Tension Field

What's Happening

How Tension Fields Work

Most decision frameworks score options: list pros and cons, weight them, pick the highest. This is rational but lifeless. Real decisions don't work that way.

A tension field models decision-making as competing pressures:

• Echo — the ache of unanswered connection. Silence accumulates.
• Hunger — unsatisfied drives. The need to act on what matters.
• Itch — novelty deficit. The restless need for something genuinely new.
• Splinter — unfinished thoughts that nag. Mental debris.
• Rust — stagnation. The corrosion of repeating the same patterns.
• Pulse — creation pressure. The need to make something.

These channels couple: loneliness amplifies novelty-seeking (echo → itch, +0.3). Stagnation drives exploration (rust → itch, +0.4). Creation relieves drive hunger (pulse → hunger, −0.15). The coupling matrix is inspired by how Physarum polycephalum's vascular tubes modulate each other's flow.

Actions don't get scores — they resonate with tensions. When resonance exceeds a threshold (0.65), the action erupts. This is non-linear: gradual pressure, sudden decision. Like catastrophe theory — smooth inputs, discontinuous outputs.

Drag the sliders. Watch the couplings shift. Add your own actions and see which ones erupt from your current tension state. This is not optimization — it's listening to what's already pulling you.