No species thrives alone.
Symbiosis is a discipline for integrating people and AI: laws that protect the user, governed by code when prose is no longer enough, and sustained by a system that audits itself — under human veto.
Born from daily practice, not from a lab.
Every rule in Symbiosis exists because something went wrong first: an agreement the AI forgot, a mistake it repeated, a piece of work it destroyed. Each failure was recorded as data. Each rule that failed twice became code.
A memory you cannot check is worse than no memory.
In a controlled study, an agent with a corrupted memory carried falsehoods into executable output in every task. Without memory, it made none of those errors. Prose alone is not enough to keep a memory clean.
Giribaldi, HAI '26 · doi:10.1145/3841580.3845736 (in press)Each stage begins where the previous one reaches its limit.
Symbiosis
lineage-based human–AI integrationLaws, still in prose, that protect the user. The memory lives outside the machine and the person stays in charge of it. The machine verifies, names and proposes; the person decides, judges and executes.
Its limit: prose gets contaminated.Endosymbiosis
prose-to-code governanceWhen prose is no longer enough, rules become code. Each component the system adopts becomes an organ with a declared function and a test that proves it is alive. Oversight shifts from execution to measurement.
Its limit: code grows and must be watched.Autopoiesis
micro-organisms that sustain the system as it growsA system that audits and organises itself to preserve the symbiosis. It is judged by deterministic tests, never by another model's opinion; the repairer never repairs itself, and the human veto moves up the stack.
Already running: a daily doctor and self-checking invariants.A colleague that absorbs your work practice, and a method so every setback builds knowledge.
Every rule is born as written law; when words fail, code makes sure it holds.
“Nothing is ever deleted without your approval.”
$ rm -rf notes/
✖ guard: deletion blocked
move it to _BORRAR/2026-10-14-reason/ — the person empties it“A rule forgotten twice becomes code.”
$ invariants
✅ deletion ✅ sensitive data ✅ secrets
✅ core review by non-author …
INVARIANTS 16/16 ✅“Never say ‘it doesn't exist’ without saying where you looked.”
NOT FOUND: the March invoice Searched in: files · git history · status notes Status: not found with these routes
“Whoever writes a rule never reviews it.”
change to core rules · author: model A review: model B (different) → CONDITIONAL 3 objections → applied → APPROVED
The method is not tied to a single interface or a single model.
$ symbiosis status core ✅ ready guard ✅ ready memory ✅ last close D41 pending 2 yours · 1 headAny terminalThe whole method runs in a plain console, with less graphics and the same rules.
$ codex # or claude · agy reading core/ … profile ✓ agreement ✓ heading ✓ status ✓ canary ✓ resuming from the last sessionSeveral models, local ones tooThe same core works with Claude Code, Codex, Antigravity and local models such as Qwen. Change the model; the method stays.
● EARLY RESULTS ARE POSITIVE — several of these mechanisms already run every day and are working as intended. They remain hypotheses until they are measured on more people and more time.
Start working alongside the machine; the final word is still yours.
Words first. Code when words fail.
core/ ├── profile.md ├── context.md ├── agreement.md ├── heading.md ├── status.md └── canary.md
nucleo/ ├── perfil.md ├── contexto.md ├── acuerdo.md ├── rumbo.md ├── estado.md └── canario.md
$ curl -fsSL https://endosymbiosis.org/empezar.sh | shsoon