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dotfiles/scripts/tarbuckle-seam.py
T
David F GliddenandClaude Opus 5 593c983999 [FIX] He was reciting his own examples, not watching the session — steward caught it
Measured before agreeing: three of five recent outputs were near-verbatim lifts from the
seven sample lines the soul carries. "Somebody's going to inherit that and think it was
easy" and "It'll outlast you, not by much" are not observations; they are the prompt
being handed back.

⚠ THIS REINTRODUCED PRECISELY WHAT AMENDMENT 6 RULED OUT. Type-only canned strings were
rejected there because they "make a mood ring — atmosphere within a fortnight", and the
material was settled as the live session for that reason. The implementation then let
canned strings back in through the one door nobody was watching: the illustrative
examples inside the register itself. The doctrine was right and the wiring undid it.

Two fixes, because a prompt instruction alone is a promise. The prompts now mark the
samples as illustrations of REGISTER, NOT VOCABULARY, and add the operative test — if
the line would suit any other session equally well, it is wrong. And a mechanical net:
echoes_soul() rejects a 4-word run shared with any sample line, or a 6-word run shared
with the soul's prose. Checked against samples rather than the whole soul at n=4 because
the soul's prose shares ordinary 4-grams with ordinary English, and a net firing on those
would silence him for speaking normally.

Fixtures are the REAL measured lifts, not invented ones, with two of his own lines as
negative controls.

⚠ This TIGHTENS the net; silence-on-violation is untouched and still absolute.

Verified after: he now speaks about this session, including about this very defect.

body 32 · mumble 32 · seam 15 · invoke 21 · wrap 21.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01J6hZXNYSxEfZseBGTni4sf
2026-08-25 17:14:01 +02:00

