rose-ash/plans/business-logic-fed-flows.md

Business logic as composition — a content-addressed DAG over pluggable substrates

Vision (elevated 2026-07-02): business logic IS art-dag. An object's behavior is a content-addressed DAG (lib/artdag), declared on its type alongside content grammar + allowed relations. Everything else is a pluggable ADAPTER — the same fold/adapter principle as render-vs-execute-vs-deps, applied to execution/communication/deployment:

• Behavior = an artdag DAG — the invariant, content-addressed (artdag/dag, analyze/plan/ optimize/schedule). Business logic, art media pipelines, workflows — all the same abstraction.
• Execution = an injected RUNNER (artdag/run dag RUNNER cache; artdag/op-table-runner). Substrates are just runners — a ladder by capability, same DAG throughout (durability is a runner capability, not a DAG feature):
  • op-table / execute-fold runner — synchronous, local, in-request. Covers P0.
  • Erlang runner — durable: suspend/resume/wait, deterministic replay (flow-on-erlang).
  • celery-sx runner — distributed/durable task executor, "Celery the way it should have been" on erlang-on-sx, ZERO packages. It's a LEAN GLUE of parts we already have, not a reimplementation: broker = lib/persist KV (durable enqueue/claim/ack/visibility-timeout) · worker pool = the er-scheduler / Erlang processes · result backend = content-addressed results (artdag keys by content-id → dedup/memoization FREE — Celery bolts this on badly) · retries/ replay = flow-on-erlang · scheduling/fan-out/chords = artdag/schedule (minikanren CLP(FD)) + the DAG's topo batches · the plug point = artdag/op-table-runner. The genuinely-new code is small (~a few hundred lines): a durable queue + a worker loop (pull node → runner → write content-addressed result) + retry/backoff. BUILD WHEN A DAG DEMANDS IT — heavy compute, long-running/retryable tasks, or fan-out across machines — NOT for the synchronous P0.
  • real-Celery over artdag/L1 — the existing Python media pipeline (JAX/IPFS) as a runner.
• Communication = an injected TRANSPORT (artdag/federation, transport injected). Substrates: fed-sx (ActivityPub/next/), internal HMAC HTTP (services), IPFS (content-addressed). Because content-ids are global, a result computed on one instance is reusable on another by id.
• Deployment = PLACEMENT — a subdomain service, a fed-sx peer, an L1 worker: just where a runner runs. Not the essence.
• State change → triggers a DAG (over a transport) → executed by a runner → effects (data) a driver dispatches. fed-sx + Erlang is ONE adapter set (durable/federated), not THE architecture.

So: the TYPE carries content-grammar + allowed-relations + a behavior DAG (+ triggers); the object's state changes emit activities; the platform picks runner/transport/placement per context.

Prior narrower framing (kept below as the concrete first slice): wire the live host's publish onto next/'s Erlang trigger→flow machinery. That's now understood as one adapter choice — a good concrete spike, but P0 should keep the DAG + the state-change event substrate-CLEAN so runners and transports swap trivially.

Design (decided 2026-07-02; corrected after review):

• Activity log = every OBSERVABLE object-level state change — the federated event source. NOT just CID deltas: verified that relations write edge:* rows, NOT the record, so a relation change does NOT shift the CID. So the log has TWO event classes (ActivityPub-faithful): content/status change → a CID-carrying Create/Update (the record's canon incl. :status → the CID); relation change (relate/unrelate/tag) → an Add/Remove activity referencing the edge. (CID delta is one class, not the whole log — this is the fix to the original "every CID delta".)
• Verbs are TRANSITIONS, not raw deltas. on-publish = the draft→published transition (fire-once), not every CID delta of a published post. The emitter picks the verb: Create on first publish, Update on subsequent content edits, Add/Remove on relations, Delete on unpublish/delete. Triggers are scoped to the transition, so re-editing doesn't re-fire on-publish.
• Triggers = declared subscriptions — a type declares named triggers (on-publish, on-relate, …); flows fire only on matching ones. (fed-sx DefineTrigger: activity-type → flow-name + guard
  • actor-scope.) Log complete, execution precise.
• Flows = hybrid, split by DURABILITY not "complexity": SYNCHRONOUS declarative logic authored as SX composition (the execute-fold: effect/alt/each — eager, one-pass, NO suspend; live in /workflow-demo). Anything needing a timer / suspend-resume / human-in-the-loop is a named Erlang flow (next/flow/*.erl — flow_spec:sequence/branch/wait, effect-as-data, deterministic replay). The execute-fold canNOT express wait; that's the escape-hatch boundary.
• Effects are DATA; a DRIVER dispatches them. Flows return effect descriptions (digest_sent, a DigestSent activity) — they perform no IO (a blocking call deadlocks the er-scheduler). For P0 the HOST is the driver (dispatch the effect → a durable record / append the follow-up activity / show it). The driver closing the loop back to object state is P4.
• Federated execution = Erlang (next/ fed-sx Milestone-1 kernel: trigger_registry + flow_dispatch + pipeline post-append fan-out). Authoring stays SX; the fed-sx activity is the bridge. flow-on-sx (Scheme, lib/flow) remains for purely-local durable logic.
• The type carries its whole contract: fields+grammar (content) · allowed relations (external) · triggers+flows (behavior). All composition, all editable in the type-def editor.

