Robert Allan JamesandClaude Sonnet 5
a8b16d41da
Investigating the std79 lockdown finding from FABRIC-3.md §XXV led to a real discovery: WIREBIND births TWO VMs per identity, a console proxy under the plain username and the actual restricted identity under <username>~user (capsule_wirebind.c). Every test in §XXV targeted the console proxy, which was never locked down at all. Retested against the correct target (rajames~user): the lockdown works exactly as designed. §XXV's "lockdown never engages" conclusion was wrong -- corrected here, not deleted, since the mistake and how it was caught are worth keeping (see the new feedback memory: confirm which specific VM a name resolves to before concluding anything, when a subsystem is known to birth more than one VM per identity). Two real, separate things found along the way are kept regardless of that correction: - capsule_runcap.c: the reserved personality devblock was read in full (mostly zero-padding after a short ~200-byte string) with no terminator, producing "WARN: block 4998 exceeds 1KB, truncating" on every std79-locked identity's birth, universal, since at least 2026-09-10. Fixed by trimming to the first NUL byte actually found -- real, but harmless to execution (real content sat in the truncated block's surviving head); it mattered for capsule_id/ content_hash being computed over padding instead of real content. - console.h/console.c/repl.c: unified the prompt from a separately- computed "[VMName] (user)" into a single "[user@VMName]" line prefix -- exactly the ambiguity that caused the original misdiagnosis (the prompt showed only the WIREBIND username, identical whether USE had targeted the console proxy or the real ~user identity). Implemented as a registered callback (console_set_user_prefix_provider()) rather than console.c calling into WIREBIND/session logic directly, since console.c is a clean HAL module with no prior dependency on capsule-level subsystems. Verified: clean build on all 3 architectures, zero new warnings, identical dict_hash/capsule_hash to every prior boot this session (console/prompt-only change). Full 9-identity messaging campaign re-run end to end: 202s, zero faults, all 8 identities at 99/99 tokens, zero regression. Also surfaced, not yet acted on: the full campaign's own console tags now visibly show which VM each identity's tests actually reached ([zuse@rajames], not [zuse@rajames~user]) -- messaging.4th's VM-NAMES-INIT registers identities by plain username, so std79-doe. fth's turn-attractor has been dispatching to each identity's console proxy, not the actual locked-down identity, since the messaging rewrite. Flagged for a deliberate decision, not investigated further. Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com> Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01EXieurDfDSsDFdnSyusuWo
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