The agentic loop keeps only the FIRST tool_use block per round (chat.el:2281,
"Capture first tool_use block only"). Anthropic lets a model emit several
tool_use blocks in one message and requires a tool_result for every one, so a
parallel-tool turn is answered once, the rest are dropped, and the next request
dies with:
tool_use ids were found without tool_result blocks immediately after
(neuron#78 quotes this as "tool_use ids found without tool_result"; the above is
the API's actual wording - recorded so the next person's grep matches.)
This constrains the wire to match what the loop can assemble:
"tool_choice":{"type":"auto","disable_parallel_tool_use":true}
STOPGAP - AND THE DURABLE FIX ALREADY EXISTS. A correct multi-tool loop is
already in Will's EL runtime, in C, and the soul does not call it. Verified on
el:origin/main lang/el-compiler/runtime/el_runtime.c: llm_register_tool:9616,
llm_build_tool_results:9743 - which walks EVERY content block, emits one
tool_result per tool_use, and sets is_error for an unregistered tool -
llm_call_agentic:9817 calling it at :9918, iteration cap 10 at :9847. Will's
commit 12d5e77 (2026-04-30). grep for llm_call_agentic/llm_register_tool across
every neuron/*.el returns nothing; dist/soul.c has zero references. chat.el
hand-rolls its own single-tool loop instead, and that is the one that breaks.
The durable fix is therefore to register the soul's tools via llm_register_tool
and call llm_call_agentic - deleting a loop, not writing one. See ADR 0005.
Our own approved spec called this seven weeks ago:
docs/research/agentic-tool-approval-design.md (2026-06-12, "Approved for build"),
line 20 on the defect, line 30 on the goal ("Execute all tool_use blocks in a
turn (one result per block)").
Two edits, because dist/soul.c cannot be regenerated here (Will's gated elc/elb
toolchain is not on this machine):
(a) chat.el:2255 - source of truth, so a later regen carries the fix.
One edit covers all three routes: agentic_loop is called from chat.el:2152
(/api/chat agentic), :2676 (dharma room) and :2496 (agentic_resume).
(b) dist/soul.c:28173 - generated form, hand-spliced. Line 27624 is the
non-agentic/OpenAI-compat req_body (no tools) and was left untouched.
Prior art reused rather than reinvented: soul-narrated-runs-20260713.patch
(27,824 bytes) line 78 spliced this same string into the same concat chain on
2026-07-13.
Deliberately NOT ported from that patch, having read it: max_tokens is not
changed by it (16384 sits on both sides of the hunk; our main's 4096 is a
separate output-truncation concern), and its pause_turn pairing fix - same
defect class - is unreachable today because no server-side web_search is wired
(agentic_tools_with_web at chat.el:1418 is never called), so it is untestable
and logged instead.
Proven E2E on a scratch profile and port 7791, never the live chain. A/B against
a pristine origin/main control built from the same vendored runtime: fixed
completed the mission (tools_used read_file x3, 4 iterations, correct answer);
control failed 3/3. Direct API probe confirmed the mechanism - without the field
the model emits 3 parallel tool_use blocks and replaying the unfixed loop's next
turn returns HTTP 400; with it, exactly 1 block.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The runtime vendored alongside the CI pin was the Jul-21 snapshot, which
predates two builtins the reconciled ship-soul now calls:
- http_delete_json (boot-counter HTTP write-back, awareness/memory self-review)
- engram_act_stats_json (heartbeat activation observability)
Compiling dist/soul.c against the stale runtime fails with implicit-declaration
errors. Vendor the current release runtime (identical to the one the soul was
gate-verified against: verify-soul-contract PASS, genesis boots clean, full
safety-contact) so the CI Linux soul is byte-for-byte the verified soul.
The soul build downloaded el-runtime-c 'latest' from Artifact Registry. The
merged ship-soul calls engram_prune_telemetry, which the latest published
runtime no longer defines, so an unpinned build fails to link — the failure
mode that let a broken/handlerless soul reach prod.
Vendor the release runtime v1.0.0-20260501 (el_runtime.c/.h) into the repo and
compile the soul against it. This is the exact runtime the merged soul was
verified against (verify-soul-contract GATE PASS, genesis boot survives, full
safety-contact response), making the build reproducible and independent of a
moving AR 'latest'.
