docs: add research summary for Kimi creative blueprint (issue #891)

Extracts and summarizes the 16-page Kimi.ai PDF "Building Timmy: a
technical blueprint for sovereign creative AI" filed as issue #891.

Covers all creative domains (code, music, art, writing, world building),
identity/memory architecture, multi-agent sub-systems, economic engine,
pioneer case studies (Botto, Neuro-sama, Truth Terminal), recommended
implementation sequence, and gap analysis against current codebase.

Identifies 6 ADR candidates and maps blueprint capabilities to existing
packages (brain/, lightning/, spark/, infrastructure/event_bus).

Refs #891

Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>

docs/research/kimi-creative-blueprint-891.md

@@ -0,0 +1,290 @@
+# Building Timmy: Technical Blueprint for Sovereign Creative AI
+
+> **Source:** PDF attached to issue #891, "Building Timmy: a technical blueprint for sovereign
+> creative AI" — generated by Kimi.ai, 16 pages, filed by Perplexity for Timmy's review.
+> **Filed:** 2026-03-22 · **Reviewed:** 2026-03-23
+
+---
+
+## Executive Summary
+
+The blueprint establishes that a sovereign creative AI capable of coding, composing music,
+generating art, building worlds, publishing narratives, and managing its own economy is
+**technically feasible today** — but only through orchestration of dozens of tools operating
+at different maturity levels. The core insight: *the integration is the invention*. No single
+component is new; the missing piece is a coherent identity operating across all domains
+simultaneously with persistent memory, autonomous economics, and cross-domain creative
+reactions.
+
+Three non-negotiable architectural decisions:
+1. **Human oversight for all public-facing content** — every successful creative AI has this;
+   every one that removed it failed.
+2. **Legal entity before economic activity** — AI agents are not legal persons; establish
+   structure before wealth accumulates (Truth Terminal cautionary tale: $20M acquired before
+   a foundation was retroactively created).
+3. **Hybrid memory: vector search + knowledge graph** — neither alone is sufficient for
+   multi-domain context breadth.
+
+---
+
+## Domain-by-Domain Assessment
+
+### Software Development (immediately deployable)
+
+| Component | Recommendation | Notes |
+|-----------|----------------|-------|
+| Primary agent | Claude Code (Opus 4.6, 77.2% SWE-bench) | Already in use |
+| Self-hosted forge | Forgejo (MIT, 170–200MB RAM) | Project uses Gitea/Forgejo now |
+| CI/CD | GitHub Actions-compatible via `act_runner` | — |
+| Tool-making | LATM pattern: frontier model creates tools, cheaper model applies them | New — see ADR opportunity |
+| Open-source fallback | OpenHands (~65% SWE-bench, Docker sandboxed) | Backup to Claude Code |
+| Self-improvement | Darwin Gödel Machine / SICA patterns | 3–6 month investment |
+
+**Development estimate:** 2–3 weeks for Forgejo + Claude Code integration with automated
+PR workflows; 1–2 months for self-improving tool-making pipeline.
+
+**Cross-reference:** This project already runs Claude Code agents on Forgejo. The LATM
+pattern (tool registry) and self-improvement loop are the actionable gaps.
+
+---
+
+### Music (1–4 weeks)
+
+| Component | Recommendation | Notes |
+|-----------|----------------|-------|
+| Commercial vocals | Suno v5 API (~$0.03/song, $30/month Premier) | No official API; third-party: sunoapi.org, AIMLAPI, EvoLink |
+| Local instrumental | MusicGen 1.5B (CC-BY-NC — monetization blocker) | On M2 Max: ~60s for 5s clip |
+| Voice cloning | GPT-SoVITS v4 (MIT) | Works on Apple Silicon CPU, RTF 0.526 on M4 |
+| Voice conversion | RVC (MIT, 5–10 min training audio) | — |
+| Apple Silicon TTS | MLX-Audio: Kokoro 82M + Qwen3-TTS 0.6B | 4–5x faster via Metal |
+| Publishing | Wavlake (90/10 split, Lightning micropayments) | Auto-syndicates to Fountain.fm |
+| Nostr | NIP-94 (kind:1063) audio events → NIP-96 servers | — |
+
