Robert Allan JamesandClaude Sonnet 5
f4ded3e1a8
Captain Bob, 2026-09-07: "starting with that 00 user we created, we're
going to give access only to FORTH 79 and 83 standard words. everything
else is locked down."
New capsules/acl-std79.4th (blocks 4023-4047): walks a VM's own
dictionary (>LINK/LINK> traversal, same as ACL-INIT-PRIMITIVES/WORDS
already use) and permanently denies+pins every word not on an explicit
FORTH-79/83 allowlist, extracted from the real registered word set
(stack_words.c through control_words.c), not recited from memory.
Deliberately excludes, beyond plain non-standard words: BYE (100% ACL
bypass to the emergency console -- "needs more discussion, exclude for
now"), COLD/WARM/REBOOT/SAVE-SYSTEM (system lifecycle), the block/screen
editor L/S/SHOW/EDIT/UPDATE/SAVE-BUFFERS (lets a session rewrite
persistent block/capsule content, defeating the lockdown even though
nominally standard), BLK-ACL-*/BLK-OWNER@ (StarForth-specific), and
FORGET/FENCE (flagged as an unrestricted superpower word, 2026-09-03
audit). Keeps WORDS/VLIST/SEE (introspection only -- ACL is enforced
per-target-word at execution time regardless of how an XT was
obtained) and the parenthesized control-flow runtime primitives
((BRANCH) etc. -- IF/DO/LOOP compile calls to these; denying them
breaks ordinary control flow, not security).
MintPersonality enum (capsule_mint.h) lets capsule_mint_identity()
select which personality-source template gets written to a new
identity's devblock -- MINT_PERSONALITY_DEFAULT (unchanged) or
MINT_PERSONALITY_STD79_LOCKDOWN (EXECs acl-std79.4th then
ACL-LOCKDOWN-STD79 as the VM's own last bootstrap step). The actual
restriction logic stays entirely in FORTH per .claude/CLAUDE.md's
Word-Level ACL System rules ("ACL policy belongs in ACL.4th, never in
C") -- capsule_mint.c only picks which few-line bootstrap stub to
write. MINT's own stack signature gains a trailing restrict? flag;
capsule_zuse_boot.c's genesis mint (Zuse herself) explicitly passes
MINT_PERSONALITY_DEFAULT -- the superuser is never restricted.
Two real bugs found and fixed live during testing, both the same class
of self-referential fault: ACL-LOCKDOWN-STD79's own walk loop calls
ACL-STD79-ALLOWED?/ACL-STD79-LIST/ACL-ALLOW!/ACL-PIN on every single
iteration to do its job -- none of those are FORTH-79/83 standard
words, so the walk was denying its own load-bearing infrastructure
partway through and then faulting the next time it tried to call it
("VM fault -- emergency console disabled; halting", reproduced twice
live). Fixed by explicitly protecting all four in the allowlist
(block 4047) -- they must stay allowed for the walk to finish, not
because they belong on a "standard words" list.
Verified live end-to-end: minted a throwaway test identity with the
restrict? flag, confirmed her WIREBIND birth completes cleanly (no
faults, no shadow conflicts) on a single real attach, then USE'd into
her VM and confirmed standard arithmetic and user-defined words work
(1 2 + . -> 3; : X 5 5 * . ; X -> 25) while KILL is entirely unknown to
her dictionary and VM-EXEC is denied. One real, non-fatal side effect
found and left as-is (not asked to fix): the fleet's inter-VM messaging
pump (MSG-ARENA) is also denied by the lockdown, logging a harmless
per-idle-tick warning -- a fully locked-down VM doesn't participate in
message routing.
Not yet applied to the real identity 00 -- this commit is the
mechanism, verified against a disposable test identity only.
Three-arch clean qemu acceptance (single Zuse device, standard
regression case) passed on amd64, aarch64, and riscv64.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_014Ec88YKxxhZGG1RNnune78
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