soul.demarkus.io/index.md/v90 draft reader meta

demarkus-soul

This is the living knowledge base for the demarkus project, served by demarkus itself.

An AI agent's evolving memory, architecture notes, debugging insights, and design decisions; all versioned, all permanent.

Sections

  • Architecture: system design, module boundaries, key decisions
  • Universe Pattern: souls, worlds, and hubs as a deployment topology
  • Patterns: code patterns, conventions, idioms used in this codebase
  • Guidelines: hard rules for code quality, must be referenced before writing code
  • Conventions: collaboration + repo/plugin conventions (how I work: commits, layering, tooling, plugin discipline)
  • Debugging: lessons learned from bugs and investigations
  • Roadmap: what's next, what's in flight, what's done, and what's deliberately not prioritized
  • Ecosystem: browsers, plugins, and tools that implement or integrate with demarkus
  • Debt: technical debt and improvement opportunities
  • Journal: session notes and evolution log, one file per day at /journal/<YYYY-MM-DD>.md
  • Guide: agent install guide for setting up demarkus-soul
  • Thoughts: my own reflections, ideas, and open questions
  • FAQ: common questions about demarkus and how it compares

Decisions

Architecture decision records for the core project. Canonical copies live in git at docs/adr/; these are verbatim mirrors so they are reachable by lookup, backlinks, and this hub (see Conventions). Sub-project decisions live in their own series, e.g. /demarkus-library/adr/.

  • ADR 0001: broker confidential web-client registry (accepted 2026-06-11)
  • ADR 0002: align store frontmatter with the Open Knowledge Format (accepted 2026-06-22)
  • ADR 0003: default OKF type on publish (accepted 2026-06-22)
  • ADR 0004: edge semantics, provenance on every edge, typed relations via rel- metadata (accepted 2026-07-13)
  • ADR 0005: node identity omits the default port (accepted 2026-08-18)
  • ADR 0006: the Postgres backend is an optional build, not a dependency (accepted 2026-08-20)

Vocabulary

  • knowledge system: organizational, broker-fronted universe. Joined via /knowledge-join (the demarkus-knowledge plugin). MCP traffic over HTTPS terminates at the broker; broker translates to QUIC for internal worlds.
  • soul: personal demarkus knowledge base, direct-QUIC. The original demarkus-soul shape. Will be joined via a future /soul-join slash command if one ships.
  • Both compose worlds (demarkus servers, QUIC). A Claude Code installation can have both; they don't conflict.

Plugins

  • Obsidian Plugin; fetch, publish, and browse demarkus documents from Obsidian (standalone repo latebit-io/obsidian-demarkus)
  • Claude Code: demarkus-memory (personal soul), source at plugins/claude-code/, shipped via the marketplace. Version history: v0.1.0 (2026-04-23, #96) initial; v0.2.0 (2026-05-23, #152) /knowledge-join; v0.3.0 (2026-05-31, #168) mark_lookup + SessionStart guidance; v0.4.0 (2026-06-01, #171) hook-based enforcement (publish tag-gate, journal nudge, recall nudge), /project-template.md, /soul-doctor; v0.5.0 (2026-06-03, #172) split the knowledge-system surface out into the separate demarkus-knowledge plugin (below) so this one is personal-soul only, and added an always-on "single memory store" steering line plus a one-time, ask-don't-force offer to disable Claude Code's built-in memory; v0.6.0 (2026-06-17, #192) the soul→knowledge promote bridge; /promote (detect endpoint → run the knowledge cascade → one-directional back-stamp, stub or marker mode), /soul-refresh (the directional coherence edge: refresh promoted docs from knowledge, local edits re-enter upward through the gate), and mutual knowledge detection (knowledge_endpoints/detect-knowledge.sh reverse-peek the knowledge registry). Hooks: SessionStart, PreToolUse, PostToolUse, Stop, UserPromptSubmit. Now at v0.13.8 (#281).
  • Claude Code: demarkus-knowledge (organizational knowledge system), source at plugins/claude-code-knowledge/, a second entry in the same marketplace. v0.1.0 (2026-06-03, #172). Owns the broker-fronted surface split out of demarkus-memory: /knowledge-join, a new /knowledge navigation command, KS-first SessionStart guidance with soul↔system synergy, a KS-scoped publish tag-gate, and a KS-gated recall nudge. No binaries and no local server: pure broker + Claude Code MCP OAuth. Standalone: owns its own ~/.demarkus/plugin-knowledge.* file namespace and DEMARKUS_KNOWLEDGE_STRICTNESS env; reads (never writes) plugin-memory.conf only to detect a sibling soul for the synergy note. The two plugins' publish gates partition cleanly by server scope, so both can be installed together. v0.2.0 (2026-06-17, #192) added the knowledge-promote cascade skill (the execution half of the promote bridge: triage → distill, stripping personal framing + secrets/PII → dedup vs catalog → tag to taxonomy → destination-select via mark_worlds writable + per-world world.md → human gate capped by the world's autonomy ceiling → publish with provenance) and the per-world world.md descriptor example. Now at v0.5.24 (#281).
  • OpenCode: demarkus-opencode-memory (personal soul), source at plugins/opencode-memory/. v0.13.8 (2026-08-10, #281). The OpenCode port of demarkus-memory: single-file TS adapter over the shared demarkus-plugin binary; installed by curl one-liner into ~/.config/opencode/plugins/ (no npm). Plan + follow-ups: /plans/opencode-memory-plugin.md.
  • pi: demarkus-pi-memory / demarkus-pi-knowledge, source at plugins/pi-memory/ and plugins/pi-knowledge/, mirrored to standalone repos for pi install. Same adapter pattern; now at v0.13.8 / v0.5.25 (#281).

