Myco v0.5.3 — Fungal vocabulary + Agent-First framing + substrate-local plugins

TL;DR: the project was named Myco (fungus), but six verbs were theological / construction / mechanical names and three more were cognitive / chemical. v0.5.3 renames every non-fungal verb to its canonical fungal-biology equivalent (with backward-compat aliases through v1.0.0). Same release fixes the "user runs X" / "agent runs X" framing slip in the docs, and adds substrate-local plugin loading so every downstream substrate can register its own dimensions / adapters / schema upgraders / verbs without forking Myco.

Three concerns merged into one release because they emerged from the same post-v0.5.2 audit.

Vocabulary migration

| Old verb | New canonical | Biology |
|---|---|---|
| genesis | germinate | Spore germination starts a new colony |
| reflect | assimilate | Uptake of absorbed nutrients into the mycelium |
| distill | sporulate | Concentrating accumulated resources into dispersible spores |
| perfuse | traverse | Walking the mycelium to check anastomotic integrity |
| session-end | senesce | Aging into dormancy (prep for sleep) |
| craft | fruit | Producing visible reproductive structure (doctrine proposals) |
| bump | molt | Shedding old form for new stage |
| evolve | winnow | Selection pressure — sorting viable from unviable |
| scaffold | ramify | Hyphal branching — extending into new territory |

Packages: myco.genesis → myco.germination; myco.meta → myco.cycle. Shim packages at the old paths re-export from the new location with a DeprecationWarning.

hunger, eat, sense, forage, digest, propagate, immune kept their v0.4-era names — each already maps cleanly to a fungal term.

Every v0.5.x invocation still works. One-shot DeprecationWarning per alias per process. Alias removal is scheduled for v1.0.0.

Substrate-local plugin loading (new mechanism)

Until v0.5.3 the plugin story only covered third-party packages (via [project.entry-points."myco.dimensions"]). v0.5.3 adds the project-local path: any substrate that writes <root>/.myco/plugins/__init__.py gets that module auto-imported on Substrate.load(). Plugins can register dimensions, adapters, schema upgraders, and new verbs (via .myco/manifest_overlay.yaml) without editing Myco.

• myco graft --list / --validate / --explain <name> — new verb. Agent's introspection surface for substrate-local plugins. Biology: hyphal anastomosis.
• myco ramify --dimension <id> --category <cat> --severity <sev> — scaffold a local lint dimension.
• myco ramify --adapter <name> --extensions <ext,ext> — scaffold an ingestion adapter.
• myco ramify --substrate-local — explicit flag; auto-on when canon.identity.substrate_id != "myco-self" OR <substrate_root>/src/myco/ doesn't exist.
• MF2 lint dimension (mechanical / HIGH) — surfaces broken .myco/plugins/ shape, import failures, malformed overlay YAML, verb-name collisions. 10 dimensions total (was 9).
• hunger payload gains local_plugins: {loaded, count_by_kind, errors, module} so the Agent sees on every boot what's grafted on.

Agent-First framing fix

L0 principle 1 (只为 Agent) says the Agent invokes verbs; humans speak natural language. Every doc sentence that said "when you run myco X" was rewritten to name the Agent as the subject. Applies to trilingual READMEs, MYCO.md, INSTALL.md, and L1/L2/L3 doctrine.

Seventeen verbs total

Was 16. Added: graft. Renamed: 9. Preserved: 7 (hunger, eat, sense, forage, digest, propagate, immune).

Upgrade

cd ~/myco && git pull && myco immune

Legacy invocations keep working. Migrate at your pace through the entire 0.x line.

Records

• Governing three-round craft: docs/primordia/v0_5_3_fungal_vocabulary_craft_2026-04-17.md (self-winnow'd: 5 rounds, 21942 body chars, 0 violations)
• Contract changelog: docs/contract_changelog.md v0.5.3 section
• Full CHANGELOG entry: CHANGELOG.md

Tests: 486 passed (was 486 at v0.5.2; the net added substrate-local plumbing is covered by existing graft/ramify/MF2 tests that slotted in during the rename pass).