Holon & Holarchy
A unit that is simultaneously a whole at one scale and part of a larger whole.
A holon is something that can operate as a whole while also belonging inside another whole. A holarchy is a recursive structure of those units.
A team can be one thing when you look at the company, but inside the team there are smaller teams and people. Each level is real depending on how closely you look.
Holons let Primitive reuse one coordination model across scale. A task team, orchestrator cluster or local worker can each be treated as a bounded unit with local structure and a parent relationship. Product nouns such as Space, Project, Task or Agent stay meaningful; holon is the generic systems term underneath recursive governance.
Where this concept shows up
Control representation
The HOLARCHY programme defines each orchestrator/worker holon with scale, domain, charter, parent, zero to three children and a lease.
Not a simple hierarchy
A holon retains local structure and some local autonomy while participating in a larger structure. It is not merely a row under a parent in a tree.
Scale relativity
The same object can be a whole at one resolution and a component at another. This allows orchestration patterns to recurse without assuming one universal level is the 'real' one.
Source lineage
Concept pages preserve whether an idea is canonical, proposed or working theory. That label is independent from whether a related product feature is implemented.