Active Inference Institute — Organizational Website

The Active Inference Institute is a volunteer-led 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to improving the accessibility, rigor, and applicability of the Free Energy Principle and Active Inference through open-science principles. Founded in 2021 and co-founded by Daniel Friedman, the Institute supports a global community of researchers, students, engineers, and enthusiasts across education, research, and tool development.

This repository contains the Institute's public-facing organizational website, built as a static GitHub Pages site with no build step or bundler. The standalone simulations are self-contained HTML files; most load Google Fonts for typography.

---

About Active Inference

Active Inference is a unified framework for modelling perception, cognition, and action in biological and artificial systems. Building on Karl Friston's Free Energy Principle — the idea that adaptive systems minimize surprise (or "free energy") through predictive processing and action — Active Inference provides a principled, interpretable approach to understanding intelligent behaviour at all scales.

---

Key Resources

Resource	Link
Website	activeinference.org
YouTube	youtube.com/c/ActiveInference
Discord	discord.com/invite/FSUvYD2p9S
GitHub	github.com/ActiveInferenceInstitute
Symposium	symposium.activeinference.institute
Email	blanket@activeinference.institute

Textbooks

• Active Inference: The Free Energy Principle in Mind, Brain, and Behavior — Thomas Parr, Giovanni Pezzulo & Karl Friston (MIT Press, 2022). The foundational textbook; the Institute hosts ongoing Textbook Group cohorts (now in Cohort 7).
• Fundamentals of Active Inference: Principles, Algorithms, and Applications of the Free Energy Principle for Engineers — Sanjeev V. Namjoshi (MIT Press, 2025 · ISBN 9780262050951). An engineering-focused companion developed in collaboration with the Institute since 2023, endorsed by Karl Friston. The 12 interactive simulations in this repository accompany this textbook.

Applied Active Inference Symposium Series

Year	Edition	Theme	Link
2021	1st	—	Zenodo Record
2022	2nd	Robotics	Coda Page
2023	3rd	Enacting Ecosystems of Shared Intelligence	Coda Page
2024	4th	—	Program
2025	5th	Industry	Program

---

Directory Structure & Architecture

This repository uses a modular folder structure to enforce clean boundaries between core site pages and standalone applications.

aii-org/
├── index.html                      ← Home page (entry point)
├── site.css                        ← Shared design tokens
├── site-components.js              ← Shared navigation, header, footer logic
├── pages/                          ← Core static site pages
│   ├── history.html                ← History timeline
│   ├── vision-mission.html         ← Strategy & Goals
│   ├── bod.html                    ← Board of Directors
│   ├── sab.html                    ← Scientific Advisory Board
│   ├── simulations.html            ← Catalog index of demos
│   ├── research.html               ← Past, current & future projects
│   ├── education.html              ← Courses, textbook groups, internships
│   └── tools.html                  ← RxInfer.jl & open-source code
├── simulations/                    ← 12 standalone Canvas interactive demos
│   ├── Ink.html                    ← 100% independent HTML/JS applications
│   ├── Apple-Frog.html
│   ├── fep_surprise.html
│   ├── ...                           ← 12 catalogued demos plus experimental files
├── assets/                         ← Static payload (images, PDF)
│   ├── bod/                        ← BOD headshots
│   └── sab/                        ← SAB headshots
├── README.md                       ← This file
└── AGENTS.md                       ← Agentic context & conventions

Technical Notes

• No build system or bundler. Pure HTML, CSS, and vanilla JavaScript.
• No external dependencies. No CDN, npm, or JS libraries.
• site.css → Design tokens, typography, header/footer styles.
• site-components.js → Injects navigation, canvas logos, mega-menu; handles UK spelling localisation dynamically across depths (basePath).
• All simulations/ are standalone webapps — inline styles and logic, rendering via the Canvas API with zero shared dependencies.

---

Interactive Simulations

12 companion demos for the foundational textbooks, covering concepts from Bayesian inference to hierarchical Markov blankets. Each is a self-contained HTML file with no dependencies. See simulations/README.md for a complete conceptual breakdown by difficulty level.

Documentation

This repository keeps documentation close to the files it describes:

• pages/README.md — core site pages and shared-component requirements.
• simulations/README.md — public simulation catalogue and experimental files.
• assets/README.md — site media, documents, and asset subdirectories.
• assets/bod/README.md — Board of Directors headshots.
• assets/sab/README.md — Scientific Advisory Board headshots.
• AGENTS.md and directory-level AGENTS.md files — repository conventions for maintainers and automated agents.
• CONTRIBUTING.md — contribution, local preview, and pull-request guidance.
• TO-DO.md — the current documentation review record and open work.

---

See CONTRIBUTING.md for the complete contribution and local-development guide.

---

License

This repository is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (CC BY 4.0). See LICENSE for the legal terms.