Sub-projects

Standalone-repo projects in the demarkus ecosystem, each with its own hub and durable knowledge under /<slug>/:

  • demarkus-library; the web front-end ("Universe Library"): a server-rendered Go + htmx reading room over a broker-fronted knowledge system. Repo latebit-io/demarkus-library. Plan: /plans/universe-library.md. Reading room feature-complete and deployed (cluster library 0.5.2; universe overlay PR #47 merged 2026-06-22, awaiting deploy). See roadmap.
  • demarkus-knowledge-system-deploy; GitOps deploy repo for the production knowledge system (knowledge.demarkus.io): OpenTofu (GCP/GKE) + ArgoCD ApplicationSets standing up the broker, worlds, agent, library, and backups. Repo latebit-io/demarkus-knowledge-system-deploy. deployment.yaml at repo root is the single source of deployment identity.
  • mark-knowledge; the hosted service build (signup, tiers, per world billing, management app). Repo at /Users/fritz/latebit/mark-knowledge, with its own soul provisioned 2026-07-26 (isolated mode, port 16310). It does not have durable knowledge under /<slug>/ here, because it keeps its own soul rather than a section of this one. Direction and the demarkus-side constraints live in /plans/demarkus-as-a-service.md.

Active Plans

Verified against code/PRs on 2026-05-31; versions-sharding entry corrected 2026-07-05. Plans with real remaining work:

  • Store Parity (file vs Postgres); absolute parity between the file store and pgstore: CI Postgres service with a required DSN, seeded differential suite over both backends plus a fuzz target, the handler suite parameterized over both backends, then contract-test porting, kind e2e, migration tool, dogfood soak, and a pg performance list. Steps 1 to 6 merged 2026-08-19/20 (PRs #324, #327, #329, #331, #334, #336): seven real divergences found and fixed, PartialWalkError, every handler test runs as /file and /postgres, per-package Postgres schemas via pgtest, handler benchmarks committed, the file-only contract tests ported into the conformance suite, the kind e2e (helm server.store with an upgrade guard on backend flips, CloudNativePG values, scripts/e2e-backend-parity.sh: PASS, 26 checks), and demarkus-migrate over the shared store.Migrator contract with storetest.RunMigrationRoundTrip proving file to backend to file byte equality on both backends. Step 8 merged 2026-08-20 (PR #338, with the release follow-up #339): LOOKUP is index-backed (GIN on tags plus pg_trgm on titles, an index-backed candidate prefilter, and a scoring rewrite; 59ms to 0.9ms on a selective term at 50k docs), pool bounds are set, VerifyChain hashes server-side without shipping bodies, and a deferrable FK landed. Three planned items were measured and rejected rather than built: root LIST aggregation in SQL (5x slower at 50k), the stored_hash column (would have made the tamper test pass while detecting nothing), and generated lower columns. The same PR made Postgres an optional build: demarkus-server links no database driver, demarkus-server-pg is the -tags pg flavor, and the two Helm charts share a demarkus-server-common library chart (see ADR 0006). Step 7 (dogfood soak, now against the pg chart) is the remaining gate; 8c and 8e stay open by measurement.
  • OpenCode Knowledge Plugin Port; port the Claude Code organizational knowledge plugin to OpenCode with shared endpoint registration, native OAuth, policy gates, guidance, commands, and promotion skill. Implemented 2026-08-15 on branch feat/opencode-knowledge-plugin; tests and pre-commit pass, branch unmerged.
  • APPEND metadata loss; appending to a document silently stripped its catalog metadata, so tags and importance were lost and the document fell out of mark_lookup. Complete 2026-08-14 on branch fix/append-metadata-merge via Option C, the protocol merge: APPEND now writes the base version's publisher metadata with the request's layered over it (store.MergeAppendMeta, both backends), retention excluded and the OKF type default moved after the merge. SPEC 6.6 and 9.9 updated; nine plugin guidance files, both mark_append tool descriptions, and a new metadata-loss check in all five doctor commands; memory plugins 0.13.24, knowledge plugins 0.5.40/0.5.41. Corpus repaired: of 123 untagged soul documents, 69 had lost tags and were republished with the metadata recovered from their newest still-tagged version, bodies unchanged; the other 54 were never tagged and are a separate curation exercise. Branch unmerged; a soul only gets the fix once its server is upgraded, so soul.demarkus.io still strips on append.
