hs.4 surfaced a leak the heap-str-abi spec didn't account for:
heap-Str slabs handed back by int_to_str / float_to_str and
immediately printed via io/print_str leak at scope close under
--alloc=rc. RED tests at e2e.rs (commit 592d87b) pin it.
Brainstorm settled on naming the rule rather than working
around it: Term::Do.args[*] are walked in Borrow position by
uniqueness and linearity passes, symmetric to Term::Ctor.args[*]
being walked in Consume position. The kind itself carries the
ownership default — no per-op field on EffectOpSig.
The rule alone doesn't close the leak; two heap-Str-specific
shape fixes follow (int_to_str / float_to_str gain ret_mode: Own;
drop_symbol_for_binder's App arm gets a Str carve-out symmetric
to field_drop_call's existing one). DESIGN anchor + WhatsNew +
audit-close from hs.5 roll into this milestone.
Grounding-check PASS — all nine load-bearing assumptions
ratified against currently-green tests (with the two RED tests
ratifying the leak as the spec's premise).
hs.2's implementer-orchestrator BLOCKED with an empirical finding: the iter 18d.3 move-tracking and iter 18b non-escape lowering together prevent static-Str pointers from ever reaching ailang_rc_inc/_dec along any shipping execution path. The previously-proposed runtime sentinel guard and the i64 -1 sentinel slot in static-Str globals were both dead by construction.
Amendment is subtractive: remove the runtime/rc.c guard from §Architecture/Runtime layer + §Components/runtime/rc.c (none needed), shrink static-Str globals from <{i64, i64, [N+1 x i8]}> to <{i64, [N+1 x i8]}> (saves 8 bytes per literal), update GEP indices (i32 0, i32 1 → i32 0, i32 0), drop the §Error-handling 'Sentinel collision' subsection, drop the proposed str_field_in_adt_drops_static_str_noop safety-gate test from §Testing strategy (vacuous against natural fixtures), reframe §Architecture/Codegen-4 as 'codegen-level elision invariant, no runtime guard'. Goal/consumer-ABI claims tightened to 'unified along consumer paths, producer + RC sides differ'.
Acceptance: re-dispatched grounding-check PASS. The amendment leaves hs.1 (committed at c56498a) needing a forward-fix retrofit — that is the new hs.2's scope, planned next.
Two builtins ship together: int_to_str (new) and float_to_str (today type-installed but codegen-deferred). Both produce malloc-backed, refcounted Str slabs via new ailang_int_to_str / ailang_float_to_str runtime exports.
Slab layout is {rc_header, len, bytes, NUL}. Static-Str globals migrate to the same packed-struct shape with a UINT64_MAX sentinel rc_header; ailang_rc_inc / _dec short-circuit on the sentinel. From every caller's POV static and heap Str values are indistinguishable, so existing code paths (eq__Str, compare__Str, io/print_str, per-type drop walks) keep working with a single +8 GEP at the three C-API callsites and no change to drop dispatch.
Out of scope: ++ concat operator, Show typeclass + print rewire, length-aware comparison for embedded-NUL Strs.
Single foreign subject (Qwen3-Coder-Next via IONOS). Two blind
cohorts: one sees only a JSON mini-spec, the other only an .ailx
mini-spec; same four tasks. Fairness anchored by a master source
plus a renderer (built on the existing ailang-surface roundtrip
machinery) that projects two form versions from one canonical
content base. Harness shells out to ail parse / check / build / run
and feeds back location-stripped errors so the JSON-pointer
asymmetry doesn't tilt the experiment. Out of scope for v1: a
verdict on Decision 6, a free-choice cohort, repetitions, a second
subject.
Grounding-check PASS on cma.1 (master + renderer + tests).
Recon surfaced that several draft 'moved OUT' sections were universal,
not mode-specific (agent role boundaries, authority over skills, design
rationale, feature-acceptance criterion, when-not-to-delegate). These
apply in any session — interactive or /boss-active — because agents can
be dispatched, design choices can be made, and skills can be edited
outside /boss too.
Tighten the move-list to the three genuinely mode-specific subsections:
Direction freedom, Notifications, Done-state notifications: WhatsNew.md.
Everything else stays in CLAUDE.md. /boss becomes leaner, the universal/
mode-specific boundary is drawn at content that only applies inside the
autonomous loop. Re-dispatched grounding-check: PASS.
Brainstorm assumed all four 23.4-prep commits had shipped to main.
Branch verification (post-iter/23.4 deletion) showed only prep1
(linearity + check bare-name) is on main; prep2 + prep3 were
attempted on the stranded iter/23.4 branch and never landed.
Spec corrections:
- Goal section: prep-commit status block reflects actual main state.
- Architecture: drop §2 (prep2/prep3 rollback) — no rollback exists
on main; section count drops from four to three artefacts.
- Components table: prep2/prep3 row now reads 'abandoned 2026-05-11
with iter/23.4 deletion', not 'shipped, rolled back in 23.4'.
- Acceptance criterion 1: drop the 'prep2 + prep3 are rolled back'
clause.
