The Gate of Maat

Formal Methods Laboratory

This repository contains all files used for the development of a Formal Methods laboratory exercise within the Computer Science degree program at the University of Bari “Aldo Moro”.

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Table of Contents

1. Description
2. Installation
3. Running the Project
4. Notes
5. License and Author

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Description

The Gate of Maat is a Finite State Machine (FSM) integrated with a Large Language Model (LLM) simulating a mythological entity — the Sphinx — whose purpose is to test the user’s worthiness through an interactive dialogue.

During the conversation, the user faces a sequence of conceptual trials designed to evaluate logic, intuition, and humility.
Each response contributes to an internal score; at the end of the dialogue, the Sphinx determines whether the user is worthy to cross the gate or should be rejected.

From a technical perspective, the project demonstrates the integration of:

• Formal Methods and FSMs, to model deterministic transitions and behaviors.
• Large Language Models (LLMs), to dynamically generate dialogue and evaluate user's responses.

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Installation

1. Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/Manuel-Cplusplus/The_Gate_of_Maat.git

2. Move into the project folder:

cd The_Gate_of_Maat

3. Copy the environment file:

cp .env.example .env

4. Inside the .env file, insert your valid OpenAI API key to enable language model access.

5. Create a virtual environment

• Windows:

python -m venv myenv

• Linux/MacOS:

python3 -m venv venv

6. Activate the virtual environment

• Windows:

myenv\Scripts\activate

• Linux/MacOS:

source venv/bin/activate

7. Install dependencies:

pip install -r requirements.txt

If required, also install the custom FSM package:

pip install fsm-llm

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Running the Project

To start the simulation:

python src/TheGateOfMaat.py

Once launched, the system initiates an interactive session with the Sphinx. The user must respond to each trial, and the final outcome — Grace or Condemnation — will be revealed based on the accumulated score.

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Note

If you add new dependencies, update the requirements.txt file:

pip freeze > requirements.txt

In case of errors, you could try to install the the custom FSM package:

pip install fsm-llm

Custom FSM package reference

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License and Author

Author: Manuel Carlucci
Year: 2025
Project: The Gate of Maat

This project is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license.

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You are free to:

• Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
• Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material

Under the following terms:

• You must give appropriate credit
• You may not use the material for commercial purposes
• Any derivative works must be distributed under the same license

View the full license here