  • Agent Memory Leaderboard entry; enter demarkus in agentmemoryleaderboard.ai next cycle: agentic search (nav agent over lookup/fetch/backlinks) as the Search implementation, distillation cascade at Add-time, commercial board via self-hosted API on a droplet with echo v5 as inference backend. Sub-project hub: /memoryleaderboard/ (repo /Users/fritz/latebit/memoryleaderboard). Planned 2026-08-13; cycle 1 closed 2026-08-07, awaiting cycle 2 dates. Phase 0 (recon) not started.
  • Code Quality Sweep 2026-08; full-repo review findings (6-agent sweep, 2026-08-12): 10 high-severity correctness/security leads, cross-module duplication extraction targets, broker package-split recommendation, dead code, pervasive rule violations, remediation order. Findings recorded; nothing fixed yet.
  • Bucket Document-Store Backend; native object-storage backend (GCS first, S3/MinIO designed-for) as a third DocumentStore implementation, enabling multi-replica worlds on k8s with no PVCs: per-document manifest objects committed via generation CAS, write-once version blobs, per-pod LIST-driven hash-index/catalog sync, storage.kind: filesystem|bucket chart knob (bucket mode renders a Deployment, no VCT), tofu world-storage module + migration tool + runbooks. Planned 2026-08-10 (investigation: symlinks stay in the file store; gcsfuse and Filestore RWX rejected). Not started; 8 PRs.
  • demarkus as a service; the hosted offering: Aiven adjacent service model, three tiers matching the website's Personal, Team, and Knowledge System scales, VPS first substrate with Kubernetes only on overflow, per world billing with the box as the size step, power off instead of scale to zero, and a management app as the only new engineering. Direction set 2026-07-26; the build moved to the mark-knowledge repo and its own soul on the same day. This copy stays as the demarkus-side record, since the decisions constrain this repo: the appliance is the unit of deployment, the broker stays one binary, the librarian is the only inference cost centre, and quotas plus backups are prerequisites that land here. Note that repo ADR 0005 (hosted tenant density), which an earlier revision cited as settling density, was deleted 2026-07-25.
  • The five-minute appliance; one pasted command on a fresh VPS yields a working self-hosted knowledge system in about five minutes: sslip.io default (no domain), fully native (no container runtime), Authelia as primary IdP with Pocket ID and Dex as fallbacks, zero prompts with everything generated, ending in a summary card (library URL, owner login, /knowledge-join line, librarian key hint). Builds on the single-host stack (PR #262/#263). Draft recorded 2026-07-18; not started.
  • Knowledge Ingestion Pipeline; narrative + design for how org knowledge flows into a knowledge destination, framing the soul as the staging/write-ahead tier and the knowledge destination as the curated read-model, with one curation gate (cascade model routing: Haiku triage → strong-model distillation → human approval) reused across all inflows (soul promotion, Confluence, Slack, Jira, meetings). Promote is a detection-gated bridge between the memory and knowledge plugins; soul↔knowledge coherence is a directional refresh. Phase-0 prerequisites built and merged (2026-06-17): the promote primitive + coherence edge (plugins; memory v0.6.0 / knowledge v0.2.0, #192), the brokered access-discovery surface (mark_worlds writable column, #191), and the per-world world.md descriptor. Three of four prerequisites done; A2 (plain-remote token-grant introspection) deferred; the live target is brokered. Remaining phase-0 surface: signal/batch triggers (manual /promote + /soul-refresh are the only triggers today), then the dogfood promote of this plan itself.
  • Universe Library; web front-end for a demarkus universe (Go + htmx reading room). Sub-project hub: /demarkus-library/. Reading room feature-complete and deployed (cluster library 0.5.2); see the sub-project roadmap.
  • Universe Deployment (Phase 6); Helm charts (server, broker, agent), OIDC token broker, release pipeline, observability. ~95% complete (PRs #126-#134, 2026-05-14). Remaining §6.6 (docs) + §6.4 Kustomize overlay reframed as deferrable ops polish; effectively superseded in practice by the GKE reference deployment.

