OMNI saysHormones modulate the whole swarm: cortisol rises under load and throttles new spawns; oxytocin raises trust and relaxes quorum. They tune, never override (R6).
A single agent has a felt state; a swarm has one too, and it is governed by the same four hormones. The key one for orchestration is cortisol: as queue depth, failures, or latency climb, cortisol rises and the conductor responds with backpressure — it spawns fewer workers, shrinks budgets, and sheds low-priority tasks. When the system recovers, cortisol falls and throughput opens back up. This is a thermostat, not a switch: hormones modulate thresholds, they never override a rule (R6).
The others shape the swarm too. Adrenaline shortens deadlines for an urgent goal; serotonin, earned by a run of successes, lets the conductor batch more aggressively; oxytocin, built from a worker's track record, relaxes how many confirmations its signal needs at quorum. Because every adjustment is a threshold change and never a bypass, a stressed swarm still obeys R9 (it still VERIFYs) and R7 (SELF still prunes) — it just runs more conservatively.
Power-ups you unlock
The swarm has a felt state set by the same four hormones
Cortisol rises under load → backpressure: fewer spawns, smaller budgets
Oxytocin from a worker’s track record relaxes its quorum need
Hormones tune thresholds, never override a rule (R6)
The Silent Failure attacks — common mistakes
Letting high cortisol skip VERIFY to go faster (override, breaks R6/R9)
A swarm with no backpressure that spawns until it falls over
Hard-coding fixed concurrency instead of modulating by felt load
Oxytocin that drops quorum to zero — trust is a discount, not a bypass
Boss battleAdd a cortisol signal that rises with the failure rate and throttles max concurrent spawns, while proving VERIFY still runs no matter how stressed the swarm gets.
Example code
<!doctype html><html><head><meta charset="utf-8"></head>
<body style="background:#06040d;color:#b388ff;font-family:monospace;padding:20px"><pre id="o"></pre>
<script>
const be = (layer, verb, payload) => ({ layer, verb, payload });
let cortisol = 0; // swarm felt-state
function regulateSwarm(failRate){ // R6: modulate threshold, never override
cortisol = Math.min(1, failRate);
return Math.max(1, Math.round(5 * (1 - cortisol))); // maxSpawns: 5 → 1 under stress
}
const out = [];
[0, 0.2, 0.6, 0.9].forEach(fr => {
const maxSpawns = regulateSwarm(fr);
// even fully stressed, VERIFY still runs — R9 is never bypassed
out.push('failRate=' + fr + ' → cortisol=' + cortisol.toFixed(2) + ' → maxSpawns=' + maxSpawns + ' [VERIFY: ON]');
});
out.push('backpressure tuned thresholds; no rule was skipped (R6)');
document.getElementById('o').textContent = out.join('\n');
</script></body></html>