---
slug: stigmergy
name: Stigmergy
one_liner: "A decentralized signal that aggregates dispersed private information into a single actionable scalar (or trace) each participant can act on locally without any central coordinator."
type: prime
schema_version: 2
status: density_v2_draft
categories: [computational, biological, economic]
origin_domain: biology
alternate_origin_domains: [economics, distributed_systems, complexity_science, epidemiology]
aliases: [distributed_information_aggregation, decentralized_coordination_signal, indirect_environmental_coordination, aggregate_scalar_signal, trace_based_coordination]
related: []
solution_archetypes: []
review_flags:
- "OPERATOR-DERIVED (op-05 generalization) — the proposed GENUS of `price_mechanism` (lift: strip the *market/exchange* frame, leaving a content-neutral decentralized signal that aggregates dispersed private information into a locally-actionable scalar or trace). Discovered in the op-05 framed-stratum sweep 2026-07-03. Tier A candidate. STATUS: HOLD pending owner keep/cut. Notes from data: `distributed_information_aggregation` verified ABSENT; this surfaced as a SIDE-SPOT during the framed sweep. NAMING TENSION: the classic term `stigmergy` denotes *indirect coordination via traces left in a shared environment* (Grassé); the LIFTED genus is broader — *aggregation of dispersed private information into an actionable signal* — so Kurt should decide whether to name the node `stigmergy`, `distributed_information_aggregation`, or split the two."
- "Created 2026-07-03; STUB ONLY (frontmatter + Core Idea + Notes). SI/SF/similarity are PROPOSER ESTIMATES pending triangulation. Body sections (Structural Signature onward) NOT written."
- "Phase-C action: re-similarity-check vs `price_mechanism` (the input) and any distributed-consensus / self-organization / feedback / market prime; RESOLVE the naming tension (stigmergy-as-traces vs distributed-information-aggregation); confirm it is a genuine genus (covers price signals AND pheromone trails AND prediction-market odds AND fever-as-signal) and not a restatement of the input; draw a subsumption edge price_mechanism→<chosen genus> + sibling edges at incorporation; sync one_liner to a v1 draft per CLAUDE.md before merge."
substrate_independence:
  composite_substrate_independence: 4
  domain_breadth: 5
  structural_abstraction: 4
  transfer_evidence: 5
  reasoning: 'The bare structure — many participants holding dispersed private information act locally in a shared medium, their actions compress into a single aggregate signal (a scalar, an odds, a trace concentration), and each participant then acts on that aggregate signal locally, with no central coordinator ever assembling the whole picture — is a strongly substrate-independent coordination form. Domain breadth and transfer score 5: the siblings are structurally unlike and span biology (pheromones), economics (prices, prediction markets), and epidemiology/physiology (fever as an aggregate infection signal), and the pattern is a workhorse of distributed-systems design. Structural abstraction is 4 rather than 5 because the recognizable cases still presuppose *agents with private information* and a shared aggregating medium — it is a coordination structure over informationful participants, not a purely value-free relation like a partial order. Lifting the market frame off `price_mechanism` raises substrate-independence well above the framed input; this is the Tier-A, verified-absent candidate of the batch.'
similarity_to_nearest_existing_prime:
  slug: price_mechanism
  similarity: 0.55
structural_framed:
  label: structural
  aggregate: 0.28
  criteria: {vocab_travels: 0.8, evaluative_weight: 0.1, institutional_origin: 0.3, human_practice_bound: 0.2, import_vs_recognize: 0.3}
  rationale: 'Structural. Once lifted off the market/exchange frame of `price_mechanism`, the residue — dispersed private information compressed into an aggregate signal each participant acts on locally, with no central coordinator — is recognized across biology and distributed systems, not imported as a human institution: ant pheromone coordination and consensus protocols instantiate it with no market present. Evaluative weight is near zero and vocabulary travels well. The small frame residue (institutional_origin, human_practice_bound off the floor) reflects that the input and one prominent instance (prices, prediction markets) are human-economic, but the genus itself is a substrate-neutral coordination structure.'
phase_b_passes_completed: []
---
# Stigmergy

## Core Idea

Stigmergy (taken here in its lifted sense) is, as a bare structure, a *decentralized aggregation-and-coordination signal*: many participants each holding dispersed private information act locally in a shared medium, their local actions compress into a single aggregate signal — a scalar, an odds, a concentration — and every participant can then act on that one signal locally, without any central coordinator ever assembling the whole picture. It is reached from `price_mechanism` by stripping one constraint: the *market/exchange* frame. The input specifies buyers and sellers, supply and demand, and money; strip the market and what remains is the underlying coordination structure — private information dispersed across participants, compressed into a public aggregate, and fed back for local action — which can run on pheromones, votes, or infection load just as well as on prices.

