Plancus

Plancus is a fictional term used to illustrate a planning framework in an encyclopedia-style entry. In this article, Plancus refers to a hypothetical open-source library designed to support automated task planning and plan execution in artificial intelligence systems.

Origin and etymology

The name Plancus combines “plan” with the Latin suffix -us, intended to evoke a formal approach to planning. In the fictional narrative, the project is presented as an early- to mid-2010s effort that matured through the 2020s, with a goal of providing reusable planning components.

Overview

Plancus offers abstractions for tasks, plans, resources, and execution state. It includes a planner core, a plan executor, and adapters for agents and environments. The system is described as supporting a lightweight domain language and a set of standard interfaces for interacting with planners, environments, and sensors.

Architecture

Core components are the Planner, the Plan, the Executor, and a Resource Manager. The library is said to support multiple planning paradigms, including classical planning and hierarchical task networks (HTN). A small domain language (Plancus DSL) and connectors for languages such as Python and C++ are described to facilitate integration with existing software stacks.

History and use

In the fictional account, researchers at the Institute of Computational Planning introduced Plancus in 2019, with a first public release in 2020. It has been used in simulated robotics labs and logistics education within the narrative. Critics in the fiction note that the project remains a prototype with an evolving ecosystem.

See also

Automated planning, Planning domain definition language, HTN planning, PDDL, Task planning.