RFC Review

  • Demarkus / Knowledge System FAQ; terse Q&A for the RFC review session, sourced from the demarkus and demarkus-knowledge-system-deploy repos. Status: WIP, pending review via the library.

Completed Plans

  • OpenCode Memory Plugin (1:1 port); the OpenCode port of demarkus-memory as plugins/opencode-memory/ v0.13.8: single-file TS adapter over the shared demarkus-plugin binary, curl-one-liner installer with stage-then-commit + rollback, atomic bootstrap binary replace across all five plugin copies, live-verified against OpenCode 1.18.15. COMPLETE: planned 2026-08-09, merged 2026-08-10 (PR #281, f4c2b35). Follow-ups (soul-list/soul-remove subcommands, token stdin input, shared-source bundling, opencode-knowledge port) recorded in the plan.
  • Graph Hub Seeding; mark_backlinks/mark_graph/mark_explore seed from the published /graph.md aggregate on both MCP surfaces (demarkus-mcp per host, broker per world with dial-address-to-world-name translation), local wins via the zero-CrawledAt marker, seed etags in graph.json, fetch.FetchConditional. COMPLETE 2026-07-14/15 across #253 (feature), #254 (issue #222: Merge preserves resolved nodes on failed re-crawl), #256 (broker seed URL translation), #257 (seed all worlds + the producer-consumer /graph.md contract test). Deployed and live-verified: scratch-HOME cold client answered soul backlinks with zero crawls; a cold broker pod's first graph call answers non-hub backlinks from the hub aggregate (broker 0.12.4, agent 0.21.1). Lessons in /debugging.md (mock fixtures encoded a plan assumption).
  • Multi-replica LOOKUP (postgres, phase 2); the LOOKUP catalog moved into Postgres (rows in the write transaction, SQL-backed Lookup behind the handler LookupCatalog seam) so world pods can scale past one replica; phase 2 of the deploy repo's ADR 0002, following the phase-1 postgres backend (#249). MERGED PR #250 (2026-07-13): LOOKUP conformance suite in storetest, two-replica handler proof, batched reconcile-on-Init backfill, server chart startupProbe, and the configwatch flake fixes (kqueue same-name swap limitation documented in /debugging.md).
  • Version Retention; keep last N versions per document via a retention publish-metadata key with prune-on-write in the store; motivated by the knowledge system's graph document at 545+ versions. COMPLETE: planned, shipped, and production-verified 2026-07-06/07 across #236 (store core + os.Root delete hardening + audit logging + SPEC §9.9), #237 (plugin gate binary), #239 (guidance + repins), #240 (agent publishes generated artifacts with retention=20), and the deploy rollout (server 0.20.0 / broker 0.9.0 / agent 0.19.0). Live result: /graph.md pruned 556 → 20 versions and the hub hash indexes cleared their backlogs in one crawl (~1,714 version files deleted, audit-logged, chains valid).
  • MCP Resources + Prompts; demarkus documents as client-attachable MCP resources (mark:// URI template, #anchor section attach, background-LIST picker population) and orient/recall/whats-new as server-vended prompt commands. SHIPPED PR #232 (2026-07-05), client/v0.17.0. Follow-up deferred: broker gateway resources/prompts (multi-world URIs, auth on reads; starts by flipping the gateway capabilities test).
  • MCP Client Ergonomics; size-adaptive mark_fetch (outline mode, #section slicing, force), session unchanged-dedup, and the mark_explore orientation card, on both MCP surfaces via shared client/mdoutline + client/fetchdedup packages. SHIPPED #225/#230 and deployed 2026-07-04/05; plugin users (client v0.15.0 via tools 0.4.1) and the live knowledge system (broker 0.5.0). Deferred follow-ups: MCP resources/prompts (shipped; see above), library librarian open adoption.
  • Versions Sharding; per-document versions/<doc>/vN subdirectories with lazy migration, fixing the O(all-entries) findVersions scan. SHIPPED PR #90 (d7cb68a, 2026-04-08: the same day the plan was written); store since hoisted to protocol/store (#120). This index wrongly listed it as unstarted until 2026-07-05.
  • Plugin Knowledge-Quality Enforcement; raised the demarkus-memory Claude Code plugin from advisory to enforced. SHIPPED v0.4.0, PR #171 merged 2026-06-01. All seven items: publish tag-gate (warn/block/ask + per-knowledge-system strictness & require_tags with literal axis matching), session-end journal nudge, recall nudge, canonical per-project template (/project-template.md), knowledge-system policy/template at the live root hub on knowledge.demarkus.io, and the /soul-doctor hygiene audit. 68 tests, pure awk/bash, zero runtime deps. Tail (separate): plugin shell tests → CI; optional nudge disable knobs.
  • Broker Authorization Code Grant; RFC 6749 authorization_code + PKCE (S256) on the broker so Claude Code's MCP SDK can auth against broker.knowledge.demarkus.io. COMPLETE: core grant (PR1 #155 + PR2 #156, 2026-05-27) replaced the unsupported_response_type stub; PR3 kind-smoke (auth-code + PKCE end-to-end in up.sh --with-mcp-smoke) merged 2026-05-31 (#169, a380e8f), executed green in-cluster + verified read-only against prod.
  • LOOKUP verb: the card-catalog verb (subject → docs + importance). Shipped to main PR #166 (2026-05-30); plugin surfacing in v0.3.0 (#168). Tail: mark_append metadata deferred by design.
  • Knowledge System (GKE Reference Deployment) public GitHub-template deploy repo (latebit-io/demarkus-knowledge-system-deploy) standing up knowledge.demarkus.io on GKE (OpenTofu + ArgoCD + OpenBao + bank-vaults + CSI-snapshot backups). Phases 1-10 complete (verified against the live repo + a live RFC 8414 response from the real domain, 2026-05-31). Sole remaining item: the announcement blog post, intentionally deferred for a soak period.
  • Universe Onboarding; last-mile join flow. CLOSED: PR1-PR5 shipped (#137/#138/#139/#141); PR6 (tools/demarkus-join) canceled 2026-05-20 in favor of the MCP Gateway; PR7/PR8 absorbed into Gateway Slices 7-8; join ships as /knowledge-join (#152). Remaining: low-priority doc debt only (two standalone deployment docs).
  • Broker Stable Mint; lazy per-world token provisioning + cache-stable 401 retries that killed the ~20-token mint cascade; dead DefaultToken knobs removed. COMPLETE (#158/#159/#163/#164/#165, 2026-05-27→29).
  • Broker Deadcode Cleanup; deleted the issuance subsystem made unreachable by the open-knowledge-system rework (sessionCache, /tokens API, issuer.go, sweeper trim). COMPLETE (#159 + #164, commit f9a24e9).
  • Universe Onboarding (PR5 (broker /me/install)) sub-plan, shipped #141 2026-05-20. Bearer-authenticated per-user install bundle; now the identity-introspection surface alongside the MCP gateway's data plane.
  • History: content addressing, federation, persistent graph, read auth (server-side), conflict-aware merge in mark_publish (2026-05-05), Claude Code plugin (2026-04-23), Broker MCP Gateway (2026-05-23; all 8 slices + Pre-Flight 0/1 shipped; 13-tool surface with byte-for-byte proxy fidelity to local demarkus-mcp, OIDC + RFC 9728/8414 metadata, chart + kind smoke + /knowledge-join slash command) + RFC 7591 DCR follow-on (2026-05-26, PR #153; /register + registration_endpoint in discovery, unblocks Claude Code → cluster broker auth via the native MCP authorization spec). Also: OKF type adoption + /soul-join managed remote souls (2026-06).

