Robert Allan JamesandClaude Sonnet 5
5a28458b21
Migrates Hermes's message/channel lifecycle onto the Stadium's unified heat/capacity economy: MSG-ALLOC/FREE-NODE and CH-ALLOC/FREE-NODE now route entirely through stadium_admit()/stadium_evict(), replacing the old local free-list + independent heat-field mechanism. Eight kernel-only STADIUM-* FORTH primitives (ADMIT, EVICT, RES@, RES-PULL, RES-PUSH, HEAT@, HEAT!, WORD-HEAT), VM.stadium_vm_id threaded through all three vm_core.c dispatch sites (replacing item 4.1's hardcoded vm_uuid_hera()), and the stadium_owner[idx] fix so evict-credit lands in the VM that actually admitted a patron, not whoever owned cell 0. This session's own contribution, on top of that pre-existing implementation: found and fixed two bugs blocking the item's own K≡1.0 conservation self-check (HERMES-K was reading 0, not 65536): - Q.SLOT admission-heat fix (capsules/hermes/init.4th): MSG-SEND/ CH-ACCEPT admitted with Q.1 (the entire fleet-wide "1.0" unit) per item, a leftover from before the Stadium migration when each message/channel had its own unconstrained heat field. Instantly drained the shared, finite reservoir. - Reservoir floor for word-execution admission (stadium_words.c): stadium_word_dispatch() (item 4.1) pulls STADIUM_WORD_HEAT_QUANTUM on every word dispatch, not just first admission -- exhausts a VM's entire reservoir in ~32 dispatches, starving any application-level economy sharing that VM's reservoir before it gets a chance to pull anything. word_dispatch_pull() now clamps word-execution's own pulls to leave a Q48_ONE/3 floor (same fair-share figure COMMON-CH's own floor already uses); application-level pulls are unaffected. - STADIUM-WORD-HEAT primitive + stadium_words_resident_heat(): the floor deliberately leaves word-execution residents holding real heat, invisible to HERMES-K's original formula (MSG+CH+reservoir, no term for word patrons). Adding this term closes K to exactly 65536 on all three architectures. Also rules on two open scope questions in FABRIC.md: MBR-ALLOC/ MBR-FREE-NODE stay off the Stadium (membership records have no heat field, never did -- the acceptance bullet's inclusion of them was a completeness gesture predating a check of the actual layout), and records the effort number (12 implementation files, +759/-120 lines). Verified: all three architectures boot clean, full self-test passes, Stadium conservation closes exactly (resident_sum + reservoir = Q48_ONE) at both the C/Stadium level and the FORTH-level HERMES-K check. 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