Calculated, not vibes —
here’s the actual machinery

Every ioreum reading is two very different jobs, done by two very different systems. A deterministic engine computes every number. An AI writes only the prose — and it is structurally unable to change a single digit. This page shows how that works, with a worked example you can check against any almanac.

1. The engine computes everything

The calculation layer is pure, deterministic code — no AI, no network, no randomness. Same birth data in, same numbers out, every time. It computes your four pillars, five-element balance (both main-qi counts and hidden-stem weighted distribution), Day Master strength and season, the elements your chart calls for, relationship interactions between charts, decade and annual luck cycles, and the 0–100 compatibility score with its named components.

The three boundary problems that quietly break most calculators are handled explicitly: solar-term boundaries to the minute (the saju year and month follow the sun, not the wall calendar), a stated convention for the 23:00 zi hour, and true solar time correction from your birthplace’s longitude — the astronomy that can shift an hour pillar for anyone born far from their time zone’s meridian.

The whole layer is locked by automated golden tests — fixed birth inputs with known correct charts, covering solar-term edges, zi-hour boundaries and leap months. If a code change breaks any known-correct chart, the release fails. Current ruleset: ioreum-2026.07 · engine 0.2.0.

2. The AI writes prose — nothing else

After the engine finishes, its output — the pillars, the balance, the scores — is handed to a language model with one job: explain these fixed numbers warmly, in plain English. The AI never calculates, and the pipeline never accepts a number from it. If a draft violates our content rules, the offending section is deleted outright rather than patched. If generation fails, your credit is restored automatically.

This is why an ioreum reading can be kind without being flattering: the flattering version and the honest version would still have to show the same chart.

3. A worked example

Birth: March 31, 1996, 2:30 pm, New York (solar calendar). The engine applies New York’s longitude for true solar time, then counts the cycles:

Five-element balance (main-qi count across the eight characters): Wood 木 2 · Fire 火 3 · Earth 土 1 · Metal 金 1 · Water 水 1. The Day Master is 丁 — Yin Fire, warm candlelight — born in spring and counted as strong in this chart, so the engine flags Earth and Metal as the elements this chart most wants fed. Every one of those statements is a deterministic output; the reading’s job is only to say what they mean.

Check it yourself: the four pillars above are calendar facts. Any rigorous almanac — or any calculator that honors the boundaries — must produce the same eight characters for that birth moment.

4. What we don’t publish, and what we don’t claim

We publish the architecture, the boundary conventions and the verification method. We don’t publish the fine-grained scoring weights and rule tables — that’s the part of the engine years of reading tradition went into, and it stays ours. And a claim we refuse to make: no chart decides your life. Readings are for entertainment and reference; the numbers are exact, and their meaning is a tradition, not a verdict.