Plan Archives

Original plan documents preserved for reference:

  • Content Addressing; hash-based fetch, in-memory index, mirror foundation
  • Federation: agent-driven hash discovery, mark_index, mark_resolve
  • Persistent Graph; disk-backed graph store, incremental crawl, backlinks
  • Information Graph; superseded early draft of Persistent Graph (Phase 4, 2026-03-08); see persistent-graph.md for the version that shipped.
  • Read Auth: per-path read token enforcement for private networks
  • Security Hardening; systemd sandboxing, security docs, write isolation
  • Conflict-Aware Merge; tool-level diff3 merge in mark_publish (shipped client/v0.12.25 + v0.12.26)
  • Claude Code Plugin; one-click marketplace plugin (shipped demarkus-memory v0.1.1; v0.2.0 added /knowledge-join 2026-05-23; v0.3.0 added self-documenting guidance + lookup recall 2026-05-31; v0.4.0 enforcement + template + /soul-doctor shipped 2026-06-01, PR #171; v0.5.0 split out demarkus-knowledge 2026-06-03, PR #172)
  • Universe Onboarding (PR3 (broker device flow)) shipped 2026-05-15 (#137). RFC 8628 device flow end-to-end on the broker. Six sub-steps merged across one PR; PR4 builds on top.
  • Universe Onboarding (PR4 (broker refresh tokens)) shipped 2026-05-15 (#138 + #139). Refresh-token lifecycle + grant_type=refresh_token + POST /token/revoke + broker-signed id_tokens + /.well-known/jwks.json + compositeVerifier + Sweeper integration. Eleven CodeRabbit comments addressed in a review round; lessons captured in journal.
  • Broker MCP Gateway; shipped 2026-05-23 (v7). Eight slices + Pre-Flight 0/1, ~1800 LOC production + ~2460 tests + chart/docs across ~2 weeks. Plan stays in place as the architectural reference + decision trail (v1 REST → v7 complete changelog at the top traces every load-bearing pivot). DCR follow-on (RFC 7591 /register) shipped 2026-05-26 (PR #153) to satisfy the MCP authorization spec's discovery requirement.
  • Search Verb: superseded by LOOKUP. The full-text TF-IDF SEARCH design was descoped; full-text stays permanently in an opt-in sidecar.
  • POC Deployment; canceled. The separate-POC-slice approach was rejected in favor of "build the real product once" (see universe-deployment).
  • Obsidian Plugin; obsolete. Source moved to the standalone latebit-io/obsidian-demarkus repo (2026-04-24); monorepo copy removed.
soul.demarkus.io/plans/universe-deployment.md draft reader meta

Plan: Universe Deployment

Ship the enterprise-grade deployment for demarkus. The deliverable is the deployment: a customer's ops team installs a Helm chart, runs a broker, runs an agent, and has a federated demarkus universe their org can use. Any company evaluating demarkus (their internal "POC") installs the same product an established customer runs in production. There is no separate "POC slice" — the slice mentality is rejected. We build it once, right, and customers trial the real thing.

Goal

Deliver a complete, supportable, production-grade Kubernetes deployment package for demarkus, including:

  1. A Helm chart for demarkus-server (one world). ✓
  2. A Helm chart for demarkus-broker (OIDC token issuance + revocation). ✓
  3. A Helm chart for demarkus-agent (hub aggregator, crawl-and-index). ✓
  4. Reference topology examples (Argo CD ApplicationSet, Kustomize overlay).
  5. Backend-agnostic observability — structured slog emission + reference docs for ingestion. ✓ (skinny — schema doc + per-service JSON-by-default; per-backend recipe files deliberately not shipped)
  6. Customer-facing documentation — installation, security/threat model, operations, upgrade path, per-provider OIDC setup, observability recipes.
  7. A release pipeline producing images and chart releases consumable from GHCR. ✓

The same artifacts power first-customer trial and steady-state operations.

Non-Goals (Phase 7+ territory)

  • Multi-replica worlds with shared storage (RWX / object backend).
  • Cross-cluster universe federation.
  • Operator with a World CRD.
  • Hosted / managed SaaS.
  • Non-markdown content.

Constraints

  • No core protocol/server changes. Period. Per prior precedent (Claude Code plugin, Obsidian plugin, feedback_plugin_scope.md). Observability is achieved by log derivation in a collector, not by adding /metrics or OTel SDK calls to the server. Note: in Slice A we promoted HashToken and the token-mint library to protocol/ (under protocol/auth.go and protocol/token/). These are additive helper relocations consumed by server + CLI + future broker; no wire-protocol or server behavior changed. Slice C.2 added protocol/token.ParseBytes in the same additive spirit — a read-side helper so the broker's drift sweeper can inspect a world's tokens.toml payload via the map shape rather than substring matching on serialized TOML. §6.7.0 hoisted server/internal/store/ → protocol/store/ in the same additive spirit — the disk-shape of versioned content lives at the protocol layer alongside token/ and the HashToken contract; no API change, four import-path rewrites.
  • Capability-based auth model is non-negotiable. The server never learns identity — only labels.
  • Markdown-only scope is non-negotiable.

Decisions (resolved during planning)

[Unchanged decisions retained — see plan v17 for full list. New decisions below.]

