This repository is the public home of the Active Inference Institute (AII) Working Groups initiative: the draft founding documents, and the place to review and comment on them ahead of the Charter Development Session at the 6th Applied Active Inference Symposium (online, 12–13 November 2026).
- Website: https://activeinference.institute/working-groups/
- Position paper: Coordinating the Field: The Case for Ecosystem-Level
Technology Roadmapping and Community Working Groups in Active Inference,
Active Inference Institute Working Paper Series, Version 1.0.0, published
30 September 2026.
doi:10.5281/zenodo.23066904
(all versions: doi:10.5281/zenodo.23066903).
Copies of the published files are in
paper/: PDF · DOCX · EPUB.
| Document | Version | Source in the position paper |
|---|---|---|
| Working Group Charter | 1.0.0 (draft) | Appendix A |
| Operating Procedures | 1.0.0 (draft) | Appendix B |
| Predecessor Governance Documents and Resources | 1.0.0 | Appendix C |
The files in docs/ are the living versions of the paper's
appendices. The published paper (on Zenodo, and mirrored unchanged in
paper/) is a fixed snapshot; later changes land in docs/ and are
recorded in the commit history. Both drafts are offered as a starting point:
they carry no force until adopted at the Symposium (provisionally) and
ratified within 90 days afterward.
Two documents referenced by the Charter are not yet published: the Domain Working Group Charter Template (Charter §10.3) and the AII Intellectual Property Policy, AII-POL-IP-001 (Charter §8.5, to be adopted by the AII Board and made public before the final Charter is ratified).
The paper proposes one Field Working Group and a set of domain working groups, convened by AII, constituted by their members, and operating under a written charter with public outputs.
Field Working Group — year-one products
- A terminology correspondence matrix for a defined set of core terms as used in at least SPM/DEM, pymdp, and RxInfer.jl.
- A public comparison protocol, stratified into conceptual, algorithmic, and numerical correspondence, with version pins, a stated equivalence rule, and at least one worked example across two implementations.
- A shared domain-assessment framework, reviewed and agreed with constituted domain groups.
- External review of the matrix and protocol by at least two reviewers who are not AII Board members and were not drafters.
Domain working groups — year-one products
- An audience and use-case note.
- One literacy or adaptation module, designed jointly by at least one active-inference expert and at least one domain practitioner.
- Participation in the Field group's framework series, and an initial domain assessment against the agreed framework.
- A published go/no-go on the group's continuation.
Formation floor. A group is constituted when at least five individuals commit in writing to its year-one product. The Field group needs at least one person who maintains or actively uses an implementation in the initial comparison set. A domain group needs at least one active-inference expert and at least one domain practitioner actively working in the domain. The Symposium may amend the floor in the provisional Charter.
Safeguards. Open membership with no fee and no AII membership required; consensus-seeking decisions with formal objections and minority reports; conflict-of-interest disclosure and recusal; a non-voting AII Liaison; AII publication review limited to institutional policy, institutional representations, and license terms; CC BY 4.0 outputs by default; a twelve-month pilot evaluation with a stop rule; and a five-year sunset review. AII may not dissolve a working group.
The paper's suggestion list for possible domain groups (Section 8). Any non-deferred candidate that meets the formation floor and participation conditions may form; there is no cap, and combined labels may be split on community feedback.
- Healthcare and clinical medicine
- Neuroscience
- Mental health and psychiatry
- Education and learning science
- Artificial intelligence and AGI
- Robotics, drones, and autonomous systems
- Finance and economic decision-making
- Climate and environmental science
- Cybersecurity
- Defense and national security applications (deferred from the pilot year pending ethics review procedures; listed for awareness only)
- Logistics
| When | What |
|---|---|
| Now – November 2026 | Public review of the draft Charter and Operating Procedures in this repository. |
| Phase 1 — Symposium, 12–14 November 2026 | Provisional adoption of the Charter and Operating Procedures (90-day period); constitution of the Field group and of every non-deferred domain that meets the conditions; election of interim Chairs and Vice Chairs; a 90-day Phase 2 calendar; provisional adoption of the seven-stage assessment framework as starting text. |
| Phase 2 — within 90 days | Ratification of the final documents by a two-thirds supermajority of the combined active membership; confirmation of the framework starting text; Year One Work Plans; officer elections under the ratified Charter. |
| Within 12 months | Pilot evaluation and stop rule (Charter Article XII). |
- Read the Charter and Operating Procedures.
- Comment or propose a change by
opening an issue.
Name the document and section, the concern, and the change that would
resolve it (see
CONTRIBUTING.md). - Register for the Symposium (free, online) at https://registersymposium2026.activeinference.institute/. The Charter Development Session is open to all registered participants, with remote participation, and attending carries no obligation to join a group.
- Express interest in the Field Working Group or a domain group by opening an issue that names the group and the role(s) you could fill (active-inference expert, domain practitioner, or implementation maintainer or user). This helps organizers plan the session; it is not by itself the written commitment described in Charter §3.4.
Active members are expected to attend four quarterly meetings of about ninety minutes and to contribute to at least one year-one product. All meetings are remote.
| Path | Contents |
|---|---|
docs/ |
Living versions of the Charter, Operating Procedures, and predecessor documents |
paper/ |
The position paper as published on Zenodo (v1.0.0; PDF, DOCX, EPUB; unchanged copies) |
CITATION.cff |
Citation metadata for the position paper |
CONTRIBUTING.md |
How to comment, propose text changes, and express interest in a group |
- Active Inference Ontology — a starting point for the Field group's terminology work.
- The website's Active Inference and X domain pages collect existing domain resources. They are not constituted working groups.
- Public calendar · Get involved
Please cite the position paper (see also CITATION.cff):
Ober, E., Maren, A., Friston, K. J., Hurtado, A. M., Pashea, A., Friedman, D., Sabine, A., & Safron, A. (2026). Coordinating the Field: The Case for Ecosystem-Level Technology Roadmapping and Community Working Groups in Active Inference (Active Inference Institute Working Paper Series, Version 1.0.0). Active Inference Journal. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23066904
Content in this repository is released under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0), the Active Inference Institute's standard open license.