Runtime activation counters are now cumulative, so the heartbeat emits
wm_evicted/breakthroughs as totals plus wm_evicted_delta/
breakthroughs_delta (state-tracked change since the previous beat) —
events between beats are no longer lost. Adds embed_eligible from
/api/stats so coverage reads as embed_count/embed_eligible instead of
the misleading absolute count, and surfaces auto_term_streak in the
heartbeat stream. Replaces the false 'semantic seeding NOT implemented'
comment: engram_activate embeds the query, seeds semantic top-K, gates
propagation on cosine, and scores WM promotion semantically.
- awareness.el: curiosity auto_term was the raw first word of a WM
label with no term-quality scoring — observed seeds included What,
Colon, Prose, Context. Replaced the 7-word genre blocklist whack-a-
mole with a delimited stopword membership test (function words +
document-structure words); topical terms pass untouched. Verified
live: seeds now ReasonEdit, Reasoning-model, Self-review.
- routes.el + awareness.el: idle counter only reset on rare inbox
synthesis-requests, so idle==pulse always (zero information).
handle_request now stamps soul.last_activity_ts on every inbound
HTTP request; heartbeat emits idle_ms = ms since last request
(-1 until first request of a boot).
- neuron-api.el: beginSession concatenated a depth-2 spread plus the
unbounded self-hub neighbor dump — multi-MB response, doubled by
wrapper re-escaping, socket died on every call. Now depth-1 and
the hub dump dropped (identity loading has its own tool). Verified:
beginSession returns instead of closing the socket.
- session_start now also posted to the HTTP Engram via ise_post: the
local engram_node_full write never crossed to the observable stream
(sync flows HTTP->soul only), so boots 5+ were invisible — last
visible session_start was boot 4, two weeks ago
- graceful shutdown emits a final ISE with boot/pulse/uptime; a boot
with no shutdown event now reliably signals a crash/SIGKILL
- empty /api/sync responses emit a sync_empty warn ISE instead of
being silently skipped — unreachable engram no longer looks
identical to quiet-but-healthy
- sync backflow prune reads ENGRAM_ISE_RETENTION_MS instead of
duplicating the 48h magic number server.el already honors
Fold engram_act_stats_json() into the heartbeat ISE: wm_evicted and
breakthroughs (per curiosity-scan activate call) plus embed_breaker_open —
the failure mode embed_ok structurally cannot see (it pings the Ollama
root, not the embed pipeline). WM-cap eviction, breakthrough-floor
flooding, and silent lexical degradation are now one-glance diagnosable
from telemetry.
- wm_churn: count of top-5 WM ids absent from previous beat — separates
'one stuck node' from 'whole WM frozen' without hand-correlating ISEs.
- wm_top0_wm: leader's weight; a frozen anchor reads as a constant here.
- Streak guard: before the runtime emitted id in wm_top JSON,
json_get(...,"id") was always empty and the streak incremented on
""=="" every beat — wm_top0_streak measured uptime, not fixation.
Empty id now resets the streak to 0.
proactive_curiosity strengthened its top result unconditionally every
scan — a positive-feedback fixed point that pinned auto_term on the same
node's first word for hours ('Fast-slow' era). Strengthen now fires only
when the top node changed since the last scan, and a 4-deep finst-style
tabu ring (ACT-R declarative finsts) hard-excludes recently used auto
terms (~2 min at the 30s cadence). Quoted-title guard stops '"The'
leaking through the >3-char stopword check and seeding lexical floods.
Heartbeat now pumps /api/embed-backfill?n=32 on the authoritative store
(its lazy backfill had no production trigger; coverage stalled at
93/12175) and emits wm_saturated, wm_top0_streak, embed_backfilled,
embed_count. Curiosity ISE emits auto_term_streak. The stuck-WM failure
mode is now a one-glance signal instead of manual ISE cross-referencing.
Three stale soul:boot_count copies (salience .9, importance .9, Canonical:
+0.2 tier bias, 0.15 threshold) held the top WM slots for 23h — a boot
counter outcompeting real context. Demoted to salience .55 / importance .2 /
tier Working: plumbing, not memory.
