Wire the soul contract gate into ci.yaml as a hard block between the cc
build and the Publish-to-Artifact-Registry step. A non-zero gate fails the
build, so a stale (route-404ing) or memory-destroying (hard-deleting) soul
can never publish neuron-soul to foundation-prod or blue-green deploy to
GKE — the same class-fix now guarding the desktop builds, extended to prod.
Vendors scripts/verify-soul-contract.sh (copied from neuron-ui; the route
contract is baked in, so it's portable POSIX bash/curl with no neuron-ui
source dependency). It boots dist/neuron on a throwaway port with a
throwaway HOME/engram/cgi — never touching ~/.neuron or any live service —
and checks PRESENCE (every app route answered) + IMMUTABILITY (no engram
write route hard-deletes; deletes/forgets tombstone). Adds curl to the
build deps for the probe.
Phase 1 tombstoned memory/delete + node/delete, but the generic forget
path was still destructive. This routes every forget through the same
tombstone semantics so nothing in the daemon can hard-delete an engram
node anymore.
Canonical helper: mem_tombstone (memory.el, imported first so every module
can call it) — keep the node + its edges, record a Tombstone marker, never
engram_forget. neuron-api's tombstone_node now delegates to it (single
source of truth).
Per-path before -> after:
- memory.el `mem_forget` hard delete (engram_forget) -> tombstone. This
alone fixes both callers: the /api/neuron/memory/forget route
(handle_api_forget) and the cultivate op=="forget".
- awareness.el autonomous `forget` action engram_forget -> mem_tombstone.
The soul can no longer autonomously hard-delete a memory.
- mcp-wrapper tool_forget was a FAKE no-op that returned {"ok","deleted"}
without deleting OR tombstoning -> now routes to the soul's tombstoning
/api/neuron/memory/delete; tool description fixed to say it
supersedes/tombstones (recoverable), not "Remove a node".
Left intentionally as hard deletes (internal GC / lifecycle, not user
memory, all call engram_forget directly): session-summary replace
(chat.el), mem_consolidate dedup (memory.el), session-start telemetry
pruning (soul.el), session lifecycle (sessions.el).
Regenerated both ship paths under a 3GB physical-RSS watchdog (peak ~32MB):
dist/soul.c (single-TU amalgamation, macOS/Linux) and the per-module
dist/{memory,awareness,neuron-api}.c (Windows/Linux build). Verified: no
forget handler calls engram_forget; a forget leaves the node present +
tombstone marker. Gate (neuron-ui verify-soul-contract.sh, new memory-forget
row): PRESENCE + IMMUTABILITY PASS.
soul.c (the macOS single-TU amalgamation) already carries the
tombstone/supersede change, but the Windows/Linux build path compiles
the per-module dist/*.c instead (build-soul-windows.sh excludes soul.c).
That path was still pulling the stale, destructive dist/neuron-api.c —
so without this the cross-compiled neuron.exe would keep hard-deleting
engram nodes even though the source is fixed.
Regenerated with `elc --emit-header neuron-api.el`: no engram_forget in
memory_delete/node_delete (tombstone), supersedes edge in node_update.
Portable C — identical for macOS/Windows/Linux; only the runtime it links
against differs.
The soul was hard-deleting engram nodes: memory/delete and node/delete
called engram_forget (frees the node and drops its incident edges), and
node/update created a replacement then forgot the original with no link
back. That violates the day-one rule that engram nodes are immutable —
memory could be silently, irrecoverably destroyed via the API.
Convert the three destructive handlers to Will's immutability semantics,
mirroring the pattern memory/update and knowledge evolve/promote already
use:
- node/update -> create the new node, wire a "supersedes" edge new->old,
KEEP the original. No engram_forget. (Was: create + forget old, no edge.)
- memory/delete and node/delete -> TOMBSTONE: keep the node AND its edges,
create a Tombstone marker node (content = target id, label
"tombstone:<id>") wired with a "tombstones" edge. Never engram_forget.
Default bounded list reads (handle_api_list_typed / the memory list) hide
tombstoned nodes and the markers; ?include_deleted=1 returns them, and
internal cognition + /api/graph/nodes still traverse them. memory/update
was already correct and is unchanged.
Full-graph hiding on /api/graph/nodes is deliberately NOT done at the el
layer: json_array_get is O(index), so filtering that endpoint (called with
limit up to 999999) would be O(n^2). That hide needs a runtime scan filter
and is a separate follow-up; nodes there remain traversable, tagged
status:deleted via the marker edge.
Regenerated dist/soul.c from these sources (flat single-TU amalgamation,
compiled under a 3GB physical-RSS watchdog, peak ~32MB). Verified with
scripts/verify-soul-contract.sh in neuron-ui: PRESENCE passes (all 27
routes) and IMMUTABILITY passes (all four mutation routes KEPT; deletes
produce a real tombstone marker and hide from the default list).