Agent reason: the first call of a session should say who is asking, what is
waiting and what to do, in under 8 KiB, from the same lists the viewer
draws. books.start now carries book.id and book.url (the book's path on the
server, never a path on a disk), you {principal, kind, scopes, client_id},
drafts {building, awaiting_evidence}, reconciliation {tracked,
never_reconciled, behind}, backup {last_at, through_seq, stale}, the
prompts, and needs_attention (the twelve most urgent items, problems first,
with every item counted by kind), beside next_steps now in the envelope's
shape (tool or prompt, why, required; attention problems are required). A
new book is told to run the onboard prompt first, then to record the
company's facts and set up the chart; an active one is offered a draft
entry. The tool carries _meta anthropic/alwaysLoad, so a client that defers
tools loads it up front. The size fit shortens attention items and waiting
drafts after the convention summaries and before the lists, as before.
agent {model, reasoning_effort, harness} is accepted and written to the
call's access record (the access log shows it as agent), self-reported and
never checked, and used for nothing else: not in the answer, not in any
decision. Who asked is the request's alone: it is cleared when the request
ends, so a later resource read on the same thread cannot see it.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5.1 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01HS8WZziDnyxunC23MUxrLp
Accounting reason: a convention, a decision or an open item carries who
decided it, when and on what authority. When that is recorded wrongly the
honest fix is to say so on the record, not to restate the policy: a policy
revision bumps the convention's revision and reads as a change of the rule,
and a new decision supersedes the old one. A source correction changes only
the authority and says why, so the audit trail shows the words were never
altered.
New event types convention.source_revised, decision.source_revised and
open_item.source_revised {id, source, reason} under the journal feature
source_revisions: an older version would refuse the types, or show the old
source as the record's authority, so it stops at the declaration instead
(rules.md B-27) and books that have not had the owner's upgrade refuse the
write with format_upgrade_pending, journaling nothing. Replay sets the
source and nothing else (the text, the revision and the journal line stay);
the projection updates the rows' existing source columns, so no schema
changed. A correction must be one: other words, the same source, no reason
or an unknown record is refused.
books.set_convention takes reason (the text exactly as it stands),
books.record_decision and books.raise_item take revises with reason. Without
reason the old refusal stands and now says how to correct only the source.
8.0.6: the hand-written lines of the three shapes in
books_written_under_older_rules_still_open; fixture old-books/p5_before,
written by b97234ac (a revised convention, two decisions, two open items, a
draft) through old-books-writer/src/bin/p5_before.rs, opens to that
version's figures, so no figure moved; books_p2_served_cut_over_whole
refuses the correction before consent and takes it after; the fuzzer and the
viewer's journal know the types. The live books refuse the new write until
the owner gives the go-ahead; merging does not need it.
Tests: a_source_only_revision_is_journaled,
a_source_revision_must_change_only_the_source,
source_revisions_wait_for_the_upgrade, source_revisions_is_its_own_feature.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5.1 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01HS8WZziDnyxunC23MUxrLp
The books can live on a machine of the owner's own (plan 3.8, 8.2 P9a,
D-51). Three things make that honest instead of nominal:
- `--isolation same_user|enforced` sets `server::Isolation`, carried
through `Served` and `BooksServer` to `books.start`. Locally the books
stay `same_user (advisory)`; under the self-host unit the server is told
`enforced` and reports `service_user (enforced)`. The server never
guesses, and the literal it used to report is gone.
- `--http [ADDR]` binds the same MCP router on loopback (default
127.0.0.1:7411) beside the Unix sockets, before the ready line, for the
TLS proxy or tunnel in front of the server. It is the same bearer door
and the same graceful close; a failed bind is reported and is not fatal
(3.9). `serve` carries both flags through the host, so the system unit
can ask for them once.
`deploy/wanderbooks-server.service` is the unit: a dedicated account, a
0700 data root, `ProtectSystem=strict`, no seccomp or Landlock (D-32), and
loopback-only networking. `deploy/README.md` is the recipe: install, setup,
move the books by `books adopt` with its head check (D-31: a copied book
is the transport), mint a bearer token, put Caddy or Tailscale Funnel in
front of the loopback door, and point Claude Code and Codex at it.