- Load-bearing assumption 5: now states prep2/prep3 never reached
main (fixes the silent-assumption pattern this spec exists to
prevent — same failure mode the original Spec-23 had).
- Load-bearing assumption 6: cite the cherry-picked main SHAs
(0caaced, 923dd8c) alongside the stranded-branch originals
(8d39f13, aef4ab8).
- Known costs: drop the '23.4 rollback' line item.
Plan-recon for iter 23.4 surfaced that poly_box_proj.ail.json does
not exist in examples/. The three load-bearing regression fixtures
are poly_id, poly_apply, and poly_rec_capture (the latter at
examples/poly_rec_capture.ail.json, driven by e2e.rs::poly_rec_capture_demo).
Three references in the spec corrected. Substantive intent (three
existing polymorphic fixtures regress unchanged under unified mono)
unchanged.
Re-brainstorm of milestone 23 after the original spec retired in
iter gc.1. The original silently assumed polymorphic free fns are
mono-specialised parallel to class methods; iter 23.4 BLOCKED three
times on that seam. Revised spec corrects the architecture by
committing to a unified typecheck-time mono pass (B1) — one
specialiser for all Type::Forall Defs, codegen-time
lower_polymorphic_call retired in same iter. First real run of the
grounding-check agent (Step 7.5) shipped in gc.1: PASS, 15
assumptions ratified.
Discussion-draft, not an approved spec. Captures today's findings:
- Repeated BLOCKEDs on iter 23.4 family were a spec-defect signal,
not a plan-defect signal.
- Today's spec-verification (brainstorm Step 7 + 8) is purely
linguistic — no code-grounded check of load-bearing assumptions.
- Spec-23's 'work the same way as 22b.3' half-sentence was the
exact load-bearing assumption that broke. Three preps spent
patching what should have been caught pre-approval.
Proposes a new agent that, with fresh context between brainstorm
Step 6 and Step 7, extracts load-bearing assumptions from the spec
draft and searches for an existing green fixture ratifying each.
Default on miss: spec discarded, blocked idea moved to roadmap with
'depends on: <missing prerequisite>'.
Eight open design questions left for the next session's brainstorm
to answer.
Anthropic now reserves /plan as a UI command, so the Skill tool refuses to
dispatch it. Rename the project's plan skill to planner, update the symlink
under .claude/skills/, and adjust references in CLAUDE.md, DESIGN.md,
skills/README.md, and the cross-references between brainstorm / implement /
audit / fieldtest / fieldtester. Plan files themselves (docs/plans/*.md)
keep their name — only the skill ID changes.
Three coupled changes to /implement:
- Boss-context offload via single subagent dispatch (target ~100x reduction)
- Iter isolation via branches (eliminates parallel-implementer conflicts)
- Per-iter journals under docs/journals/ replacing the JOURNAL.md monolith
JOURNAL.md becomes docs/journal-archive.md at acceptance time. Workers
stay at Opus 4.7; saving comes from token-volume relocation only.
Three classes of fix from the LLVM-IR audit:
1. != on Float: fcmp une, NOT fcmp one. one is 'ordered and not
equal' (false for nan!=nan, breaks IEEE / user-fixed constraint).
une is 'unordered or not equal' (true for nan!=nan, matches IEEE
and Rust f64::ne).
2. crates/ailang-codegen/src/synth.rs touches the Float primitive at
five sites the original spec missed: llvm_type, builtin_ail_type,
builtin_effect_op_ret, type_descriptor (descriptor 'Fl' to avoid
collision with ADT-name F-prefix), builtin_binop (becomes a
transitional artefact, replaced by type-dispatched helper).
3. Float literals lower as LLVM hex-float syntax (double 0x4014...);
nan/inf/neg_inf as direct SSA double constants at use site (NOT
via the __unreachable__ analogue, which is a terminator
instruction not a value); container slot layout precision
(monomorphisation vs bitcast).
Mainstream-aligns the Float surface: + - * / < <= > >= become
forall-quantified with codegen-dispatch on Int|Float (parallel to
today's == path), instead of the original draft's wort-style
fadd/flt/etc. Adds nan/inf/neg_inf as builtin constants and
is_nan : (Float) -> Bool. % stays Int-only (no fmod yet).
Iteration plan now flags iter 3 and iter 4 as widening passes
that must hold the no-Int-regression line.
User feedback after first draft:
- family/iter not standard terms — milestone/iteration adopted
- ailang-docwriter folded into audit/ rather than left orphan
- explicit "Core rules adopted from Superpowers" section so each
inherited Iron Law is named at the spec level, not just implied
Five-skill pipeline (brainstorm, plan, implement, audit, debug) under
skills/, emitting durable artefacts to docs/specs/ and docs/plans/.
Codifies discipline currently spread across CLAUDE.md (TDD-for-bugs,
mandatory tidy-iter, bench-regression rules, feature acceptance) into
trigger-bound skills. Existing per-iter workflow preserved; the layer
formalises the pre-iter design step and the iter handoff contract.
Bootstrap spec — defines the system that future specs will pass through.
Brummel