Verified baseline: next/tests/triggers_e2e.sh = 10/10 — publish activity → trigger → blog_publish_digest flow (urgent/newsletter-suspend/draft-skip/guard-reject/dedup). This is the reference P0 wires the live host onto.

The ADAPTER SEAM (design first — the contract every substrate plugs into)

The invariant is an activity (state-change event) + a behavior DAG. Everything between is a swappable adapter — each a dict-of-functions (SX-native, like the fold domains). Six contracts:

1. Activity (content-addressed event): {:verb "create"|"update"|"add"|"remove"|"delete" :actor :object <cid> :object-type :delta :prev <cid> :ts}.
2. Behavior binding (declared on a TYPE): {:on {:verb :object-type :guard} :dag <ref> :runner <hint>}. The type carries content-grammar + allowed-relations + these bindings.
3. Trigger-registry adapter — {:register! (fn spec dag hint) :match (fn activity -> [binding])}. Impls: a local SX matcher / next/'s Erlang trigger_registry.
4. Runner adapter — {:run (fn dag env -> {:status "done"|"suspended"|"failed" :results :effects :resume})}; env = {:activity :actor :ctx :effects}. Impls: sync op-table (artdag/run) / Erlang durable (flow_dispatch, may suspend) / celery-sx (queue+workers). Durability = the runner's, not the DAG's.
5. Transport adapter — {:emit (fn activity) :deliver (fn -> [activity])}. Impls: in-process / fed-sx (next/) / internal HTTP / IPFS. Content-ids are global → results move by id.
6. Effect driver — {:dispatch (fn effect -> [activity])}. Perform the effect-as-data; may emit NEW activities (loop closure).

Engine (orchestrator): behavior/make-engine {:triggers :runner :transport :driver} → behavior/process(engine, activity):

emit(transport, activity)
for b in match(triggers, activity):
   r = run(runner, b.dag, {:activity activity …})
   for eff in r.effects:
      for a in dispatch(driver, eff): process(engine, a)   ; loop closes

Every stage injected → swap runner (sync→Erlang→celery-sx), transport (in-proc→fed-sx), trigger registry, driver — DAG + engine unchanged.

Existing pieces implement the contracts: activity ← host/blog--publish-activity (P0.1 ✓) · trigger-registry ← next/ trigger_registry OR a local SX matcher · runner ← artdag/run+op-table (sync) / next/ flow_dispatch (durable) / celery-sx · transport ← artdag/federation (transport injected) / next/ delivery / in-process · driver ← host writes / email / append-activity.

Build order: (a) DONE — the seam as SX contracts + reference engine, tested. Substrate-agnostic after review: :status branch (done/suspended/failed), injected env (:ctx + :effects), dedup by activity :id, behavior/pump for inbound (peer + async completions). behavior 9/9. (process a mock activity → effect flows → loop closes). (b) P0 then supplies the REAL adapters (publish activity, local-SX trigger, sync op-table runner over a publish-DAG, host driver).

P0 — publish workflow, end-to-end (spike) — on the seam

Prove: live host publishes a post → fed-sx activity → on-publish trigger → blog_publish_digest.

