LithosAnanke v2.1.0

UEFI-bootable FORTH microkernel. Boots from firmware, initialises memory and interrupts, then runs StarForth as its sole userspace runtime. No libc. No OS. Just stone and necessity.

Lithos (foundation) + Ananke (necessity) — the kernel under StarshipOS.

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Products

StarForth v4 moves the engine onto a 32-instruction core derived from Chuck Moore's F18 (docs/v4.0.0/). With it, this repository carries three products, not one:

Product	What it is
Hosted StarForth F18	The v4 engine as a native Linux build, for amd64, arm64 and riscv64.
FPGA StarForth F18	A 32-bit build of the same engine loaded into the FPGA: the gateway to the rest, the foundation everything else is built up from.
StarshipOS	The bare-metal product: LithosAnanke running StarForth.

FORTH-79 is recomposed on the F18 engine and stored as a capsule; the StarshipOS-specific vocabulary gets the same treatment. v3 remains the reference system until v4 meets its acceptance criteria (docs/v4.0.0/JUSTIFICATION.md §16). Both run on bare metal now: every board image carries v4 and v3, boots v4 as built, and one word in its boot configuration chooses (see below).

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Status

Milestone		Status
M0–M6	UEFI boot · PMM · VMM · IDT · APIC · heap · framebuffer VT100 console	✅ Complete
M7	StarForth VM integration + parity validation	✅ Complete
M7.1	Capsule birth · Mama FORTH vocabulary · the Tripod fleet · kernel-Hermes · word-level ACL	✅ Live
M8	Keyboard input to the REPL — PS/2, virtio and USB keyboards (a full keyboard: Caps/Num Lock, keypad)	✅ In QEMU, all three ISAs
M9	Block storage — Artemis's disk on virtio-blk; identity thumbdrives on USB mass storage	✅ In QEMU · real disks: no driver yet (boards/BRINGUP.md A4)
Bare metal	a generic PC (amd64; first on the bench: a Beelink SER5), Raspberry Pi 5 (aarch64), Milk-V Mars (riscv64); Zynq-7020 (ARMv7) not yet ported	Images build; first boots on the bench — boards/BRINGUP.md

v4 is the default build, and v3 is being retired: every kernel boots v4 unless its boot arguments say system=v3. POST at boot, on all three ISAs: v4 — 538 tests, PARITY:V4_SYSTEM word_count=317 dict_hash=0xe5a57f3eb72ff94a; v3 — 1052 tests, PARITY:M7.1a word_count=526 hash=0x82f4ae7cb2e2d424.

What's live

• The Tripod — a named multi-VM fleet: Hera (the Mama VM, the governor), Artemis (block storage: a Block Allocation Map with Q48.16 block heat, cooldown and reclamation) and Hestia, birthed, run and re-birthed independently on all three architectures.
• kernel-Hermes — messaging moved into the kernel (the Hermes VM is gone, docs/fabric/FABRIC-3.5.md): every VM takes its own messages on its own turn, under a cooperative switcher that every VM takes part in.
• Identities on thumbdrives — Zuse, the superuser, and every user is a minted USB thumbdrive (Ed25519, Zuse-signed); plugging one in births that user's VMs, pulling it out ends them. There is only the drive: no password, no PIN.
• 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 superuser zuse)ok>). Measured overhead of the live ACL-TTL mechanism: +0.0603%, CV 0.000%, architecture-independent (docs/fabric/FABRIC-1.md §T).
• Logs that persist — every VM's log records go to a ring on Artemis's disk (LOG-FLUSH, LOG-SHOW).
• The physics-driven runtime — seven feedback loops and the L8 Jacquard mode selector, with a per-VM heat channel into fleet-wide tuning (VM Fleet Attractor).
• Kconfig build configuration — about 40 physics, heartbeat, pipelining and kernel-only knobs, shared with the hosted build.

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Quick Start

# One boot image per physical target (output: build/boards/<board>/)
make boot_image TARGET=PC         # any x86-64 UEFI PC -- GPT/ESP, BOOTX64.EFI
make boot_image TARGET=RASPI      # Raspberry Pi 5 -- FAT, config.txt + kernel_2712.img + DTB
make boot_image TARGET=MILKV      # Milk-V Mars    -- GPT/ESP, BOOTRISCV64.EFI (U-Boot bootefi)
make boards                       # list boards (the Zynq-7020 has no ARMv7 port yet)

# Each image carries v4 and v3. As built it boots v4; to boot v3, change the one word
#   system=v4  ->  system=v3
# in starforth.cfg on the PC's stick or the Mars's card, or cmdline.txt on the Pi 5's card.

# The same TARGET drives all, docs and clean (make help)
make                              # every board with a kernel port + hosted v3 + the book
make docs                         # build/docs/LithosAnanke.pdf (LaTeX master: docs/book/main.tex)
make clean TARGET=RASPI           # that board's outputs and build/aarch64/kernel

# The kernel in QEMU (OVMF / AAVMF / EDK2), one architecture at a time -- boots v4
make -f kernel/Makefile ARCH=amd64   clean qemu
make -f kernel/Makefile ARCH=aarch64 clean qemu
make -f kernel/Makefile ARCH=riscv64 clean qemu
make -f kernel/Makefile ARCH=amd64 KERNEL_ARGS=system=v3 clean qemu   # v3, while it remains

# The Pi 5's native boot path, rehearsed on QEMU's virt machine at EL2
make -f kernel/Makefile ARCH=aarch64 RPI5_NATIVE_BASE=0x40080000 rpi5-rehearsal

Artifacts: build/<arch>/kernel/starkernel_loader.efi · build/<arch>/kernel/starkernel_kernel.elf

Tree: kernel/ (LithosAnanke: Makefile, src/, include/starkernel/, linker/), v3/ (StarForth v3 engine and hosted build), v4/ (StarForth v4, see docs/v4.0.0/), boards/<board>/ (board.mk + boot files), capsules/ (the FORTH capsules). Every makefile runs from the repo root; the root Makefile forwards any other goal to v3/Makefile.

For the hosted v3 VM by itself, see the separate StarForth repository — LithosAnanke used to be a branch inside it, and is now its own project.

Build configuration (optional)

Every kernel-only knob is an optional Kconfig symbol; a plain make -f kernel/Makefile uses the defaults unless you opt in:

make -f kernel/Makefile ARCH=amd64 menuconfig
make -f kernel/Makefile ARCH=amd64 kernel_amd64_defconfig

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Documentation

Start at docs/README.md — the map: where each kind of document lives and which to believe. Among them:

The FABRIC record	Every design decision and the work as it happened (FABRIC-3.md is the living one)
StarForth v4	The F18-derived engine
Board bring-up	Getting onto a PC, the Pi 5 and the Mars
Roadmap and versioning	Milestone plan and release-versioning policy
Capsule System — M7.1	Capsule birth protocol
Word-level ACL	The access-control design
HAL, as built	Hardware abstraction layer
Developer guide / Kconfig reference	Full symbol reference for both builds
Dead ideas and revised claims	What is no longer true, and since when
Changelog	Milestone-level history

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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

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Robert A. James (Captain Bob) · Systems Engineer · Hacking since 1973