Closes FABRIC-2.md's last open §12 Q5 question. fleet_heartbeat_tick_count is fed by every live VM's own vm_tick(), not one VM's, so it was reaching HEARTBEAT_INFERENCE_FREQUENCY (shared/borrowed from the per-VM inference gate) several times faster than intended with more than one VM live - backwards from FABRIC.md §22.4's required ~1000:1 separation. What's actually gated turned out to be low-stakes: vm_physics_tick() (capsule_vm_physics.c:397) is a passive statistics refit - re-sorts a window of past heat-transfer samples and recomputes a median rate estimate. It doesn't move heat or arbitrate capacity. Firing too often just meant a noisier statistic recomputed more frequently than planned, not incorrect behavior. Considered and explicitly rejected: scaling the threshold by live VM count at the check site. That's the first brick of a scheduler - reading fleet state to adjust a rate dynamically - which this project has deliberately avoided building. Implemented instead: STADIUM_CAPACITY_TICK (existing Kconfig symbol, defined but never read by any code path) now gates vm_physics_heartbeat_tick()'s call directly, replacing the borrowed HEARTBEAT_INFERENCE_FREQUENCY. Default bumped 1000 -> 4000, a flat constant picked once for Tripod's known 4-VM topology, same kind of placeholder as every other frequency knob in Kconfig.kernel - not computed from anything at runtime. Renamed fleet_last_inference_tick -> fleet_last_capacity_tick to match. Still one clock, one counter (fleet_heartbeat_tick_count) - just a bigger flat divisor on it. Three-arch QEMU acceptance: all clean to ok>, identical Stadium conservation invariant on all three (resident_sum=43691 reservoir=21845 sum=65536). logs/20260815-093425/amd64, logs/20260815-093521/aarch64, logs/20260815-093641/riscv64. Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
include/
Public headers for the hosted StarForth VM (src/). Kernel-only headers
live under include/starkernel/.
Core VM
vm.h— theVMstruct and all core types (DictEntry,DictPhysics, stacks, dictionary state); the central header most other files include.vm_api.h— external VM API surface.vm_host.h,vm_debug.h,startup.h,version.h— host integration, debug utilities, startup sequencing, version string.cli.h,repl.h,io.h,log.h— CLI parsing, REPL loop, I/O, logging.word_registry.h— word registration system shared by everysrc/word_source/*.cfile.compudynamics.h— the generic compudynamics module: tuning-word/config lookups (cd_tuning_word(),cd_tuning_vm()) consumed byssm_jacquard.c.
Memory / blocks
memory_management.h,dictionary_management.h— dictionary allocator and search.block_subsystem.h,blkcfg.h,blkio.h,blkio_factory.h— logical→ physical block mapper and pluggable block I/O backends (file/RAM).platform_alloc.h,platform_lock.h,platform_time.h— platform abstraction shims (hosted vs. kernel allocation/locking/timing).
Physics-driven adaptive runtime (7 feedback loops)
physics_runtime.h— main physics coordinator.physics_hotwords_cache.h— Loop #1, execution-heat hot-words cache.physics_metadata.h— per-wordDictPhysicsmetadata tracking.physics_pipelining_metrics.h— Loop #4, word-transition prediction.physics_execution_hooks.h— execution instrumentation hook points.rolling_window_of_truth.h,rolling_window_knobs.h— Loop #2 circular execution-history buffer and its tuning knobs.inference_engine.h— Loops #5/#6, window-width and decay-slope statistical inference.dictionary_heat_optimization.h— Loop #1 heat counters.ssm_jacquard.h— L8 Jacquard steady-state mode selector.doe_metrics.h— Design of Experiments (2^7 factorial) metrics.profiler.h— performance profiling hooks.
Arithmetic / codegen
q48_16.h— Q48.16 deterministic fixed-point arithmetic (used instead of IEEE-754 float specifically to keep cross-architecture behavior bit-identical).math_portable.h— portable math helpers.arch_detect.h,starforth_config.h— architecture detection and the build-flag fallback-default layer (used when a.cfile is compiled by hand withoutmake).vm_asm_opt.h,vm_asm_opt_arm64.h,vm_asm_opt_riscv64.h,vm_inner_interp_asm.h,vm_inner_interp_arm64.h,vm_inner_interp_riscv64.h— per-architecture assembler-optimized inner interpreter (USE_ASM_OPT=1).
See include/starkernel/README.md for the bare-metal kernel headers.