The load-bearing anatomy has three parts. First, *dispersed private information*: no participant holds the whole picture; each knows only its own local circumstance (its scarcity, its estimate, its infection state). Second, *compression into a single aggregate signal*: the participants' local actions combine, in the shared medium, into one low-dimensional public quantity that summarizes the ensemble — this is the informational compression that lets a scalar stand in for vast dispersed knowledge. Third, *local action on the aggregate with no central coordinator*: each participant reads the aggregate signal and acts on it locally, and it is this loop — local action feeding the aggregate, aggregate guiding local action — that produces coordinated global behavior without anyone directing it. The characteristic payoff is *scalable coordination without a bottleneck*: an enormous, distributed, private-information problem is solved without ever assembling or transmitting the full information to a center, which is why the pattern scales where central coordination would choke. The characteristic cost/failure is *signal pathology*: because everyone acts on the same compressed aggregate, the signal can mislead — stale traces, manipulated or thin markets, or a signal that compresses away information that mattered — producing coordinated error (herding, trail-following into a dead end) precisely because the coordination is signal-mediated.

Read structurally, the same aggregation loop recurs across domains that share nothing economic. In *biology*, ant foraging is the eponymous case: each ant deposits and follows pheromone, no ant plans the route, and the trail concentration is the aggregate signal that turns dispersed local encounters into an efficient colony-level path. In *prediction markets*, the odds are a scalar that compresses dispersed private beliefs into a single number each participant can act on — a non-monetary-in-spirit aggregation of information. In *epidemiology and physiology*, fever functions as an aggregate signal of infection load: dispersed local immune activity compresses into one body-level scalar that downstream systems act on. `price_mechanism` — the market case, where the aggregate is a price and the private information is scarcity and preference — is one species; the siblings show the genus is the bare decentralized information-aggregation-and-coordination structure.

## Notes

**Provenance.** Produced by operator 05 (generalization / lift) as the proposed genus of `price_mechanism` (input one-liner: "Supply-demand pricing"), by stripping the market/exchange frame to leave a content-neutral decentralized signal that aggregates dispersed private information into a locally-actionable scalar. Surfaced as a side-spot during the op-05 framed-stratum sweep on 2026-07-03; `distributed_information_aggregation` was verified ABSENT from the corpus. Claimed siblings: pheromone trails in ant foraging, prediction-market odds, fever as an aggregate infection signal. Manifest tier: A (verified absent).

**For owner evaluation (keep/cut).** The case FOR: this is the Tier-A, verified-absent candidate of the batch — a strongly substrate-independent coordination structure (dispersed private information → aggregate signal → local action, no coordinator) with genuinely unlike siblings across biology, economics, and physiology, filling a confirmed corpus gap (`distributed_information_aggregation` absent). It covers `price_mechanism` as a clean species and reaches well beyond it. The RISK / decision Kurt must make is primarily one of **naming and scope, not keep/cut**: (1) **Naming tension.** The classic term *stigmergy* (Grassé) denotes specifically *indirect coordination via traces left in a shared environment* — the pheromone/ant case. The *lifted genus* the operator found is broader: *aggregation of dispersed private information into an actionable signal*, which includes trace-free cases like prices and prediction-market odds. So "stigmergy" may be too narrow (or connotationally off) for the node; `distributed_information_aggregation` may be the truer label. Kurt should decide: name the broad genus `distributed_information_aggregation` and treat `stigmergy` (trace-mediated) as a child species, or vice versa, or split into two primes. (2) **Alias/overlap risk** vs any existing self-organization, distributed-consensus, or `feedback` prime — the aggregate-signal loop is a feedback loop, so confirm this adds the *information-aggregation* content those don't. (3) **Restatement vs the input is low risk** (similarity ~0.55). Sharp question for Kurt: *what is the node's name and width — `stigmergy` (traces), `distributed_information_aggregation` (broad), or both as parent/child?*

**At incorporation.** Re-run similarity against `price_mechanism` (input) and any distributed-consensus / self-organization / swarm / feedback / market prime to confirm no collapse and to settle the naming/scope decision. If kept: draw a subsumption edge `price_mechanism` → the chosen genus, sibling edges to the pheromone-trail / prediction-market / fever instances (or the primes carrying them), and a parent edge to `feedback` / self-organization if appropriate. Add a missing-edge note recording that `distributed_information_aggregation` was verified absent. Resolve the stigmergy-vs-distributed-information-aggregation naming, then write a v1 draft and sync the one_liner across v1 and v2 per CLAUDE.md before merge.
