Robert Allan JamesandClaude Sonnet 5
cab9b5a31f
Reachability verified live before writing any code, per this project's own standing rule (grep cannot establish reachability alone): FIND SEND-ELEVATE-REQUEST / FIND ELEVATE-GRANT / FIND CH-REQUEST all resolve on a live Hera boot, though grep across capsules/experiments/docs found zero callers of SEND-ELEVATE-REQUEST -- a real, complete, directly-callable entrypoint (H.5/H.8's own design) with no current automatic trigger, not dead code. Correction to a prior finding, made in the course of this check: task 3.8's write-up claimed "Hera's own pre-existing inability to load common:messaging.4th" -- false. capsules/init.4th (Hera's own MAMA_INIT capsule) loads it directly, and SEND-ELEVATE-REQUEST lives and works in her dictionary right now. Task 3.8's own actual scope is unaffected by this correction. Cutover: SEND-ELEVATE-REQUEST (messaging.4th) no longer ends in CH-REQUEST's COMMON-CH/MSG-SEND path; it now calls KH-ELEVATE-SEND (repl.c), a new C word wrapping sk_hermes_send_one(), registered unconditionally for every VM. from/to are derived from the calling VM and sk_get_mama_vm() directly in C, never taken from the stack -- a real correctness improvement over CH-REQUEST's own initiator-only gate, which only existed because a caller COULD pass the wrong from value; deriving it in C makes that spoof structurally impossible. SK_HERMES_MSG_TYPE_ELEVATE_REQUEST reuses ELEVATE-REQUEST's own value (8), same partition-rule reasoning as tasks 3.8/3.9. Delivery is unchanged task 3.4 machinery. No new static-buffer lifetime caveat -- the payload-aliasing fix landed before this task started. CH-REQUEST (messaging.4th) is now dead code, its one real caller just removed -- found, not fixed, per Captain Bob's Law. Verified live on all three architectures: 0 0 0 0 S" DUP" SEND-ELEVATE-REQUEST (deliberately-invalid pubkey, so ELEVATE-GRANT correctly refuses -- the check is the pipeline running, not a grant succeeding) fires the evidence line and completes cleanly, DUP unaffected afterward. Zero UNKNOWN WORD, dict_hash identical across all three architectures (changed uniformly from prior runs -- one new word registered -- not diverged, matching SXXXIV.6's own rule). This closes task 3.11 (Phase 3 gate): all of messaging.4th's live FORTH-owned message types (BLK-ATTACH-EVENT, CONSOLE-CMD-EVENT, ELEVATE-REQUEST) are now real kernel-Hermes cutovers. Phase 4 may begin. Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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