Files
StarForth/src/starkernel
Robert Allan JamesandClaude Sonnet 5 7edccd2c35 Hera can't message: root-caused and fixed by symmetry (FABRIC-3.md §XX)
Hera never loaded common:messaging.4th, unlike every other VM in the
fleet. The standing belief was this was deliberate, to avoid moving
her dict_hash off baseline. Checked live instead of assumed: loading
messaging.4th into her dictionary silently dropped every colon-
definition referencing one of 8 STADIUM-* primitives that
register_child_vm_words() gives every other VM but
register_mama_forth_words() never gave her -- a missing-primitive gap,
not a designed privilege boundary. Confirmed mama_word_birth is
genuinely VM-agnostic and SPAWN-EVENT is an unwired placeholder before
proposing the fix.

Fix: register the same 8 STADIUM-* primitives for Hera, load
messaging.4th from init.4th the same way Hermes/Artemis/console/mint
already do, and give her own idle-loop context a direct MSG-TICK call
(not VM-EXEC, which would hit the same reentrancy class the existing
per-other-VM pump loop already guards against) so her own queued
messages actually drain. Her dictionary is now a proper superset of
every child VM's, plus her remaining extra privileges -- not
structurally different from any other VM, just additionally
privileged.

Verified: dict_hash identical across amd64/aarch64/riscv64
(0xc8f4b09e36f4fc4a), Hermes/Artemis dict_hashes unchanged and still
cross-arch identical, all three boot clean to zuse)ok> with zero
UNKNOWN WORD faults, mkcapsule --lint clean.

Unblocks rewriting the turn-attractor (FABRIC-3.md §XIX) to coordinate
via real MSG-SEND/MSG-TICK instead of blocking VM-EXEC.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01EXieurDfDSsDFdnSyusuWo
2026-09-12 16:05:11 -04:00
..
2026-09-01 12:07:32 -04:00

src/starkernel/

LithosAnanke — the bare-metal UEFI kernel that boots StarForth directly on hardware (amd64/aarch64/riscv64). Built only via Makefile.starkernel; the only valid acceptance test is the three-arch QEMU boot (see .claude/CLAUDE.md), never make test.

  • kernel_main.c — kernel entry point, driving the boot milestones (console init, PMM, VMM, interrupts, timers, kmalloc heap, VM bootstrap).
  • repl.c — kernel REPL.
  • doe_log.c — kernel-side DoE (Design of Experiments) metrics logging.

Subdirectories:

  • arch/{amd64,aarch64,riscv64}/ — per-architecture support (APIC/GIC/ PLIC interrupt controller, timers, boot/ISR assembly).
  • boot/ — UEFI loader, ELF loading, kernel command-line parsing.
  • capsule/ — capsule birth/run/load/validate pipeline.
  • hal/ — hardware-abstraction-layer implementation (console, framebuffer, VT100, memory, host services).
  • hash/ — XXHash64 content-addressing implementation.
  • math/ — kernel-build Q48.16 fixed-point arithmetic.
  • memory/ — physical/virtual memory managers and the kernel heap.
  • pci/ — PCI bus enumeration.
  • virtio/ — VirtIO block device driver.
  • vm/ — kernel VM subsystem (bootstrap, core interpreter, parity logging, capsule arena).

See include/starkernel/README.md for the corresponding headers.