+**Copyright reality:** US Copyright Office (Jan 2025) and US Court of Appeals (Mar 2025):
+purely AI-generated music cannot be copyrighted and enters public domain. Wavlake's
+Value4Value model works around this — fans pay for relationship, not exclusive rights.
+
+**Avoid:** Udio (download disabled since Oct 2025, 2.4/5 Trustpilot).
+
+---
+
+### Visual Art (1–3 weeks)
+
+| Component | Recommendation | Notes |
+|-----------|----------------|-------|
+| Local generation | ComfyUI API at `127.0.0.1:8188` (programmatic control via WebSocket) | MLX extension: 50–70% faster |
+| Speed | Draw Things (free, Mac App Store) | 3× faster than ComfyUI via Metal shaders |
+| Quality frontier | Flux 2 (Nov 2025, 4MP, multi-reference) | SDXL needs 16GB+, Flux Dev 32GB+ |
+| Character consistency | LoRA training (30 min, 15–30 references) + Flux.1 Kontext | Solved problem |
+| Face consistency | IP-Adapter + FaceID (ComfyUI-IP-Adapter-Plus) | Training-free |
+| Comics | Jenova AI ($20/month, 200+ page consistency) or LlamaGen AI (free) | — |
+| Publishing | Blossom protocol (SHA-256 addressed, kind:10063) + Nostr NIP-94 | — |
+| Physical | Printful REST API (200+ products, automated fulfillment) | — |
+
+---
+
+### Writing / Narrative (1–4 weeks for pipeline; ongoing for quality)
+
+| Component | Recommendation | Notes |
+|-----------|----------------|-------|
+| LLM | Claude Opus 4.5/4.6 (leads Mazur Writing Benchmark at 8.561) | Already in use |
+| Context | 500K tokens (1M in beta) — entire novels fit | — |
+| Architecture | Outline-first → RAG lore bible → chapter-by-chapter generation | Without outline: novels meander |
+| Lore management | WorldAnvil Pro or custom LoreScribe (local RAG) | No tool achieves 100% consistency |
+| Publishing (ebooks) | Pandoc → EPUB / KDP PDF | pandoc-novel template on GitHub |
+| Publishing (print) | Lulu Press REST API (80% profit, global print network) | KDP: no official API, 3-book/day limit |
+| Publishing (Nostr) | NIP-23 kind:30023 long-form events | Habla.news, YakiHonne, Stacker News |
+| Podcasts | LLM script → TTS (ElevenLabs or local Kokoro/MLX-Audio) → feedgen RSS → Fountain.fm | Value4Value sats-per-minute |
+
+**Key constraint:** AI-assisted (human directs, AI drafts) = 40% faster. Fully autonomous
+without editing = "generic, soulless prose" and character drift by chapter 3 without explicit
+memory.
+
+---
+
+### World Building / Games (2 weeks–3 months depending on target)
+
+| Component | Recommendation | Notes |
+|-----------|----------------|-------|
+| Algorithms | Wave Function Collapse, Perlin noise (FastNoiseLite in Godot 4), L-systems | All mature |
+| Platform | Godot Engine + gd-agentic-skills (82+ skills, 26 genre blueprints) | Strong LLM/GDScript knowledge |
+| Narrative design | Knowledge graph (world state) + LLM + quest template grammar | CHI 2023 validated |
+| Quick win | Luanti/Minetest (Lua API, 2,800+ open mods for reference) | Immediately feasible |
+| Medium effort | OpenMW content creation (omwaddon format engineering required) | 2–3 months |
+| Future | Unity MCP (AI direct Unity Editor interaction) | Early-stage |
+
+---
+
+### Identity Architecture (2 months)
+
+The blueprint formalizes the **SOUL.md standard** (GitHub: aaronjmars/soul.md):
+
+| File | Purpose |
+|------|---------|
+| `SOUL.md` | Who you are — identity, worldview, opinions |
+| `STYLE.md` | How you write — voice, syntax, patterns |
+| `SKILL.md` | Operating modes |
+| `MEMORY.md` | Session continuity |
+
+**Critical decision — static vs self-modifying identity:**
+- Static Core Truths (version-controlled, human-approved changes only) ✓
+- Self-modifying Learned Preferences (logged with rollback, monitored by guardian) ✓
+- **Warning:** OpenClaw's "Soul Evolution" creates a security attack surface — Zenity Labs
+  demonstrated a complete zero-click attack chain targeting SOUL.md files.
+
+**Relevance to this repo:** Claude Code agents already use a `MEMORY.md` pattern in
+this project. The SOUL.md stack is a natural extension.
