Historical simulation
Time, causality, imperfect knowledge, and events that remember why they happened.
Historical simulation kernel · Rust · v0.4
Simulate history.
Render it your way.
Canwu is a thin, deterministic engine for worlds shaped by time, cause, consequence, and incomplete knowledge—from antiquity to the late twentieth century, without forcing a renderer or editor on top.
- Core
- Headless Rust
- World model
- Actor-relative
- Execution
- Deterministic
TIME
EVENT
KNOWLEDGE
COMMAND
SIMULATION
WITHOUT
THE STAGE
Why Canwu
A world engine with nothing to hide behind.
Headless by choice
Keep Canwu at the center. Plug in the renderer, interface, or research client you prefer.
Fast by design
A compact Rust core spends its budget on simulation—not a mandatory editor or render loop.
Agent-native
Agents discover legal actions, observe actor-relative knowledge, act, and explain through one semantic contract.
Thin by architecture
Your renderer is a lens.
Canwu is the world beneath it.
Connect a game engine, a web map, a command-line study, or a custom data interface through the public API. The simulation stays portable because no presentation layer receives privileged access to mutable state.
Read the architecture ↗Game engineWeb clientResearch toolAI agent
Your adapter
CANWU PUBLIC APIcommands · queries · events · snapshots
HISTORICAL SIMULATION COREtime · causality · knowledge · plugins · replay
No renderer is privileged. Every client remains replaceable.
Region- and period-agnostic
One kernel.
Many centuries.
Canwu’s core is not tied to one dynasty, continent, or campaign. Domain plugins supply the rules and records for the societies you want to model.
- 01AntiquityPolities, exchange, migration
- 02Medieval worldsCourts, faith, land, tribute
- 03Early modernStates, trade, empires
- 04Industrial ageProduction, logistics, mass politics
- 0520th centuryInstitutions, media, global systems
Agent-native
Teach the interface once.
Let every world speak it.
Agents should not need a new editor ritual for every simulation. Canwu exposes a stable semantic loop: discover capabilities, observe from an actor’s perspective, inspect details, choose legal actions, act, wait, and explain consequences.
- Actor-relative observations instead of leaked omniscience
- Machine-readable action schemas and validation
- Causal event explanations and compact progressive disclosure
CANWU / SEMANTIC API
> describe_capabilities()
interfaces observe · inspect · query
available_actions · act · explain
> observe(actor="envoy.17")
time 1898-09-21
knowledge partial · confidence 740‰
source_age 3 days
> available_actions()
01 request_audience
02 verify_report
03 dispatch_message
> explain(event="dispatch.204")
Because: verified report changed threat estimate.Application atlas
See every use case →Build the view your history deserves.
01↗02↗03↗04↗
Grand strategy
Nations, courts, armies, economies, and information moving at different speeds.
Historical research
Repeatable scenarios, counterfactual forks, causal records, and inspectable evidence.
Agent worlds
Multi-agent environments where each actor sees only what they could plausibly know.
Learning & museums
Interactive histories presented through maps, timelines, archives, or spatial experiences.
Current foundation
Evidence, not magic.
Canwu is an active v0.4 development engine. Its public architecture already centers repeatable time, validated commands, actor knowledge, causal events, snapshots, forks, diffs, replay, and deterministic plugin boundaries.
ordered simulation phases in the authoritative boundary
supported development platforms: Windows, macOS, Linux
possible presentation layers outside the headless core
Source available
Start without royalties.
Scale on progressive terms.
Personal, community, research, educational, nonprofit, and commercial use is royalty-free while a product family remains at or below US $10 million in its applicable 12-month revenue period. The license text is authoritative.
Read the Canwu License 1.0 ↗参伍 · CANWU