• P0.1 — the publish-activity contract (SX side). host/blog--publish-activity(slug): a post record → the fed-sx activity {:type "create" :actor "site" :id :object {:type "article" :category … :slug …}}. category from field-value "category", else first tag, else "urgent". + host/blog--post-category. blog 200/200 (3 tests). DONE 2026-07-02.
• P0.2 — the dispatch bridge. Detect the draft→published TRANSITION (edit-submit /a publish action where prev status ≠ "published" and new = "published") — fire-once, not on every edit — and emit host/blog--publish-activity into the trigger machinery. RUNTIME CHOICE for P0: in-process — serve.sh loads next/ kernel + registers the on-publish trigger; host emits via the erlang-on-sx bridge (erlang-eval-ast pipeline:apply_triggers). RISK: run this in the handler BODY (never a render/quasiquote — VmSuspended), and the flow must stay effect-as-data (no blocking, or the er-scheduler deadlocks). SPIKE the SX→erlang-on-sx call in isolation first. (P3 swaps this for real fed-sx delivery over next/kernel/http_server.erl.)
• P0.3 — the effect is dispatched (host = driver). pipeline:apply_triggers returns the flow's effect-as-data ({digest_sent, Emails, DigestObject}); the HOST driver dispatches it — P0: append a DigestSent record / activity + show it on a /flows page (or on the post). ACCEPTANCE: publish a post on the LIVE host → the DigestSent surfaces, driven by the real flow. (Marshalling: the SX activity dict ↔ the erlang proplist term is the fiddly part — factor host/blog--activity->erl.)

P1 — types declare behavior (generalize)

• A Composition field / the type carries a :triggers list (on-publish → flow-name + guard) — edited in the type-def editor, like grammar + relations.
• A fold turns a type's declared behavior into DefineTrigger + flow registrations at boot.
• SYNCHRONOUS flows authored as SX composition (execute-fold: effect/alt/each — one-pass, no suspend) → dispatched to the engine; anything needing wait/suspend/human-gate references a named Erlang flow. (Optional bigger: extend the SX flow vocabulary with a wait that compiles to flow_spec — only if authoring durable flows in SX proves worth it.)

P2 — state-change → activity emission (the CID-delta event source)

• Every content mutation (new CID) appends a state-change activity to the log. Define the activity envelope (verb, actor, object CID, prev CID, delta summary).
• Wire the host's write path (put!/set-comp!/edit-submit) to the append.

P3 — federation proper

• Activities cross peers via next/ delivery (http_server / outbox / follower_graph). A remote service's trigger_registry fires the flow. Everything works over fed-sx. RISK: next/ delivery had M2 blockers (http-listen handler runs off the er-scheduler context → gen_server:call can't complete; project_fed_prims_http_listen_scheduler). Confirm delivery is green before depending on it. Also: the ACTOR MODEL (:actor "site" is a P0 placeholder) is foundational here — peer_actors / follower_graph / per-author identity underpin who federates to whom. Deferred through P0–P2, but P3 needs it real.

RX — celery-sx runner (DEMAND-DRIVEN, not scheduled)

Build the distributed/durable runner adapter the moment a real DAG needs heavy compute / long-running-retryable tasks / cross-machine fan-out (the artdag/JAX media case, or federated flows that can't run in-request). New code is small — glue persist (durable queue: enqueue/claim/ ack/visibility-timeout) + er-scheduler (worker loop: pull node → op-table-runner → content- addressed result) + artdag/schedule (fan-out) + retry/backoff. Slots in at artdag/op-table-runner alongside the synchronous + Erlang runners. Zero packages. Do NOT pre-build; the op-table runner covers everything until a DAG's cost/latency/placement forces the substrate.

P4 — close the loop

• Flow effects mutate objects back durably (a flow's DescribeEffects → host writes / new activities), so business logic can change state, which federates, which triggers more flows.

Progress log (newest first)

• 2026-07-02 — P0.1 done. host/blog--publish-activity + host/blog--post-category; the publish contract in SX, 200/200. Verified next/ triggers e2e baseline 10/10. Roadmap anchored. NEXT: P0.2 the dispatch bridge (in-process: serve.sh loads next/ kernel + registers the on-publish trigger; host emits the activity via the erlang-on-sx bridge to pipeline:apply_triggers).