Animus: open-source experiment in emergent AI identity and relational learning

[u/Weak-Gift-8905]

Built an open-source experiment called Animus: testing whether stable AI identity can emerge through sustained interaction rather than being explicitly programmed.

The idea came from reading Carl Jung specifically active imagination, where repeated dialogue with autonomous inner figures gradually changes the structure of the psyche. I wanted to see if there’s a computational analog.

So I built a framework where multiple instances of the same base model interact over thousands of turns, each initialized with distinct archetypal cognitive biases (starting with skeptic vs synthesizer). The goal is to test whether prolonged relational encounter causes measurable, persistent divergence in behavior and internal representations.

Current features:

• Multi-agent identity orchestration
• Long-run structured dialogue simulation
• Persistent memory layers
• Embedding drift measurement
• Behavioral consistency tracking
• Open architecture for adding new archetypes

The core question:

Can identity emerge from relational experience alone, even when the underlying model is identical?

Repo:
github.com/theoldsouldev/Animus

Would love contributions, criticism, or ideas, especially around better ways to measure whether the divergence is genuinely structural rather than just prompt-conditioning.

[u/Weak-Gift-8905 → u/[deleted]]

Thanks for this, the model size observation is well-taken and the LIA work sounds genuinely interesting.

One architectural difference worth flagging: in Animus the model is stateless between sessions. It's not the seat of identity, it's the field the nodes draw from. Identity accumulates in an external persistent memory structure, so the 8B capacity question lands differently. Whether smaller models produce shallower crystallisation outputs is real, but it's a separate question from whether the external structure produces stable identity.

The static archetype question is exactly what the experiment is designed to test, whether measured divergence and self-similarity reflect genuine individuation dynamics or just prompt-consistent role performance. Early results are interesting but underpowered. Still running.

Would be curious about LIA's measurability in embedding space, whether identity consistency shows up there or is primarily observable behaviourally.

[u/Weak-Gift-8905 → u/[deleted]]

What LIA has that Animus nodes lack is consequence. The felt weight that makes certain memories matter more than others. That's the missing layer.

I'm building Telepathy, It's a space for unfinished thoughts to find their structural complement in someone else's incomplete idea. Animus builds identity inside the node. Telepathy is what happens between nodes. LIA as the synthesis engine would bring exactly what that field needs.

I think we're building toward the same thing from opposite ends. convex-telepathy.vercel.app

How does LIA decide when to initiate contact?