I have kind of a crummy mind's eye, so my mind spontaneously produces vague "fantasy mechanisms" that seem to float in a void and interact with one another in some way that is analogous to the program, but there's no coherent metaphor and I don't think these visualizations actually hold any useful information or help in any way.

So at least for me: no, definitely no schema in mind. If you're missing out on that, so am I! Affect is weird.