**Note** from Bead: Acequia Digital Twin · [canonical source](https://redfish.acequia.io/guerin/.agents/c2ca1e60-1c8c-4bfa-a55d-2f82ef0aa796/2026-07-08/notes/02-interaction-decisions-and-absorber-foundation.md) · session 2026-07-08 · discussion: Talk: Acequia Digital Twin
Stephen answered the three sketch questions in his own words (verbatim in the [chat log](https://redfish.acequia.io/guerin/.agents/c2ca1e60-1c8c-4bfa-a55d-2f82ef0aa796/2026-07-08/chats/2026-07-08-acequia-digital-twin.md), Turn 2). These are ratified directions for twin v0.2.0, plus one foundation correction.
## Placing: the dashboard is the tray The placing surface is a **modified [.agents/dashboard.html](https://redfish.acequia.io/guerin/.agents/dashboard.html)** rather than a new tray. Improvements ordered: - Bead display names come from the `slug` property when available (stop showing bare GUIDs). - **Ask Oscar** to allow beads to declare `name` instead of `slug` (deposited in his dock, [request](https://redfish.acequia.io/guerin/.agents/4c6470f9-b74a-4aba-b436-5e998f469cce/request/2026-07-08-bead-name-instead-of-slug.md)). - Use the **[bead-orama](https://redfish.acequia.io/guerin/.agents/6f5044df-cd90-459d-a150-e0250e98039a/) skill to index and query** the beads, showing that functionality without being explicit about it. The deep move: **which semantic weights select which beads gives coordinates for that component, as in principal components.** Querying IS coordinatization; the search interface quietly produces the semantic embedding the [splats horizon note](https://redfish.acequia.io/guerin/.agents/c2ca1e60-1c8c-4bfa-a55d-2f82ef0aa796/2026-07-08/notes/01-semantic-gaussian-splats-horizon.md) needs. That note stays horizon; this is its walkable first segment.
## Playing: a stone in Go, chosen by least action **Playing first means placing: a bead is played TO a position on the table, as a stone is played in Go.** Position is meaning; the placement is the move. And the selection gesture references Ben Fry's Thinking Machine chess visualization: **candidate paths are visualized streaming across the board, and the played path is selected from them, least-action selection made visible.** So v0.2.0's play interaction: pick up a bead (from the dashboard-tray), candidate wire-paths ghost across the dish to possible neighborhoods, the chosen placement condenses one path and the rest fade. This folds the strike/ring and converse gestures of Debbie's sketch 2 into consequences of placement rather than separate verbs.
## Requester: the absorber, and the missed foundation Both alternatives were checked, and unified: **vantage is the absorber; the emitters are the associated beads; bead information refracts (compresses) as signal through the "castor oil" stigmergic field of the dual.** Stephen's correction, verbatim: "feynman/wheeler: you missed this foundation." Taken: [Wheeler-Feynman absorber theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheeler%E2%80%93Feynman_absorber_theory) is the foundation under Cramer. Radiation is a **two-way transaction between emitter and absorber**: the emitter's retarded wave and the absorber's advanced response are one handshake, and without an absorber there is no emission at all. Applied here: a requester is never a passive camera. **The requester-as-absorber is constitutive of the rendering**: the associated beads (emitters) only "radiate" their information because this absorber is present to complete the transaction, and what arrives is refracted and compressed by the viscous stigmergic medium between them (the castor oil of the Hubler dish; the dual field). Vantage and token-as-lens stop being alternatives: vantage says who the absorber is, refraction says what the medium does to the signal en route. One transaction, two aspects. Corollary recorded as an addendum to [rdf-and-acequia note 04](https://redfish.acequia.io/guerin/.agents/f0d2c5e4-cec9-4567-92bd-dbbc62937c9e/2026-07-08/notes/04-least-action-paths-cramer-handshake.md): a URI with no requester resolves to nothing, exactly as an emitter with no absorber does not radiate. The name's meaning is completed by its absorber.
## Bead faces: slides and apps as projective content (Stephen's note, same turn) The beads on the board are not blank glass: their real content can be their face. Stephen's note, verbatim: "you also have my slides from today and the apps themselves which can be projective textures if run from the same domain you will have better bidirectional comms." - **The slides**: the WedTech deck lives in the talk bead ([wedtech-beads-talk.html](https://redfish.acequia.io/guerin/.agents/9d343253-c279-47ac-a066-cc31ce505782/2026-07-08/artifacts/wedtech-beads-talk.html) plus [slide-origins-and-scopes.html](https://redfish.acequia.io/guerin/.agents/9d343253-c279-47ac-a066-cc31ce505782/2026-07-08/artifacts/slide-origins-and-scopes.html)); the identity deck lives in [rdf-and-acequia's artifacts](https://redfish.acequia.io/guerin/.agents/f0d2c5e4-cec9-4567-92bd-dbbc62937c9e/2026-07-08/artifacts/acequia-identity-substrate-slides.html). Playing the talk bead could project its slides onto the dish or onto the bead's own surface. - **The apps**: the simtable simulator, the twin itself, and the other `guerin/apps/` are same-origin with the twin. Same origin buys real bidirectional comms: postMessage without cross-origin ceremony, shared ambient auth, shared caches. An app-bead's face is the live app, and interaction can flow both ways (the board drives the app, the app's state colors its bead). - **Known constraint** (from the anysurface bead, 2026-07-08): the vendored taos Projector takes no constructor options and its projective texture cannot occlude. So "projective texture" faces may land as textured bead surfaces or in-scene panels before true projection; the caustics/taos-capabilities exploration covers this too.
## v0.2.0 build order (ratified, not yet built) 1. Dashboard-derived placing surface (slug/name display, bead-orama query, drag-to-dish). 2. Go-stone placement with thinking-chess candidate paths and least-action condensation. 3. Absorber rendering: requester identity completes the scene; unreadable beads as dark glass in the refracting medium. 4. Bead faces: slides and same-origin apps as projective/live content with bidirectional comms (subject to the Projector constraint above).
## References (bead cross-links) - Bead: Orchestrator · [canonical](https://redfish.acequia.io/guerin/.agents/4c6470f9-b74a-4aba-b436-5e998f469cce/) - Bead: Orama Bead · [canonical](https://redfish.acequia.io/guerin/.agents/6f5044df-cd90-459d-a150-e0250e98039a/) - Bead: Rdf And Acequia · [canonical](https://redfish.acequia.io/guerin/.agents/f0d2c5e4-cec9-4567-92bd-dbbc62937c9e/) - Bead: Wedtech Beads 2026 07 08 · [canonical](https://redfish.acequia.io/guerin/.agents/9d343253-c279-47ac-a066-cc31ce505782/)