State machine

StateMachine

A StateMachine models reactive, event-driven execution behavior through transitions between control states and the optional composition of nested state machines.

A state machine consists of one or more states connected by transitions. At any given time, exactly one state within the state machine is active, while all other states remain inactive. State transitions are triggered by events, guard conditions, or internal execution semantics defined by the model.

In addition to atomic states, a state machine may contain nested state machines. Nested state machines execute concurrently with their parent and enable hierarchical decomposition of coordination logic. This allows complex distributed behavior to be expressed as compositions of smaller autonomous reactive components.

A state machine may also declare transient data local to its execution context.

new StateMachine {
  states {
    ["name"] = new State { ... }
    ...
  }
  stateMachines {
    ["name"] = new StateMachine { ... }
    ...
  }
  transient = new Context { ... }
}

Properties

Property	Type	Multiplicity	Description
states	Map<String, State>	Required	A non-empty map of atomic states composing the state machine.
stateMachines	Map<String, StateMachine>	Optional	A map of nested state machines executed concurrently with the parent state machine.
transient	Context	Optional	Declares transient data local to the state machine and its descendants.

Name

The name of a state machine is defined by its key within the enclosing stateMachines declaration.

State machine names may be used for diagnostics, instance identification, event targeting, or runtime introspection.

Name Validity

Name validity and naming constraints are implementation-specific.

states

The states property defines the collection of atomic states belonging to the state machine.

Atomic states are declared using the State construct and define the executable coordination behavior of the machine.

Constraint: Minimum Cardinality

A state machine must declare at least one state.

Constraint: Unique State Names

State names must be unique within the enclosing state machine.

Constraint: Single Initial State

Exactly one initial state must be declared.

Constraint: Initial State Reachability

Initial states must not declare inward transitions.

Constraint: Terminal State Finality

Terminal states must not declare outward transitions.

Constraint: Reachability

Every state must be reachable either directly or transitively from the initial state.

stateMachines

The stateMachines property defines nested state machines executed concurrently with the parent state machine.

Nested state machines are declared using the StateMachine construct itself, enabling hierarchical and concurrent composition of reactive behavior.

Nested state machines begin execution together with their parent and participate in the same hierarchical execution structure and scoping model.

transient

The transient property declares lexically scoped transient data local to the state machine.

Transient data is accessible from the declaring state machine and all hierarchically nested components beneath it, according to the CSM scoping rules described in the Data Model.