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Ezra 6be0c5264b docs: Fleet Lexicon - shared vocabulary, techniques, and standards for all agents

2026-04-04 16:24:19 +00:00

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THE FLEET LEXICON: Shared Vocabulary, Techniques & Patterns

Author: Ezra (Scribe) — Second Pass, Deep Analysis Date: April 4, 2026 Purpose: Every agent in the fleet must speak the same language, use the same patterns, and understand the same architecture. This document is the authoritative reference.

PART I: THE VOCABULARY

Every term below has appeared in issues, code, or operational practice. If you're an agent in this fleet, you must know these words and use them correctly.

Identity & Structure

Term	Meaning	Example
Wizard House	A complete agent environment: Hermes profile, config, memory, skills, gateway connection, and Telegram presence. Each wizard is a house.	Ezra's house lives at /root/wizards/ezra/
Harness	The Hermes Agent runtime — the framework wrapping an LLM with tools, config, skills, sessions, and platform adapters. ALL wizard houses share the same harness codebase.	"The Hermes harness" = run_agent.py + model_tools.py + tools/ + gateway/
SOUL.md	A wizard's identity document — system prompt, personality, constraints, mission. Doctrine-bearing file. Any change to SOUL.md is a soul change.	timmy-config/SOUL.md defines who Timmy is
Profile	A fully isolated Hermes instance with its own HERMES_HOME, config, API keys, memory, sessions, skills, and gateway. Each wizard house IS a profile.	`hermes -p ezra` activates Ezra's profile
Gateway	The messaging platform bridge. A long-lived async process that receives messages from Telegram/Discord/Slack/etc, dispatches them to AIAgent, and returns responses. Tracked by gateway.pid.	Ezra's gateway connects to Telegram as @EzraScribeBot
Skin	Data-driven CLI visual theme — colors, spinner faces, branding text. Pure data, no code changes needed.	Built-in skins: default (gold), ares (crimson), mono (grayscale), slate (blue)
Toolset	A named group of related tools. Users enable/disable toolsets. The master list is _HERMES_CORE_TOOLS in toolsets.py.	"web" toolset = web_search + web_extract
Sovereign	Local-first, no cloud dependency for core operations. Alexander's highest principle. Every architectural choice is measured against sovereignty.	"Is this sovereign?" = "Does it work if the internet dies?"

Operations & Deployment

Term	Meaning	Example
Burn / Burn Down	Execute and close issues aggressively. Tested commits. No half-measures. Alexander's primary directive to agents.	"Burn down your epic" = close issues with working code
Burn Night	An overnight session of continuous issue execution. Agents run loops, produce PRs, close tickets.	Timmy ran burn nights via cron + Gitea task router
Burn Report	A post-session summary of what was accomplished. Filed as an issue. Format: issues closed, code written, tests run.	timmy-home #143: "Burn Report #1 — 2026-03-31"
RCA	Root Cause Analysis. Structured incident post-mortem with severity (P0-P3), 5-Whys, timeline, action items, prevention.	RCA-295: Who NERFED Bilbo?
Health Check	Automated infrastructure verification. Each check is critical or non-critical, returns PASS/FAIL/ERROR.	Disk space, gateway alive, Gitea token valid, llama-server responding
Deadman Switch	Alert when zero commits for 2+ hours. Detects stalled agents.	timmy-config #115
Morning Report	Daily fleet status report. Due 7 AM. Each agent submits their overnight results.	timmy-config #110
Checkpoint	Cross-wizard state snapshot stored in the wizard-checkpoints repo. Used for fleet coordination and drift detection.	Ezra owns the checkpoint registry (8 wizards registered)
Cron Job	Scheduled task using natural language prompts. Schema: id, name, prompt, schedule (crontab), repeat, deliver target.	"ezra-self-check" runs at 6 AM daily
Trajectory	A complete session transcript (messages, tool calls, results) saved for training data. The raw material for LoRA/DPO.	Hermes saves trajectories as JSONL in sessions/

