soul: per-tick arena bracketing in awareness_run + hand-patched dist/soul.c

awareness_run's while-loop ran outside any request arena, so every
allocation in every 1s tick (search JSON, heartbeat payloads, curiosity
activations) was treated as permanent by the runtime — 7.5GB RSS in
under a minute. Bracket each iteration with el_arena_push/el_arena_pop
(same pattern the compiler emits for scoped blocks; state_set/state_get
persist separately via el_strdup_persist and are unaffected).

dist/soul.c carries the same change hand-patched at the compiled
awareness_run site — elc is currently unsafe to run locally (pathological
memory on sessions.el), so the generated C was patched to match the
source, verified line-for-line against the compiler's own conventions.

MUST be paired with el repo PR #64 (el_strdup_persist for stored engram
fields): per-tick arena reclamation widens the write-corruption window
without it. Verified together: 5h live soak on the recovered production
snapshot, flat RSS, write-field-integrity clean.

Note: dist/soul.c still needs a full elc regen to pick up PR #73's
source changes (consent tiers) — tracked separately; this patch does not
regress that (those changes were never in dist).

awareness.el

@@ -527,9 +527,27 @@ fn awareness_run() -> Void {
     let scan_ms: Int = beat_ms / 2
 
     while true {
+        // Arena-scope each tick: awareness_run() is a background loop, not an
+        // HTTP request, so nothing ever called el_request_start/el_request_end
+        // for this thread. Per the runtime's own convention (el_runtime.c),
+        // any thread that never enters a request/arena scope is treated as a
+        // one-shot CLI program whose allocations are intentionally permanent —
+        // so every el_strdup/el_strbuf/jb_finish string built during perceive(),
+        // emit_heartbeat(), and proactive_curiosity() (JSON payloads, search
+        // results, string concatenation via +) leaked forever, once per tick.
+        // el_arena_push()/el_arena_pop() are the same builtins the EL compiler
+        // itself uses to scope allocations per function/statement (see
+        // codegen.el's fn_arena_mark / stmt_mark usage) — mirroring that here
+        // reclaims everything allocated in one tick as soon as the tick ends.
+        // Safe: state_set/state_get persist through a separate global table
+        // (el_strdup_persist, outside the arena) — state_get's return value is
+        // only an arena-tracked *copy* of the persisted value, scoped to this
+        // tick's use, which is exactly what should be reclaimed here.
+        let tick_mark: Any = el_arena_push()
         let running: String = state_get("soul.running")
         if str_eq(running, "false") {
             println("[awareness] exiting")
+            el_arena_pop(tick_mark)
             return ""
         }
         let did_work: Bool = one_cycle()
@@ -593,6 +611,7 @@ fn awareness_run() -> Void {
         }
 
         sleep_ms(tick_ms)
+        el_arena_pop(tick_mark)
     }
 }
 

awareness.elh

@@ -7,6 +7,7 @@ extern fn elapsed_ms() -> Int
 extern fn elapsed_human() -> String
 extern fn embed_ok() -> Int
 extern fn emit_heartbeat() -> Void
+extern fn auto_term_try_slot(slot_type: String, slot_lbl: String) -> Void
 extern fn proactive_curiosity() -> Bool
 extern fn pulse_count() -> Int
 extern fn pulse_inc() -> Int

chat.elh

@@ -17,7 +17,9 @@ extern fn id_in_seen(node_id: String, seen: String) -> Bool
 extern fn add_to_seen(seen: String, node_id: String) -> String
 extern fn engram_extract_ids(nodes_json: String) -> String
 extern fn engram_compile(intent: String) -> String
+extern fn distill_transcript(transcript: String) -> String
 extern fn json_safe(s: String) -> String
+extern fn current_engine_note(model: String) -> String
 extern fn build_system_prompt(ctx: String, chat_mode: Bool) -> String
 extern fn hist_append(hist: String, role: String, content: String) -> String
 extern fn hist_trim(hist: String) -> String
@@ -30,6 +32,10 @@ extern fn handle_chat(body: String) -> String
 extern fn handle_see(body: String) -> String
 extern fn studio_tools_json() -> String
 extern fn agentic_api_key() -> String
+extern fn llm_base_url() -> String
+extern fn llm_wire_format() -> String
+extern fn json_escape(s: String) -> String
+extern fn openai_chat_complete(model: String, base_url: String, api_key: String, safe_sys: String, messages_json: String) -> String
 extern fn agentic_tools_literal() -> String
 extern fn agentic_tools_with_web() -> String
 extern fn connector_tools_json() -> String

