The atom system

Measured 2026-08-10 against pearlstar_gitea/offline-main. Every number here was counted this session, not carried from a prior document.

correction The handoff this page replaces (ATOM_SYSTEM_ANALYSIS_HANDOFF_20260809.md) states that atoms/{persona}/{topic}/{TYPE}/ does not exist and that all atoms live in teacher_banks/. Both halves are wrong. The path exists, holds 246 persona×topic cells, and today's render trace resolves atoms/corporate_managers/anxiety/HOOK/CANONICAL.txt:28. Its atom counts (STORY 480, "3,558 total") match neither bank measured here.

Two banks, counted separately

There are two parallel atom banks. They are not alternatives to each other and must never be added into one total.

Slot type	Persona bank	Teacher bank
STORY	4,184	281
HOOK	5,339	207
REFLECTION	5,936	258
EXERCISE	2,579	270
SCENE	4,417	197
INTEGRATION	4,883	197
PIVOT	2,079	216
COMPRESSION	3,434	236
TAKEAWAY	2,069	236
THREAD	2,027	236
PERMISSION	2,045	222
TEACHER_DOCTRINE	93	91
base-layout total	65,850	2,653

Persona counts are ## headers in atoms/{persona}/{topic}/{TYPE}/CANONICAL.txt — 3,762 files, 246 cells, en-US base layout only. Teacher counts are .yaml files under teacher_banks/{teacher}/approved_atoms/{TYPE}/ — 15 teachers. Spot-checked: corporate_managers/anxiety/STORY holds 20, consistent with the aggregate.

Why earlier counts disagreed so wildly. The atoms/ tree has four layouts at overlapping depths — base, anchored/, engine-keyed, and locale copies. 18,629 of the 23,853 CANONICAL.txt files are locale translations. A naïve recursive count returns ~173,000 and means nothing. Any atom count must state its scope or it is not a number.

Which bank is used

Persona bank is the default path. Teacher bank wins the enrichment_select waterfall only when teacher_id is set. A book rendered without --teacher never touches teacher_banks/.

Verified on a render executed today — corporate_managers × anxiety × overwhelm, no teacher flag — whose human_atom_trace.txt resolves every slot to atoms/…/CANONICAL.txt.

The other supplies

System	Count	Location / status
Five-layer practices	311	`practice_library/inbox/*_PRODUCTION_READY.json` — teacher-agnostic, LIVE
Practice items (store)	272	`practice_library/store/practice_items.jsonl` — eligible for every cell
Story arc banks	10 cells	`story_atoms/{persona}/anchored/{topic}/{engine}/` — was 9; `corporate_managers × anxiety` added 2026-08-10
External stories	6 topics	`accent_banks/external_stories/` — seeded; consumer status unresolved
Surface taxonomy	11 types	`config/atoms/surface_taxonomy.yaml` — `status: warn_only_measurement`, not enforced

What changed on 2026-08-10

Enrichment on by default — default_profile moved from minimal_accent (every accent budgeted 0) to somatic_reflective (EXTERNAL_STORY 2, CITED_EVIDENCE 1, ENCOURAGEMENT 2 per book).
corporate_managers bound its first character arc — 60 story atoms, 36 spine pins, 13 named protagonists reaching the page. research_fit BOUND; acceptance layer path_works → structurally_clear.
998 CJK social atoms restored and the row-count gate wired, after a plumbing overwrite.
Stale-base revert gate added — blocks a commit that silently undoes work landed between read-tree and commit-tree.

Open, with evidence

Teacher identity divergence. One teacher reads three ways: doctrine.yaml says Taoist geomancy and explicitly forbids Wu Wei framing; the atoms use Wu Wei; the EPUB uses Shaolin. Nothing enforces the doctrine's own forbidden list.
External story bank consumer — seeded, and the planner now budgets 2 per book by default. Whether anything reads it is unresolved.
mechanism_called — every book that binds still caps at structurally_clear because this field has no producer.

Sources: docs/agent_prompt_packs/20260810_atom_system_fix/, docs/BOOK_PIPELINE_FULL_AUDIT_2026-08-10.md, docs/handoffs/ATOM_SYSTEM_ANALYSIS_HANDOFF_20260809.md (superseded on counts).