Definition
Plain language
A standard Unix command that instantly duplicates a running program by sharing its memory until one of the copies changes something.
As stated in the literature
The Unix system call that creates a child process sharing the parent's memory pages copy-on-write; central to DeltaBox's millisecond-scale memory snapshots and to standard RL fan-out for agent training.
Also called: fork()
Why it matters: It's the foundation of cheap parallel sandboxes, which is how RL pipelines and snapshotting systems achieve fast fan-out without duplicating gigabytes.
For example, a parent process can fork into a thousand children almost instantly because they all share the same memory pages until one tries to write.
Heard on the show
“And the lifecycle: roster edits every ten tasks — fork a winner, merge near-duplicates, prune dead weight, spawn a fresh specialist for uncovered task types.”Episode 200 — The One Mechanism That Turns Twenty AI Clones Into an Actual Team