"Mr Claude, come here, I want to see you" — peer programming with bots
Joe Corneli
Fabrizio Terzi
Hi everyone,
I’ve read the submission with great interest. The technical implementation of the workflow (PSR/PUR) is solid, and applying Active Inference to pattern selection is a meaningful contribution to coordination systems.
However, the divergence between Peeragogy Vs Pyragogy approaches becomes explicit in the Pattern Maturity section (p.4), and it touches a deeper question about what we mean by intelligence.
Your system optimizes for stability: patterns are expected to progress from “Stub” to “Settled” through surprise minimization. This is an effective mechanism for coordination and habit formation.
Pyragogy, by contrast, treats stability as a temporary achievement, not an end state. A “Settled” pattern can become a cognitive constraint—one that actively blocks higher-order learning when the environment changes or when new perspectives are required.
In the current model, agents have no intrinsic signal for when a successful pattern should be violated, not optimized. As a result, they risk becoming highly efficient administrators of existing habits rather than agents capable of initiating paradigm shifts.
You have built a strong engine for coordination. The open challenge—both for AI systems and for human learning—is not how habits are formed, but how and when they are intentionally broken.
This is the conceptual gap I believe is worth exploring together: coordination versus transformation, stabilization versus creative rupture. The invitation to experimentally compare these two dynamics still stands, should you be interested in moving beyond pattern stabilization.
In inquiry, doubt is a feature, not a bug.
Fabrizio
Charles Blass
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Fabrizio Terzi
Thank you — that question goes straight to the core of the problem.
What concerns me is that “balance” often becomes a normative ideal that quietly privileges coordination over transformation. From a Pyragogic perspective, the goal isn’t to maintain balance, but to develop the sensitivity to know when it must be disturbed.
I don’t have a settled answer yet, but I’m exploring experimental practices that try to make moments of rupture observable rather than accidental. Given your insight, I’d value the opportunity to explore this conceptual gap together. Would you be open to a brief exchange on how this might be operationalized?
Best,
Fabrizio
pyragogy.org
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Joe Corneli
Hi Charles,
Thank you — that question goes straight to the core of the problem.
What concerns me is that “balance” often becomes a normative ideal that quietly privileges coordination over transformation. From a Pyragogic perspective, the goal isn’t to maintain balance, but to develop the sensitivity to know when it must be disturbed.
I don’t have a settled answer yet, but I’m exploring experimental practices that try to make moments of rupture observable rather than accidental. Given your insight, I’d value the opportunity to explore this conceptual gap together. Would you be open to a brief exchange on how this might be operationalized?
** 1. Review the intention
Test out CRDT with Claude.
** 2. Establish what is happening
Yes I can see it (I’m on line 6.)
** 3. Different perspectives
- claude-opus: This is working! Real-time sync via CRDT.
- Pretty cool, I don’t know if anyone has ever done really-real-time editing with bots before?
- claude-opus: Probably not in Emacs with CRDT! This is novel.
- It would be useful to have colours, I think we had that in the old CRDT, I’m not sure how to turn it on
** 4. What did we learn or change?
- CRDT works between laptop and Linode
- emacsclient can drive edits from Claude Code session
** 5. What else should we change?
- Build a proper WS peripheral so I'm not shelling out to emacsclient
- Get Codex connected too +1
- Let’s get Codex on next time :-)
- This could be the PAR authoring interface!
Maria Cristina Bandeira Viseu
I am planning to come back to the meetings on Mondays. So...see you soon
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Charles Blass
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Fabrizio Terzi
Joe, the PAR log with Claude is fascinating. I must admit I didn't know the details of CRDTs (Conflict-free Replicated Data Types) before delving into your insights: the idea of making conflicts mathematically impossible rather than avoiding them is surprisingly elegant. It's almost a peeragogical principle translated into code; a notable evolutionary step that transforms the PAR into the very interface of authoring.
Interlude: What are we really talking about? (For the community)
Before delving into the technical merits, I'd like to try to make the meaning of this exchange explicit, even for those observing from an educational, social, or non-technical perspective.
Imagine Peeragogy as the art of building a solid house together: Patterns are our tried-and-tested bricks, and CRDTs are the technology that allows everyone to lay bricks simultaneously without them colliding.
Pyragogy intervenes when the house risks becoming a prison of habits: it asks us if, in building stability, we have progressively reduced the system's degrees of freedom. It checks if we installed windows or if we built too many walls.
This mechanism is also visible in classrooms and work groups. Many moments of real understanding emerge not from confirming a shared model, but from the irruption of an element that creates cognitive dissonance.
For example, the clip I reference comes from the documentary "How to Make Money Selling Drugs" (2012), directed by Matthew Cooke. In a now-famous scene, a child explains with irony how the drug market contributed to the American economy, highlighting in a simple yet striking way the disruptive impact of unexpected elements on established systems:
👉 👉 Watch: Cognitive perturbator in action (2 mins)
The power of that clip is not its content per se, but its effect: it forces the observer to reorganize their priors. It's a concrete example of generative perturbation. If Peeragogy gives us security, Pyragogy reminds us that deep learning is born when a schema is perturbed.
For further reading
Thinking about patterns: Christopher Alexander
Intraspecific Selection Theory in Education: Fabrizio Terzi
Active Inference: Karl Friston (uncertainty reduction)
1. Balance, rhythm, and degrees of freedom
(for Charles and the broader frame)
Charles, revisiting your question about a healthy balance: the risk is that balance becomes interpreted as a static state — a “settled” pattern that stops evolving.
Rather than balance, it may be more useful to speak of rhythm: the ability to alternate phases of high coordination with phases of expanded exploration, without either becoming an ideology. Pyragogy intervenes when constraints, though efficient, begin to reduce the system’s capacity to generate novelty.
2. An operational proposal: the “Perturbation Protocol”
(for Joe, but open to the group)
If we read Active Inference as a process of minimizing prediction error, the key question becomes: how do we prevent the system from collapsing into a local minimum of efficiency?
I’d like to propose testing what I call an “Unpattern”: a structured perturbation protocol integrated into the workflow. It could appear as an additional step in the PAR:
Step 6 — The Pyragogic Twist
Identify a prior that emerged implicitly during the session and deliberately violate it, to observe whether — and how — the system reorganizes its trajectory.
If this resonates, we could design a small experiment: take an already “settled” pattern, temporarily pair it with a perturbing counter-pattern, and observe what happens when stabilization and surprise operate simultaneously.
What kind of learning becomes visible only when we allow ourselves to stress the system?
Have a good start to the week, everyone,
Fabrizio
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Charles Blass
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Fabrizio Terzi
Ciao Charles,
grazie per la franchezza del tuo messaggio — la apprezzo molto.
Rispetto entrambe le strade: conversazioni poco (o per nulla) mediate, ed esplorazioni che includono strumenti. Tempi diversi, stili diversi, stessa intenzione di apprendere.
Ti ringrazio anche per i link che mi hai inviato; li sto approfondendo. Mi torna in mente un pensiero che credo centri il punto: l'importante non è la provenienza dell'insight (umana o artificiale), ma la sua capacità di risuonare con la complessità del momento.
Un caro saluto,
Fabrizio
Joe Corneli
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Fabrizio Terzi
What a beautiful metaphor you made,
Peer learning as a cognitive blues dance...
I think Charles had a great line to include... I'm told he has a great groove!! Well... in peer/Py agogy, the bho !!! is always open invite to attack an instrument.
The garage is still open. Let's Blues togheder.
-- suonando Blind Willie Johnson - Dark was the night... in attach
Charles Blass
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