CELN: A CPU-only deterministic reasoning engine using Vector Symbolic Architectures

Flavio Venturini — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 18:01:28 +0000

I wanted to share a project I've been working on: CELN (C. Elegans Learning Network). It's a logical reasoning engine that uses Vector Symbolic Architectures (VSA) instead of neural networks.

I originally built this because I wanted to explore whether formal logical reasoning could be implemented entirely with deterministic vector algebra, rather than learned statistical models.

How it works (briefly):

Concepts are encoded as 10,000-dimensional vectors
A non-commutative binding operator (Projective Resonance) composes and decomposes logical statements
The binding algebra produces a query-key similarity computation mathematically similar to Q·K^T attention, although without learned parameters
Deduction happens through deterministic linear algebra, not probability

I evaluated CELN on the ProofWriter benchmark, which tests logical reasoning across three classes: True, False, and Unknown.

Results (Ryzen 2600):

ProofWriter: 500/500 (100%)
Stress test (5,000 examples): still 100%
Latency: ~34.7ms per query
RAM: 493MB peak

The "Unknown" class is interesting because CELN returns "no proof possible" whenever no derivation exists — the algebra simply doesn't resolve.

Limitations: CELN is a logic core, not a chatbot. It doesn't generate text fluently yet. Rules are currently hand-crafted; automatic extraction from natural language is the next step.

Background: I designed the architecture and math. The Python implementation was done with the help of AI assistants — I treated them as a compiler for the mathematical blueprint, reviewing and debugging every iteration.

I'm 15, from Brazil. No research lab, no GPU cluster, no advisor. Built this on a home PC.

Try it (no heavy downloads):
git clone https://github.com/Ravi4649/celn && cd celn && python examples/step_by_step_en.py

GitHub: https://github.com/Ravi4649/celn
Paper (DOI): https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20836283

I'm especially interested in where people think this approach will fail. Happy to answer questions.

DEV Community: Flavio Venturini

CELN: A CPU-only deterministic reasoning engine using Vector Symbolic Architectures