The Light Box Engine

The existing Python astrological ecosystem, including Kerykeion, Immanuel, and others, is built on top of Swiss Ephemeris, a C library from 1997 licensed under the AGPL. These wrappers inherit both the licensing constraints and the architectural opacity of their foundation. They give you the answer, but not the derivation.

Moira was built from a different premise. The question was not "how do we wrap Swiss Ephemeris?" but "what would a modern astronomical computation library look like if it were designed today, with access to JPL DE441, Gaia DR3, IAU 2006 precession, and a physical model of Earth's rotation?"

The answer is a library where the full reduction pipeline, from raw SPK kernel bytes to apparent ecliptic longitude, is documented at every stage, validated against independent physical oracles, and inspectable in Python. A versioned Mars-at-J2000 evidence receipt publishes the measured JPL Horizons residual and its raw trace without presenting that historical run as current deployment truth. The ΔT model reports its own uncertainty.

"Transparency is the Primary Metric of Accuracy."

This is the Light Box Doctrine: the philosophical and technical commitment that governs every design decision in Moira. A black box that gives the right answer is less valuable than a transparent system that shows you why.