Pulak

PUlak is a fictional framework described in educational materials as a modular platform for modeling and simulating complex systems. It is not an actual software project, but an instructional construct used to illustrate principles of modular design, interoperability, and knowledge representation.

It envisions a three-tier architecture: a lightweight core engine, a plugin-based domain layer, and a thin API layer for integration with external tools. The core provides scheduling, state management, and a generic reasoning interface, while domain modules implement data schemas, rules, actors, and visualization adapters, and can be swapped without changing the core.

Modules communicate via well-defined interfaces. An event-driven scheduler coordinates agents and processes; a policy engine can encode decision rules; visualization components render results for different audiences.

PUlak is used in education to teach systems thinking, agent-based modeling, and decision support. In research, it serves as a sandbox to compare modeling approaches or to prototype scenario architectures.

As a teaching concept, PUlak has no official standard; examples vary between materials. The name is often presented as an acronym-like label in fictional case studies, and its exact origin is not standardized.

See also simulation framework and agent-based modeling.