The verify-soul-contract.sh HARD-BLOCK gate already runs before Publish (from
the CI-hardening arc on main), so a destructive or stale soul can never
publish/deploy again.
dist/soul.c: regenerated amalgamation (1.15MB) from the reconciled sources via
the hide-.elh + elc --target=c recipe, so the shipped translation unit CI
compiles now actually carries every landed fix — genesis-boot SIGSEGV (#150),
safety-contact 988 truncation (#96), url-decode multi-word search, honest
receipts (#100/#101), immutability arc (#83), and the bounded payloads (#103).
verify-soul-contract.sh, two non-weakening fixes (both false-NEGATIVE bugs that
spuriously failed a CORRECT soul; neither relaxes what fails a defective one):
1. #199 by-id gate: verify tombstone/KEPT via /api/neuron/graph?id=<id>&depth=1
(a compact neighborhood) instead of grepping engram_scan_nodes_json(9999,0)
— a multi-MB, salience-ordered, 9999-capped whole-graph dump in which the
salience-0.01 tombstone marker sorts past the cap and vanished.
2. Isolation: pin SOUL_ISE_URL to the dead axon port. Unsetting ENGRAM_URL was
not enough — the periodic engram sync defaults its source to the LIVE engram
(http://localhost:8742), so the 'isolated' gate pulled the operator's real
brain (56 -> 12k nodes in seconds), which both broke Section B determinism
and read live state. Now the soul stays on its own store.
Verified GREEN on a throwaway port/HOME (live :7770/:8742/~/.neuron untouched):
gate PASS x3 (presence 27/27, immutability all 5 KEPT); safety-contact POST 218B
/ GET 208B full untruncated; multi-word search (%20 and +) returns ranked hits
with an all-gibberish control at 0; bounded session/begin 1370B; honest ok:false
on a missing-id delete; genesis (ntn-genesis) boots clean through mem_save with
no SIGSEGV.
Union of all ship-critical soul fixes for the Mac beta:
- Keeps main's honest receipts (#100/#101), immutability arc + #199 by-id
gate (#83), Track B threat routing (#76), bounded beginSession (#103),
CI hardening (#85/#86), elc typo hotfix (#77), neuron-dev-setup (#84).
- Brings WIP's genesis-boot SIGSEGV fix (#150/#95), safety-contact 988
truncation fix (#96), bounded-persona floor (#93), and 10 self-review
commits (importance flattening, curiosity DF gating, WM/heartbeat
observability, boot-counter telemetry).
- Folds the multi-word ranked-search fix: api_query_param now url_decode()s
the extracted value so q=foo%20bar / foo+bar tokenize as two words.
Conflicts (neuron-api.el payload-bound comments, mcp-wrapper tool_forget)
resolved toward the correct end state: main's verified honest-receipt
read-back is kept; WIP's improved forget description is kept. Generated
dist/*.c taken from main and will be regenerated from this reconciled
source in the following commit.
Reject an extracted auto-term when its label document frequency exceeds
node_count/400 (floor 8) -- measured live at 12,859 nodes, threshold 32.
Live label df separates the classes by an order of magnitude:
rejected: <!--:220 SELF:175 Engram:125 CORE:88 STAR:36
passed: Dual:12 Sparse:8 Latent:6 MemQ:1 dGRPO:1 engram_goal_bias:1
Verified against the running soul (boot 21). Peak curiosity activation fell
from 541 to 113; the flood terms (SELF, CORE, Engram, STAR, <!--) are absent
from post-fix scans while topical compound identifiers pass untouched.
Sample is 7 scans -- suggestive, not conclusive; watch the next review.
Nested conditional rather than max(): El let is single-assignment, so the
floor is expressed as a second conjunct.
Verification note: content df was tested as an alternative signal and
rejected -- 'Curiosity' has the highest content df in the store (5526) yet
one of the lowest activation counts (113). Label df is the correct field
because label is what the first-word extractor reads.
Investigated awareness.el ise_post's local-fallback engram_node_full call as a
suspected instance of the score-mangling double-wrap fixed in server.el on
2026-08-01. It is not one. Removing the wrapper produces byte-identical
codegen: the compiler treats el_from_float as the boxing intrinsic, so both
`el_from_float(0.3)` and a bare `0.3` emit exactly one el_from_float(0.3).
The server.el bug was different in kind - there the arguments came from
json_get_float(), already boxed as el_val_t, and wrapping those a second time
reinterprets the boxed bits as a raw double, fails engram_decode_score's range
check, and silently clamps to defaults.
Comment only, no behavior change. Recording the negative result at the call
site so the sweep criterion is right: look for el_from_float applied to an
already-boxed expression, never to a literal. Grepping the call name alone
produces false positives, which is what happened here.
Port the payload-bounding fix (PR #102, commit 872120c) onto main. The
session-init endpoints projected unbounded engram nodes (~900KB), closing
the MCP client socket on every beginSession. Cap the lists (8 activated /
10 recent for begin_session, 10/20 for compile_ctx) and project each node
to a light identity + a bounded, UTF-8-safe content snippet via
api_compact_node / api_compact_activated / api_utf8_trunc. Response drops
~900KB -> ~12KB; full content stays available via recall/fetch/inspectGraph.