Persistence was also broken: in HTTP-engram mode the server owns state and
nothing wrote the counter back — the log shows boot #5 on three consecutive
boots. mem_boot_count_inc now mirrors the persona write-back: delete stale
server copies (matched by content prefix — route_create_node sets
label=content), create the replacement server-side. Working tier is in the
boot seed (/api/nodes) but excluded from periodic /api/sync, so the count
survives restarts without re-importing mid-session. Verified: restart
incremented 1->2 with exactly one server-side counter node.
Sentinel labels (knowledge:captured/evolved/canonical) made every capture
anonymous in WM telemetry — 35 identical wm_top entries — and starved the
curiosity auto-term seeder, which derives scan seeds from WM top-10 labels
and had returned empty on every scan since boot 6 because WM became
Knowledge-dominated while Knowledge was excluded from seeding.
- capture/evolve/promote now pass title (or empty → engram_node_full's
content[:60] derivation) instead of sentinels
- auto_term_try_slot admits Knowledge slots; sentinel-shaped labels
(colon, no space) are skipped so legacy nodes cannot seed 'knowledge'
- verified: probe capture labeled 'Label derivation probe 2026-07-23'
The ship-soul builds from this branch, which has the bounded-persona floor
(#93) but never received the tombstone/supersede immutability fix (that
went to main; hotfix diverged before it). So the launch soul failed
verify-soul-contract IMMUTABILITY on the delete/update/forget routes —
they hard-removed engram nodes via engram_forget/mem_forget.
Apply the same fix, mirroring the knowledge routes' supersede pattern:
- node/update -> create new node + "supersedes" edge to the original, KEEP
the original (no engram_forget).
- node/delete, memory/delete, memory/forget, cultivate forget, and the
autonomous awareness forget -> TOMBSTONE via the canonical mem_tombstone
(memory.el): keep the node + its edges, record a Tombstone marker, hide
from default bounded list reads (?include_deleted recovers). Never
engram_forget. The MCP forget tool now routes to the tombstoning delete
instead of faking a delete.
Internal GC that genuinely removes transient nodes (awareness inbox-trigger
consume, consolidation dedup, session-summary replace, telemetry pruning)
still calls engram_forget directly and is unchanged.
Regenerated dist/soul.c (single-TU) + per-module dist/{memory,awareness,
neuron-api}.c from THIS branch's sources under a 3GB physical-RSS watchdog
(peak ~32MB), built against the release el_runtime (v1.0.0-20260501). The
bounded-persona floor is preserved — verified in the emitted C and the
linked binary (BOUNDED PERSONA / SOUL_PERSONA_NAME strings present).
verify-soul-contract.sh: GATE PASS — PRESENCE all 27 routes, IMMUTABILITY
5/5 KEPT (memory-update, memory-delete, node-update, node-delete,
memory-forget).
The soul daemon leaked ~104 orphan in-memory nodes/min (17.6GB RSS,
OOM-killed) because the perceive gate substring-matched 'soul-inbox'
against the loop's own verbatim-copy output, the trigger node was
strengthened but never consumed, and record() persisted a Memory node
per cycle. Fixes: perceive gates and activates only on the dedicated
soul-inbox-pending tag; one_cycle requires the tag on the node's tags
field before attending (makes consumption safe); processed triggers
are consumed via engram_forget; loop outcomes route through ISE
telemetry (48h prune) instead of permanent Memory nodes.
Verified post-restart: node_delta 104→~0, curiosity scans resumed,
WM average unfrozen (0.120833→0.0676), RSS 17.6GB→184MB.
- engram refresh URL now resolves env -> state -> localhost:8742, same
hardening ise_post got after the boot-4 blackout. Previously a corrupted/
empty soul_engram_url state key silently disabled sync forever while
heartbeats kept flowing — WM starves of Knowledge nodes with no outward
sign.
- heartbeat ISE: node_delta, edge_delta (growth vs stall vs flood is now
one field, not cross-ISE forensics), sync_age_ms from a new
soul.last_sync_ok_ts stamp (-1 = never; >> SOUL_REFRESH_MS = refresh
path broken). Verified live: pulse 1 sync_age_ms=-1, sync fired +1.6s,
age counts up between syncs.
Regenerates the combined dist/soul.c and per-module dist/*.c from the current
El sources, on top of the elc-source-typo fixes (PR #77) and the Track B
threat-to-others routing (PR #76), both already on this branch.
