Robert Allan JamesandClaude Sonnet 5
cb32e6632b
Following up on the messaging-words-not-denied finding: 'MSG-STATUS ACL-STD79-ALLOWED? .' sent into rajames came back UNKNOWN WORD, not "denied" -- acl-std79.4th's own supporting words were never compiled into the VM's dictionary at all. Root cause, confirmed via the raw boot log: "WARN: block 4998 exceeds 1KB, truncating" fires during every std79-locked identity's own birth. capsule_exec_payload() parses "Block N" content as everything from that header to the next "Block N" header or end-of-payload, truncating at 1024 bytes for both storage and execution. MINT_RESTRICTED_PERSONALITY is a short (~200 byte) string written into a zero-padded 4096-byte devblock at mint time; capsule_runcap_ birth() reads back the entire reserved multi-devblock region with no second "Block N" header anywhere in it to terminate "block 4998" early, so the parser treats the whole mostly-padding region as one oversized block. Confirmed universal, not one identity's quirk: the warning fires exactly 8 times in a full 9-identity boot -- once per std79-locked identity (rajames, 00-06; zuse runs natively on Hera, never through this path) -- and dates back to at least 2026-09-10 in this repo's own logs, well before this session. The std79 lockdown has likely never actually engaged, for any of the 8 locked identities, since it was built. Not fully closed to the byte: the real content sits at the start of the oversized block, inside the surviving truncated slice, so truncating the tail shouldn't by itself stop the head from executing -- the exact remaining mechanical step (stale leftover data, a line-boundary artifact, or something else) isn't nailed down yet. Explicitly not fixed -- documented per Bob's own "stop here, document it, and continue" call. Security-relevant (an intended lockdown restricting nothing) and deserves its own deliberate fix with real test coverage, not a bolt-on to an unrelated change. Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com> Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01EXieurDfDSsDFdnSyusuWo
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 |
workload-0.4th … workload-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