Robert Allan JamesandClaude Sonnet 5
9b305a5be7
Punch list §25 item 3.8 complete. Added after starting item 4.1
surfaced the need to thread a vm_id into stadium_admit()'s new quota
parameter; Captain Bob ruled UUID/GUID rather than keeping the
narrower uint32_t.
New VMUuid type (vm_uuid.h/vm_uuid.c): two uint64_t halves, RFC-4122-
shaped for logging. Not real randomness -- checked directly against
QEMU 10.2.1's actual CPU feature set: amd64 RDRAND and riscv64 Zkr are
both real, available features here; aarch64 has no RNG property on any
CPU model including "max" (verified exhaustively via QMP
query-cpu-model-expansion). Captain Bob ruled a uniform fallback
across all three ISAs rather than a per-architecture split.
Fallback is a deterministic PRNG (splitmix64) seeded from the Mama
capsule's content hash, pre-filling a 16-entry FIFO pool at boot and
refilling with another batch of the same stream when exhausted --
exactly the shape requested. Same capsule booted twice produces the
same id sequence, preserving the dict_hash reproducibility this
session has relied on throughout.
Hera keeps a fixed, reserved all-zero id, not drawn from the pool --
capsule_birth.c uses vm_id == 0 as a load-bearing sentinel in three
places (KILL protection x2, fleet heat-fanout parent-chain
terminator), found by reading before writing any code.
Two real sentinel-collision bugs caught before shipping, same class as
STADIUM_CONTAINS_NONE: vm_uuid_none() (all-ones, not all-zero) for
"not yet assigned"/"no VM" placeholders; confirmed item 3.7's quota
table already used an in_use boolean rather than a vm_id sentinel, so
no second collision was actually possible there -- the dead,
never-referenced STADIUM_QUOTA_SLOT_EMPTY macro was removed.
Blast radius larger than first scoped, flagged mid-work rather than
silently absorbed: capsule_vm_physics.c/.h (the fleet heat-transfer
layer item 2.1 modified earlier this session) has its own vm_id-keyed
node table and walks parent_vm_id chains through the same identity
space, so it needed the same change, plus its callers in
mama_forth_words.c and sk_vm_bootstrap.c.
One live FORTH word contract changed, by explicit ruling: CAPSULE-BIRTH
was ( capsule-id -- vm-id ), a single cell -- can't hold 128 bits.
Captain Bob picked pushing two cells ("there is doubles support in the
FORTH std word set anyway"): ( capsule-id -- vm-id-hi vm-id-lo ).
MAMA-VM-ID changed the same way: ( -- 0 0 ).
Verified: full (not standalone-file) kernel rebuild to catch cross-file
breakage given the size of this change -- it surfaced the
capsule_vm_physics.c blast radius a narrower check would have missed.
Three-architecture boot (amd64, aarch64, riscv64), all reaching ok>
with identical dict_hash=0x3d4e1daf289da94f matching the item-3.7
baseline.
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