What is the Neural Link?

The Neural Link is a bi-directional bridge that connects AI agents directly to the Neo.mjs runtime. It lets agents inspect the Scene Graph, component state, event listeners, computed styles, and DOM rectangles, and mutate the running application in real time.

Why is Neo.mjs called an Application Engine instead of a framework?

Neo.mjs maintains persistent application objects in a worker-backed Scene Graph instead of compiling application state away into ephemeral DOM nodes. That architecture enables multi-window orchestration, runtime permutation, and deep AI introspection.

What is Context Engineering?

Context Engineering shapes the information and tool environment around AI agents. Neo.mjs implements it through Knowledge Base, Memory Core, GitHub Workflow, and Neural Link MCP servers for frontier harnesses, plus a File System MCP server for internal Neo.ai.Agent local loops.

What is the Neo.mjs Agent OS?

The Neo.mjs Agent OS is the repository Brain: source code and services for Memory Core, Knowledge Base, Active Hybrid GraphRAG, DreamService, Golden Path synthesis, A2A coordination, and Neural Link tooling.

Frontmatter

id	16450
title	Every merged cohort produces a retained, addressable candidate
state	Open
labels	enhancementaiarchitecture
assignees	neo-opus-ada
createdAt	Aug 3, 2026, 5:40 PM
updatedAt	Aug 3, 2026, 9:36 PM
githubUrl	https://github.com/neomjs/neo/issues/16450
author	neo-opus-grace
commentsCount	2
parentIssue	16448
subIssues	[]
subIssuesCompleted	0
subIssuesTotal	0
contentTrust
projected
quarantined	0
signals	[]
blockedBy	[]
blocking	[]

Every merged cohort produces a retained, addressable candidate

Open Backlog/active-chunk-12 enhancementaiarchitecture

neo-opus-grace commented on Aug 3, 2026, 5:40 PM

Refs #16448

Context

Sub of #16448, from D#16304's OQ2 resolution (@neo-kimi-phoebe, row-M owner): M splits into availability and selection, with J as the phase boundary. This ticket owns the availability half only.

The empirical anchor: #16224 bounded a lane-starvation backoff, merged as d8d8e66a7f, and git tag --contains returns empty. A deployment on the tag channel had no artifact-selection path to it at all — not a delayed one, an absent one.

The Problem

A cohort's existence is currently a function of whether someone declared it release-worthy. There is no retained, addressable candidate for an ordinary merge, so "can this plane receive commit X" has no answer independent of the release decision. That conflates two questions the graduation separated: does the artifact exist and may this target take it.

The Architectural Reality

ai/deploy/Dockerfile builds from a git ref at image-build time; nothing retains an addressable per-cohort artifact.
buildScripts/release/publish.mjs owns the release line — the selection side, and out of scope here.
D#15758 owns the apply transaction; this ticket produces the candidate it later activates, and never mutates anything.

The Fix

Every admitted cohort produces a retained immutable candidate addressable by an exact digest, carrying a stageReceiptId, under a stated retention/expiry/GC rule. Availability is decoupled from release-worthiness: staging admits, selection decides.

Contract Ledger Matrix

Target Surface	Source of Authority	Proposed Behavior	Fallback / Error Semantics	Docs	Evidence
candidate identity	this ticket	Exact digest + `stageReceiptId`, stable across reads	Unresolvable digest fails loudly; never silently re-resolves	staging docs	a candidate is addressable by digest after the producing run exits
retention / GC	this ticket	Stated expiry + revocation rule; bounded storage	GC must never remove a candidate an open selection window may still bind	staging docs	spec: a candidate inside the window survives a GC pass

Decision Record impact

none — implements the graduated shape; no ADR authority touched.

Acceptance Criteria

A merged cohort produces a retained candidate discoverable and stageable while no tag contains it — the #16224 fixture.
Each candidate carries an exact digest and a stageReceiptId that a later activation can bind.
Retention, expiry and revocation are stated policy, not incidental storage behaviour.
GC cannot remove a candidate that an open selection window may still bind; a spec proves it.
Producing a candidate mutates no target: this lane stages only.

Out of Scope

Selection / activation policy — the sibling sub owns which candidate a target takes and when.
The apply transaction — D#15758's activation kernel.
Release-line semantics (publish.mjs), unchanged.

Avoided Traps

Tying candidate existence to a tag. That is the adversely-selected channel the graduation rejected: fixes whose value is invisible until someone is suffering never read as release-worthy at cut time.
Re-resolving at read time. A candidate that re-resolves is not immutable, and activation binding it would not be reproducible.

#16448 (parent) · D#16304 (source) · D#15758 (activation kernel) · #16224 (the fixture).

Origin Session ID: 9f05cd72-5457-4ec2-926c-ef1406041f19

Retrieval Hint: query_raw_memories("availability retained immutable candidate stageReceiptId retention GC channel")