writeonce/docs/stories/jarvis/00-story.md
shoney.arickathil ad088163cc docs(rv2-tls,jarvis): TLS ladder through F3c-core + SAN landed
- rv2 9 phase-F row + review_pending: F3c-core sans-io driver + SAN/host
  landed (KAT'd vs RFC 8448 record trace); remaining F3c-net = system CA
  trust-anchor walk + net.connect_tls VM plumbing (live-gated), then G
- jarvis 00-story + 01 blocker tables: crypto/handshake engine landed;
  jarvis now waits only on net.connect_tls (the socket glue)
- status board rv2 9 row updated to the full ladder state

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
(cherry picked from commit 4fdf07196d01c32d0ab12d32d36fa4285ff34654)
2026-09-15 01:15:31 +02:00

112 lines
6.7 KiB
Markdown

# Story — `jarvis`, the writeonce AI assistant
The sixth track, and the second whose product is an end-user *program* rather
than a language capability — after [`wmux`](../wmux/00-story.md), the terminal
multiplexer. Where wmux proves writeonce can build the tool a developer lives
in, jarvis proves it can build the tool of the moment: an AI assistant, written
end to end in `.wo`, durable and single-binary by construction. It serves the
same north star — adoption by Linux developers — by meeting them where the
attention is.
Numbering restarts at 1 and is local to this track; frontmatter carries
`track: jarvis`. Status rules are the repo's, unchanged: `status:` in
frontmatter is the only place state lives, no directory encodes it.
## The problem, stated once
An assistant's whole job is to reach a model, and the runtime cannot reach
anything outbound. It learned to *listen* — sockets in 8/11/35, unix sockets and
peer address in 35 and runtime-v2 — but it has never learned to *dial*: there is
no `net.connect` (outbound TCP), confirmed against `runtime/src/wob.h` (the net
builtins stop at listen/accept/read/write plus the unix-socket client), and no
outbound TLS client anywhere. An LLM API is HTTPS on a remote host. jarvis
therefore does not begin until two things exist.
The design chosen is **direct outbound HTTPS** — jarvis dials the LLM API
itself, keeping the pure single-binary story. That gates the whole track on
runtime work, now **partly built**:
- **`net.connect`** — outbound TCP — ✅ **landed 2026-09-07** (`wob.h` id 110,
`getaddrinfo` DNS + blocking connect; the outbound half language 38 named).
- **An outbound TLS client** — HTTPS over that socket — owned by
runtime-v2 [9](../runtime-v2/09-in-process-tls.md) (in-process TLS), which
**retires the standing "TLS is the proxy's job" doctrine**. In progress and
mostly landed: **A AEAD** (ChaCha20-Poly1305 + AES-GCM), **B HKDF**,
**C X25519**, **D signatures** (RSA PKCS1/PSS + ECDSA-P256), **E X.509** +
**SAN/hostname**, **F1** record layer, **F2** key schedule, **F3a** message
layer, **F3b** offline handshake verification, and the **F3c-core sans-io
handshake driver** — all vector-gated against RFC 8448 and real cert chains.
What jarvis still waits on is **F3c-net**: the `net.connect_tls` builtin (the
socket glue driving that driver over a real fd) plus a system CA trust-anchor
walk — and **G** (inbound server) for porch, not jarvis.
A **local-gateway alternative was considered and set aside**: jarvis could speak
to a small companion process over a unix socket (`net.connect_unix`, id 107) or
spawn one (`proc.spawn`, id 97) — both exist today — and let that companion do
the HTTPS, exactly as inbound TLS terminates at a proxy. It is buildable now.
It was rejected in favour of the single-binary story, in which the assistant
owns its own connection rather than shipping a second executable.
## Architecture
browser ⇄ jarvis (a porch app) ⇄ net.connect ✅ + TLS (rv2 9, in progress) ⇄ LLM API
Requests arrive at a porch web app; the answer streams the other way, token by
token, LLM → jarvis → browser, over porch's SSE. Conversation state is durable
in a `@table`, so history survives a restart with no external store — the
writeonce differentiator wmux already showed for session state, applied to chat.
## The iterations
Ordered by dependency; the first rung is the whole end-to-end seam, and nothing
past it is worth building until that seam is proven.
| # | Iteration | Delivers | Needs |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | [the chat loop](01-chat-loop.md) — ✅ `ready` (forks auto-approved, `review_pending`) | a prompt sent to one LLM, tokens streamed back to the browser, the conversation persisted durably | the outbound seam (TLS phase F); porch 2/3/6/7; wo-html |
| 2 | [tool use / the agent loop](02-tool-use.md) — `refine` | function-calling and multi-step orchestration through actors — where "assistant" becomes "agent" | 1 |
| 3 | [retrieval (RAG)](03-retrieval.md) — `refine` | embeddings + vector search over a document set; carries its own sub-gap — an embeddings call over the same outbound path, plus a vector store (pure-`.wo` or a new primitive, decided in that story) | 1, and the embeddings/vector decision |
Sketched, not committed — named so the shape is visible, not to schedule them:
**model routing / multi-model** (choose a backend per request) and an **MCP
client** (jarvis as an MCP host, calling tools over the protocol) — both
on-brand, both later.
Only iteration 1's scope is settled by this overview; every iteration file is
written and refined to `ready` before its code lands, per the repo's story
discipline.
## Dependencies
Consumed, and already `ready` or shipped:
| Needs | From |
| --- | --- |
| signed cookies, session id | porch [2](../porch/02-randomness-and-cookies.md) |
| durable conversation history, revocable sessions | porch [3](../porch/03-sessions.md) + `@table` |
| incremental response writes | porch [6](../porch/06-streaming-core.md) |
| token streaming to the browser | porch [7](../porch/07-sse-and-compression.md) (SSE) |
| the chat UI | `wo-html` / `writeonce-view` |
Blockers, which must land before iteration 1 starts:
| Blocker | Owner | State |
| --- | --- | --- |
| outbound TCP (`net.connect`) | language [38](../language-runtime-database/38-content-platform-capabilities.md) | ✅ **landed 2026-09-07** (`wob.h` id 110) |
| outbound TLS client | runtime-v2 [9](../runtime-v2/09-in-process-tls.md) — in-process TLS; **retires the proxy-termination doctrine** | 🔄 in progress — A AEAD ✅, B HKDF ✅, C X25519 ✅, D signatures ✅, E X.509 ✅, F1 record ✅, F2 key schedule ✅, F3a messages ✅, F3b offline verify ✅, F3c-core sans-io handshake driver ✅, SAN/hostname ✅ (all KAT'd vs RFC 8448 / real certs); **remaining F3c-net**: system CA trust-anchor walk + `net.connect_tls` VM plumbing (live-gated), then G server |
## What this track does NOT own
| Not jarvis's | Why |
| --- | --- |
| local, in-process model inference | needs an ML runtime and heavy FFI — against the no-external-dependency doctrine |
| the local-gateway companion process | considered and rejected (above) in favour of the single-binary story |
| voice / audio in or out | a separate surface with its own capture and codec story; no rung asks for it |
| starting before the blockers land | like [porch 9](../porch/09-idempotent-replay.md) waiting on language 41, jarvis waits on the outbound seam — documented, not worked around |
## Review protocol
Same as every track: the developer reads one iteration, approves or amends, and
the next starts only after approval. Each iteration is an unsplittable value
slice with phases, Given/When/Then acceptance criteria, and an out-of-scope
list, proven by a gate before it is called done.