Building a Newcomen: A Practical Implementation Guide

This guide provides a complete implementation walkthrough for the Newcomen Architecture, a hybrid cognitive system combining transformer LLMs, GRU state engines, and vector memory stores for persistent conversational state. It covers environment setup, component construction (hippocampus, hypothalamus, cortex), cognitive loop integration, testing, and advanced modules including GRU training and memory consolidation. The guide supports both local GPU inference and remote API inference via Anthropic, OpenAI, or Mistral, and includes a full working codebase. Companion to: Dew, J. L. (2026). "Attention Is Not All You Need: The Newcomen Architecture for Persistent Conversational State." DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18728294