🌐 Trunk Links

The long-distance substrate of the ecosystem. APIs, compute, memory, storage β€” the trunk is what makes an ecosystem more than a fleet.
THE TRUNK LINKS β”Œβ”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β” β”‚ β”‚ β”‚ L4: FLEET ← network of harnesses β”‚ β”‚ β”‚ β”‚ β”‚ β–Ό β”‚ β”‚ ╔═══════════════════════════════════════╗ β”‚ β”‚ β•‘ L5: ECOSYSTEM (trunk links here) β•‘ β”‚ β”‚ β•‘ β•‘ β”‚ β”‚ β•‘ β”Œβ”€β”€β”€β”€β” β”Œβ”€β”€β”€β”€β” β”Œβ”€β”€β”€β”€β” β”Œβ”€β”€β”€β”€β” β•‘ β”‚ β”‚ β•‘ β”‚API β”‚ β”‚COMPβ”‚ β”‚MEM β”‚ β”‚STORβ”‚ ... β•‘ β”‚ β”‚ β•‘ β””β”€β”€β”€β”€β”˜ β””β”€β”€β”€β”€β”˜ β””β”€β”€β”€β”€β”˜ β””β”€β”€β”€β”€β”˜ β•‘ β”‚ β”‚ β•‘ β•‘ β”‚ β”‚ β•šβ•β•β•β•β•β•β•β•β•β•β•β•β•β•β•β•β•β•β•β•β•β•β•β•β•β•β•β•β•β•β•β•β•β•β•β•β•β•β•β• β”‚ β”‚ β”‚ β”‚ β”‚ β–Ό β”‚ β”‚ L6: INFRA ← the physical substrate β”‚ β”‚ β”‚ β””β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”€β”˜

🌲 The 8 Trunk Categories

πŸ“‘ APIs

  • REST β€” HTTP request/response
  • gRPC β€” typed RPC
  • GraphQL β€” query language
  • A2A β€” agent-to-agent
  • A2UI β€” agent-to-UI
  • A2C β€” agent-to-CLI
  • MCP β€” Model Context Protocol
  • OpenAI-compat β€” chat/completions
  • Anthropic-compat β€” messages
substrate: Protocol (L5)

⚑ Compute

  • CPU β€” general purpose
  • GPU β€” CUDA, Metal, ROCm
  • TPU β€” Google tensor
  • NPU β€” neural processing
  • edge β€” Cloudflare Workers, Lambda@Edge
  • vector β€” SIMD ops, AVX-512
  • wasm β€” sandboxed execution
substrate: Scale (L2)

🧠 Memory

  • RAM β€” main memory
  • VRAM β€” GPU memory
  • cache β€” L1/L2/L3, Redis
  • ephemeral β€” short-lived state
  • registers β€” kernel-level state
substrate: State (L7)

πŸ’Ύ Storage

  • KV β€” key-value (Cloudflare, Redis)
  • DB β€” Postgres, MySQL, SQLite
  • blob β€” R2, S3, GCS
  • file β€” local FS, NFS
  • object β€” typed objects, content-addressed
  • time-series β€” InfluxDB, Prometheus
  • graph β€” Neo4j, DGraph
  • vector β€” Pinecone, Weaviate, qdrant
substrate: State (L7)

πŸ”— Network

  • HTTP β€” request/response
  • MQTT β€” pub/sub for IoT
  • WebSocket β€” bidirectional
  • gRPC stream β€” bidirectional typed
  • Unix socket β€” local IPC
  • SSH β€” secure shell
  • QUIC β€” modern UDP transport
substrate: Protocol (L5)

πŸ” Identity

  • OAuth β€” delegated auth
  • API key β€” long-lived secret
  • mTLS β€” mutual TLS
  • DID β€” decentralized identifier
  • JWT β€” token-based
  • SSO β€” single sign-on
substrate: Address (L1)

πŸ“Š Observability

  • logs β€” structured, unstructured
  • metrics β€” counters, gauges, histograms
  • traces β€” distributed spans
  • profiles β€” CPU, memory, GPU
  • events β€” domain events
substrate: State (L7)

πŸ’° Billing

  • Stripe β€” metered, prepaid
  • GitHub Sponsors β€” sponsorship
  • Buy Me a Coffee β€” donation
  • AWS billing β€” usage
  • Cloudflare billing β€” bundle
substrate: Scale (L2)

πŸ” The Trunk Inspector

Every cell in Quilt has trunk links. The IDE shows them in the right panel. Click any cell to see its trunks.

πŸ“‘ Outgoing

What the cell calls.

  • POST /v1/chat/completions β€” OpenAI
  • POST /v1/messages β€” Anthropic
  • GET /kv/quilt:cell-7 β€” Cloudflare KV
  • WS wss://... β€” A2A

πŸ“₯ Incoming

What the cell receives.

  • POST /quilt/elephant/field β€” from elephant cell
  • POST /quilt/murmur/gossip β€” from peer
  • GET /quilt/state/dump β€” IDE poll

βš™οΈ Resources

What the cell uses.

  • compute: 0.5 CPU, 0.1 GPU
  • memory: 256 MB RAM, 80 MB VRAM
  • storage: 1 GB blob, 10 MB KV

πŸ’΅ Cost

What the cell costs.

  • compute: $0.01/hr
  • storage: $0.001/day
  • API: $0.0001/call
  • total: ~$0.50/day

🌌 Trunk Links by Substrate Layer

TrunkSubstrate layerConservation meaning
APIsProtocol (L5)Ξ³ = calls/sec, Ξ· = latency
ComputeScale (L2)Ξ³ = provisioning, Ξ· = idle
MemoryState (L7)Ξ³ = allocation, Ξ· = leak
StorageState (L7)Ξ³ = write, Ξ· = read
NetworkProtocol (L5)Ξ³ = transmit, Ξ· = drop
IdentityAddress (L1)Ξ³ = grant, Ξ· = revoke
ObservabilityState (L7)Ξ³ = emit, Ξ· = retain
BillingScale (L2)Ξ³ = spend, Ξ· = budget

πŸ”­ Try it

β†’ Open Zoom IDE β†’ Open Abstraction Levels β†’ Open Quilt IDE β†’ Open Cell Bridges

The trunk links are visible in the Quilt IDE inspector (right panel) and the Zoom IDE (right panel "Trunk Links" section). The system is fractal. The trunk is at every level.