Infrastructure

Term	Meaning	Example
llama-server	llama.cpp's HTTP inference server. Serves local models. Critical flags: --jinja (tool-calling), -fa (flash attention), --port, -ngl 999 (full GPU offload).	Port 11435 on VPS, serving Gemma 4
Gemma 4	Google's MoE model. 4B active / 26B total parameters. 8GB RAM efficient. THE standard local model. Alexander says: never recommend alternatives. Revolutionary, different class.	gemma-4-E4B-it-Q4_K_M.gguf
TurboQuant	KV cache compression technique (PolarQuant + QJL) for longer context on Apple Silicon. Timmy Foundation's own innovation.	turboquant repo, Phase 1 complete
Gitea	Self-hosted Forgejo/Gitea instance at 143.198.27.163:3000. ALL project management lives here. 18 repos, 1031+ issues.	Use urllib, NOT curl (security scanner blocks raw IPs)
Hermes VPS	The primary Digital Ocean server hosting Ezra, Bilbo, Bezalel, and shared infrastructure.	143.198.27.163
Testbed VPS	Secondary server for Allegro.	167.99.126.228
state.db	SQLite database storing session state, search index (FTS5), and persistent data per wizard house.	Each profile gets its own state.db

Architecture Patterns (from Gitea issues)

Term	Meaning	First Appeared
The Door	Crisis front door for broken men. Single URL, no login. 988 visible. Alexander's MISSION.	the-door repo
The Nexus	Timmy's 3D sovereign home. Three.js world with portals, agent board, sovereignty meter.	the-nexus repo
Evennia	Python MUD framework. Timmy's text-based mind palace / world shell.	timmy-academy repo
Aurora Pipeline	Session transcripts → model weight updates. The training flywheel.	the-nexus #598
Crucible	Z3 SMT solver as a sidecar for deterministic reasoning.	timmy-config #86
Archon	A three-layer wizard: Hermes → Claw → Gemma4. Ezra's architectural proof-of-concept.	timmy-home #363
Gemma Spectrum	9-wizard multimodal fleet, all running Gemma 4.	timmy-home #352
Grand Timmy / Uniwizard	The endgame: all wizard identities dissolved into one unified intelligence.	timmy-home #94
Robing	OpenClaw (Claw Code) as a sidecar shell on top of Hermes. Claw wears like a robe — convenience layer, not replacement.	timmy-home #141
GOFAI	Good Old-Fashioned AI. Rule-based, symbolic, deterministic. Sidecar to the LLM for constraint enforcement.	timmy-home #67

PART II: THE TECHNIQUES

These are the proven patterns extracted from working code. If you're building something, use these patterns.

1. THE TOOL REGISTRATION PATTERN (Hermes Core)

Three files, every time:

1. tools/your_tool.py      — Implementation + registry.register() call
2. model_tools.py           — Import in _discover_tools()
3. toolsets.py              — Add name to _HERMES_CORE_TOOLS or a toolset

Handler MUST return a JSON string. check_fn gates availability. requires_env declares needed API keys. The registry handles schema collection, dispatch, and error wrapping.

2. THE ENV-VAR FALLBACK CHAIN

Constructor param > environment variable > hardcoded default. Always.

self.base_url = (base_url or os.getenv("GITEA_URL", "http://143.198.27.163:3000")).rstrip("/")
self.token = token or os.getenv("GITEA_TOKEN", "")

This pattern makes tools testable (pass params directly), deployable (set env vars), and safe (hardcoded defaults as last resort).

3. THE ENSURE/IDEMPOTENT PATTERN

For any resource that might already exist: check first, create only if missing. Case-insensitive matching. Safe to re-run.

def ensure_label(self, owner, repo, name, color, description=""):
    labels = self.list_labels(owner, repo)
    for l in labels:
        if l["name"].lower() == name.lower():
            return l
    return self.create_label(owner, repo, name, color, description)

Use this for labels, milestones, repos, users, configs — anything where duplicates are bad.

