Two fixes, one found by making the other.
1. HEBBIAN WRITE-BACK. This daemon learned 1,198 associations in 23h48m and
kept none of them: it syncs FROM the engram server and never pushes, and
mem_save() is unreachable in HTTP mode by design (soul.el only sets
soul_snapshot_path inside `is_genesis && safe_to_seed`, false whenever
ENGRAM_URL is set, because the server owns persistence). So the one process
that runs idle cognition -- where essentially all co-activation happens -- was
the one process that could not remember what it learned.
hebb_consolidate() now drains the runtime's write-back queue on every heartbeat
and POSTs it as ONE batch to /api/edges/batch. One request, one durable write,
not one 60MB snapshot per edge. Also drains on clean shutdown, so an exit
between beats doesn't take the last 8 minutes of learning with it.
_auth is required and its absence is silent: check_auth_ok exempts GET and
/api/neuron/state-events (which is why ise_post works keyless) but gates every
other mutation on "_auth" in the BODY -- http_serve surfaces no headers, so
there is no Bearer path. An unauthorized reply is NON-EMPTY, so the obvious
`if resp == "" return 0` check would have reported delivery of edges that were
refused, after the drain had already destroyed them. Caught before it shipped.
Gauges hebb_wb_pending/_drained/_dropped/_sent go into the heartbeat so a
consolidation path that stops delivering is visible in the stream.
2. A READ ROUTE MUST NEVER WRITE THE CANONICAL SNAPSHOT. GET /api/graph/edges
serialized this process's graph straight over $HOME/.neuron/engram/snapshot.json
-- the engram SERVER's durable store -- and read the edges back out of it. I
triggered it myself this morning fetching edges for the census above:
snapshot.json went from the server's 41,213 edges to the soul's 42,431, and the
next engram restart loaded the soul's graph as canonical. It happened to be a
superset (Knowledge 1198->1218, Memory 1238->1242, no durable type down), so
nothing was lost. That was luck. Had the soul been running a partial load --
the exact failure soul.el's safe_to_seed guard exists to catch -- one GET would
have destroyed the store, with no write-side guard able to see it coming.
The engram server fixed this same class of bug on 2026-07-21 by routing exports
to a dotted sidecar; the soul kept the original pattern. Same fix: exports go to
.soul-edges-export.json. Also stops a 60MB serialize-and-reread per GET.
Verified: boot 26 loaded 42,432 edges with hebb_max 0.4941 carried across the
restart -- the first time this daemon has ever started knowing what it learned.
- sessions.el: new sessions module with session management and approval gate
- routes.el: wire /api/sessions routes (list, get, create, approve, tool_result)
- chat.el: thread-aware activation — short messages anchor to last reply
before engram compilation so follow-ups stay on-topic
- chat.el: agentic path tracks per-session history (session_hist_{id})
instead of shared conv_history, seeding each turn with prior context
- chat.el: add call_neuron_mcp, dispatch_tool, is_builtin_tool, next_bridge_id
agentic_loop, bridge_save, agentic_resume, handle_tool_result
- dist/soul: rebuild with all of the above
- Add stub implementations of safety.el, stewardship.el, and imprint.el
with their .elh headers so the branch compiles without the dependency
branches (feat/layer-safety, feat/layer-stewardship, feat/layer-imprint).
Each stub documents the layer contract it must satisfy when replaced.
- Fix GET /api/chat bypass: update the GET branch in handle_request to
call layered_cycle() consistently with the POST branch, rather than
calling handle_chat() directly and skipping the consciousness stack.
- Export layered_cycle() from soul.elh (and dist/soul.elh) so routes.el
can resolve the symbol via the header import.
- Fix steward_action else branch: add explicit handling for "block"
(returns safe refusal immediately, skips L3) and "redirect" (uses
redirect_to field). Unknown actions now log a warning and fall back to
the screened input rather than silently passing an empty string to
imprint_respond().
- Document hard_bell path: clarify that omitting auto_persist/history
update is intentional security isolation, and document the safety_validate
second-param sentinel contract ("hard_bell" vs screen_action).
- soul.el: SOUL_CGI_ID, SOUL_ENGRAM_PATH, SOUL_IDENTITY env vars;
state_set("soul_snapshot_path") so callers can find it; only call
init_soul_edges() when cgi_id == "ntn-genesis"
- chat.el: handle_dharma_room_turn — soul builds its own context from its
own engram, assembles system prompt, calls LLM, persists episodic memory;
also fix is_new_tool scoping bug in handle_chat_agentic (use has_tool)
- routes.el: wire dharma_room_turn event type before chat_as_soul branch
- rebuild dist/neuron: handle_dharma_room_turn now compiled in
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
Tim Lingo