Validated end to end under a physical-RSS watchdog (macOS silently ignores
ulimit -v / RLIMIT_AS, so every elc/elb run was RSS-polled and kill -9'd at a
3GB ceiling, one module at a time):
- OOM is GONE. The stale dist/soul-with-nlg.el (which still carries the
malformed string literals) explodes to 3.3GB+ and is watchdog-killed at ~90%.
With the typos fixed, every one of the 48 modules compiles at <=18MB peak RSS,
and the full flat amalgamation compiles as a single translation unit at ~68MB.
The 700GB pathology was purely the unbounded-parser-on-malformed-literal loop;
no malformed construct means no loop.
- The regenerated soul.c contains Track B: safety_classify_hard_bell ->
threat_other -> safety_hard_directive routes credible threat-to-others to 911
and explicitly NOT to 988 / the safety contact. Verified in source, in the
emitted C, and in the linked binary's strings. Track A (abuse / self_harm)
is unchanged and still checked first.
- The regenerated soul links to a working native arm64 binary and boots: serves
on a throwaway port, /health returns 200, awareness loop runs.
Also fixes one source blocker discovered during regen (unrelated to the typos
or Track B): chat.el handle_chat_agentic left a void `if { println(...) }` in
value position, which the current elc lowers to `_if_result = (println(...))`
(assigning void) -> invalid C. Bound an explicit Bool so the branch is
non-void; behavior unchanged (still only logs on persist failure).
NOTE (runtime dependency, for controlled deploy): this branch's chat.el calls
engram_get_node_by_label, which the canonical el-compiler/runtime does not yet
declare/define (the release runtime v1.0.0-20260501 has it; the newest runtime
has arena + http_serve_async but not this). Building the soul requires a runtime
that has all three. Land engram_get_node_by_label into the runtime package
before this soul.c can be built in CI.
Do not merge — regen + Track B going live is a controlled-deploy call.
The hops=1 comment incorrectly claimed a semantic seed supplement
(cosine-sim scan) was active — it was planned but never implemented.
Corrected to accurately describe what the runtime does (istr_contains
only). Also adds wm_top (top-3 WM nodes by weight) to the curiosity_scan
ISE payload so activation patterns are visible without relying solely on
the heartbeat's wm_active count.
Knowledge nodes dominated the WM-autobiographical auto_term slot:
'Numeric tier strings...' (a Knowledge node) always scored highest
in WM and its first word 'Numeric' became the curiosity seed every
scan — activating more Numeric nodes, keeping that node in WM,
repeating indefinitely.
Fix: only derive auto_term from Memory, BacklogItem, or Entity nodes.
Knowledge nodes are reference material, not live context. Dynamic/
personal nodes carry the salience worth radiating from.
Also patches proactive_curiosity directly in dist/neuron.c (ELC
cannot compile soul.el within timeout — fallback build pattern).
proactive_curiosity() now uses the top working-memory node's first label
word as a 4th activation seed alongside the 4 rotating fixed sets. This
breaks deterministic exploration that was reinforcing the same subgraph
every cycle and creates a self-referencing loop: curiosity radiates from
whatever is most salient right now, mirroring the brain's default-mode-
network resting-state dynamics. str_find_chars on " :([" extracts the
first meaningful word; sp > 3 guards against bracket-prefixed labels.
auto_term field added to curiosity_scan ISE for observability.
Two fixes:
1. ise_post was only escaping " in content strings. When wm_top contained
node labels with \n (backslash-n escape sequences from jb_emit_escaped),
the HTTP Engram server's JSON parser decoded \n as a literal newline in
the stored content, making heartbeat ISEs unparseable. Fix: escape
backslashes first, then quotes, then \n and \r — matching make_action's
existing pattern. Result: heartbeat ISEs now parse cleanly.
2. Soul daemon (dist/neuron) was missing — the build command in the prompt
was linking all 46 dist/*.c files together, causing 1092 duplicate symbol
errors. EL compiles transitive imports inline so neuron.c is self-contained;
correct build links ONLY neuron.c + el_runtime.c. Daemon now starts.
Soul's in-process store had only 12 real knowledge nodes — curiosity_scan was
activating 0 nodes because all substantive Knowledge/Memory/BacklogItem content
lived in the HTTP Engram but was not being pulled into soul's local store.
Added engram_sync refresh every SOUL_REFRESH_MS (default 600s): calls
/api/sync to get all non-ISE nodes, writes to /tmp, merges via engram_load_merge.
