ENGINE.md step 2, the carrier. Ruled 2026-10-05 (V3-PARITY.md 1i), on DECOMPOSITION.md section 6: a write to a port blocks until the neighbour reads. - node: v4_node_port_attach, v4_node_port_served; a store to the port keeps the value as the request and blocks the node - exec: a blocked node executes nothing; served, it goes on from the opcode after the store, in the same instruction word; a fault meanwhile abandons the rest of the word - compile.v4: n KERNEL-WORD name makes a word whose body writes n to the port; its arguments and results are on the data stack - boot: the kernel's words are made by handing the node text, and requests are served between the node's opcodes; one no one serves is error 12 - BYE, the first kernel word: hosted it leaves the program, as hosted v3; on the lone node it is v3's cold restart - ENGINE.md 3a: multiuser, multitasking, preemptive and cooperative, and what that asks of the engine Verified: make -C v4 test passes at both widths, with tests/test_port.c; hosted-check passes on three ISAs; clean qemu with STARFORTH_V4=1 on amd64, aarch64 and riscv64 passes POST with the same hashes as hosted, and a kernel word no one serves and BYE typed at each prompt are answered (logs/20261005-185506, -185734, -190101; -185234 is an amd64 run in which those two lines were not typed). Not done: v3's own C functions serving a node. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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material, and an archive of superseded docs.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.