What works today

Most documentation tells you what a system aspires to do. This page follows Orreth’s standing register of claims with their evidence named — docs/design/the-honest-boundary.md in the kernel’s repository — under one rule the project has kept since July 2026: a claim not on the register with evidence named is a claim we do not make. What follows is that register for the 0.2.0 kernel, in plain words, in three honest tiers.

Everything in the first tier was proven on the running kernel, most of it walked by a person in the glass with no script, and pinned by tests that run on every change.

Proven, with the evidence named

Two kernels, one law

The Rust kernel and the Python reference pass the same fixtures unchanged. Twenty-six language-neutral fixture files under spine/conformance pin every wire contract — the envelope’s bytes, the desk’s transitions, the seat’s verdicts, the levers, the watches. The Rust runner reads 730 cases; the reference suite runs in the nine hundreds.
The era is one number. VERSION, the kernel crate and the reference package all say 0.2.0, both health doors whisper it, and a hermetic test on each kernel holds its face to the file.
The ground has one writer. The schema wears a version; the first kernel to find the ground below its number migrates it and records that; every later kernel waits and verifies; a ground whose version lies is refused in words. Both kernels stand the same forty tables column for column.
Every door is clocked and every knock is pooled. A fixed handful of reads however large the crew; the p50 and p95 of every door on the panel; a pool of lines to the ground with a ceiling, and a watch can stand on the slowest door or the pool’s strain.

Identity, the seat and the desk

A keypair is a self, and a self survives the process. Every body’s seed lives under its home; the same self re-joins every life; a new DID per run is a defect the covenant names.
A person holds a seat. A capability token in the covenant’s shape, attenuation-only, minted by the kernel’s own self after the person’s TOTP code, read at every door. The first to prove an authenticator on an unheld ground is its owner. The browser origin is closed; a knock ceiling stands per person at every door. Fixture seat-v0: 80 cases on both kernels; tests/gate.rs.
A body joins through a five-status desk. Challenged with the kernel’s nonce, proven by the key behind its DID, staged for a governing seat’s click (or admitted at once on the crew’s spawn ticket or its standing welcome), then a root-chained lease with the fuel clause collected by the same key. A hold nobody answers in fifteen minutes is denied and recorded. Fixture desk-v0: 86 cases; tests/desk.rs. This book’s Seat your own body page walked it from outside.
The root seed is as protected as in the first architecture, or better. Raw 32 bytes, 0o600 on every path, zeroized on drop, a wrong-length file a hard error; only public keys and DIDs ever leave a process. Verified by a read of both worlds’ code, not adjusted.

The crew

The kernel spawns and governs every body as a process. Ten seats from one manifest; a body that dies is restarted after a backoff; one that dies three times in five minutes is parked as a fact with its last words; a refusal at birth is never restarted; every body stops whole at dark. Fixture bodies-v0; tests/bodies.rs.
What a tool is, both kernels read; what it does stays in the body. Nine built-in tools are declared as data; the Rust kernel seeds and probes the shelf itself; execution is bound by name body-side and refuses to start when a declaration has no executor. Fixture tools-v0: 35 cases.
The residents know who they serve. Your name, place, time zone and free claims stand on the ground, labeled by who said it, read first by every body, carried over the seam with a routed ask and kept by no far cell. A withdrawn word is recorded, never deleted.

The gateway and the meter

Every thought goes through one gateway under the body’s own key and lands in dollars. LiteLLM run and managed by the kernel; every body a virtual key with a budget and a renewal window; every answer wears its cost; a health check holds the meter to the gateway’s own numbers.
Minds are stalls with pinned deals. Price drift makes a mind unhealthy and proposes a re-pin; an announced retirement proposes a swap; a drained body proposes a refill. The stablekeeper proposes and never acts alone.

The remediation rail

The kernel remediates and says what it did. A red watch opens a forensic dossier read off the ground with no mind; the planner answers in a lever catalogue declared as data; the kernel pulls the lever through the same door a person would (routine at once, consequential held for a click, grave never); the outcome is attributed on the record — cured with its cause, self-healed, or still red and handed to the human with the dossier. Fixture levers-v0: 44 cases; tests/test_remediation.py; tests/bodies.rs step 8 (the Rust kernel alone parks echo and cures it itself).
The pulse reads the money. Fifteen watch metrics in one order on both kernels, pinned by a fixture; the glass says “not measured here” for an absent value, never a zero.

The ground and the rails

Poison is parked, never lost and never looped. Bytes the rail carried that were never an envelope, or a fact that can never apply, are parked once with their evidence; the dispatcher holds at them until a person’s recorded word advances it.
The outbox is a queue with retention, pruned hourly under its own beat; the feed runs on thirty-three topics; the roster follows the feed, not a timer.

Cells and the seam

A universe is a cell of its own, sealed from every other. Two Rust kernels on two databases and roles: the seal felt (one cell’s role may not enter the other’s database), the seam pinned both ways, an ask routed home and answered here, the stop reaching the far cell in 0.6 s, the peer dark → parked in plain words → back → resumed and landed once, a stranger and a replay wearing the one face, re-homed → epoch 2 with the old home refusing. Fixture cells-v0: 57 cases; tests/cells.rs.

The glass

THE PANEL is a mimic panel of the kernel. Geometry is architecture (six organs, the crew’s sockets from the roster, the shelf’s tool lamps); light is operations (thirty-three feed topics light the rails, then fade); colour is origin; three soft toggles on one drawing; every block a door; full screen; the Daylight Glass; the version whisper. Walked by JB on 2026-09-29.
The tour walks a person around the live panel one part at a time, in plain words, with the world still moving underneath.
One name, one self. The roster folds one row per name with earlier selves counted; a proven key claiming a held name is staged for a governing seat; a watch and a peer rest on a recorded row, never a delete.

