Robert Allan JamesandClaude Sonnet 5
52eb1bbb20
Per FABRIC-3.md D.7 (birth-by-message-only): the Tripod legs must be alive session-less before any thumbdrive-attach flow has a running Hermes/Artemis to message. kernel_main.c's item 4.2/4.6 self-tests previously birthed both, exercised diagnostics, then explicitly KILLed them before ok> every boot -- production boot never actually kept either alive. Stripped both blocks down to birth-only, diagnostics and KILL removed. Found and fixed a real regression this surfaced, not left broken: Hermes's CD-INIT (message/channel arena init, and the thing that loads lib.4th into her own dictionary) was only ever invoked by the self-test just removed -- nothing in hermes/init.4th itself called it. Added an unconditional CD-INIT call at the end of her own init.4th so a real birth actually initializes her arena, matching how Artemis's own ART-BOOT-ENTRY already runs unconditionally at her own capsule load. Added STARTUP-BANNER (lib.4th): a shared word reading a common IDENTITY-BANNER buffer, printing "(no identity)" until CERTVERIFY/MINT exist to populate it from a thumbdrive's PKI fields -- scaffolding only, per direct instruction. Wired into each Tripod leg's own init.4th (Hera/Hermes/Artemis); Artemis didn't load lib.4th before, added that too. Verified live on all three architectures: BIRTH for both, no KILL anywhere in any log, and an interactive USE round-trip confirmed Hermes is genuinely reachable post-boot, not just logged as born. Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com> Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_019ZGkimpfyh63EZyRkNbkPD
capsules/
FORTH personality files loaded by the VM at boot. A capsule is an immutable, content-addressed payload; its XXHash64 hash is its identity. Any mutation changes the hash and the birth protocol rejects the image.
Key files
| File | Type | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
init.4th |
(m) MAMA_INIT |
Default Mama VM personality — loaded at LBN 2048 |
ACL.4th |
user | Word-level ACL system; self-activating at boot |
zuse.4th |
user | Bootstrap superuser; loaded by ACL.4th |
doe.4th |
user | DoE workload words (EXEC-DOE) — opt-in |
init-0.4th … init-9.4th |
(p) |
Numbered personality variants |
init-l8-*.4th |
(p) |
L8 Jacquard mode variants (stable/volatile/diverse/temporal/transition/omni) |
hermes/init.4th |
(p) |
Hermes baby VM personality |
artemis/init.4th |
(p) |
Artemis baby VM personality |
Block namespace
Block ranges are shared across all loaded capsules — collisions cause silent word-definition overwrites.
| Range | Owner |
|---|---|
| 2048–2099 | init.4th |
| 2100–2199 | doe.4th |
| 3000–3999 | workload capsules |
| 4000+ | user-defined (ACL.4th, zuse.4th, …) |
Each block is limited to 1024 bytes. Verify with wc -c before committing.
See also
experiments/bare_metal/README.md— DoE protocols and block namespace rulesdocs/03-architecture/word-acl/DESIGN.md— ACL system designtools/mkcapsule.c— assembles capsules intocapsule_generated.c- Project root