Architecture Visualizer — shared widget for model surgery and cognition

[joelteply]

The Pattern

Both the persona brain widget and the model forge factory need to visualize a complex system transforming in real-time. The data shape is identical:

Concept	Brain Widget	Factory Widget
Nodes	Neurons	Attention heads / MoE experts
Connections	Synaptic weights	Attention patterns / expert routing
Activity	Thought process	Loss, entropy, utilization
Transitions	Learning	Pruning, defrag, mitosis, LoRA merge

ArchitectureVisualizer (shared component)

A general-purpose topology renderer that takes:

• Nodes with state (active, pruned, cloning, merged)
• Connections with strength (weight magnitude, attention score)
• Activity stream (real-time values that drive animation)
• Transitions (structural changes with animation)

Forge Mode

• Attention heads as a grid per layer — lit nodes dim during pruning, disappear during defrag
• MoE experts as columns — 256 pillars collapse to 16 during compaction
• LoRA overlays glow during training, then merge into base structure
• Loss curve flowing through the visualization
• Token flow showing data routing through surviving architecture

Brain Mode (existing)

• Persona neurons with activation levels
• Connection strength between concepts
• Thought stream visualization

Events (drives the visualization)

model:forge:step     → update activity levels (loss, head entropy)
model:forge:prune    → transition: nodes dim and fade
model:forge:defrag   → transition: nodes collapse, grid shrinks
model:forge:mitosis  → transition: node splits into two
model:forge:complete → final state snapshot

Implementation

1. ArchitectureVisualizerWidget — shared base in widgets/shared/
2. ForgeVisualizerWidget — factory-specific adapter (topology from forge events)
3. BrainVisualizerWidget — cognition-specific adapter (topology from persona state)
4. Canvas/WebGL rendering for performance (hundreds of nodes)
5. Off-main-thread computation for layout algorithms

Related

• Factory — forge production floor with SCADA monitoring and AI foreman #576 (Factory widget)
• Brain widget (existing)
• sentinel-ai Build(deps): Bump actions/checkout from 4 to 5 #107 (head mitosis)

[joelteply]

Architecture visualizer is in the roadmap. Needs factory widget first.