Safety-typed AI — ActionProposal from LLMs and vision cannot drive actuators; only
SafeAction from safety.validate() can. Enforced at compile time and runtime.
Hardware verification — deploy Robot to Profile and spanda verify check sensors, memory,
timing, power, and network before deployment.
Capability verification — Expose, grant, and trace robot capabilities; verify the system can perform the mission, not just compile.
Simulation + replay — spanda sim before hardware exists; spanda replay for regression and
incident review.
Health-aware runtime — health_check, fleet require clauses, and policies during operation.
Package-based extensibility — Lean core; official packages (ROS2, MQTT, GPS, vision, fleet, mission assurance, mission continuity) via the provider registry.
| Differentiator | What it means |
|---|---|
| AI safety gate | ActionProposal cannot drive actuators; only SafeAction from safety.validate() |
| Hardware verification | deploy + spanda verify — sensors, memory, timing, power |
| Physical units | 1.0 m/s, 0.5 rad, 100 ms — unit algebra at compile time |
| Robot-native syntax | Sensors, actuators, topics, safety zones, tasks as keywords |
| Deterministic scheduling | task every 50ms with optional budget { } |
| Real-time contracts | deadline, jitter <=, priority, critical isolated; pipeline budgets |
| Reliability primitives | Watchdogs, mode blocks, recover from, retry/fallback |
| Mission trace replay | --record, spanda replay --deterministic / --playback |
| First-class regex | Literals, triggers, subscription filters, validate rules |
| Trigger-driven execution | on / every / when / while for events, safety, AI |
| Cooperative concurrency | spawn, join, parallel, channels, select |
| Simulation built in | spanda run / spanda sim without hardware |
| Digital twins | twin { mirror …; replay true; } |
| Platform packages | 38 hosted packages; spanda install, provider dispatch |
| Mission assurance | knowledge_model, state_estimator, anomaly_detector, …; spanda demo assurance |
| Mission continuity | continuity_policy, takeover/delegation/succession; spanda continuity, spanda demo continuity |
| Weighted sensor fusion | observe { }, state_estimator, fusion.read(); spanda-fusion package |
| Learned anomaly detection | learned backend assurance.anomaly; optional ONNX |
| World models | world_model { } + fusion.read() belief hook |
| Verification & DX | Traceability, kill switch, health policies, typed handler I/O |
| Live providers (optional) | OpenAI, Anthropic, ONNX; IoT live bridges; mock fallback |
| Package registry | Ed25519-signed tarballs; SPANDA_REGISTRY_URL override |
Honest status tiers: feature-status.md · Lean-core phases: lean-core-roadmap.md