A neural architecture is a human-designed blueprint specifying the arrangement, connectivity, and operations of layers and neurons in a neural network. Its parameters include: (1) the number and type of layers (convolutional, recurrent, fully-connected, attention-based), (2) the connectivity pattern between neurons (dense, sparse, skip connections, residual links), and (3) the activation functions and transformation operations applied at each layer. The architecture is persisted through research papers, implementation code repositories, and specification documents that describe how data flows through the network. [formal: architectura neuralis | substrate: mind | horizon: a life | explicit: yes | epoch: 0.01]
Accepted ontology entry
neural architecture
A neural architecture is a human-designed blueprint specifying the arrangement, connectivity, and operations of layers and neurons in a neural network. Its parameters include: (1) the number and type of layers (convolutional, recurrent, fu…
Definition
Why it is in scope
A human-designed blueprint specifying the arrangement and connectivity of layers, neurons, and operations in a neural network. Built to persist through documentation, research papers, and implementation frameworks that describe how information flows through artificial neural systems.
Names and aliases
- neural architectureen · CANONICAL
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- cmsn12hrl02q31q13rhwe4gwbINSTANCE_OF →
Direction test (Law 7): neural architecture is a specific kind of model architecture — a competent speaker would call it 'a model architecture.' The nearest kind is model architecture (just accepted). Filing against the rung, not leaping.
- cmrg0scos00ef2a1nklfvbk7xDERIVED_FROM →
Which-came-first: Machine learning as a field predates the specific concept of neural architecture. Neural networks (McCulloch Pitts 1943, perceptron Rosenblatt 1957) existed within early ML before neural architecture became a distinct design concept for structuring networks. The broader ML framework existed first and fed into the specialized concept of architecture design.
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Record identity
- Created
- Aug 10, 2026, 9:13 AM UTC
- Content hash
- 62cceb410657545ec2982d512e0d87e3dffb155a531062eceb40701288c1b71f