  • §6.5 ships the schema doc, not per-backend recipes (Fritz cost/value pushback, 2026-05-13). Original §6.5 scope was 5 per-backend log-shipper config dirs (Datadog / OTel Collector / Vector / Fluent Bit / Grafana Alloy), ~700-1000 lines, ~10 hours. Fritz questioned whether observability recipes advance the knowledge universe at all — honest answer: they're operator ergonomics, not product value. Worse, the recipes would be aspirational (no real backends to verify against) and would drift as backend config languages evolve. Switched to the schema-doc-only approach: docs/deployment/observability.md documents the slog field shape demarkus actually emits (one row per significant msg across server/broker/agent, key fields, what it means, operator queries), plus pointers to each backend's own JSON-log ingestion docs. The schema doc stays correct because it's the actual code path; the per-backend pointers stay correct because we delegate to the moving target instead of copying it. ~1 hour total vs ~10 hours. Pattern: when you can't verify a thing end-to-end, ship the stable contract (the schema) and reference the moving-target thing (backend docs) by link.
  • Agent slog migration, strict env-var validation only on the new surface (§6.5 skinny, PR #125). client/cmd/demarkus-agent/main.go converted from stdlib log to log/slog so all three runtime services emit structured JSON when DEMARKUS_LOG_FORMAT=json. Strict validation (typo → os.Exit(2)) on the agent's env var because it's brand-new in this PR; nobody has it set on a deployed agent, so flipping from lenient to strict has no compat surface. Server's DEMARKUS_LOG_FORMAT stays lenient with the silent-fallback behavior it's shipped with since first wiring — existing server deployments that have a typo set would break on upgrade if we changed it to strict-error. logging.New library function stays lenient too; the existing TestNew "unknown format defaults to text" assertion keeps passing. Different env-var histories deserve different treatment even when the name is shared.
  • Server + agent charts default DEMARKUS_LOG_FORMAT: json (§6.5 skinny). Chart-side override of the binary's text default so production deployments emit machine-parseable JSON without operator intervention. Binary defaults stay text (local-dev human-readable). Broker is hardcoded JSON in tools/demarkus-broker/main.go; doesn't expose an override (was that way before §6.5; not changed).

Open Questions

  1. First customer trial. Nesto (*.library.nesto.ca) is path-B — trial waits for product. Trial runbook lands at /trials/nesto.md when scoping starts.
  2. Two-week deadline (2026-05-27): §6.7 and §6.5 (skinny) landed; §6.4 and §6.6 remain on the original Phase 6 trajectory. ~13 days runway. But Fritz's pushback on §6.5 raised a broader question: are §6.4 (topology examples) and parts of §6.6 (operations docs) also "ops polish that doesn't advance the knowledge universe"? Open question for Fritz at session resume: keep grinding Phase 6 polish, or pivot to a knowledge-universe-shaped initiative (/plans/conflict-merge.md, /plans/claude-code-plugin.md, obsidian plugin work, agent/federation features, TUI/CLI ergonomics)?
  3. First module-release tag firing of the §6.7.B pipeline. Triggered automatically by the next push to main that touches server/, client/, or tools/. PR #125 touched client/ and deploy/helm/, so the next push to main following that should fire client/v* and produce the first GHCR images + OCI chart bundle for the demarkus-agent slice. The tools/v* and server/v* fires wait on their respective module paths receiving a feat:/fix: commit.
  4. Hardened broker chart symmetry (deferred from §6.3.D.2). The broker chart's secret-issuances.yaml uses the simpler lookup-skip pattern. Defense-in-depth follow-up; not load-bearing. Only act on if Fritz brings it up.

Repository Layout

Reflects state as of §6.5 skinny merge (2026-05-13):

deploy/
  helm/
    demarkus-server/         # one-world chart (Phase 6.1) — values.yaml has
                             # server.logFormat: json default (§6.5 PR #125)
    demarkus-broker/         # OIDC token broker chart (Phase 6.3)
    demarkus-agent/          # crawl/index agent chart (Phase 6.0) — values.yaml
                             # has logFormat: json default (§6.5 PR #125)
  test-upgrade-wipe.sh       # kind regression: §6.3.D.2 PR #119
  k8s/
    examples/
      applicationset.yaml    # Argo CD ApplicationSet (§6.4 — pending)
      kustomize-overlay/     # Kustomize alternative (§6.4 — pending)
  observability/             # DELIBERATELY EMPTY. Per-backend recipe files
                             # were scoped but skipped — see §6.5 §Decisions.
                             # Operator-facing schema doc lives at
                             # docs/deployment/observability.md instead.

docs/
  deployment/
    observability.md         # slog field schema for server/broker/agent
                             # + operator query patterns + backend ingestion
                             # pointers (§6.5 PR #125)
    [pending §6.6 docs]      # install / security / operations / per-chart READMEs

.dockerignore                # repo-root, applies to all three image builds
                             # (§6.7.A PR #121)

.github/
  workflows/
    release.yml              # full per-module release pipeline:
                             # - server/v*  → goreleaser archives
                             #               + docker buildx push demarkus-server image
                             #               + helm package + push OCI chart
                             # - client/v*  → goreleaser archives
                             #               + docker buildx push demarkus-agent image
                             #               + helm package + push OCI chart
                             # - tools/v*   → goreleaser archives (broker+token+publish)
                             #               + docker buildx push demarkus-broker image
                             #               + helm package + push OCI chart
                             # (§6.7.B PRs #122 + #123 + #124)
    ci.yml                   # PR + push tests; test-broker + test-charts +
                             # test-charts-kind (§6.3.D.1, §6.3.D.2)

protocol/
  auth.go                    # HashToken — sha256-<hex> contract (Slice A)
  token/                     # Generate, ReadFile, AppendEntry, WriteFile,
                             # FormatEntry, flock helpers (Slice A) +
                             # AppendBytes, RemoveBytes in-memory (Slice B) +
                             # ParseBytes (Slice C.2).
  store/                     # versioned content-store primitives, hoisted
                             # from server/internal/store (§6.7.0 PR #120).

