03 Architecture kernel vs gateway

Kernel vs Gateway

The architecture follows a separation of powers principle: the kernel makes decisions and manages state, while the LLM translates natural language into structured actions.

The Golden Rule

The LLM never decides or writes state directly. It only translates.

Kernel Responsibilities

Aspect	Description
State	Manages all persistent and working state
Memory	Episodic, semantic, working, and emotional memory
Safety	Evaluates actions against 20 fundamental rules
Policies	Stores and enforces learned policies
Evaluation	Assesses signals and computes risk scores
Learning	Updates policies and semantic memory from outcomes

Gateway Responsibilities (when proxied to enterprise)

Aspect	Description
Translation	Converts natural language to structured commands
Planning	Breaks objectives into execution plans
Narration	Converts results back to human-readable text
Coordination	Orchestrates the plan-safety-execute flow

Community vs Enterprise

Feature	Community (Local)	Enterprise (Proxied)
Storage	SQLite	MySQL + Qdrant
Vectors	SQLite vector store	Qdrant HNSW
Cache	In-memory	Redis
Safety	Full pipeline	Full pipeline + MetaCritic
Auth	None (localhost)	JWT + RBAC
Scale	Single user	Multi-tenant