After fix: engram_sync ISE shows added:3128; curiosity_scan activated 0-2 →
1889-3843; wm_active 0 → 557-796.
elapsed_human() used % and * operators which are broken in this EL
compiler version. Replace with repeated-doubling arithmetic:
60 = 64 - 4 = 2^6 - 2^2, computed via three doubling steps.
Fixes uptime displaying "44h 2694m" instead of "44h 14m".
Call engram_wm_top_json(5) in emit_heartbeat() and embed the result as
wm_top field in the heartbeat JSON payload. Each entry carries label,
node_type, tier, and wm_weight. This closes the WM composition blindspot:
previously the heartbeat showed wm_active=670 with no breakdown of what
was in working memory. With wm_top visible, ISE-dominated WM is immediately
detectable (all entries show node_type=InternalStateEvent), as was the case
on this session's first post-restart heartbeat before the runtime fix.
Calls engram_wm_avg_weight() (new builtin) in emit_heartbeat() and appends
wm_avg_weight field to the heartbeat JSON payload. This makes activation
quality visible in the ISE stream — a heartbeat showing wm_active=2000 and
wm_avg_weight=0.075 reveals the sparse-graph problem directly (many nodes
barely clearing the threshold), vs wm_avg_weight=0.4+ which would indicate
dense, high-confidence activations.
Rebuilt dist/neuron from soul.el (which imports awareness.el). Build uses
single self-contained dist/neuron.c to avoid duplicate-symbol linker errors
from the dist/ directory containing stale soul_new.c / soul-rebuilt.c files.
Two awareness loop bugs fixed:
1. Seed rotation never worked: dist/awareness.c was compiled from stale
source (pre-fix awareness.el still had broken ts_minutes % 4). Compiled
C showed `minute_block = (ts / 60000); EL_NULL; 4;` — minute_block was
always ts_minutes (millions), never 0-3. if(minute_block==1/2/3) never
matched. Fix: recompile from current awareness.el which has the correct
modulo workaround: ts_minutes - minute_q4 (via + - / only).
2. Heartbeat/curiosity silent for 24h at 99% CPU: old design used idle-tick
counting (idle_n >= beat_interval). Failed when perceive() inbox guard
false-positives on "soul-inbox" substring matches in knowledge nodes —
did_work=true every tick, idle_n never accumulated, neither signal fired.
Fix: wall-clock elapsed time (time_now() - last_ts >= interval_ms).
Heartbeat fires regardless of load. New SOUL_HEARTBEAT_MS env var (default
60000ms) avoids the broken EL * operator. Verified: heartbeat ISEs flowing
at pulse 3 within 2 minutes of restart.
dist/awareness.c was stale — still had the broken EL % operator codegen
(minute_block = ts/60000 raw, EL_NULL; 4; as dead statements) and the
broken should_scan/should_beat logic (idle_n truthy check instead of >=).
Recompiled awareness.el to bring dist/awareness.c in sync with the source
fix committed 2026-05-25 (fb69044). The monolithic dist/neuron.c (compiled
from soul.el which imports awareness.el) was already correct from fb69044 —
only the standalone dist/awareness.c was behind.
Bug #2 (99% CPU) root cause identified: perceive() inbox guard
(engram_search_json) has false positives — knowledge nodes containing
"soul-inbox" as a substring match, causing engram_activate_json(..., hops=2)
to run on every tick on a 162K-node graph. This blocks sleep_ms and prevents
idle_n accumulation → no heartbeats. Separate fix needed.
Three bugs fixed in awareness.el:
1. EL let-rebinding inside if-blocks creates inner scope only — outer
variable unchanged after block exits. Curiosity seed terms were always
"memory/knowledge/context" regardless of minute_block. Fix: state_set
inside if-blocks, state_get after to retrieve selected values.
2. EL % operator completely broken in v1.0.0-20260501 — compiles as dead
code (left operand assigned, modulo dropped). minute_block was always
ts/60000 (a large int, never 0-3). Fix: arithmetic workaround:
x%4 = x - (q+q+q+q) where q = x/4.
3. awareness_run idle_n % beat_interval == 0 also broken by same % bug —
should_scan and should_beat fired every idle tick instead of every N
ticks. Fix: idle_n >= interval comparisons with idle_reset() after
firing, so the counter restarts cleanly after each event.
EL % and * operators filed as P1 backlog item for elc compiler fix.
Also adds minute_block field to curiosity_scan ISE for observability.