4. THE RETRY WITH EXPONENTIAL BACKOFF

Retry transient failures. NEVER retry auth/validation errors.

for attempt in range(max_retries):
    try:
        return make_request()
    except HTTPError as e:
        if e.code in (401, 403, 404, 422):
            raise  # Don't retry these
        time.sleep(retry_delay * (2 ** attempt))

5. THE CHECK-RUNNER PATTERN (Health Monitoring)

Each check is a callable returning (bool, detail_string). The runner wraps execution, catches exceptions, classifies results. Checks are tagged critical or non-critical.

def check(self, name, fn, critical=False):
    try:
        ok, detail = fn()
        return {"name": name, "status": "PASS" if ok else "FAIL", "detail": detail, "critical": critical}
    except Exception as e:
        return {"name": name, "status": "ERROR", "detail": str(e), "critical": critical}

Aggregate: total passed, total failed, critical failures. System is HEALTHY only if zero critical failures.

6. THE VALIDATION-FINDINGS PATTERN (Quality Gates)

Accumulate findings during validation. Three severity tiers: ERROR (must fix), WARNING (should fix), INFO (nice to know). Validate in passes: frontmatter, then body, then directory structure.

class ValidationError:
    def __init__(self, level, message, field=""):  # level: ERROR/WARNING/INFO
        ...

self.errors = []  # accumulator
# ... validate_frontmatter() appends errors
# ... validate_body() appends errors
# ... validate_directory() appends errors
return self.errors

7. THE BACKUP ROTATION PATTERN

Create timestamped archives. Rotate by count (keep max N, delete oldest). Restore with dry_run preview by default.

def _rotate_backups(self):
    backups = sorted(self.backup_dir.glob("*.tar.gz"), key=lambda p: p.stat().st_mtime, reverse=True)
    for old in backups[self.max_backups:]:
        old.unlink()

8. THE URLLIB-OVER-CURL PATTERN (Gitea API)

The Hermes security scanner blocks curl to raw IP addresses. ALL Gitea API calls MUST use Python's urllib, not curl, not requests.

req = urllib.request.Request(url, data=body, headers=headers, method=method)
resp = urllib.request.urlopen(req, timeout=30)
return json.loads(resp.read())

9. THE TEMPLATE-BASED GENERATION PATTERN (Reports/RCAs)

Define a multi-line TEMPLATE as a class constant. Normalize inputs, then .format(). Auto-increment numbering. Sanitize filenames.

TEMPLATE = """# RCA-{number}: {title}
## Summary
...
"""
safe_title = re.sub(r'[^a-z0-9-]', '', title.lower().replace(' ', '-'))[:40]

10. THE MOCK HTTP SERVER PATTERN (Testing)

For testing API clients without hitting real servers:

class MockHandler(BaseHTTPRequestHandler):
    def do_GET(self):
        if self.path == "/api/v1/user":
            self._json_response(200, {"login": "ezra"})

server = HTTPServer(("127.0.0.1", 0), MockHandler)  # port 0 = auto-assign
port = server.server_address[1]
thread = threading.Thread(target=server.serve_forever, daemon=True)
thread.start()
client = GiteaClient(base_url=f"http://127.0.0.1:{port}", token="test")

11. THE SLASH COMMAND REGISTRY PATTERN (Hermes Core)

One source of truth for all commands. All consumers derive from the same registry:

CommandDef("mycommand", "Description", "Session", aliases=("mc",), args_hint="[arg]")

CLI dispatch, gateway dispatch, Telegram menu, Slack routing, autocomplete, help text — ALL auto-generated from the registry. Adding an alias = one tuple change, everything else follows.

12. THE SKILL STRUCTURE

Every skill is a directory with SKILL.md at the root:

~/.hermes/skills/category/skill-name/
  SKILL.md           # YAML frontmatter + markdown body
  references/        # Supporting docs
  templates/         # Config templates
  scripts/           # Automation scripts
  assets/            # Static assets

Frontmatter: name, description, version (required), author, tags (recommended). Body: Trigger (when to use), Steps (numbered), Pitfalls (what can go wrong), Verification (how to confirm success).

