The Architecture of Traces
Coined by Pierre-Paul Grassé in 1959 to describe termite nest construction, stigmergy (from Greek stigma "mark" + ergon "work") is the principle that explains how "dumb" agents build smart structures. An individual termite doesn't have a blueprint for the cathedral-like nest. Instead, it drops a pheromone "brick." That brick changes the environment. The next termite smells the brick and is biologically compelled to place its brick nearby.
In the Myceloom architecture, stigmergy is the alternative to centralized orchestration. Instead of a master server telling every node what to do, nodes react to the "digital pheromones"—traffic load, error rates, resource availability—left by others.
Scalability Without Bureaucracy
The power of stigmergy is that it scales infinitely. Centralized control systems eventually choke on their own complexity; the "manager" cannot process the inputs fast enough. Stigmergic systems get smarter as they get larger, because every new agent adds both work capacity and sensing data to the environment.
This is the foundation of Adaptive Topology. The network heals and routes not because a central brain commands it, but because the local environment "requests" it.