A ByteQuilt research program
Computingprimitives drawnfrom biology.
What if software could self-heal, adapt to workloads, and gracefully degrade like living systems? Mutuus pursues that question with data structures, operational strategies, and coordination patterns that are formally specified, implemented in Rust, and benchmarked against their classical counterparts.
- 10
- primitives
- 9
- benchmarked
- 2
- papers with DOIs
“A biological analog is useful when it helps identify a structural mechanism, lifecycle pattern, or resource tradeoff that can be specified, implemented, and tested. It is not useful when it merely renames an established technique.”
Phillips (2026), Adaptive Computing Primitives, §2
- 10
- Primitives in the library, each paired with a classical counterpart
- 7
- Evaluation gates before an organic is published
- 100+
- Tick cycles before steady-state benchmarks are taken
- 0
- Losses hidden. Wins and losses are reported together
Three strata,from structure to ecosystem.
Higher tiers depend on lower tiers, but each is independently useful. Claims are scoped to one level at a time so they can be tested.
Organics
Data structures
Adaptive data structures that offer an alternative to a classical (inorganic) counterpart, adding lifecycle management, adaptive behavior, and self-tuning.
Metabolics
Operational strategies
Resource-management policies that formalize what production systems already do ad hoc: how computation is allocated, conserved, and recovered.
Eight strategies cataloged
Ecologics
Coordination patterns
Relationships between systems: how they compete for resources, cooperate for mutual benefit, and co-evolve over time.
Cataloged · evaluation deferred
We publishthe losses.
Every organic is benchmarked against the structure it hopes to replace, and the tradeoffs are reported whole. The Nacre Array wins on structural mutation and loses on raw reads. Both appear in the paper.
“Research that hides failures is marketing, not science.”
Read the Nacre Array paper →Nacre Array vs. Vec<T>, 100K elements
Criterion.rs medians · 12-byte elements
Split at fracture plane
vs Vec::split_off
Insert at midpoint
segment-bounded shift
Sequential scan (cache on)
contiguity wins
Iteration
hardware prefetch
Random access (cache off)
O(log S) lookup
Source: Phillips (2026), Nacre Array, §7. Mixed hot/cold memory results are deferred until a reproducible harness is published.
Watch a structurecool, compress, and wake.
Three hundred elements in five segments. Untouched segments cool from Hot to Warm to Cold, then compress in place. A single read brings one back.
Tip: click any segment to read it. Reads reheat a segment instantly; cooling only happens on tick().
Field notes
- Waiting for the organism to stir…
- Elements
- 300
- Segments
- 5
- Cold ratio
- 0%
- Compressed
- 0 B
Figure. Nacre Array Compression at tick 0 of 500. Five segments of 60 twelve-byte elements; cooldown 10 / 20 / 5 ticks.
Illustrative simulation, not a benchmark · Mutuus Research, ByteQuilt
The program,read like a trunk.
One ring per paper or benchmark milestone, laid down from the pith outward. The outer ring is sapwood: work that is still alive and changing.
- 01Early 2026BenchmarksFirst three organics complete benchmarkingNacre Array, Diatom Bitmap, and Mycelial Cache pass Phase 5 of the seven-phase evaluation.
- 02Mar 9, 2026PaperAdaptive Computing PrimitivesThe position paper defines Organics, Metabolics, Ecologics, four dimensions of complexity, and the evaluation gates.
- 03Mar 24, 2026White paperNacre Array formal specificationSplits 7.5× faster than Vec::split_off at 100K elements; random access 7.9× slower. Both reported.
- 042026BenchmarksWaggle Convergence benchmarkedIn early evaluation at the position paper; now benchmarked with a structured contradiction benchmark.
- 052026BenchmarksFive more primitives benchmarkedDendrite Ring, Echo Field, Place Field, Spike-Timed Event Log, and Gleaning Policy reach the benchmarked stage.
- 06NowSapwoodStill growingChromatophore Context is implemented and awaiting benchmarks; Ecologics are cataloged with evaluation deferred.