Symposium: Active Inference Symposium Research Tools

Python tools for presenter research profiles, participant learning plans, project proposals, text visualizations, and calendar exports for the Active Inference Symposium.

Version 2.3.0 connects 2026 organizing with approved public publication. Explore the 2026 public program, including abstracts, consenting participant profiles, downloadable source dossiers, and the working abstract book. Private organizing inputs remain outside this repository; 2024/2025 archives and the offline 2026 intake templates are preserved.

Quick start for 2026

Requires Python 3.10 or newer and uv. The development runtime is pinned to Python 3.12; installations use the committed dependency lock.

git clone https://github.com/ActiveInferenceInstitute/Symposium.git
cd Symposium
uv sync --locked --extra dev
uv run symposium --version

# The supplied 2026 scaffold is safe to initialize again.
uv run symposium edition init --year 2026
uv run symposium edition validate --year 2026

Initialization and validation run offline without API credentials. Edition initialization currently supports macOS and Linux. Default validation checks structure and reports empty inputs as warnings. Before processing real data:

uv run symposium edition validate --year 2026 --require-data

The last command deliberately exits nonzero until both eligible participants and valid presenter exports are present. Follow the 2026 organizer guide to populate the workspace, validate it, and run analysis.

data/inputs/aif_2026/
├── Public_Participant_Information.csv  # Header only until organizers add data
├── presenters/                       # One folder per new presenter
└── ...                               # Onboarding instructions and templates

outputs/2026_symposium/               # Generated locally when processing runs
├── people/
├── presenters/
├── proposals/
└── visualizations/

Interactive interface

uv run python run.py                   # Default: 2026
uv run python run.py --year 2025        # Explicit historical edition
uv run python launch.py --year 2026
./symposium.sh --year 2026

The menu offers data inspection, participant analysis, column summaries and word clouds, single-person background research and curricula, visualizations, and configuration checks. All edition-specific inputs and reports use the selected year. Importing the runner does not change the working directory or create files.

Configure paid analysis

Copy .env.example to .env and set the credentials needed for your chosen workflow. Copy config.example.json to the ignored config.json to customize models and paths.

cp .env.example .env
cp config.example.json config.json

Configuration precedence is defaults → explicitly loaded JSON → environment. The runner loads project-local config.json; the CLI accepts --config config.json before the command. Explicit CLI paths select the input and output for that command. SYMPOSIUM_YEAR selects the runner edition; its --year option overrides that value. SYMPOSIUM_DATA_DIR and SYMPOSIUM_OUTPUTS_DIR change the base storage paths.

Perplexity is used for web-assisted background research; OpenRouter supports profile analysis and curricula. Existing model defaults remain configurable; verify provider availability before a paid run. Setup and tests make no paid API calls. AI-generated research profiles and proposals require organizer review before sharing.

Command-line workflows

All existing explicit-path commands remain available. These examples process the new edition once authorized data has been added:

# Profile analysis (choose the provider explicitly).
uv run symposium --config config.json analyze participants \
  --csv-file data/inputs/aif_2026/Public_Participant_Information.csv \
  --output-dir outputs/2026_symposium/people --api-provider openrouter

# Background-only research and curriculum-only generation.
uv run symposium analyze backgrounds \
  --csv-file data/inputs/aif_2026/Public_Participant_Information.csv \
  --output-dir outputs/2026_symposium/people
uv run symposium analyze curricula \
  --csv-file data/inputs/aif_2026/Public_Participant_Information.csv \
  --output-dir outputs/2026_symposium/people --api-provider openrouter

# Presenter publications: OpenAlex topic and works CSVs, one folder per person.
uv run symposium analyze presenters \
  --data-dir data/inputs/aif_2026/presenters \
  --output-dir outputs/2026_symposium/presenters
uv run symposium generate profiles \
  --data-dir data/inputs/aif_2026/presenters \
  --output-dir outputs/2026_symposium/presenters --include-methods

# Visualizations read Markdown reports, rather than registration CSVs.
uv run symposium visualize all \
  --input-dir outputs/2026_symposium/people \
  --output-dir outputs/2026_symposium/visualizations --method pca --layout spring

generate projects accepts --profiles-dir, --output-dir, a user-supplied --domain-file, and a catechism such as KarmaGAP, EUGrants, or Synthetic. See uv run symposium generate projects --help for options.

Participant imports accept the 2025 survey questions, corresponding short labels, and canonical field names. The future-impact question supports subsequent years. Optional survey null markers are normalized to empty strings. Missing name/consent headers, duplicate fields, malformed CSV rows, duplicate eligible names, and colliding report filenames are rejected. Only explicit affirmative public sharing consent (yes, y, true, 1, ignoring case) permits inclusion.

Features and package API

• Presenter analysis from OpenAlex topic and publication exports.
• Participant profiles, background research, curricula, and column summaries.
• Profile and methods synthesis, catechism-based project proposals.
• Markdown and JSON reports; PNG visualizations of text embeddings, networks, distributions, word clouds, and PCA diagnostics.
• Calendar utilities through symposium.ScheduleExporter (ICS, JSON, CSV).
• Generic explicit-path CLI commands and year-separated organizer workflows.

from pathlib import Path
from symposium.core.edition import Edition
from symposium.core.data_loader import DataLoader

edition = Edition(year=2026)
participants = DataLoader.load_participant_data(edition.participants_csv)
print(f"{len(participants)} eligible registrations")

Development and verification

uv sync --locked --extra dev
uv run ruff check src/ tests/ run.py launch.py
uv run ruff format --check src/ tests/ run.py launch.py
uv run python -m pytest
uv build

The coverage regression gate is 80%. Tests cover historical workflows, real temporary CSV files, offline onboarding, failure cases, and generated reports. Tests requiring live providers are opt-in (uv run python -m pytest -m real_api) and require credentials.

Public Symposium program

The Symposium Pages site presents approved abstracts, consenting participant profiles, available dossiers and abstract-book downloads, and explicitly scheduled sessions. The 2026 Symposium is online and free, November 12–13 (UTC). The public build uses only the verified data/public/2026 snapshot; it requires no organizer credentials or paid AI service. See the publication and organizer guide for source mapping, approval checks, native abstract-book production, and deployment boundaries.

Documentation

• 2026 organizer guide: inputs, schema, readiness, analysis, review.
• Documentation index: user, API, architecture, and development guides.
• Data guide: historical and current data organization.
• Changelog, citation, license.
• Contributing, issues.

Citation

@software{symposium2026,
  title = {Symposium: Research Analysis Tools for Active Inference Symposium},
  author = {Active Inference Institute},
  version = {2.3.0},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://github.com/ActiveInferenceInstitute/Symposium}
}

Maintained by the Active Inference Institute.