---

DEVLOG #3 (2026-07-01, ARCHITECTURE, TOOLCHAIN, AND STAGE 0)

Project: SL-LLM-R
Tracked Work Time: 14 hours

Today started with architecture decisions and ended with the first real Stage 0
implementation.

I wrote six ADRs for the repository structure, toolchain, dependencies,
determinism, and low-level code.

The language split is:

• Python for research logic and orchestration
• C for stable ABI boundaries
• Assembly only for measured hot paths

I wanted assembly earlier, but that would add complexity before the system is
testable. SHA-256 stays in Python’s hashlib.

Central object IDs must not depend on time, process IDs, filesystem ordering,
thread scheduling, or uuid4(). Objects are hashed from canonical JSON:

json.dumps(data, sort_keys=True, separators=(",", ":"))

Core must not depend on infrastructure. I also added a machine-readable Stage
0 Definition of Done. Stage 0 only passes when schemas, validation, roundtrip
tests, golden vectors, and provenance exist.

Then I started coding.

The result was 67 files and around 2,514 added lines.

The schemas cover events, snapshots, manifests, verifier results, registry
commits, resource accounting, and Governor decisions. Each central object is
immutable, validated, encoded, hashed, and linked to provenance.

The RNG uses SplitMix64 with deterministic seed partitioning. The same seed
produces the same sequence across processes and thread counts.

The event store is append-only. Every event has a parent_hash, so history
cannot be silently overwritten.

The registry was the hardest part. Publication uses a temporary file and
atomic rename. Crash tests require recovery to either the old valid root or
the new valid root. My first version left temporary files behind, so I added
startup cleanup and root validation.

I also added an x86-64 RNG kernel and checked it against the C reference with
36,008 generated vectors. Both produce identical output.

Finally, stage0_status.py now checks real files, tests, manifests, vectors,
and audit evidence instead of trusting manual passed flags.

---

What Works

• Six ADRs accepted
• Deterministic schemas and canonical encoding
• Append-only event storage
• Atomic registry commit, rollback, and crash recovery
• C and x86-64 parity
• Evidence-driven Stage 0 audit

---

Tests

make test
make conformance

All current Stage 0 tests and the audit pass.

---

Changed Files

• Initial implementation: bf59395
• Status-checker fix: 9d6d353
• Assembly integration: 90a1f70

---

Next Steps

Begin Stage 1A and implement the proposal engine.

---

Summary (AI)

Stage 0 is implemented and tested: deterministic schemas, canonical encoding,
append-only events, rollback, native parity, and evidence-based status checks.

This is an engineering result, not evidence that VGCP or autonomous learning
works.