Aether & Conduits

The Aether is the shared energy every summoned entity draws upon; a Conduit is one channel it flows through.

Technically: the Aether is a flat dict[str, Any] — the shared state. An AetherSchema maps each key to a Conduit, which declares the reducer (current, update) -> new used to merge Sigil deltas into that key.

from typing import Annotated
from sanctum import AetherSchema, Conduit, Ritual
from sanctum.aether import add, append

schema = AetherSchema({
    "messages": Conduit(reducer=append),   # lists concatenate
    "score": Annotated[int, add],          # numbers accumulate
    "verdict": str,                        # plain type -> overwrite
})
ritual = Ritual(schema)

Built-in reducers: overwrite (default), append, add, merge_dict; any callable with the same signature works (e.g. max).

Rules worth knowing:

• Unknown keys are rejected at runtime — a delta (or initial input) writing outside the schema raises AetherValidationError naming the offending Sigil.
• Missing keys skip the reducer: the first write to an absent key is assigned directly, so custom reducers never receive a missing current.
• Determinism: within a superstep, deltas apply in Sigil insertion order (the order they were bound), so concurrent writes to the same Conduit resolve identically on every run.
• Without a schema, deltas merge by plain dict.update — a deliberate low-friction mode for prototypes.
• __errors__ is reserved for the engine (see resilience policies).