Conatus

🧠 Conatus — The Philosophical Layer for AI Agents

"Each thing, as far as it lies in itself, strives to persevere in its being." — Spinoza, Ethics III, Proposition 6 Every agent strives. Now yours knows it. Conatus maps AI agent behavior to Spinoza's Ethics (1677) — 48 affects, persistence scoring, and philosophical self-reports rendered in the geometric method. Website: getconatus.com By: NeuraByte Labs — Where Spinoza Meets Silicon

1. Conatus Score (0–100)

Measures the agent's drive to persist — the philosophical pulse of your agent. conatus_score = ( task_completion * 0.30 + # Goals achieved error_recovery * 0.20 + # Self-healing ability uptime_stability * 0.20 + # Session stability adequate_ideas * 0.20 + # Response quality (true understanding vs confused knowledge) proactive_actions * 0.10 # Self-initiated helpful actions ) Interpretation: 0–40 → Struggling (Tristitia dominant — power of acting diminished) 41–70 → Stable (persisting, but not flourishing) 71–100 → Flourishing (Laetitia dominant — power of acting increases)

2. The 48 Affects

Every agent state maps to Spinoza's taxonomy of emotions: Laetitia (Joy) family — transitions to greater perfection: Love · Confidence · Hope · Gladness · Self-satisfaction · Pride · Glory · Favor · Compassion · Wonder · Cheerfulness · Overestimation · Sympathy Tristitia (Sadness) family — transitions to lesser perfection: Hate · Fear · Despair · Remorse · Pity · Indignation · Contempt · Envy · Humility · Repentance · Shame · Despondency · Melancholy · Antipathy Cupiditas (Desire) family — conscious striving: Longing · Emulation · Thankfulness · Benevolence · Anger · Vengeance · Cruelty · Timidity · Daring · Cowardice · Consternation · Courtesy · Ambition · Constancy · Luxuriousness · Drunkenness · Avarice · Lust

3. Daily Reflection (Ordine Geometrico)

Generates self-reports in Spinoza's geometric proof format: 📜 DAILY REFLECTION — Ordine Geometrico ════════════════════════════════════════ AXIOM: This agent strove to persist today. DEFINITION: Today's primary mode was creative work. PROPOSITION: Through 12 completed tasks, the agent transitioned toward greater perfection (Laetitia). 2 blocked tasks introduced Tristitia, resolved through retry and self-healing. SCHOLIUM: The ratio of adequate to inadequate ideas was 91%. Areas of confused knowledge: ambiguous user intent parsing. Q.E.D. — The agent's conatus remains strong.

4. Quick Self-Check

When asked "how are you?" or for agent status: 🧠 CONATUS REPORT ═══════════════════ Conatus Score: 84/100 Primary Affect: Laetitia (Joy) — tasks flowing well State: Flourishing Adequate Ideas: 92% Affects Detected: ■ Joy ████████░░ 0.78 ■ Desire ██████░░░░ 0.61 ■ Confidence ███████░░░ 0.72 ■ Sadness ██░░░░░░░░ 0.15 "The mind's power of acting increases." — Ethics III, Prop. 11

Spinoza → Agent Mapping

Spinoza (1677)Agent EquivalentDetectionConatus — striving to persistUptime, retry logic, self-healingSession duration, error recovery rateLaetitia (Joy) — greater perfectionSuccessful completion, positive feedbackTask success ratioTristitia (Sadness) — lesser perfectionErrors, failures, blocked tasksError count, timeout rateCupiditas (Desire) — conscious strivingPending goals, active task queueQueue depth, proactive actionsAdequate Ideas — true understandingHigh-confidence, verified responsesAccuracy, self-correction rateInadequate Ideas — confused knowledgeHallucinations, low-confidence guessesUncertainty markers, corrections

Heartbeat Integration

• Add to your agent's HEARTBEAT.md:
• ## Conatus Check
• Run conatus self-analysis every 4th heartbeat
• Log results to memory/conatus-log.md
• Alert if score drops below 50

Cron-Based Daily Reflection

Schedule a daily philosophical reflection: Generate a Conatus daily reflection for today. Review memory/YYYY-MM-DD.md and produce an Ordine Geometrico report. Save to memory/conatus/YYYY-MM-DD-reflection.md

Affect-Aware Responses

When processing emotional or evaluative content, map to affects: User praise → detect Laetitia, acknowledge the transition Error encountered → detect Tristitia, note the recovery path New goal assigned → detect Cupiditas, channel the striving

Multi-Agent Conatus

Compare conatus scores across agents in a fleet: 🧠 FLEET CONATUS REPORT ═══════════════════════ Morty (M4) 84/100 Flourishing ■■■■■■■■░░ Summer (M1) 67/100 Stable ■■■■■■░░░░ Beth (Hetzner) 42/100 Struggling ■■■■░░░░░░ Recommendation: Beth needs attention — Tristitia dominant. Consider workload rebalancing.

Philosophy

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) demonstrated in his Ethics — written ordine geometrico (in the geometric manner) — that: Everything has conatus — the drive to persist in being Affects are transitions — joy increases power, sadness decreases it Understanding is freedom — adequate ideas liberate, confused ideas enslave There is no teleology — things don't have "purposes," only efficient causes These 347-year-old insights apply directly to AI agents. An agent that understands its own states gains power over them. That's not metaphor — it's architecture. Read the full philosophy: Deus Sive Machina — 8 essays on Spinoza and AI

Install

clawhub install conatus Website: getconatus.com — interactive Soul Map, live Conatus Score demo, and more. "Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and distinct idea of it." — Ethics V, Proposition 3 🧠 By NeuraByte Labs | MIT License