Robert Allan JamesandClaude Sonnet 5
5784d8a1a8
Punch list §25 item 0.3 complete.
The functional work (FDT reader, `time` CSR switch, SBI TIME extension
arm/re-arm, sie.STIE) was committed separately by Captain Bob as accd79f,
honestly labeled "NOT complete." This finishes it: stale documentation
cleanup, then rigorous verification against the item's literal acceptance
text, which the prior commit had not yet done.
Doc cleanup: every remaining reference to `rdcycle` / "assumed 1 GHz" in
riscv64/timer.c and riscv64/apic.c rewritten to describe the actual `time`
CSR / SBI-armed behavior. Caught and corrected my own arithmetic error in
the process: a draft claimed the ns-overflow bound improved to "~58 years"
under the new counter; direct computation shows the bound is actually
~3.26 days (2^48 ns) and is *frequency-independent* -- s_ns_per_tick and
tick rate scale inversely and cancel. Verified with a script before
writing the final comment, not asserted.
Verification, since "boots to prompt" was not sufficient for this item's
acceptance ("heartbeat_ticks() advances ... within measurement noise"):
- No FORTH word exposes heartbeat_ticks() to the REPL, and adding one would
be a new primitive outside this item's scope. GDB-over-QEMU-stub reads of
the static counter failed ("Cannot access memory"), likely a virtual-vs-
runtime address mismatch; abandoned rather than debugged further, since a
better instrument was available.
- QEMU's own `-d int` trap tracing (independent of all guest code) shows
2,797 `cause:5 desc=s_timer` interrupts delivered by the time boot reaches
the prompt, and the interleaved `desc=supervisor_ecall` entries are exactly
the SBI set_timer calls from riscv64_timer_rearm(), confirming the full
interrupt -> handler -> re-arm -> SBI loop.
- Measured rate over a real 10.127 s window: 1,013 further interrupts,
100.028 Hz observed against 100 Hz configured -- 0.03% deviation. The
sustained, non-decaying rate is itself proof the one-shot re-arm succeeds
on every cycle, not just the first.
- Confirmed regression-free on amd64 and aarch64 too: uefi_loader.c, uefi.h,
boot_info_offsets.h and the new fdt.c/fdt.h are shared across all three
builds (amd64 also consumes the offset constants via kernel_entry.S), so
all three were rebuilt and booted. Identical dict_hash
0x3d4e1daf289da94f on all three, matching the item 0.1/0.2 baseline.
Reported, not fixed, per rule 3:
- DOE_INJECT=1's EXEC-DOE now fails as "UNKNOWN WORD" against the pruned
Hera-alone capsule -- doe.4th was never loaded by init.4th even before
item 0.1's prune, so this is a pre-existing gap the prune surfaced, not a
new defect. Discovered while chasing why a 200-rep injected DoE run
produced no new CSV rows after 25 minutes; it had failed in the first
millisecond, not run the whole time.
- repl.c's own comment claims a "Heartbeat: N ticks" diagnostic prints to
the serial log; no such print exists anywhere in the tree.
- riscv64/arch.c's arch_read_timestamp() still uses rdcycle with a stale
1 GHz comment, but it has zero callers on this architecture -- dead code,
left alone.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
LithosAnanke v1.5.4
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