Engineering principles
The binding principles from the implementation plan, with the honest status of each — principles are
practiced, not just stated.
Safety by isolation
V0.1 executes only in QEMU with project-generated disposable images — never pass-through host disks. The blast radius of a kernel bug is a throwaway VM.
IN DEVELOPMENT Intelligence is not authority
Future AI agents must not execute privileged kernel operations directly. Agent intent flows through policy, permission evaluation, user approval and deterministic services — the kernel API is shaped for that now.
CONCEPT Small trusted core
Kernel responsibilities are explicit; clear subsystem boundaries and narrow interfaces are preferred over hidden global state. Pure logic lives outside the kernel where it can be host-tested.
IN DEVELOPMENT Deterministic observability
Every boot stage is observable through serial output even if the framebuffer or keyboard path fails. One stage, one machine-parseable marker.
IN DEVELOPMENT Failure is data
Panic output, QEMU exit codes, timeouts, exception vectors, failing assertions and serial tails are captured as structured evidence wherever possible.
IN DEVELOPMENT Reproducibility
A fresh authorized developer or agent should be able to reconstruct the environment from versioned documentation and scripts alone — toolchain pinned, commands documented, builds repeatable.
IN DEVELOPMENT