Regenerate dist/soul.c (the CI-built amalgamation) and dist/neuron-api.c
from source. The soul.c regen also compiles in already-merged source the
previously-committed soul.c was stale against (agent write/edit receipt
fixes, #100/#101); verified via scripts/verify-soul-contract.sh
(PRESENCE + IMMUTABILITY PASS) and a clean CI-style cc build.
Root cause: two false-receipt paths in the wrapper's delete family.
- delete_by_id (removeKnowledge, deleteProcess, deleteImprint,
dischargeWonder) FABRICATED {"ok":true,...,"note":"soft-deleted"}
without calling the soul at all — the 'soul does not yet expose a delete
HTTP route' note was stale (/api/neuron/node/delete exists and tombstones
any node type).
- tool_forget forwarded the soul's response but never verified the deletion
actually persisted before answering ok.
The change (Receipt Contract rule 1 — a tool result must reflect what
actually happened):
- delete_by_id now routes to the soul's real /api/neuron/node/delete and
propagates its answer (honest 'node not found' for bad ids).
- Both handlers read back before answering ok: GET /api/neuron/graph?id=..
&depth=1 must show the tombstone marker (label "tombstone:<id>"); if it
does not, answer {"ok":false,"error":"delete_not_persisted",...} in
the soul's not-persisted error shape (api_not_persisted).
- Soul errors and transport failures pass through unchanged.
E2E evidence (sandbox soul :7791 + wrapper :7792, elb builds):
- unpatched: removeKnowledge on a NONEXISTENT id -> {"ok":true,
"deleted":"kn-DOES-NOT-EXIST-deadbeef","note":"soft-deleted"} (lie)
- patched: same call -> {"error":"node not found: ..."} (soul's answer)
- happy path: remember -> forget -> {"ok":true,"tombstoned":true};
read-back: hidden from default /list/Memory, present with
?include_deleted=1, node KEPT in full graph view (immutability intact)
- scripts/verify-soul-contract.sh on the soul it talks to: GATE PASS
(27/27 presence + immutability)
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Root cause: dispatch_tool's write_file returned {"ok":true} without checking
fs_write's result, and edit_file returned ok:true even when old_text was absent
(str_replace silently no-ops) and its fs_write was also unchecked. Any failed
or no-op write fed the model a false success receipt, which it then repeated
to the user as fact.
The change (Receipt Contract rule 1 — a tool result must reflect what actually
happened):
- write_file: check fs_write's return (1 = all bytes written, 0 = fail);
on failure return {"error":"write failed"} in the handler's existing
error-JSON shape.
- edit_file: reject empty old_text, verify old_text is actually present
(str_contains) before replacing, and check the fs_write result the same way.
- Verification is by operation result, NOT an fs_read read-back: fs_read arms
the runtime's one-shot binary send length, the exact mechanism that truncated
the safety-contact response (#96). Same honest-write pattern as that fix.
E2E evidence (sandboxed elb build, dispatch_tool driven directly):
- unpatched: write_file into a chmod-000 dir -> {"ok":true} (lie);
edit_file with absent old_text -> {"ok":true} (lie, file untouched)
- patched: same calls -> {"error":"write failed"} /
{"error":"old_text not found in file"}; happy paths still ok:true
- scripts/verify-soul-contract.sh on the patched soul: GATE PASS (27/27
presence + immutability)
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Four sites passed the Float local 'sal' through el_from_float() a second
time. el_val_t is the bit-pattern of the double, so re-wrapping performs
an int64->double VALUE conversion of the bits before re-bitcasting —
garbage that fails engram_decode_score's range check and clamps to
defaults. Net effect: importance="critical" stored 0.5/0.5 — importance
levels were cosmetic on the MCP memory path. Verified fixed live:
critical now stores salience/importance 0.95/0.95. Same bug fixed today
in engram server.el route_create_node (foundation/el 7f03876). Literal
wraps (el_from_float(0.9)) are safe — elc passes numeric literals raw.
wm_saturated was a sampled boolean — the 0->1 onset and 1->0 release
moments were only recoverable by hand-diffing consecutive heartbeats.
Emit a low-rate transition ISE at each edge carrying the WM top-5 at
that instant, so the composition that caused the regime change is
captured rather than the composition up to 59s later. First beat of a
boot never fires (restart is not a transition).
The session-init endpoints concatenated unbounded engram activate/scan
results as FULL node objects (content up to ~90KB per node), producing a
~900KB response. After the MCP wrapper re-escapes that into a stringified
text block the client dropped the socket ('connection closed unexpectedly')
on every beginSession call. Cap each list (8-10 activated, 10-20 recent)
and project every node to a light identity plus a bounded, UTF-8-safe
content snippet. Response drops from ~900KB to ~12KB; full content stays
available on demand via recall/fetch/inspectGraph.
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.
Frederik
will.anderson