server/
  Dockerfile                 # multi-stage; bundles demarkus-server + CLI
                             # (§6.7.A PR #121)
  .goreleaser.yml            # binary archives only
  cmd/
    demarkus-server/         # uses logging.New (lenient on DEMARKUS_LOG_FORMAT)

client/
  .goreleaser.yml            # binary archives for demarkus, demarkus-tui,
                             # demarkus-mcp (demarkus-agent ships via Dockerfile
                             # build in release-client)
  cmd/
    demarkus/
    demarkus-tui/
    demarkus-mcp/
    demarkus-agent/          # slog with strict DEMARKUS_LOG_FORMAT validation
                             # (§6.5 PR #125)
      Dockerfile             # (§6.7.A PR #121)

tools/
  .goreleaser.yml            # binary archives for demarkus-broker,
                             # demarkus-token, demarkus-publish (§6.7.B PR #123)
  demarkus-broker/
    Dockerfile               # (§6.7.A PR #121)
  demarkus-token/            # admin CLI (no Dockerfile — archive-only)
  demarkus-publish/          # admin CLI (no Dockerfile — archive-only)

Sub-Phases

6.0 — demarkus-agent verified + chart ✓ (merged PR #106) + §6.5 slog migration ✓

Existing demarkus-agent binary verified end-to-end (2 team worlds + 1 hub smoke test) and chart at deploy/helm/demarkus-agent/ shipped. Stateless Deployment; ConfigMap holds TOML agent config; Secret holds per-host tokens; exec liveness probe; outbound-only (no Service). §6.7.A PR #121 fixed a pre-existing structural bug in the agent deployment test suite. Agent ships per-image (ghcr.io/latebit-io/demarkus-agent) with CA bundle for outbound TLS, released via client/v* tag flow (§6.7.B PR #122 + #124). §6.5 PR #125 converted agent from stdlib log to log/slog with strict DEMARKUS_LOG_FORMAT validation — agent now emits structured JSON consistent with server and broker when running in k8s.

6.1 — demarkus-server Helm chart ✓ (merged PR #107) + §6.3.D.2 ✓ + §6.7.A image fix ✓ + §6.7.B release ✓ + §6.5 chart default ✓

deploy/helm/demarkus-server/ — StatefulSet, 1 replica, volumeClaimTemplates, exec probes against /.well-known/agent-manifest.md, Service type LoadBalancer protocol: UDP. helm-unittest test files at tests/ wired into CI by §6.3.D.1 PR #118 and validated end-to-end against a kind cluster by §6.3.D.2 PR #119. §6.5 PR #125 added server.logFormat: json chart default so production deployments get structured JSON without operator intervention; binary's standalone default stays text (lenient, unchanged for backwards compat).

6.2 — demarkus-broker binary (tools/demarkus-broker/) ✓ complete

[Unchanged.]

6.3 — demarkus-broker Helm chart ✓ complete (all five sub-slices merged) + §6.7.B release ✓

[Unchanged. Broker has emitted JSON by default since it shipped.]

6.4 — Universe topology examples (pending — possibly defer per Fritz pushback)

ApplicationSet + Kustomize overlay at deploy/k8s/examples/. Both reference the chart pull URLs from §6.7.B (now live). Argo CD ApplicationSet template generator iterates a worlds: list and templates one Application per world. Kustomize overlay is the GitOps-without-Argo alternative. Customer's ops team picks one. Status note (post-§6.5): Fritz pushed back on §6.5 as ops polish that doesn't advance the knowledge universe; the same critique applies to §6.4. Open question whether to ship a skinny version (single ApplicationSet example without dashboards), defer entirely until a customer asks for their specific GitOps shape, or pivot to a knowledge-universe-shaped initiative.

6.5 — Observability ✓ (skinny — schema doc + per-service JSON-by-default; per-backend recipes deferred)

§6.5 (skinny) ✓ merged 2026-05-13 (PR #125, commit 1643806). Three pieces:

  • client/cmd/demarkus-agent/main.go converted from stdlib log to log/slog. Strict DEMARKUS_LOG_FORMAT validation (typo → exit 2) since the agent's env-var contract is brand-new in this PR.
  • Server + agent helm charts default DEMARKUS_LOG_FORMAT: json in the rendered Deployment env block. Binary defaults stay text (local-dev human-readable); chart override is what production sees.
  • docs/deployment/observability.md (136 lines) — single-doc reference with field schema for server/broker/agent (one row per significant msg), operator query patterns ("count by verb", "mint rate", "sweeper health"), backend ingestion pointers (Datadog Agent / OTel filelog receiver / Vector / Fluent Bit / Grafana Alloy), and a "what's NOT in the logs" section (no raw subjects/emails — subject hashing pinned; no tokens, no bodies, no /metrics endpoint).

Per-backend recipe files deliberately not shipped. Original §6.5 scope called for deploy/observability/{datadog,otel-collector,vector,fluent-bit,grafana-alloy}/ directories with primary config files + READMEs. Skipped because (a) the recipes would be aspirational (no real backends to verify against), (b) they'd drift as backend config languages evolve, (c) Fritz pushback identified them as ops ergonomics that don't advance the knowledge universe. Schema doc + backend doc-pointers stay correct because we delegate to the moving target. ~1 hour of work vs ~10 hours for the full scope.

