Locy Language Guide¶

Rule Definition¶

CREATE RULE rule_name [PRIORITY n] AS
MATCH ...
[WHERE ...]              -- pre-aggregation filter
[ALONG ...]
[FOLD ...]
[WHERE ...]              -- post-FOLD filter (HAVING semantics)
[BEST BY ...]
YIELD ...

The first WHERE filters rows before aggregation. The second WHERE (after FOLD) filters aggregated groups — e.g., WHERE count >= 3.

Rule References¶

Unary¶

WHERE n IS suspicious
WHERE n IS NOT suspicious

Binary/Tuple¶

WHERE a IS reachable TO b
WHERE (x, y, c) IS control

Expression Functions in Rules¶

Cypher expression functions work inside WHERE, ALONG, FOLD, BEST BY, and YIELD. The similar_to() function is particularly useful for semantic scoring in rules:

-- Filter by semantic similarity in WHERE
CREATE RULE relevant_docs AS
MATCH (q:Query)-[:ABOUT]->(topic:Topic)<-[:TAGGED]-(d:Document)
WHERE similar_to(d.embedding, q.text) > 0.7
YIELD KEY q, KEY d, similar_to(d.embedding, q.text) AS score

-- Use as PROB value for probabilistic derivation
CREATE RULE related AS
MATCH (a:Paper)-[:CITES]->(b:Paper)
YIELD KEY a, KEY b, similar_to(b.embedding, a.embedding) AS PROB

similar_to() supports metric-aware vector scoring (Cosine, L2, Dot Product), FTS scoring, and multi-source hybrid fusion. See the Vector Search guide for full documentation.

PROB can be written as expr AS PROB, expr AS alias PROB, or expr PROB. At most one output column per rule can be marked this way.

Probabilistic Aggregation with MNOR and MPROD¶

-- Noisy-OR: probability that at least one cause fires
CREATE RULE failure_risk AS
MATCH (c:Component)-[:HAS_SIGNAL]->(s:QualitySignal)
FOLD risk = MNOR(1.0 - s.pass_rate)
YIELD KEY c, risk

-- Product: joint probability that all conditions hold
CREATE RULE vendor_reliability AS
MATCH (v:Vendor)-[:SUPPLIES]->(c:Component)
WHERE c IS failure_risk
FOLD reliability = MPROD(1.0 - failure_risk.risk)
YIELD KEY v, reliability

See Probabilistic Logic for full documentation of MNOR and MPROD.

Rule vs command expressions

In rule bodies (WHERE, YIELD, ALONG, FOLD), similar_to() runs inside DataFusion with full capability — metric-aware vector scoring, auto-embedding, FTS, and multi-source fusion. In command WHERE clauses (DERIVE ... WHERE, ABDUCE ... WHERE), only basic vector similarity (cosine) is available because commands execute on materialized rows after strata converge without schema context.

Goal Query¶

QUERY reachable WHERE a.name = 'Alice' RETURN b

DERIVE in Rules (Graph Mutation)¶

Rules can use DERIVE instead of YIELD to directly write graph mutations:

-- Infer a new edge from rule output
CREATE RULE infer_risk AS
MATCH (a:Account)-[:TRANSFER]->(b:Account)
WHERE a IS flagged
DERIVE (b)-[:RISK_FROM]->(a)

-- Add a label to derived nodes
CREATE RULE flag_accounts AS
MATCH (a:Account)
WHERE a.fraud_score > 0.8
DERIVE (a:FlaggedAccount)

DERIVE rules run in Phase 2 (command dispatch) on converged derived facts. Use YIELD when you want to produce queryable derived facts; use DERIVE when you want to write mutations back to the graph.

Derivation Commands¶

DERIVE reachable WHERE a.name = 'Alice'

Hypothetical Reasoning¶

ASSUME {
  CREATE (:Node {name: 'Temp'})
} THEN {
  QUERY reachable RETURN b
}

Abductive Reasoning¶

ABDUCE NOT reachable WHERE a.name = 'Alice' RETURN b

Explainability¶

EXPLAIN RULE reachable WHERE a.name = 'Alice'

Modules¶

MODULE acme.security
USE acme.common

For advanced semantics of ALONG, FOLD, BEST BY, and mutation reasoning, continue to the advanced pages.