AIM Framework glossary
Minimal Architecture Specification (MAS)
Canonical definition
The Minimal Architecture Specification (MAS) is the component-function specification of the motivational architecture, carried in Chapter 4, Section 4.4: the four processing components (the Decision Hub, the Body Manager, the Thinker, and the Observer), the Belief Register state component that holds the Thinker's posteriors and conditions the Observer's Salience, the Signed Valuation Principle under which each input-bearing component supplies a signed scalar, the coupled fast/slow AIM Operational Loop, and the architectural localisation of priors, tag-stripping integration, Salience, and Ground-Resolution, together with the failure mode the architecture entails (Object Parasitism) and the crisis geometry the coupled loop entails. It is minimal in that it states the least structure a system must instantiate to produce the outputs the AIM Framework derives, and it is specified at the Disaggregation Primitive level per the Dashboard Gauge Principle: its functional statements say what each component does at the reading-surface level, not how the supporting neural systems are organised.
Explanation
The MAS is the AIM Framework's wiring diagram: which boxes exist, what each is permitted to do, and how they are coupled. Chapter 2 locks what the words mean; the MAS locks which operations may be assigned to which box. The specification and its human instantiation are separately falsifiable: the human system might fail to instantiate an architecture that remains a valid specification for some other system.
Epistemic status
Framework-Specific Construct (specification).