Published July 6, 2026
| Version 1.0.1
Journal article
Open
Autopoietic Project Generation
Description
template_autopoiesis is a combinatoric grammar that deterministically generates
whole runnable projects — not files or snippets, but complete, independently
testable child repositories with their own kernel source, tests, analysis
entry point, and manuscript. A single integer seed plus a grammar of orthogonal
slots (primitive domain, analytical track, section set, and three
presentation/provenance slots) selects one child from a combinatoric product
space of 360 nominal (45 content-distinct)
configurations, via a SHA-256 digest of the seed and slot identity — with no
random-number generator anywhere in the expansion path.
Project generators routinely claim completeness, determinism, and
traceability without making any of the three independently checkable. This
exemplar treats each claim as a structural property to verify rather than a
rhetorical one to assert: verify_child() recomputes a tree hash from the
files actually on disk and compares it against the recorded provenance,
rather than trusting a value the same run wrote down; a honesty manifest
inspects the live source AST to confirm every claim in this manuscript
resolves to a real function in a real file; and a per-domain mutation gate
checks that the acceptance tests reject a constant-success stub before
trusting that they accept the real kernel. The same discipline governs this
document itself — every number below is substituted at render time from a
live measurement rather than hand-typed as a literal.
Across 5 heterogeneous primitive domains
(- optimization
- dynamics
- statistics
- signal
- graph), 493 tests exercise both fixed ground-truth
checks and Hypothesis-driven property invariants at 96.28% branch
coverage, with an explicit negative control per domain distinguishing the
real kernel from a deliberately-wrong one.
Generation pipeline
Grammar product space
- Domain count: 5
- Effective product size: 45
- Total product size: 360
- Reserved slots: 3 (figure_profile, qr_profile, integrity_profile)
- Grammar hash: f84a8f9dbcb18e37
- Tests: 493 · Coverage: 96.28%
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Associated artifacts
GitHub release: Autopoietic Project Generation (v1.0.1) — improved abstract (https://github.com/docxology/template/releases/tag/v1.0.1)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21227869
Zenodo: https://zenodo.org/records/21227869
PDF SHA-256: 84145371f10c7ee97a75c53d78917d247fd6bd987d2c1764ee437b6fbdef8f51
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Additional details
Related works
- Is supplement to
- Software: https://github.com/docxology/template/releases/tag/v1.0.1 (URL)