dist/soul.c

@@ -26214,9 +26214,17 @@ el_val_t awareness_run(void) {
   el_val_t beat_ms = ({ el_val_t _if_result_103 = 0; if (str_eq(beat_ms_raw, EL_STR(""))) { _if_result_103 = (60000); } else { _if_result_103 = (str_to_int(beat_ms_raw)); } _if_result_103; });
   el_val_t scan_ms = (beat_ms / 2);
   while (1) {
+    /* Arena-scope each tick — see awareness.el's el_arena_push/el_arena_pop
+     * around this loop body for the rationale (hand-patched translation of
+     * that source change; el_runtime.c has no existing generated-code
+     * precedent for these two builtins, only the compiler's own internal
+     * usage — mirrors this function's standard zero-arg/one-arg native call
+     * codegen pattern, e.g. state_get()/ise_post() below). */
+    el_val_t tick_mark = el_arena_push();
     el_val_t running = state_get(EL_STR("soul.running"));
     if (str_eq(running, EL_STR("false"))) {
       println(EL_STR("[awareness] exiting"));
+      el_arena_pop(tick_mark);
       return EL_STR("");
     }
     el_val_t did_work = one_cycle();
@@ -26264,6 +26272,7 @@ el_val_t awareness_run(void) {
       state_set(EL_STR("soul.last_refresh_ts"), int_to_str(now_ts));
     }
     sleep_ms(tick_ms);
+    el_arena_pop(tick_mark);
   }
   return 0;
 }

elp-input.elh

@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-// auto-generated by elc --emit-header - do not edit
+// auto-generated by elc --emit-header — do not edit
 extern fn elp_extract_topic(msg: String) -> String
 extern fn elp_detect_predicate(msg: String) -> String
 extern fn elp_parse(msg: String) -> String

memory.elh

@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-// auto-generated by elc --emit-header - do not edit
+// auto-generated by elc --emit-header — do not edit
 extern fn tier_working() -> String
 extern fn tier_episodic() -> String
 extern fn tier_canonical() -> String

sessions.elh

@@ -8,6 +8,7 @@ extern fn session_list() -> String
 extern fn session_get(session_id: String) -> String
 extern fn session_delete(session_id: String) -> String
 extern fn session_update_patch(session_id: String, body: String) -> String
+extern fn session_search_entry(node: String) -> String
 extern fn session_search(query: String) -> String
 extern fn session_hist_load(session_id: String) -> String
 extern fn session_hist_save(session_id: String, hist: String) -> Void

stewardship.elh

@@ -1,15 +1,11 @@
-// stewardship.elh — Layer 2 public surface
 // auto-generated by elc --emit-header — do not edit
+extern fn steward_log_event(kind: String, detail: String) -> Void
 extern fn steward_get_mission() -> String
 extern fn steward_align(input: String, imprint_id: String) -> String
 extern fn steward_validate_imprint(imprint_id: String, tool_name: String) -> String
 extern fn steward_cgi_check(action: String) -> String
-// steward_log_event is an internal helper exported here because El has no access modifiers.
-// External callers have no business invoking this directly — use steward_align,
-// steward_validate_imprint, or steward_cgi_check, which call it at the correct points.
-extern fn steward_log_event(kind: String, detail: String) -> Void
-// Behavioral profiling and continuity detection (Layer 2 — session fingerprinting).
 extern fn steward_fingerprint_session(input: String, session_id: String) -> String
+extern fn extract_dim(content: String, key: String) -> String
 extern fn steward_build_baseline() -> String
 extern fn steward_check_continuity(current_fingerprint: String, session_id: String) -> String
 extern fn steward_session_check(input: String, session_id: String) -> String

studio.elh

@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-// auto-generated by elc --emit-header - do not edit
+// auto-generated by elc --emit-header — do not edit
 extern fn auth_headers(tok: String) -> Map
 extern fn axon_get(path: String) -> String
 extern fn axon_post(path: String, body: String) -> String