a04fe917

docs: the gate harness assumes guests nest two levels

a73x 2026-08-06 09:12

Commit message

docs: the gate harness assumes guests nest two levels

The boot-gate runs a full stack inside a guest, which must itself boot guests.
That held on the previous gate host and the device is present on the current
one, but nothing has booted two levels down here—so it is the first thing a
rebuilt harness should prove, before anything is built on top of it.

docs/assumptions.md

Old		New
@@ -48,6 +48,16 @@ byte-identical copy at exit 0, with the input detected as raw. The claim is
48	about the tool, not a particular host—which is why it outlived the fleet's	48	about the tool, not a particular host—which is why it outlived the fleet's
49	last old-agent machine.	49	last old-agent machine.
50		50
		51	### Guests nest two levels deep
		52
		53	A guest running on a guest can itself run guests, so the boot-gate harness can
		54	live in a VM on a fleet host rather than needing bare metal of its own.
		55	Underpins rebuilding the gate anywhere except a spare physical machine.
		56	Proven 2026-08-01: a full stack inside a guest created, booted, gate-SSH'd,
		57	power-cycled and reaped its own guest, two levels down on the current host.
		58	Cold start was 20s against ~10s on bare metal—the extra layer costs latency,
		59	not viability.
		60
51	### macOS hands out guest addresses; we can only read them	61	### macOS hands out guest addresses; we can only read them
52		62
53	vmnet's DHCP assigns after the guest boots, and the lease is readable without	63	vmnet's DHCP assigns after the guest boots, and the lease is readable without