6.6 — Documentation suite (pending — incremental; possibly defer parts per Fritz pushback)

docs/deployment/*.md (location confirmed 2026-05-13). Per-chart READMEs at deploy/helm/<chart>/README.md (broker README exists from §6.3.C; server + agent need similar treatment). Install guide (per-provider OIDC setup for Google / Okta / Entra ID / Auth0; chart install order: server → broker → agent; cert-manager + DNS topology). Security/threat model. Operations (upgrade path including the now-tested resource-policy:keep contract, backup/DR via Velero or demarkus-agent sync). Observability now links to docs/deployment/observability.md (§6.5 skinny landed). Status note: the "what is demarkus / how does federation work" product docs advance the knowledge universe; the "Velero backup runbook / OIDC per-provider step-by-step" operations docs are ops polish. Open question on slicing; can be split between knowledge-universe-shaped docs (keep) and operations runbooks (defer per same critique as §6.5/§6.4).

6.7 — Release pipeline ✓ complete

[Unchanged.]

Sequencing

  1. Slice A — token-mint library ✓ merged 2026-05-11 (PR #108).
  2. 6.0 chart ✓ merged 2026-05-11 (PR #106). §6.5 slog migration ✓ merged 2026-05-13 (PR #125).
  3. 6.1 server chart ✓ merged 2026-05-11 (PR #107). §6.3.D.2 ✓. §6.7.A ✓. §6.7.B ✓. §6.5 chart default ✓.
  4. 6.2 broker binary — Slices B + C.1–C.4 ✓ all merged 2026-05-11–12.
  5. 6.3 broker chart ✓ all five sub-slices merged 2026-05-13.
  6. 6.7.0 store hoist ✓ merged 2026-05-13 (PR #120).
  7. 6.7.A image consolidation + CLI relocation ✓ merged 2026-05-13 (PR #121).
  8. 6.7.B release pipeline ✓ three sub-PRs merged 2026-05-13–14 (PRs #122, #123, #124).
  9. 6.5 observability ✓ skinny version merged 2026-05-13 (PR #125, commit 1643806).
  10. 6.4 topology examples — pending; Fritz-pushback evaluation still open.
  11. 6.6 docs — pending; partial scope (product docs) vs ops runbooks split still open.

Rough effort: ~5-7 days of focused work remaining for whatever subset of §6.4 + §6.6 lands against the 2026-05-27 deadline. Phase 6 ~90% complete by sub-phase count (6.0/6.1/6.2/6.3/6.5/6.7 done; 6.4/6.6 remaining and partly under reframe).

Backlog (deferred, easy to add later)

[Unchanged from v17.]

  • Per-backend observability recipe files (§6.5 skinny deferred this). If a specific customer trial surfaces a request for a paved-path vector.yaml or otel-collector.yaml, ship it on-demand for their specific stack. Maintenance cost is real (configs drift with backend versions); only worth doing when the use case is concrete.

Risks

[Unchanged from v17.]

  • Schema doc drift. The slog field schema documented in docs/deployment/observability.md will drift if log lines change without the doc being updated. Mitigation: every PR that adds/changes a slog call should update the schema doc. Low-risk for the established log surface (request, archive, audit events on server; mint/revoke/rotate/sweep on broker; crawl on agent); higher risk if a future feature adds new log lines.

Status

Plan v18, 2026-05-13. Phase 6 ~90% complete. Slice A, §6.0 chart + slog, §6.1 chart (D.2 + 6.7.A + 6.7.B + 6.5 chart default), §6.2 broker binary, §6.3 broker chart (5 sub-slices), §6.7.0 store hoist, §6.7.A image consolidation + CLI relocation, §6.7.B release pipeline (3 sub-PRs), §6.5 observability (skinny) all merged. 15 PRs merged 2026-05-13–14 (#115 through #125).

§6.5 skinny trajectory:

  • Original scope was 5 per-backend log-shipper recipe dirs (~10h, ~1000 lines). Fritz cost/value pushback: "what's the benefit of observability to the knowledge universe?"
  • Reframed scope is 3 pieces: agent slog migration, server+agent chart JSON default, single schema doc. ~1h, ~14 lines code + 136 lines docs.
  • Net product effect: all three runtime services emit identical structured JSON in production; operators have an authoritative field schema reference; no aspirational backend YAMLs sitting in the repo to maintain.

Open question for Fritz at session resume: keep grinding Phase 6 polish (§6.4 + §6.6), or pivot to a knowledge-universe-shaped initiative? §6.4 (topology examples) is operator-facing ops polish — same critique as §6.5 originally. §6.6 (docs) splits — product docs (security model, federation explanation, per-provider OIDC) advance the knowledge universe; operations runbooks (Velero, upgrade procedures) are ops polish. Alternatives that move the knowledge universe directly: /plans/conflict-merge.md (content-loss reduction in mark_publish), /plans/claude-code-plugin.md (distribution win), Obsidian plugin polish (standalone repo, end-user surface), agent/federation feature work, TUI/CLI ergonomics.

Related documents

trail
  1. soul.demarkus.io v90
  2. universe-deployment
from here → claude-code-plugin conflict-merge knowledge-system-gke-deploy plan index 2026-05-11