The two-account CI job (`.github/workflows/two-user.yml`) makes the
deployment and runs `crates/ledger-cli/tests/two_user.rs` as another
account: `agent_uid_cannot_read_tenant` proves the tenant root and its
journal are refused, then reads, writes, uploads, files, exports and
verifies over HTTP with the bearer (in a second book, so the moved books'
head is not advanced); `self_host_adopt_same_head` compares the moved
books' head and event count with the source clone's.
`isolation_label_is_enforced_under_the_unit` runs everywhere, including
the unit-file read that keeps the recipe from drifting.
Accounting reason for the shape: nothing here changes an entry, a report
or a figure. It changes who can reach them: the move is lossless and
verifiable at the head, and the boundary is the operating system's, not a
promise in our text. No journal code, kernel function, Kani harness or
Lean step is touched, so `just prove` is not required.
No go-ahead needed: no new journal feature or event; the live books are
unaffected.
books.start passed Integrity::default() to the attention engine, so it
asserted "database matches, no file failures". On a book whose database
differs from the journal, or whose stored file is missing or corrupt, the
viewer showed the database/stored-files items and the server did not: the
two lists diverged exactly where they matter most.
Call find, which computes the check: every distinct stored blob is read
and hash-checked once (a damaged blob is still reported per attachment
filed from it), and Store::disk_check now makes the viewer's comparison
through a snapshot of its data directory instead of reporting a match.
The parity test now damages its own fixture (removes the receipt's blob,
then changes a projected account row) and asserts both lists still agree
item for item and both name the damage. On the demo books (138
attachments, 138 distinct blobs, debug build) books.start takes about
0.26 s warm, 0.29 s cold, so the real check costs no decision.
Needs attention was computed by the viewer alone, while books.start
hand-picked a handful of next steps. The human's list and the agent's
could disagree, and a new item had to be written twice (or, as
books.start showed, not at all).
Move the engine to ledger-package over PackageBooks: one function,
find/find_with(books, today, settings, integrity), reads the ledger, the
journal's event types (an entry's origin), the attachments and their
links, the statements, the reconciliations, and the database check. The
viewer's attention module now only maps Target to Route; books.start
turns the same items into its next steps (why = the item's title, top 12),
so the list the human sees and the steps the agent gets cannot drift.
PackageBooks gains settings, journal, statements, reconciliations and
disk_check, implemented for Store and Snapshot, so both views answer
alike. The W-9, reconciliation and 1099 predicates move beside the items
to keep one copy. ledger-package gains ledger-config and serde_json (the
receipt policy and the tool arguments the items carry).
Tests: view_model.rs and spec_kept.rs pass unchanged; the new
attention_parity.rs compares the viewer and books.start item for item on
the demo books and on a book written entry by entry. just check green.
The owner (2026-10-23): "We should probably just delete the stdio path
altogether. THere's no point in that. And it sitting there unused will
just lead to bitrot. Nuke it?"
Books are served only by the books server (`wanderbooks server`),
reached by agents through the bridge (`wanderbooks mcp --book ID`),
which stays.
Removed: `wanderbooks dev-stdio`, the `ledger-mcp` binary, and
`ledger_mcp::run` (stdio and `--http` over a bare data dir), with all
that only that mode had:
- files the books make coming back inline: `HandedFile.content_base64`
is gone, and `download` and `expires_at` are always there;
- books with no access log or backups: `books.access_log`,
`books.backup` and `books.back_up_now` are always offered, by scope;
- the settings file read and reloaded (`legacy_files`), the vault key
named by a file or `--vault-key-file`, and the books dir's
key-inside-the-books and git checks (with `paths.rs`);
- `wire.rs` (the bridge frames an agent's lines itself);
- `books.settings`' file fields and `books.start`'s `settings_source`.
`BooksServer` is built one way, from `Served` (a book as the books
server serves it), in production and in the unit tests. An unknown tool
is now a protocol error (mcp-tools.md). Inline file input is unchanged.
