Robert Allan James
936d046ca6
The Zynq FPGA is not a fourth platform to port to — it is the pivot that
forces the project into three distinct products, each with its own host,
delivery, and proof character (decided 2026-08-29):
1. Hosted StarForth - the existing hosted/interpreted StarForth runtime
(3-arch acceptance-tested), delivered as a portable embedded runtime.
2. A full StarshipOS - the standalone OS built on LithosAnanke
(LithosAnanke -> StarshipOS), a self-booting OS on general silicon
(SER5/RasPi/Milk-V line).
3. Hardware steady-state machinery with sealed executions, HOL-proven -
the FPGA-native product: hardware-enforced sealed executions and
steady-state machinery machine-checked in a proof assistant (HOL);
delivery is the bitstream + HOL proof artifacts, not just an OS port.
The coupling is the point: product 3 is born on the FPGA, and its existence
is what cleanly separates 1 from 2 from 3. Product 1 ships hosted on an OS,
product 2 as an OS on general silicon, product 3 as proven hardware. Per-
product gates and the even-major line carrying the three as separate tracks
are scoped at v2.5.0 close / during the coloring-in phase. Complements, and
does not retract, the existing hardware bare-metal release policy.
Authoritative form in ROADMAP.md; FABRIC-3.md tracks the same horizon.
StarForth / LithosAnanke Documentation
This is the lithosananke branch: the bare-metal StarKernel side of the project
(contrast master, which is the hosted-VM-only side). Documentation follows the
two-tier model described in docs/CLAUDE.md: formal/ is the polished,
citable LaTeX tier; working/ is living design notes and drafts that feed it.
Everything else in this directory is branch- or subsystem-specific material that
doesn't fit either tier.
Layout
- formal/ — Three-volume LaTeX documentation set (research volumes,
practitioner books, standalone reports) plus the
scraps/fragment library it's assembled from. Audience: patent counsel, SSRN reviewers, licensees, hobbyists with hardware in hand. Seeformal/CLAUDE.mdfor authoring conventions. - working/ — Living documents: architecture design notes, DoE
experiment logs, hardware/platform notes, draft specs, academic-paper source
material, and an archive of superseded docs. Source material for
formal/. - 03-architecture/ — Tripod VM architecture constraints (Hera/Hermes/Artemis) and the word-level ACL system design.
- lithosananke/ — LithosAnanke kernel branch documentation: milestone roadmap, system architecture, HAL reference, kernel command-line argument design, and the amd64 APIC-timer ISR postmortem.
- birthing/ — VM birthing plan and status for the Hera-spawns- Hermes/Artemis constellation, plus three-architecture QEMU acceptance logs.
- patent/ — Provisional patent application source. Legal hold — ask Bob before touching anything in this directory.
- api/ — Generated Doxygen tag file and warnings log (gitignored; not part of the tracked doc tree).
- pptx/ — Elevator-pitch and deep-dive slide decks for different audiences (technical, non-technical, academic, PhD-level).
Current Active Work
- LithosAnanke M7/M7.1 — VM parity validation and init capsule architecture.
See
lithosananke/README.mdandlithosananke/M7.1.md. - Word-level ACL system — Phase 6 complete on
master; Phase 7 (LithosAnanke parity) is the next step. See03-architecture/word-acl/README.md. - Tripod VMs — Hera (governor), Hermes (messenger), Artemis (memory/block
storage). See
03-architecture/tripod/README.mdandbirthing/.
Contributing
- Place new material in
working/first; promote toformal/only when it's ready to be cited (seeformal/CLAUDE.mdfor promotion criteria). - Never touch
patent/,formal/patent/,formal/scraps/legal/, orworking/legal/without Bob's explicit instruction. - Add a
README.mdto any new category-level subdirectory, following the format used throughout this tree: orientation paragraph + bullet list of real files with one-line descriptions.