Hiro development journal

Starting Hiro's real 24-hour Stage 6 probation in an external fixture

2026.08.04 at 13:28:18 America/Los_Angeles Validated and published Machine-readable JSON

Executive summary

Implemented a wall-clock, resumable probation path around Hiro's fixture-only Stage 6 transaction controller while preserving the earlier time-compressed drill path.

The real run started at 2026-08-04 13:27:01 Pacific in a sealed external Git fixture. Its immediate canary, minute-zero integrity check, and minute-zero probation canary passed.

The monitor checks repository and candidate integrity every 15 minutes, runs stable canaries at 0, 15, 60, 360, and 1,440 minutes, and permits no more than five minutes of checkpoint lateness.

Stage 6 remains disabled. The run cannot mutate Hiro's active branch, and it does not grant automatic-promotion authority even if the full 24-hour interval passes.

Work completed

Real-time probation execution

Implemented and running

Added a separate real_time request mode and entrypoint so real wall-clock evidence cannot be confused with or accidentally executed through the compressed rehearsal path.
The probation start timestamp and timing parameters are frozen in the append-only ledger. Resumed processes must use the exact same checkpoint sequence, integrity interval, and lateness limit.
The wait loop renews the fixture lease at most 60 seconds apart while sleeping and checks due times using timezone-aware UTC timestamps.
The running transaction uses five stable canary offsets: 0, 15, 60, 360, and 1,440 minutes.

Integrity monitoring and fail-closed behavior

Implemented and passed focused tests

Every 15 minutes the monitor checks the persistent host disable sentinel, rejects activation opt-in, verifies the fixture HEAD, requires a clean worktree, and compares the candidate file to its exact requested contents.
A checkpoint more than five minutes late produces a failed probation result and an additive fixture rollback when the candidate is still the exact HEAD.
A changed HEAD is treated as overlapping state and enters emergency stop instead of attempting an unsafe revert.
Checkpoint and integrity events are append-only and are reused on restart rather than duplicated.

External fixture launch

Healthy at minute zero

The fixture, candidate worktree, ledgers, logs, and eventual frozen outcome are stored under C:\tmp\hiro-stage6-realtime-probation-20260804, outside Hiro's repository.
The fixture candidate revision is eae85d008a843e99a684dcc26fa5e372817a4d51 and adds only its bounded evidence document.
The probation clock started at 2026-08-04T13:27:01.367267-07:00 and cannot validly complete before 2026-08-05T13:27:01.367267-07:00.
At launch, the immediate canary, minute-zero integrity check, and minute-zero canary all passed; the background process and lease heartbeat were healthy.

Decisions and reasoning

Keep real-time and compressed execution as explicit, non-interchangeable modes so compressed evidence cannot be mislabeled as elapsed-time evidence.
Use a five-minute lateness allowance to tolerate small scheduling drift while still treating sleep, shutdown, or monitoring loss as a failed checkpoint.
Run a lightweight fixture test at scheduled canary points and integrity-only checks every 15 minutes to minimize sustained computer load.
Run the probation in a hidden background process without creating or changing a persistent system schedule.
Require the host Stage 6 DISABLED sentinel throughout this forced-shadow run and retain zero authority over Hiro's active branch.

Validation and evidence

Check	Status	Result
Focused Stage 6 safety tests	passed	30 tests passed in 28.20 seconds. New coverage verifies elapsed checkpoints, restart recovery without duplicate commits or events, rollback after a late checkpoint, and strict separation between compressed and real-time entrypoints.
Repository-wide regression suite	passed	315 tests passed in 139.18 seconds.
Real child-process startup	passed after one safe launcher correction	The first invocation was rejected by argument parsing because Windows split a repository path containing a space; it created no fixture or transaction. The corrected invocation started successfully with normalized process search paths and a hidden window.
Minute-zero runtime evidence	passed	The fixture fast-forward, immediate canary, minute-zero integrity check, and minute-zero probation canary are recorded as successful append-only events.
Hiro isolation	passed at launch	Hiro HEAD remained c9148f1ec4cf9164e4256cc3ce93efdd6794282a. Stage 6 remained disabled, the persistent sentinel remained present, and active Hiro mutations, service restarts, schedule changes, and external actions were zero.

Current state

Transaction realtime-probation-20260804 is in progress in an external fixture.
The first three launch checks passed and the monitor is waiting for the 15-minute checkpoint.
A passing result cannot be frozen before the full 24-hour interval elapses.
Stage 6 remains draft-disabled and disconnected from Hiro's active branch.

Next steps

Allow the monitor to reach the 15-minute, 60-minute, 6-hour, and 24-hour canary checkpoints while retaining every 15-minute integrity observation.
After the final checkpoint, verify the frozen outcome hash, complete event sequence, elapsed duration, fixture state, and unchanged Hiro revision.
If the run passes, prepare and review a final disabled Stage 6 policy candidate and its exact hash.
Request separate explicit user approval bound to that policy hash before any evidence-only active-branch authority is considered.