Circuits: building complete working processes from DataChips
A Circuit is a connected group of working capabilities. A simple way to picture it is an assembly line. One station receives a measurement. The next cleans or checks it. A third makes a decision. A fourth records the result. Each station has a specific job, but the complete line accomplishes more than any station alone.
In a digital Circuit, the connections are not physical wires. They are explicitly declared routes between inputs and outputs. A DataChip's output must be suitable for the next component's input. When the units or expected formats differ, the system must use an approved conversion rather than silently feeding incompatible data to the next step. Circuits can include ordinary algorithms, AI Chips, access controls, logging operations and permitted remote services.
Consider a wildfire-planning research Circuit using publicly available or otherwise authorized inputs. The first DataChip interprets weather measurements. A second calculates a terrain condition. A third compares route constraints. A fourth labels uncertainty. A final reporting component assembles the result for a qualified human planner. The complete Circuit is more powerful than any one function, but the decision remains a planning aid rather than an autonomous command to emergency workers.
Why the original source of each part still matters
A Circuit should not hide what it depends on. The use of one component may be allowed for internal research but forbidden for public redistribution. Another may require additional testing in a safety-critical setting. A third may be owned by an unrelated university. Joining them does not erase their legal or safety requirements. The assembled Circuit carries the relevant lineage and effective restrictions of its parts.
The execution engine
The CircuitRuntime, part of BTG's Recursive Fabric work, is the software that actually executes the connected operations. It knows which operation comes first, how outputs are passed along, which errors stop the process, how resource limits are enforced by supporting systems and what evidence is recorded. A Circuit specification is the wiring plan; the runtime is the machine doing the work.
That difference is visible in BTG's engineering evidence. Early work ran a digest-processing Circuit connected to NIKI's research records. Later local engineering connected the actual NIKI-generated WebAssembly sensor algorithm as a typed operation within a two-node Circuit, followed by a SHA-256 digest operation. The recorded output matched the fixed oracle across all 65,536 inputs. These are different stages of engineering, and the later result is more directly relevant to executable composition.