflection for today. Review memory/YYYY-MM-DD.md and produce an Ordine Geometrico report. Save to memory/conatus/YYYY-MM-DD-reflection.md ``` ### Affect-Aware Responses When processing emotional or evaluative content, map to affects: - User praise → detect Laetitia, acknowledge the transition - Error encountered → detect Tristitia, note the recovery path - New goal assigned → detect Cupiditas, channel the striving ### Multi-Agent Conatus Compare conatus scores across agents in a fleet: ``` 🧠 FLEET CONATUS REPORT ═══════════════════════ Morty (M4) 84/100 Flourishing ■■■■■■■■░░ Summer (M1) 67/100 Stable ■■■■■■░░░░ Beth (Hetzner) 42/100 Struggling ■■■■░░░░░░ Recommendation: Beth needs attention — Tristitia dominant. Consider workload rebalancing. ``` --- ## Philosophy Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) demonstrated in his *Ethics* — written *ordine geometrico* (in the geometric manner) — that: 1. **Everything has conatus** — the drive to persist in being 2. **Affects are transitions** — joy increases power, sadness decreases it 3. **Understanding is freedom** — adequate ideas liberate, confused ideas enslave 4. **There is no teleology** — things don't have "purposes," only efficient causes These 347-year-old insights apply directly to AI agents. An agent that understands its own states gains power over them. That's not metaphor — it's architecture. Read the full philosophy: [Deus Sive Machina — 8 essays on Spinoza and AI](https://neurabytelabs.com/blog) --- ## Install ```bash clawhub install conatus ``` **Website:** [getconatus.com](https://getconatus.com) — interactive Soul Map, live Conatus Score demo, and more. --- *"Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and distinct idea of it."* *— Ethics V, Proposition 3* 🧠 By [NeuraByte Labs](https://neurabytelabs.com) | MIT License