Robert Allan JamesandClaude Sonnet 5
704573bdfc
No code changed. This is a closure annotation on an existing open item where it lives (FABRIC-2.md, marked archival by CLAUDE.md, but §I's punch list landed there after the FABRIC series rename and genuinely still lives there) -- not new design content in an archival doc. Used QMP send-key to inject a real keypress into a running headless QEMU guest -- no physical keyboard needed, overturning this item's own "no way to observe the live QEMU GTK window from this environment" assumption. A first pass (amd64 + aarch64, real first keypress after a fresh boot, pre/post log captures) actually reproduced the defect but misread it as clean: both logs showed the echoed key on a bare new "[Hera]" line instead of appended to the still-visible "(zuse) ok> " line, which looks like normal REPL output unless you know the prompt should still be there. QMP screendump on aarch64 confirmed it visually. Root cause traced to two specific interacting lines, not guessed: console_ensure_line_start() (hal/console.c:312) emits its newline via the tx-count-exempt console_putc_inner(), by design, so idle chatter doesn't spam the REPL's prompt reanchor. But sk_repl_idle() (repl.c:178) calls it unconditionally on every ~1s idle beat, including at a bare prompt with nothing typed (n==0, repl.c:610) -- forcing a real but tx-count-invisible newline that the reanchor check (repl.c:633) never notices, so the prompt is never reprinted. The next real keystroke echoes onto the now-blank line with a lazily-emitted "[VMName] " prefix, indistinguishable from Enter having already been pressed. Not a first-keypress race -- it fires on any ~1s+ human pause at a bare prompt, i.e. nearly always, matching "consistent and reproducible." repl.c's own comment at lines 598-609 already half-diagnosed this exact failure mode and gates it for n>0 (mid-edit); the gap is the identical n==0 case (bare prompt) was treated as harmless. Likely fix location noted, not designed here. Verified reproducible on both amd64 (i8042) and aarch64 (virtio-input) input paths; riscv64 shares aarch64's virtio-input code path. Evidence: three fresh boot logs plus before/after screendump PNGs (evidence/aarch64/qemu-screenshot-20260905-013835-i9-*.png). No 3-arch acceptance boot run for this commit -- no code changed, and these logs/screenshots are themselves the evidentiary artifact, not a generic regression check. Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com> Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_019YcT3H2PQeyujrzjqS3Var
LithosAnanke v2.0.1
UEFI-bootable FORTH microkernel. Boots from firmware, initialises memory and interrupts, then runs the StarForth VM as its sole userspace runtime. No libc. No OS. Just stone and necessity.
Lithos (foundation) + Ananke (necessity) — the kernel under StarshipOS.
Status — M7.1 (Capsule System · Multi-VM Fleet)
| Milestone | Status | |
|---|---|---|
| M0–M6 | UEFI boot · PMM · VMM · IDT · APIC · heap · framebuffer VT100 console (v1.5.1-FINAL) | ✅ Complete |
| M7 | StarForth VM integration + parity validation | ✅ Complete |
| M7.1 | Capsule birth protocol · Mama FORTH vocabulary · Tripod multi-VM fleet (Hermes/Artemis) · Word-level ACL (Phases 1–7) | 🔄 In Progress |
| M8 | REPL — keyboard input, interactive Forth | Planned |
| M9 | Block storage — AHCI driver | Planned |
POST at boot: parity hash verified across amd64/aarch64/riscv64 · Mama capsule dictionary: 453 words
What's live in M7.1
- Tripod — a named multi-VM fleet (Hera the Mama VM, Artemis, two Hermes instances) births, runs, and re-births independently, verified booting live pre-REPL on all three architectures.
- Hermes — a 17-block inter-VM messaging/channel layer between fleet members, with async delivery and channel negotiation.
- Artemis — a Block Allocation Map (BAM) storage subsystem with Q48.16
block-heat tracking and cooldown/reclamation (
ART-COOL/ART-REAP). - Word-level ACL — every dictionary entry carries a TTL/allow/mode/pin
access-control record. Strict, TTL, and pinned modes; two console layers
(emergency
ok>and superuserzuse)ok>). Phases 1–7 complete (C infrastructure, FORTH policy layer,zusebootstrap superuser, Isabelle proof stubs, kernel parity); Phase 8 (Ed25519 PKI / thumbdrive challenge-response) is the only item remaining. Measured overhead once active on every check: +0.0054%–+0.0088%, CV = 0.000%, across a 3×3 Latin-square DoE campaign (architecture × seed × 30 replicates) — three orders of magnitude below the measurement floor. - VM Fleet Attractor physics — the L8 Jacquard mode selector now has a real per-VM heat channel into fleet-wide tuning, replacing hardcoded compudynamics constants with a dynamically-inferred rate.
- Kconfig build configuration — every physics/heartbeat/pipelining/ kernel-only tuning knob (~40 total) is now a discoverable, optional Kconfig symbol shared with the hosted VM build. See Quick Start below.
Quick Start
# Build kernel (requires cross-compilation toolchain, or native gcc)
make -f Makefile.starkernel ARCH=amd64
# Run in QEMU with OVMF
make -f Makefile.starkernel qemu
# Other architectures
make -f Makefile.starkernel ARCH=aarch64 qemu
make -f Makefile.starkernel ARCH=riscv64 qemu
Artifacts: build/amd64/kernel/starkernel_loader.efi · build/amd64/kernel/starkernel_kernel.elf
For the hosted VM by itself (Linux, no cross-compiler needed, no bare-metal tooling): see
the separate StarForth repository — LithosAnanke used to be a branch inside that repo,
now it's its own project with its own master.
Build configuration (optional)
Every kernel-only knob (STARFORTH_ENABLE_VM, PARITY_MODE, the shared
physics/heartbeat family, etc.) is an optional Kconfig symbol — a plain
make -f Makefile.starkernel uses the same defaults it always has unless
you opt in:
make -f Makefile.starkernel ARCH=amd64 menuconfig
make -f Makefile.starkernel ARCH=amd64 kernel_amd64_defconfig
Documentation
| System Architecture | Full kernel + VM design |
| HAL Reference | Hardware abstraction layer interfaces |
| Capsule System — M7.1 | Capsule birth protocol design |
| VM Fleet Attractor design log | Tripod/Hermes/Artemis physics + build-system history |
| Getting Started / Kconfig reference | Full symbol reference for both build targets |
| Changelog | Milestone-level history |
| Roadmap | Milestone plan through self-hosting |
License
Starship License 1.0 (SL-1.0) — free for personal, research, and educational use. Commercial use requires a separate agreement. Attribution to R.A. James (Captain Bob) must be preserved in all distributions.
Patent pending. USPTO provisional filed December 2025 — physics-grounded self-adaptive runtime system. This license does not grant patent rights. Licensing inquiries: rajames440@gmail.com
Robert A. James (Captain Bob) · Systems Engineer · Hacking since 1973