Part V — REFERENCE
13.Drawing the Stack
The whole architecture on one page. Every term links to the section that teaches it.
Layer 3 — Economy §10–12
The marketplace: Ops, Cogs, Frames and Guards published, discovered, installed across sovereign Hubs. Tracks stay home.
Interface — Products around the Hub §9
Applications, consoles, and builders — a Desktop/Web Application among them — where people meet the Hub.
Layer 2 — Execution §3–5
Ops — installable, supervised jobs
Cogs — AI workers oriented by Frames
Frames — organizational context, versioned and inheritable
Layer 1 — Infrastructure §7–8
Organizational Memory — the context the Hub accumulates
Intelligence Hub — the sovereign deployment perimeter
Nebari — curated open-source stack · Nebi — packaging and installs
Compute, open-weight models, the organization's data
Accountability plane §6
cross-cutting: it applies to every layer above
- Guards: check
- Gates: decide
- Tracks: record
The architecture drawn as one stack. Layer 1, Infrastructure (Sections 7 and 8): the open-source commons assembled into an organization-controlled Intelligence Hub, with Organizational Memory accumulating under the organization’s governance. Layer 2, Execution (Sections 3 to 5): Frames carry context, Cogs perform bounded work, Ops orchestrate complete jobs. The Interface (Section 9): the products around the Hub — applications, consoles, and builders, a Desktop/Web Application among them — through which people meet the Hub. Layer 3, Economy (Sections 10 to 12): artifacts exchanged across independent Hubs. Beside the stack, the accountability plane (Section 6) is drawn as a single panel spanning the full height, with a connector from every tier (economy, interface, execution, and infrastructure) into it: Guards check, Gates decide, Tracks preserve evidence, at every layer, for every artifact and run.
View as text diagram
┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ ┌─────────────────┐ │ LAYER 3 — ECONOMY (§10–12) │ │ ACCOUNTABILITY │ │ The marketplace: Ops, Cogs, Frames, and Guards published, │───►│ PLANE (§6) │ │ discovered, installed across sovereign Hubs. Tracks stay home. │ │ cross-cutting │ ├──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ │ │ INTERFACE — Products around the Hub (§9) │ │ │ │ Applications, consoles, and builders — a Desktop/Web │───►│ Guards: check │ │ Application among them — where people meet the Hub. │ │ Gates: decide │ ├──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ Tracks: record │ │ LAYER 2 — EXECUTION (§3–5) │ │ │ │ Ops — installable, supervised jobs │ │ every layer, │ │ Cogs — AI workers oriented by Frames │───►│ every artifact, │ │ Frames — organizational context, versioned and inheritable │ │ every run │ ├──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ │ │ LAYER 1 — INFRASTRUCTURE (§7–8) │ │ │ │ Organizational Memory — the context the Hub accumulates │ │ │ │ Intelligence Hub — the sovereign deployment perimeter │───►│ │ │ Nebari — curated open-source stack Nebi — packaging/installs │ │ │ │ Compute, open-weight models, the organization's data │ │ │ └──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ └─────────────────┘
Each layer, restated as the problem it exists to solve:
- Infrastructure exists because rented intelligence leaks auditability and context (§1–2); the Hub is the perimeter where both stay home (§7), built from the open-source commons (§8).
- Execution exists because models alone are capability without accountability: Frames capture the context that makes AI work valuable (§3), Cogs make the work assignable and auditable (§4), Ops make whole jobs installable and supervised (§5).
- The accountability plane exists because generation and verification are different things; it is not a fourth layer but a plane that cuts across all three: Guards check, Gates decide, Tracks preserve the evidence (§6).
- The economy exists because packaged + contextualized + verifiable = exchangeable (§10), and because open standards are how strangers come to trust each other's artifacts (§11).
Where this sits in the industry's picture
The diagram above is this guide's drawing of one architecture. Revision 9 adds a front section that draws something different and, for anyone who has been handed a competing stack diagram by a competing vendor, more immediately useful: a picture of where these abstractions would sit inside the layering the industry already uses.
The placement is easy to hold: Frames at the data layer, Cogs at the work layer, Ops at the application layer; the accountability plane as "this architecture's answer to what the industry calls observability and governance, made concrete enough to ship with the artifacts themselves"; the Hub spanning infrastructure through application; and products around the Hub occupying the room the figure deliberately leaves open. The paper credits industry framings for the layer names, "IBM's" among them, and says it "learns from them without following any one literally."
Declining to propose a rival stack is a smaller claim than a whitepaper of this kind usually makes, and it is the more useful one. A rival stack asks an organization to adopt a worldview. Shared abstractions ask it to adopt six nouns that fit inside the worldview it already has. If the second is what is really on offer, this is the picture that has to be true.
The paper's six-verb summary is the whole system in one breath:
"Frames guide the work. Cogs perform the work. Ops orchestrate the work. Guards verify the work. Gates decide whether the work proceeds. Tracks make the work accountable."
Self-test, in the field-guide spirit: cover the diagram and explain to a colleague why an Op written by a stranger can be safely installed in your organization. If your answer touches a manifest, a Frame, a Guard, and a Track, you have the architecture.