AILED — Psyche & Personality System for Chess Engines

Architecture-agnostic middleware that gives any chess engine an emotional state.

A continuous psyche score (ψ ∈ [−100, +100]) tracks position quality move-by-move and drives a five-stage audio-inspired signal chain that reshapes the engine's move probability distribution — without any search, tree traversal, or model retraining.

Works as a drop-in layer on top of any move predictor that outputs logits or probabilities: Maia2, Stockfish NNUE policy heads, or your own transformer.

This module is a partial release accompanying the research paper: "Ailed: A Psyche-Driven Chess Engine with Dynamic Emotional Modulation"

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What It Does

Psyche System

The PsycheCalculator evaluates the board position after every move across five factors:

Factor	Default Weight	Description
Material	10	Piece value difference (P=1, N/B=3, R=5, Q=9)
King safety	5	Pawn shield + nearby enemy attackers
Pieces attacked	3	Own pieces under attack
Center control	2	Attacks on d4/d5/e4/e5
Mobility	1	Legal moves minus opponent's legal moves

These are combined, tanh-compressed to [−100, +100], and blended into the running psyche state with configurable reactivity, phase-awareness (opening/middlegame/endgame), sacrifice dampening, and daily decay toward neutral.

Game Phase Detection

Phase is detected per move and controls reactivity scaling (opening = dampened, middlegame = baseline, endgame = strongly dampened / freeze-biased by default, all configurable via PsycheConfig):

Phase	Condition
Opening	fullmove ≤ 15 and non-pawn/non-king material loss < 6 pts
Endgame	total non-pawn/non-king material on board ≤ 13 pts
Middlegame	everything else

Endgame takes priority. The opening threshold prevents damped reactivity from masking rapid early collapses — gambits, sacrifices, or early trades that lose 6+ points of material (≈ two minor pieces) exit opening phase immediately, even before move 15. Both thresholds are configurable via PsycheConfig:

from ailed.psyche.config import PsycheConfig

config = PsycheConfig(
    opening_move_limit=15,               # fullmove limit for opening phase
    opening_material_loss_threshold=6,   # points lost to exit opening early (default: 6)
    endgame_material_threshold=13,       # total material to enter endgame
)

from ailed.psyche import PsycheCalculator
import chess

calc = PsycheCalculator()          # default config
board = chess.Board()
psyche = 0.0                       # neutral at game start

board.push_san("e4")
psyche = calc.update_psyche(psyche, board)
print(f"ψ = {psyche:.1f}")        # e.g. ψ = 3.2

EQ Signal Chain

MoveSelector applies a full audio-inspired signal chain to the move probability distribution:

Softmax → Noise gate → Dynamics → Sort + EQ bands → Saturation → Renormalize → Sample

1. Noise gate — silences moves below probability threshold
2. Dynamics — compressor/expander on probability spread
3. EQ bands — moves sorted into 5 quality bands, each with gain multiplier
4. Saturation — soft-clips dominant moves
5. Renormalize — produces valid distribution

All five parameters interpolate across N psyche anchors. At ψ = −70 (stressed) behavior differs dramatically from ψ = +70 (overconfident).

from ailed.uci.move_selector import MoveSelector
from ailed.uci.eq_curve import PRESETS
import torch, chess

selector = MoveSelector(curve=PRESETS["human"])
board = chess.Board()
legal_moves = list(board.legal_moves)
logits = torch.randn(len(legal_moves))

move = selector.select_move(
    legal_moves=legal_moves,
    move_logits=logits,
    base_confidence=0.8,
    psyche=-40.0,
)

Six Built-in Personalities

Name	Character
human (default)	Stressed → noisy. Confident → autopilot.
human5_symmetric	Fine-grained psyche response (5 anchors).
human5_asymmetric	Wider stress, narrower confidence zone.
classical	Tight, positional, disciplined.
jazz	Avoids obvious moves, boosts alternatives.
rock	Bold, loves extremes (V-shape EQ).
metal	Chaotic, everything gets a shot.
flat	Bypass — raw probabilities.

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Installation

Requires Python 3.11+.

pip install chess pydantic torch
git clone https://github.com/chrnx-dev/ailed-chess
cd ailed-chess
pip install -e .

Reproduce Core Checks

Run the package tests exactly as used for release readiness:

pytest -q

Minimal sanity check of psyche + selector behavior:

python - <<'PY'
import chess
import torch
from ailed.psyche import PsycheCalculator
from ailed.uci.move_selector import MoveSelector

board = chess.Board()
board.push_san("e4")

calc = PsycheCalculator()
psi = calc.update_psyche(0.0, board)

selector = MoveSelector()
legal = list(board.legal_moves)
logits = torch.randn(len(legal))
move = selector.select_move(legal_moves=legal, move_logits=logits, base_confidence=0.8, psyche=psi)

print(f"psyche={psi:.2f}, selected={move.uci()}")
PY

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Architecture Agnosticism

Works on top of any move predictor that outputs logits or probabilities:

• Maia2 (convert probability dict to log-probs)
• Stockfish NNUE policy head
• Your custom transformer
• Any neural network with move output

The paper demonstrates this across two engines of vastly different scale (60K-game model vs 169M-game Maia2), showing consistent behavioral signatures from psyche regardless of base model.

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What Is NOT Included

This repository contains only the psyche and personality modules.

Full AILED system (released with paper) includes:

• Move predictor (23.5M param transformer)
• Training pipeline
• Lichess bot deployment
• Web dashboard
• Nightly study loop
• Terminal UI

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Community

Contributing	Bug fixes, new psyche factors, EQ personalities, docs
Code of Conduct	Contributor Covenant v2.1
Security	Private vulnerability reporting via GitHub advisories
Issue templates	Bug report · Feature request · Docs improvement

AI-generated contributions are welcome. Contributors are responsible for understanding and testing their code. Changes to critical paths (psyche math, phase detection, EQ signal chain) may require human validation before merge — see CONTRIBUTING.md for details.

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Citation

Please cite both:

• the software release (preferred via GitHub citation tools / CITATION.cff)
• the arXiv paper once public

@misc{ailed2026,
  title={Ailed: A Psyche-Driven Chess Engine with Dynamic Emotional Modulation},
  author={Resendez Prado, Diego Armando},
  year={2026},
  eprint={TBD},
  archivePrefix={arXiv},
  primaryClass={cs.AI}
}

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License

Apache 2.0 — see LICENSE.