Rebuilt awareness.c and neuron.c from source using the updated elc (which now
correctly recognizes http_serve_async as a 2-arg builtin). Rebuilt the neuron
binary against the updated el_runtime.c which now sorts InternalStateEvent scans
by created_at DESC. The soul daemon now posts heartbeats that surface immediately
at offset 0 of the ISE scan, rather than being buried behind 20K older entries.
Two fixes:
1. proactive_curiosity() was calling engram_activate_json with multi-word phrases
("memory knowledge context"). engram_activate finds seeds via istr_contains
(substring match), so the phrase had to appear verbatim in a node's content.
Almost no node contains the exact string "memory knowledge context", so only
0-2 nodes activated per curiosity scan. Fixed by activating each word separately:
"memory", "knowledge", "context" → 3 independent activate calls → hundreds of
nodes promoted to WM per cycle.
2. dist/neuron.c called http_serve() (blocking accept loop) which made awareness_run()
unreachable. soul.el correctly specifies http_serve_async but elc silently drops
unknown builtins, leaving blocking http_serve in the compiled C. Patched neuron.c
to call http_serve_async directly — HTTP server runs in a background pthread,
awareness_run() runs on the main thread as intended.
EL compiles any variable named 'seed' to EL_NULL at call sites (likely
conflicts with BFS seed node terminology in the runtime builtins). Rename to
'curiosity_seed' throughout proactive_curiosity(). Also note this as a known
EL reserved-name hazard alongside the inline if-else string expression bug.
1. perceive() guard — gate on engram_search_json before running activation.
engram_activate_json with no matching seeds cleared all WM weights every
second during idle operation, destroying context built by MCP-layer calls.
The search-based guard is a no-WM-side-effect pre-check.
2. emit_heartbeat() pulse field — replace broken if-else string default with
int_to_str(pulse_count()). EL codegen initialises inline if-else result
slots to 0, producing "pulse":, (invalid JSON) when the true branch fires.
3. proactive_curiosity() — new function that activates a rotating 4-domain seed
every beat_interval/2 idle ticks to build working memory between heartbeats.
Seeds rotate on wall-clock minute cycle to avoid single-topic WM dominance.
Seed selection uses imperative let-rebinding (not inline if-else) to avoid
the same EL codegen empty-string bug.
Ollama availability is a silent failure mode: when the embedding service
is down, semantic seed injection falls back to lexical-only activation with
no signal in the ISE stream. Add embed_ok field (0/1) to every heartbeat
by probing http://localhost:11434 — makes Ollama health visible without
a separate monitoring path.
state_get() returns "" for unset keys. Both soul.pulse and soul_boot_count
could be empty on first heartbeat cycle, producing invalid JSON like
{"event":"heartbeat","pulse":,"boot":,...}. Add defensive guards:
if str_eq(raw, "") { "0" } else { raw } for both fields.
Rebuilds soul daemon binary to pick up tier-based temporal decay rates
implemented in el_runtime.c. No source changes to awareness.el or soul.el —
pure rebuild to stay in sync with Engram runtime.
Heartbeat ISEs now include wm_active: number of nodes currently in
working memory. Makes ISEs observable enough to diagnose activation
health without a separate query.
neuron-api.el is a new first-class El module that implements all Neuron
cognitive API handlers natively — no HTTP round-trips, no MCP wrapper,
direct engram builtin calls. All capabilities that previously lived in
the MCP wrapper adapter now live here in the soul.
Handlers: begin_session, compile_ctx, remember, recall, search_knowledge,
browse_knowledge, capture_knowledge, evolve_knowledge, promote_knowledge,
browse_processes, define_process, log_state_event, list_state_events,
inspect_config, tune_config, inspect_graph, link_entities, list_typed,
consolidate.
Routes wired in routes.el under /api/neuron/* (GET + POST).
Also compiles all loop-1/loop-2 .el source changes into dist/*.c and
rebuilds the binary. memory.elh and neuron-api.elh updated with new exports.
elp-input.el: replace broken engram_search_json with engram_activate_json
as Layer 1. Layer 2 suppress/filter keeps nodes with non-zero salience/
importance. Reason step extracts patient from top activated node content.
ELP grammar realizes the response via generate().
routes.el: add 'elp' event_type to handle_dharma_recv so the studio can
route ELP requests through dharma.
will.anderson
Will Anderson