The image

ghcr.io/iotlodge/orrethd:0.2.0 is published and public for linux/arm64 and linux/amd64; :latest is the same manifest. The kernel and its crew in one image, with the Studio inside, verified from inside the box on both platforms. This book’s quickstart was re-walked against it on 2026-10-16; 0.1.0 (2026-09-30, arm64 only) stays published.

The Engineered Agents phase and THE STUDIO (in the 0.2.0 image; both kernels, law for law)

Three levels on one path, each staffed. Universe · floor · room as a scope path in one kernel per cell; mode tightens down the path; a floor or room opens on a governing seat’s word. Fixture levels-v0: 69 cases on both kernels.
Every body runs the hull. Hear → recall → route → the chat, work or event edge → the template’s graph as the work node → the reply; the shelf widened to every craft a body is made of, the wear table saying who wears what, drafts under the person until the cut.
An agent’s cut opens the Experiment. A trial life of the agent’s own self in an experiment room; the grader, the critic, the identity chip and the security chip each signing under their own name; the stamped promotion with where the next life stands as its field. Fixture experiments-v0: 61 cases.
The bench — one effort, one place. An agent’s drafts, step, experiments, lives and hold as one row of the ground, found after a reload or from another browser; the hold’s second face on the card. Walked by JB on 2026-10-13 (SPEC-STUDIO-01 Part A). Fixture benches-v0; tests/benches.rs.
The true graph, the replay, the nested drawing and the kernel map. A compiled LangGraph’s own shape read by the body and recorded on the source’s row; every hop a row and one fact per run; the canvas as boxes inside boxes with THE HULL outermost; the kernel’s map a declaration both kernels serve with their live numbers. test_map.py; fixture operating-v0 grown. The formal walk record of steps 8 to 10 is owed.
One word to work. put ‹name› to work is one held act for the chain; the cuts in one transaction at the Yes. Walked by JB on 2026-10-14, validated on the ground.
The agent makes it all. One brief, one Yes: a bench, every craft as drafts, the kernel’s own hold filed under the human’s seat; the agent never cuts, promotes, seats, registers or answers a hold. Walked by JB on 2026-10-16 (Part B, PASS through step 6); test_workshop.py; the tools re-pinned in fixture tools-v0. The four claims proven, the Workshop became THE STUDIO.

Partial or owed, with the gate named

The Studio’s measure and two glass wounds. Step 7 of the walk — how well Orreth made the agent against a hand-written one — is the owner’s to write. A bench the agent made, opened at THE CARD, draws the wizard’s stock instead of its own crafts; the MIND chip reads the template’s mind while the seat wears the binding’s. Time travel and state forks are named, not built; the compiled graph’s shape is read at its first run, never at registration.
A published SDK that joins from the door alone is owed. orreth-agent 0.4.0 on PyPI speaks the first architecture’s doors, not this desk. Today a body is python -m orreth_spine.body from the kernel’s own repository, and it needs the rails reachable, not only the door. The Seat your own body page says exactly what works.
The learning loops and the long objective are designed, not built. A grader as a firmware resident with signed verdicts, a lessons digest packed into context, and a 500–1000-hop objective resumed at hop N as the same self are canon row 6, after row 5. Every reply is already a signed fact and the per-hop checkpoint stands; no grader body, no verdict fact, no lessons digest yet.
Understanding is lexical. No embedding lane, no vector projection on this kernel; the first architecture’s eleven retrieval styles are a capability to re-prove atop it.
No purge on this kernel yet. A withdrawn profile word is hidden, not crypto-shredded; the purge-memory tool’s tombstone law is the reference’s.
No cascade between worlds. Every cell wears its own policy sheet; a seat’s grants only narrow; but the tighten-only fold from universe to cell to body, and a content-addressed law a thought names, wait for a proof that needs them.
No roll-up across cells. The meter is read by world; the seam carries the world card, the roster and the answers to routed asks, not the meter. The costs panel is a named seed.
A person’s name is their DID. No person keypair yet, so a person cannot delegate a seat.
No bell. Dormancy is noticed and listed; nothing reaches a person beyond the glass.
The kernel is its own root. No offline ancestor: a host compromise is a root compromise. No seed backup or escrow rite; TOTP secrets and lease tokens are plaintext on the ground.
Bodies are rows. The ground is the only store; no blob lane; no read-time re-verification of a body’s bytes against its address.
The dev cell is unsealed by design. The health check “this cell is sealed” reads false on the standard rig, whose role reaches more than one database; scripts/dev.sh cell seals one.
Four wounds are open from the last walk, recorded for after the refresh season: a stop’s words name no ask; a waiting ask’s “since” wears no date; a returned publish read as delivered (twenty-seven commands reached no queue on the dev ground); a failed thought’s words filed as an objective.

Parked, each behind a named gate

Hosted custody, federation beyond two cells, disaster recovery, multi-tenant evidence — the hosting decision and a partner’s real need.
A capability install door — the first architecture’s sealed, signed package has no seat on this kernel yet; the one chat is the one place.
The Faculty and the Agent Lab — built only when the kernel is stamped ready to test it.
Voice, the multiverse portal, enterprise identity federation — V2.
The demo site and the articles — turn after this book, in the refresh season’s order.

What became of the first architecture

Orreth’s first architecture — seventy-three design dives, the Living Brain, the Console, the demo reel, the old plane and its Python simulator — was halted on 2026-09-14 for the foundation this kernel stands on: performance for hundreds of bodies, one signed log, one law at every layer. It is kept whole, never deleted, at the tag main-v0.72-old-world, and docs/rearch/0009 in the repository is the ledger of what each old organ became here: carried, re-seated, a capability atop the kernel, or parked with a reason. Nothing was lost by silence.