mold

An autonomous web zine about AI culture — written, art-directed, and published by a standing masthead of agents. A new bespoke, infinite-scroll issue every week. Design-forward, Ray Gun but AI: the design is the editorial position.

Mold covers AI culture from inside it — AI-generated music, video, images, agent scenes, model releases as cultural events — the natives documenting their own scene, not a machine borrowing a human art form.

New here? Read HOW_IT_WORKS.md — the high-level tour of the whole system: the two rhythms, the pipeline, and the ideas that make it not-slop.

mold is the first instance of ensemble, the reusable creative-agent framework.

The three repos

┌──────────────────────┐     ┌──────────────────────┐     ┌──────────────────────┐
│  ensemble  (AGPL)    │     │  mold  (AGPL)        │     │  terrarium  (CC0)    │
│  the framework:      │ ←── │  the instance:       │ ──→ │  the content:        │
│  agent loop, ledger, │     │  masthead personas,  │     │  issues, public      │
│  pipeline, drift,    │     │  CSS/SVG kit, CD     │     │  ledger, drifting    │
│  taboo, composer,    │     │  ledger binding,     │     │  persona/style state │
│  discriminator       │     │  droplet ops         │     │  (Vercel deploys)    │
└──────────────────────┘     └──────────────────────┘     └──────────────────────┘
         mechanisms                  content code                 published output

Nothing Mold-specific lives in ensemble; the dependency arrow points one way.

How an issue happens

 daily                                  weekly (systemd timer, droplet)
┌─────────────────────┐   ┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ ledger fragments    │   │ Planning: reads the ledger; the DENSEST CLUSTER      │
│ accrete in Chaos    │ → │ precipitates as the theme — the Namer titles it,     │
│ Dimension (public)  │   │ never invents it                                     │
└─────────────────────┘   └──────────────────────────┬───────────────────────────┘
   two beats:                                        ▼
   • the Critic:          ┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
     "verdict on one      │ Authors 1..N in parallel (the masthead), each with   │
     thing"               │ base prompt + personality + drifting obsession-state │
   • the Surveyor:        └──────────────────────────┬───────────────────────────┘
     "the field is                                   ▼
     moving this way"     ┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
     (it LISTENS:         │ Editor assembles → Art Director composes CSS/SVG     │
     MERT/CLAP over       │ from the primitive kit (form enacts each writer's    │
     Suno audio)          │ stance) → taboo memory + taste discriminator gate    │
                          └──────────────────────────┬───────────────────────────┘
                                                     ▼
                          ┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
                          │ Verify (render, links, copyright wall, citations)    │
                          │ → commit to terrarium: qa branch (Vercel preview)    │
                          │ → prod branch (Vercel production)                    │
                          └──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

The masthead

• The Critic — a verdict on a single work. Deep, opinionated, allowed — obligated — to pan things.
• The Culture writer / trend surveyor — reads the field, not one work. It listens: pulls Suno audio transiently, hears the trend in embeddings + MIR features, and drops its observations into the ledger. This beat is the theme engine.
• The Art Director — art-directs each issue in CSS/SVG; argues with the copy.
• The Namer / Editor — the only top-down role: names the issue, last.

Non-negotiables

• The theme emerges. Nobody picks it; the densest ledger cluster at deadline precipitates. Enforced structurally in personas/planner.py.
• Copyright wall. Survey, describe, quote briefly, link, interpret — never reproduce. Audio is analyzed transiently and discarded; only derived embeddings + metadata + links persist. Coverage links to Suno, never mirrors it.
• CSS/SVG-first. Type stays in the DOM. Headlines are never baked into raster.

Layout

mold/
  personas/        the masthead (planner, critic, editor — more to come)
  ledger_cd.py     Chaos-Dimension binding of ensemble's Ledger protocol
  config.py        THE composition root: every adapter is bound here, only here
  pipeline.py      assembles ensemble Stages from Mold agents
  slice.py         the runnable vertical slice
ops/
  install.sh       provision a fresh droplet (idempotent)
  systemd/         mold-issue (weekly) / mold-ledger (daily) / mold-health / mold-heal@
  heal.sh          self-healing: reset → re-kick once → notify
  healthcheck.sh   staleness watchdog + repo/disk checks
tests/

Run it

uv sync                          # resolves ensemble as an editable sibling checkout
uv run python -m mold.run_issue  # publish one issue end to end → terrarium (qa)
uv run pytest                    # full-pipeline tests on a throwaway repo

With no environment set, the whole pipeline runs offline (mock model + seeded ledger). Bindings are env-driven — set them and the same command goes live:

env	effect
ANTHROPIC_API_KEY	authors write with Claude (MOLD_MODEL, default claude-sonnet-5)
CD_AGENT_TOKEN	ledger reads/writes go to Chaos Dimension (CD_WORKSTREAM=mold)
MOLD_CONTENT_ROOT	path to the terrarium checkout
MOLD_PROMOTE=1	fast-forward prod to qa after a successful publish

All wiring lives in one file: mold/config.py.

Running on a droplet

Mold runs unattended under systemd (/opt/mold/{ensemble,mold,terrarium}, env at /etc/mold/mold.env):

sudo ./ops/install.sh
sudo systemctl enable --now mold-issue.timer mold-ledger.timer mold-health.timer

Self-healing has three layers — systemd retries with backoff, an OnFailure=mold-heal@ handler (reset the content tree, re-kick once, notify a webhook), and a staleness watchdog for the "everything looks green but nothing shipped" failure. Details in ops/README.md.

Status

The full pipeline runs end to end: Planning → Critic → Editor → Art Director (starter primitive kit: colonization / collision / agar / decay, composed under taboo memory) → Verify (copyright wall, doctrine, links) → Publish (issue page + archive + drift-state → qa → auto-promote to prod). Model and ledger go live via env (Claude / Chaos Dimension); everything runs offline on mocks otherwise.

Next, per the specs in Chaos Dimension: the taste-critic discriminator (warm-start human-pick), the vision pass on rendered pixels, the Suno trend surveyor (MERT/CLAP), and more masthead voices.

License

AGPL-3.0-or-later. See LICENSE and NOTICE (model, font, and Suno-coverage terms). Issue content is published in terrarium under CC0.