Then the owner's three decisions (2026-10-23, the question tool):
(a) `books.import_settings` is removed entirely (118 tools): old books
come in whole by `wanderbooks books adopt`, which reads their settings
file once; ledger-config keeps its settings-file parsing only as far as
adoption uses it (`load` and the path-reading `effective_receipt_policy`
are gone), and `books.chart_template` gives its settings as
`books.set_setting` changes. (b) The viewer's loose-books-folder mode is
removed (`--data-dir`, `--books-toml`, `--vault-key-file`, the settings
file and config.json followed): it opens only books of the data root,
reading settings from the journal and the vault from the book's own
`vault/` and `keys/`. (c) `wanderbooks dev-stdio` has no stub: it is an
unknown command like any other word. Also: an upload's expiry past the
calendar is an error, never an empty string.
Tests: every suite that drove the stdio server moved to
crates/ledger-cli/tests/ and drives a real `wanderbooks server` on a
data root of its own (tests/common), handed files by their download;
mcp_stdio.rs is mcp_journeys.rs. Tests of what is gone are deleted and
listed in docs/testing.md. Docs: plan D-44 (D-18 superseded), STATUS,
testing, rules, mcp-interface, the handbook, README; justfile recipes.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01T3gXMVt7XJPi6ens1or9Dj
A project is a class with facts (description, status, kind, party,
dates, links, notes) in one project.set event behind the format
feature projects. Four tools (books.add_project, update_project,
projects, project); documents and decisions link to projects; B-37:
on-spec costs are expensed as incurred, repayment is revenue, and the
unrecovered cost is never below zero (Kani). Viewer: a Projects list
and a project page with its figures, by month and by account. The
sidebar measures its footer instead of reserving a fixed 172 px.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01T3gXMVt7XJPi6ens1or9Dj
Books an update could write a newer format for open on their old format
and are asked at every open; anything needing a new feature is refused
until the owner agrees with the passphrase, after a verified backup that
includes the keys. New books start on the current format. Each projection
schema has its own database file, so an older version still opens the
books until the owner agrees.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01T3gXMVt7XJPi6ens1or9Dj
No Landlock, no seccomp, no helper: isolation is "same_user
(advisory)". The lease socket keeps two intents (close, format-upgrade
consent). The viewer holds the books open while it runs and gains a
Books menu: New books, Back up now, Restore (preview, then confirm),
Close, Connect Claude Code / Codex. New commands `wanderbooks books
back-up` and `wanderbooks connect claude|codex`. The scaffold
(`new`/`init` and its templates) is gone; install.sh needs no sudo.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01T3gXMVt7XJPi6ens1or9Dj
The server backs each book up itself: a per-book git archive, pushed
fast-forward only to a git remote and to a folder, when the books open,
after a quiet spell, before they close and on request; every commit,
push and drill is a record in ops/backup.jsonl. Drills clone each
target and verify the chain, the blobs, the vault and the head, weekly
and after a failure. `wanderbooks books restore` previews, then
restores beside or (with --replace) over, never moving books something
holds. The archive refuses anything but a plain bare repository and
pins git against the owner's configuration. books.backup and
books.back_up_now for the agent.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01T3gXMVt7XJPi6ens1or9Dj
One wanderbooks executable. The books are open while the viewer, an
agent session or a terminal holds them: a host process takes leases on
a socket, starts the server (the hidden mode `wanderbooks server`) with
a pipe on its input, and closes it 10 s after the last lease ends. No
background service. One host even in a race (run/host.lock).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01T3gXMVt7XJPi6ens1or9Dj
Settings, conventions (posting templates, approval rules, policies,
close steps, calendar, mappings, notes), decisions, open items and
entry approvals are journal events (journal format 2). Books that keep
their settings never read wanderbooks.toml or config.json; the server
and the viewer take the vault key from --vault-key-file instead.
books.import_settings moves a settings file in once, exactly as the
server reads it. Approval rules, when enforced, gate every posting
path. Replay refuses what it can't read as newer, never as corrupt.
Lean: a record changes no figure. Mutation on the whole diff: every
survivor killed by a test but two equivalent (docs/testing.md). The
Company page says a late open item is overdue in words, not colour
alone.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01T3gXMVt7XJPi6ens1or9Dj
swaitsandClaude Fable 5.1