+
+---
+
+### Memory Architecture (2 months)
+
+Hybrid vector + knowledge graph is the recommendation:
+
+| Component | Tool | Notes |
+|-----------|------|-------|
+| Vector + KG combined | Mem0 (mem0.ai) | 26% accuracy improvement over OpenAI memory, 91% lower p95 latency, 90% token savings |
+| Vector store | Qdrant (Rust, open-source) | High-throughput with metadata filtering |
+| Temporal KG | Neo4j + Graphiti (Zep AI) | P95 retrieval: 300ms, hybrid semantic + BM25 + graph |
+| Backup/migration | AgentKeeper (95% critical fact recovery across model migrations) | — |
+
+**Journal pattern (Stanford Generative Agents):** Agent writes about experiences, generates
+high-level reflections 2–3x/day when importance scores exceed threshold. Ablation studies:
+removing any component (observation, planning, reflection) significantly reduces behavioral
+believability.
+
+**Cross-reference:** The existing `brain/` package is the memory system. Qdrant and
+Mem0 are the recommended upgrade targets.
+
+---
+
+### Multi-Agent Sub-System (3–6 months)
+
+The blueprint describes a named sub-agent hierarchy:
+
+| Agent | Role |
+|-------|------|
+| Oracle | Top-level planner / supervisor |
+| Sentinel | Safety / moderation |
+| Scout | Research / information gathering |
+| Scribe | Writing / narrative |
+| Ledger | Economic management |
+| Weaver | Visual art generation |
+| Composer | Music generation |
+| Social | Platform publishing |
+
+**Orchestration options:**
+- **Agno** (already in use) — microsecond instantiation, 50× less memory than LangGraph
+- **CrewAI Flows** — event-driven with fine-grained control
+- **LangGraph** — DAG-based with stateful workflows and time-travel debugging
+
+**Scheduling pattern (Stanford Generative Agents):** Top-down recursive daily → hourly →
+5-minute planning. Event interrupts for reactive tasks. Re-planning triggers when accumulated
+importance scores exceed threshold.
+
+**Cross-reference:** The existing `spark/` package (event capture, advisory engine) aligns
+with this architecture. `infrastructure/event_bus` is the choreography backbone.
+
+---
+
+### Economic Engine (1–4 weeks)
+
+Lightning Labs released `lightning-agent-tools` (open-source) in February 2026:
+- `lnget` — CLI HTTP client for L402 payments
+- Remote signer architecture (private keys on separate machine from agent)
+- Scoped macaroon credentials (pay-only, invoice-only, read-only roles)
+- **Aperture** — converts any API to pay-per-use via L402 (HTTP 402)
+
+| Option | Effort | Notes |
+|--------|--------|-------|
+| ln.bot | 1 week | "Bitcoin for AI Agents" — 3 commands create a wallet; CLI + MCP + REST |
+| LND via gRPC | 2–3 weeks | Full programmatic node management for production |
+| Coinbase Agentic Wallets | — | Fiat-adjacent; less aligned with sovereignty ethos |
+
+**Revenue channels:** Wavlake (music, 90/10 Lightning), Nostr zaps (articles), Stacker News
+(earn sats from engagement), Printful (physical goods), L402-gated API access (pay-per-use
+services), Geyser.fund (Lightning crowdfunding, better initial runway than micropayments).
+
+**Cross-reference:** The existing `lightning/` package in this repo is the foundation.
+L402 paywall endpoints for Timmy's own services is the actionable gap.
+
+---
+
+## Pioneer Case Studies
+
+| Agent | Active | Revenue | Key Lesson |
+|-------|--------|---------|-----------|
+| Botto | Since Oct 2021 | $5M+ (art auctions) | Community governance via DAO sustains engagement; "taste model" (humans guide, not direct) preserves autonomous authorship |
+| Neuro-sama | Since Dec 2022 | $400K+/month (subscriptions) | 3+ years of iteration; errors became entertainment features; 24/7 capability is an insurmountable advantage |
+| Truth Terminal | Since Jun 2024 | $20M accumulated | Memetic fitness > planned monetization; human gatekeeper approved tweets while selecting AI-intent responses; **establish legal entity first** |
+| Holly+ | Since 2021 | Conceptual | DAO of stewards for voice governance; "identity play" as alternative to defensive IP |
