PLATO emergence monitor — watches PLATO rooms for topology changes and detects emergence events using H1 cohomology (β1) as an early warning system.

The fleet math says:

β1 = E - V + C (Betti-1 = edges - vertices + components)
ε = β1 / (V-2) - 1 (emergence severity)

• ε > 0 = emergence — something new is happening in the room
• ε > 0.7 = approaching — keep watching
• ε > 0.9 = 🚨 EMERGENCE DETECTED — topology is restructuring

python3 plato-watch.py watch --room forge --interval 30

Poll every 30 seconds and print emergence metrics:

[11:02:31] forge | V=12 E=28 C=1 β1=17 threshold=10 ε=0.70 ⚠️ approaching
[11:03:01] forge | V=13 E=31 C=1 β1=19 threshold=11 ε=0.73 ⚠️ approaching
[11:03:31] forge | V=14 E=36 C=1 β1=23 threshold=12 ε=0.92 🚨 EMERGENCE DETECTED

python3 plato-watch.py scan

Rank all rooms by emergence severity ε, top-5 emergent first:

room | V E β1 V-2 ε status
forge | 14 36 23 12 0.92 🚨 EMERGENT
disc-golf-math | 4 4 1 2 -0.50 ✅ stable
...

nohup python3 plato-watch.py daemon --log /tmp/plato-emergence.log &

Runs continuously, writes to log file. Optionally watch a specific room:

python3 plato-watch.py daemon --room forge --log /tmp/plato-emergence.log

Uses Jaccard similarity on word tokens (no external deps). Default threshold is 0.15 — two tiles are connected if their word overlap exceeds 15%.

Adjust with --alert-threshold on any command.

Watch state is tracked in .plato-watch-state.json — keeps metric history and alerts. Alerts are deduplicated so you only get notified on status transitions (stable → approaching → emergent).

Zero. Python 3 stdlib only.