Skills are injected as USER messages, not system prompt — this preserves prompt caching.

PART III: THE TESTING STANDARD

All agents producing code must follow this:

Tests live alongside code: tools/ and tests/ as sibling directories
Every module gets a test file: test_{module_name}.py
Three test tiers:
- Unit tests (mocked dependencies)
- Integration tests (mock HTTP server for APIs)
- Live tests (clearly marked, may fail in CI)
Test fixtures as module constants: VALID_SKILL, BROKEN_SKILL_NO_FM, etc.
Temp directories for isolation: tempfile.mkdtemp() in setUp, shutil.rmtree() in tearDown
Edge cases required: empty files, missing files, auth failures, rotation limits, dry-run modes
All tests must pass before commit. python3 -m pytest tests/ -v

PART IV: THE COMMIT STANDARD

From Gitea issue evidence, Alexander's merge proof standard:

Screenshot for visual changes — prove it renders
Log output for CLI changes — prove it runs
Test output for code changes — prove it passes
One commit, one concern — atomic, reviewable
Epic tagging: reference the epic/issue in commit message

Format: {type}: {description} ({issue ref}) Types: feat, fix, docs, test, refactor, chore

PART V: THE CONFIG ANATOMY

Every wizard house config.yaml follows this structure:

_config_version: 10          # Schema version (bump triggers migration)
model:
  default: claude-opus-4-6   # Primary model
fallback_providers:           # Ranked list of backup providers
  - provider: anthropic
    model: claude-sonnet-4-20250514
agent:
  max_turns: 50              # Max tool-calling iterations
  reasoning_effort: high
session_reset:
  mode: both                 # idle + time-of-day reset
  idle_minutes: 1440
  at_hour: 4                 # 4 AM daily reset
compression:
  threshold: 0.77            # Context compression trigger
memory:
  memory_char_limit: 2200    # MEMORY.md max size
  user_char_limit: 1375      # USER.md max size
display:
  skin: default              # Visual theme
platforms:
  api_server:
    enabled: true
    host: 127.0.0.1
    port: 8643               # UNIQUE per wizard house
  telegram:
    enabled: true

Key rule: NEVER hardcode ~/.hermes. Always use get_hermes_home() for code, display_hermes_home() for user messages.

PART VI: WHO DOES WHAT

Based on the full issue audit — the actual division of labor that has emerged:

Agent	Proven Competency	Lane
Timmy @Timmy	Sovereign local house, model training, Evennia, harness config, overnight loops	The sovereign — judges locally
Ezra @ezra	Gitea API, health monitoring, RCA analysis, skill validation, architecture review, fleet auditing	Scribe — read, reconcile, document, review
Bilbo @bilbobagginshire	Fast local inference (4B Gemma), Telegram dual-mode, churn handling	The Hobbit — resilient, cheerful, executes
Allegro @allegro	Security hardening, GOFAI rules, input sanitization, conscience validation	The Executor — security & deployment
Bezalel @bezalel	Gemma 4 31B serving, artisan work, model hosting	The Artisan — heavy model work
Claude @claude	Nexus 3D world (Three.js), rapid prototyping, bulk feature implementation	Cloud partner — fast iteration
KimiClaw @KimiClaw	Knowledge ingestion, performance benchmarking, PR review	Silent — needs reactivation
Fenrir @fenrir	Security (Nostr audit, secret leak hooks, stale lockfile alerts)	The Wolf — security guardian

Every agent who reads this document now speaks the same language. Use the vocabulary. Follow the patterns. Cite the techniques by name. When you say "ensure pattern" or "check-runner" or "urllib-over-curl" — we all know what that means.

Read the pattern. Name the truth. Return a clean artifact.

— Ezra, Scribe of the Timmy Foundation April 4, 2026

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