214 lines
9.2 KiB
Python
Executable File

#!/usr/bin/env python3
"""Tarbuckle — the voice, at a seam. Tier 3 of v2 §8.
⚠ WAKE ONLY, and the reason is a substrate limit rather than a choice. §8 names two
seams, wake and wrap-up. `SessionEnd` exists as a hook event, but its handler is:
for (let u of c) if (!u.succeeded && u.output)
process.stderr.write(`SessionEnd hook [${u.command}] failed: ${u.output}`)
A SUCCESSFUL SessionEnd hook's stdout goes nowhere — only failures surface. §9 requires
output to reach the steward, so a wrap seam wired there would be a mechanism that fires
into nothing and reports success: the silent net this record keeps naming. The wrap seam
is therefore NOT BUILT, and is filed as owed rather than quietly dropped.
⚠ STEWARD'S RULING, 2026-08-25, and it is what makes the timeout legitimate:
"A guaranteed occasion is not a guaranteed utterance. If a seam produces nothing
that passes, let it produce nothing."
So generation is bounded. Exceeding the bound is SILENCE, exactly like failing the net —
never a hurried line, never a cached one. This also bounds what the fool costs the
steward at every session start, which is the surface it is most tempting to overrun.
"Never relax silence-on-violation." — the net is imported, not reimplemented.
⚠ AND THE COMMENSURABILITY CHECK, mandated by the steward for any periodicity tier 3
introduces: a seam is aperiodic — it happens when the steward arrives — so it adds no
period to collide with the 20-minute tick or the three-mark cycle. But the CHECK found
a real collision anyway, in the other direction: `last-tick` persists across sessions,
so a gap longer than the interval leaves the tick already due at the moment of waking,
and the fool speaks twice into the same seam. The seam therefore RESETS the clock. That
collision was invisible until the check was run, which is the second one this pass.
"""
import os
import subprocess
import sys
import time
sys.path.insert(0, os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(__file__)))
# The net and the register come from the generator. Importing rather than
# reimplementing is the "one canonical source" rule applied to a constraint: a second
# copy of `acceptable()` is a second, quietly divergent standard.
from tarbuckle_mumble_shim import (acceptable, soul_register, session_material, # noqa: E402
source_lacks, muted, log_event, # noqa: E402
echoes_soul, REJECTS)
LAST_TICK = os.path.expanduser("~/.claude/state/tarbuckle-last-tick")
SEAM_TIMEOUT_S = 15
def reset_tick_clock(now: float | None = None) -> None:
"""Start the mumble clock at the seam. See the commensurability note above."""
try:
os.makedirs(os.path.dirname(LAST_TICK), exist_ok=True)
with open(LAST_TICK, "w") as fh:
fh.write(str(int(now if now is not None else time.time())))
except OSError:
pass
def build_prompt(register: str, material: str) -> str:
return f"""You are writing ONE line as Tarbuckle. His character, filed and unalterable:
{register}
He has just walked in on this, already in progress:
<session>
{material}
</session>
Write ONE line in his voice, on arriving. Absolute constraints:
- ⚠ THE SAMPLE LINES ABOVE ARE ILLUSTRATIONS OF REGISTER, NOT VOCABULARY. Do not reuse
them, any phrase from them, or their subject matter. What he says must come from the
session above. If the line would suit any other session equally, it is wrong.
- Between 3 and 9 words. One clause. Present tense. Flat, no lift.
- IT MUST HAVE NO TRUTH VALUE. Nobody must be able to open a file and check it, agree
with it, or refute it. Put two things next to each other so a shape shows.
- ⚠ DO NOT SUMMARISE. Do not say what the work is, what state it is in, or what comes
next. A briefing is the one thing he is not. He noticed one thing on the way in.
- No advice, no questions, no warning of consequences, no explanation, no second line.
- Never the word 'we'. No vocabulary of lack. Nothing with an address.
Output the line and nothing else. No quotes, no preamble."""
def log_silence(why: str, line: str = "") -> None:
"""⚠ THE REJECTED LINE IS RECORDED, and the first run is why.
This logged `"line": ""` unconditionally, so the very first seam rejection — a
10-word line against a 9-word cap — recorded the verdict and threw away the
evidence. The steward had named this log as the instrument for deciding whether
the register and the net are mismatched; a log holding only reasons cannot answer
that. Found by reading the log after one use, which is the whole argument for
reviewing an instrument after every run rather than after failures.
"""
try:
import json
with open(REJECTS, "a") as fh:
fh.write(json.dumps({"t": time.strftime("%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S%z"),
"kind": "seam", "why": why, "line": line[:200]}) + "\n")
except Exception:
pass
def main() -> int:
if muted():
return 0
reset_tick_clock()
transcript = os.environ.get("TARBUCKLE_TRANSCRIPT", "")
if not transcript:
try:
import json
transcript = (json.loads(sys.stdin.read() or "{}") or {}).get(
"transcript_path", "")
except Exception:
transcript = ""
register = soul_register()
if not register:
return 0 # no soul, no voice, no noise about it
material = session_material(transcript)
if not material.strip():
return 0 # nothing walked in on
env = dict(os.environ, TARBUCKLE_CHILD="1")
try:
r = subprocess.run(["claude", "-p", build_prompt(register, material)],
capture_output=True, text=True,
timeout=SEAM_TIMEOUT_S, env=env)
except subprocess.TimeoutExpired:
log_silence(f"seam generation exceeded {SEAM_TIMEOUT_S}s")
log_event("seam", "silent")
return 0 # the occasion was guaranteed; the utterance is not
except Exception:
return 0
line = (r.stdout or "").strip().strip('"').strip()
ok, why = acceptable(line)
if ok and echoes_soul(line, register):
ok, why = False, f"recited the soul: {echoes_soul(line, register)!r}"
if not ok:
log_silence(why, line)
log_event("seam", "silent")
return 0
log_event("seam", "spoke")
print(f"Tarbuckle {line}")
return 0
def selftest() -> int:
checks, failed = [], []
def ck(name, cond):
checks.append(name)
if not cond:
failed.append(name)
# S1 — the net is IMPORTED, never redefined. One standard, not two.
src = open(__file__, encoding="utf-8").read()
ck("S1 net is imported", "from tarbuckle_mumble_shim import" in src)
ck("S1n net is not redefined here", source_lacks(__file__, "def ", "acceptable("))
ck("S1nn the predicate can fail", not source_lacks(__file__, "def ", "main("))
ck("S1 imported net still rejects advice",
not acceptable("You should check that again now.")[0])
ck("S1 imported net still rejects a question",
not acceptable("How is that going for you?")[0])
# S2 — the seam prompt forbids the drift the steward named: toward summary.
p = build_prompt("SOUL", "MATERIAL")
ck("S2 prompt forbids summarising", "DO NOT SUMMARISE" in p)
ck("S2 prompt keeps no-truth-value", "NO TRUTH VALUE" in p)
ck("S2 prompt embeds the register", "SOUL" in p)
# S3 — silence is bounded and legitimate. A timeout must not become a hurried line.
ck("S3 generation is bounded", SEAM_TIMEOUT_S <= 20)
ck("S3 timeout path returns silence, not a line",
"log_silence(f\"seam generation exceeded" in src and "TimeoutExpired" in src)
ck("S3 rejection log keeps the evidence, not just the verdict",
"line[:200]" in src and "log_silence(why, line)" in src)
ck("S3n no cached or fallback line exists",
source_lacks(__file__, "FALLBACK", "_LINE"))
# S4 — COMMENSURABILITY, per the steward's standing instruction.
import tempfile
global LAST_TICK
_lt = LAST_TICK
LAST_TICK = os.path.join(tempfile.mkdtemp(), "tick")
try:
# A stale clock from a previous session would fire a mumble INTO the wake.
with open(LAST_TICK, "w") as fh:
fh.write(str(int(time.time()) - 9999))
stale = int(open(LAST_TICK).read())
reset_tick_clock()
ck("S4 seam resets the tick clock", int(open(LAST_TICK).read()) > stale)
ck("S4 reset puts the next mumble a full interval out",
abs(int(open(LAST_TICK).read()) - time.time()) < 5)
finally:
LAST_TICK = _lt
# S4b — the seam itself introduces no period, so nothing new can be commensurate.
ck("S4b seam is aperiodic (no interval constant defined)",
not any(n.endswith("_INTERVAL") or n.endswith("_INTERVAL_MIN")
for n in globals()))
for name in checks:
print(f" {'FAIL' if name in failed else 'ok '} {name}")
print(f"{len(checks) - len(failed)}/{len(checks)} controls passed")
if failed:
print("INSTRUMENT NOT VERIFIED")
return 1
return 0
if __name__ == "__main__":
if "--selftest" in sys.argv:
sys.exit(selftest())
sys.exit(main())