Divergence/convergence cycle
Healthy work over the substrate cycles. Divergence opens the space — exploration, widening diversity; convergence closes it around something usable. The cycle repeats at every scale, and reading where a population sits in it is the point of watching coordination phase.
The cycle
No single phase is a failure. What counts as healthy is role-relative: a brainstorming agent should spend most of its time in exploration, a verification agent in stabilization. There is no universal healthy profile, only a match or mismatch between the substrate’s phase and the role and stakes of the task.
Failure modes
The pathologies are cycle failures. Premature convergence collapses into lock-in before exploration has done its job: the more context settles around a region, the deeper its pull, until new material cannot compete — a belief attractor. Failure to converge is drift: couplings decay without consolidation, activity without accumulation.