Lens

Many pairs of glasses, each seeing one aspect

A lens is one fixed way of seeing an input — one embedder. Like a pair of glasses tuned to a single aspect (topic, tone, structure, code-vs-prose), a lens turns an input into a vector that captures its perspective and only its perspective.

The power isn’t in any one lens; it’s in keeping many of them and never blending their views. That is what lets Calyx represent the shape of meaning across perspectives instead of one averaged-out blob.

Frozen and content-addressed: a reproducible contract

A lens is frozen. Once registered it never silently changes, so the same input run through the same lens always yields the same vector. Because it’s content-addressed, it carries a stable identity — a LensId — derived from exactly what the lens is. That makes a lens a contract: a result measured today can be reproduced and verified later, which is the bedrock the Ledger and grounding discipline stand on.

A lens produces a typed slot for an input; a set of lenses chosen for a vault is a panel; and an input seen through all of them at once is a constellation.