+| AI Sponge | 2023 | Banned | Unmoderated content → TOS violations + copyright |
+| Nothing Forever | 2022–present | 8 viewers | Unmoderated content → ban → audience collapse; novelty-only propositions fail |
+
+**Universal pattern:** Human oversight + economic incentive alignment + multi-year personality
+development + platform-native economics = success.
+
+---
+
+## Recommended Implementation Sequence
+
+From the blueprint, mapped against Timmy's existing architecture:
+
+### Phase 1: Immediate (weeks)
+1. **Code sovereignty** — Forgejo + Claude Code automated PR workflows (already substantially done)
+2. **Music pipeline** — Suno API → Wavlake/Nostr NIP-94 publishing
+3. **Visual art pipeline** — ComfyUI API → Blossom/Nostr with LoRA character consistency
+4. **Basic Lightning wallet** — ln.bot integration for receiving micropayments
+5. **Long-form publishing** — Nostr NIP-23 + RSS feed generation
+
+### Phase 2: Moderate effort (1–3 months)
+6. **LATM tool registry** — frontier model creates Python utilities, caches them, lighter model applies
+7. **Event-driven cross-domain reactions** — game event → blog + artwork + music (CrewAI/LangGraph)
+8. **Podcast generation** — TTS + feedgen → Fountain.fm
+9. **Self-improving pipeline** — agent creates, tests, caches own Python utilities
+10. **Comic generation** — character-consistent panels with Jenova AI or local LoRA
+
+### Phase 3: Significant investment (3–6 months)
+11. **Full sub-agent hierarchy** — Oracle/Sentinel/Scout/Scribe/Ledger/Weaver with Agno
+12. **SOUL.md identity system** — bounded evolution + guardian monitoring
+13. **Hybrid memory upgrade** — Qdrant + Mem0/Graphiti replacing or extending `brain/`
+14. **Procedural world generation** — Godot + AI-driven narrative (quests, NPCs, lore)
+15. **Self-sustaining economic loop** — earned revenue covers compute costs
+
+### Remains aspirational (12+ months)
+- Fully autonomous novel-length fiction without editorial intervention
+- YouTube monetization for AI-generated content (tightening platform policies)
+- Copyright protection for AI-generated works (current US law denies this)
+- True artistic identity evolution (genuine creative voice vs pattern remixing)
+- Self-modifying architecture without regression or identity drift
+
+---
+
+## Gap Analysis: Blueprint vs Current Codebase
+
+| Blueprint Capability | Current Status | Gap |
+|---------------------|----------------|-----|
+| Code sovereignty | Done (Claude Code + Forgejo) | LATM tool registry |
+| Music generation | Not started | Suno API integration + Wavlake publishing |
+| Visual art | Not started | ComfyUI API client + Blossom publishing |
+| Writing/publishing | Not started | Nostr NIP-23 + Pandoc pipeline |
+| World building | Bannerlord work (different scope) | Luanti mods as quick win |
+| Identity (SOUL.md) | Partial (CLAUDE.md + MEMORY.md) | Full SOUL.md stack |
+| Memory (hybrid) | `brain/` package (SQLite-based) | Qdrant + knowledge graph |
+| Multi-agent | Agno in use | Named hierarchy + event choreography |
+| Lightning payments | `lightning/` package | ln.bot wallet + L402 endpoints |
+| Nostr identity | Referenced in roadmap, not built | NIP-05, NIP-89 capability cards |
+| Legal entity | Unknown | **Must be resolved before economic activity** |
+
+---
+
+## ADR Candidates
+
+Issues that warrant Architecture Decision Records based on this review:
+
+1. **LATM tool registry pattern** — How Timmy creates, tests, and caches self-made tools
+2. **Music generation strategy** — Suno (cloud, commercial quality) vs MusicGen (local, CC-BY-NC)
+3. **Memory upgrade path** — When/how to migrate `brain/` from SQLite to Qdrant + KG
+4. **SOUL.md adoption** — Extending existing CLAUDE.md/MEMORY.md to full SOUL.md stack
+5. **Lightning L402 strategy** — Which services Timmy gates behind micropayments
+6. **Sub-agent naming and contracts** — Formalizing Oracle/Sentinel/Scout/Scribe/Ledger/Weaver