Beam search

This wiki entry defines a term used across VSAVM and explains why it matters in the architecture.

The diagram has a transparent background and highlights the operational meaning of the term inside VSAVM.

Related wiki pages: VM, event stream, VSA, bounded closure, consistency contract.

Definition

Beam search keeps only a fixed number of best candidates at each step, providing a practical compromise between exhaustive search and greedy choice.

Role in VSAVM

VSAVM uses beam-like strategies for query compilation and for closure exploration. Beams make ambiguity explicit and allow the system to prune candidates that conflict under closure.

Mechanics and implications

Beam width impacts the strength of conclusions. A narrow beam can miss conflicting branches; a wider beam improves coverage but increases cost. VSAVM ties robustness to the budget and can downgrade to conditional outputs when coverage is limited.

Further reading

Beam search is widely used in sequence decoding and heuristic search. In VSAVM, beam scoring incorporates both predictive fit and consistency penalties.

References

Beam search (Wikipedia) Heuristic (Wikipedia) Best-first search (Wikipedia)