Build your own kernel

The eight catalog kernels (KB-701) are shared by every organization. If none of them is quite your voice, fork one: a kernel of your own, tuned your way, that only your organization can see or select.

Where it lives

Open Primitives ▾ → Kernels. The page has three tabs: Catalog (the shared kernels, plus Your kernels below them), Studio (write something with one), and Endpoints (callable URLs, KB-407).

Fork one

1. On Catalog, find Your kernels and press Fork a kernel.
2. Fork from: pick a kernel from the Shared catalog, or one of Your kernels to build further on something you already tuned. Forking a fork is the same action as forking a shared one.
3. Name the copy, and press Fork kernel.

To start from nothing instead, pick Start from scratch at the bottom of the Fork from list. Give the kernel a Name and a Voice (how it sounds and who it writes for, in a sentence or two), then press Create kernel. Either way you land on the kernel's page.

Tune it

Open your kernel. You set what it sounds like, not what it says in a prompt: the platform compiles your choices into the instructions the writing engine runs.

Name and Description first. An agent choosing a kernel reads the description, not the name, so make it say something: "patient, example-led explainers for a non-expert reader".

Then Voice, three choices:

Below them, Anything else this kernel should always do takes up to 2,000 characters of house rules in plain words: your terminology, a fact to always get right, a reference to work in. "Use British spellings." "Refer to the product as 'Acme Flow', never 'the platform'."

Press Save. Saving writes the whole kernel at once as a new live version; nothing autosaves while you type.

What Save does with your notes

Some of what people write in the notes box is really one of the three settings in disguise ("make it funnier"), and some genuinely has to stay as free text (your terminology, a fact, "avoid X and Y when discussing Z"). So on Save the platform reads the note and, when part of it maps onto Register, Framing or Humor, shows you a Found this in your note dialog with exactly what it would change before anything is applied.

Accept it and that text moves into the setting and is cleared from the notes; anything it did not match is left exactly as you wrote it. If the check itself fails for any reason, your note is saved untouched and the save still goes through.

The kernel file

Below the settings, Kernel file shows the whole kernel as one JSON file, with every version kept. Edit it and press Save as candidate to keep the change without using it, or Save and make live. Test a candidate (below), then make it live from the version list; the same list lets you Roll back to this on an older version. If the kernel you forked from gets an update, the panel offers it: Save as a candidate to test or Accept and make live.

Test it

Under Test this kernel, paste a short brief, choose the version under Write with (the live one, or a saved candidate), and press Run test. This writes a throwaway article with that version and uses one kernel run. Unsaved edits aren't used, so save first. The result shows Passed or Did not pass the jury, the run's timeline (rounds, rule checks, the reviewer panel's votes; read it with KB-704), and the Draft article it produced. Nothing is created in any collection. Test runs are limited to five a minute.

Use it

Once saved, the kernel appears in Settings → Writing Kernel next to the catalog, and you select it the same way (KB-702). Write with it on its card opens the Studio with it already chosen. A brief for it follows the same advice as for any kernel (KB-703).

Archive

The bin icon on the card, then Archive, retires a kernel. It can't be undone, so don't archive one your organization has selected.