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Cognitive OS

Cognitive OS is a local-first, evidence-governed runtime for building toward a general intelligence operating system. It is not documented as an achieved AGI; the product boundary is a verifiable cognitive runtime that maintains goals, evidence, hypotheses, world/self state, governed actions, and long-running recovery. This distilled repository keeps the core runtime, model routing, local-machine adapter, empty-first mirror, verifier gates, failure learning, and managed VM provider. Desktop UI shells, WebArena, ARC-AGI-3 adapters, benchmark fixtures, and frozen report artifacts have been removed from the core distribution.

Quick Start

python3.10 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
python -m pip install --upgrade pip
pip install -r requirements-dev.txt
pip install -e .
conos preflight --strict-dev
conos layout
pytest -q

Runtime-only smoke checks:

conos version
conos preflight
conos setup --one-click
conos validate-install
conos setup --dry-run
conos doctor
conos status
conos logs --tail 120
conos approvals
conos vm status
conos run local-machine --help
conos mirror --help
conos llm --help
conos vm --help

Product Entry Point

conos is the only public CLI entry point.

conos run local-machine --instruction "inspect README" --candidate README.md --max-ticks 2
conos mirror init --mirror-root runtime/mirrors/session-1
conos llm control-plane --route structured_answer --required-capability structured_output --permission generate_text
conos auth codex status
conos vm report
conos supervisor --help

The distilled run target is local-machine. Removed targets such as arc-agi3, webarena, app, ui, eval, and dashboard are intentionally not part of this package.

Core Capabilities

  • Runtime supervision: SQLite-backed resumable runs, task state, leases, approvals, event journal, resource watchdog, soak mode, pause/resume, and crash recovery. Product status is normalized into runtime modes such as SLEEP, IDLE, ROUTINE_RUN, DEEP_THINK, CREATING, ACTING, DREAM, WAITING_HUMAN, and DEGRADED_RECOVERY; see docs/runtime-modes.md.
  • AGI-direction control plane: a North Star ledger, autonomous task discovery, explicit evidence/hypothesis lifecycle, self/world-state separation, model-state-driven action influence, outcome-driven self/world model updates, runtime goal pressure from self-model learning, skill-candidate discovery, planner-visible active goal pressure, normal no-user-instruction autonomous ticks for safe L0/L1 goals, homeostasis diagnostics from self/world/runtime pressure, formal evidence commit for idle-time diagnostics, pressure-resolution escalation to WAITING_HUMAN, DEEP_THINK, or approved limited L2 mirror investigation, refusal gates, and external baseline comparisons. See docs/agi-north-star.md.
  • LLM routing: provider inventory, model profiles, route policies, thinking-policy control, budget-aware routing, Ollama/OpenAI/Codex CLI adapters, and explicit runtime contracts.
  • Governance: action capability checks, permission gates, verifier policy, source-sync approval, failure learning ledger, and structured audit events.
  • Local-machine adapter: atomic repo/file/test/edit actions, action grounding, target binding, bounded patch proposal, verifier-gated patching, and local mirror integration.
  • Empty-first mirror: materializes only requested files, executes inside a controlled workspace, builds patch-gated sync plans, verifies source hashes, writes rollback checkpoints, and audits every apply.
  • Managed VM provider: Con OS-owned VM state root, Apple Virtualization runner launcher, guest-agent initrd bundle, base-image bundle export/import, and default execution boundary for local-machine commands. There is no silent host-exec fallback when the VM path is unavailable.

Local Mirror

conos mirror init --mirror-root runtime/mirrors/session-1
conos mirror fetch --mirror-root runtime/mirrors/session-1 --path README.md
conos mirror exec \
  --mirror-root runtime/mirrors/session-1 \
  --backend local \
  --allow-command python3 \
  -- python3 -c "from pathlib import Path; print(Path('README.md').exists())"
conos mirror plan --mirror-root runtime/mirrors/session-1

mirror exec and conos run local-machine default to the Con OS managed-VM boundary. The --backend local form above is a development-only host-exec opt-in for quick smoke checks; product execution should keep the default managed VM boundary and bootstrap the VM first.

mirror apply is a patch gate: it verifies planned source hashes and mirror hashes before changing the source tree. Rollback checkpoints are recorded for applied plans.

Security governance is layered into read, propose_patch, execute, network, credential, and sync-back capabilities. Side-effecting actions emit structured audit events, network access is policy controlled, credential use is explicit and redacted in audit, and source sync is never copy-back: only approved patch-gate plans can cross from mirror/VM back into the source tree. Local-machine runs can also constrain those layers per task through action governance policy, for example allowing only read and propose_patch while blocking execute, network, or sync-back before the action reaches the adapter. Capability-layer approvals are first-class runtime inbox items: WAITING_APPROVAL records can be listed with conos approvals, approved with conos approve <approval_id>, and the approved layer is injected back into the same run's governance state on resume. Side-effecting local-machine actions also pass through a final audit guard: if a normal governance decision is present, that decision becomes the side-effect audit record; if governance is disabled in a development path, the adapter still emits and persists a side_effect_audit_event before returning the action result.

Execution credentials are isolated by default. Local host execution no longer inherits the full host process environment; it receives only a small sanitized base environment plus explicit extra_env keys. Env values are redacted in mirror/audit records, and sensitive env key names such as tokens, passwords, or API keys are treated as credential access by action governance before the command reaches the execution adapter. If a credential must be injected, it has to be supplied as a credential lease with a lease_id; leased credentials enter the credential capability path, can require approval, and are redacted from command output and audit payloads.

Network ingress is also policy-gated. Internet tools are hidden unless a run explicitly enables them, private/local network targets require governance approval, URL credentials are rejected, and git-based project fetches run with a sanitized process environment instead of inheriting host Git/API credentials. Runs can declare host allow/block lists through the local-machine adapter or CLI (--internet-allowed-host, --internet-blocked-host, --internet-blocked-host-suffix). Successful network artifacts carry a network_policy_audit record in both the artifact metadata and the side-effect audit path.

Managed VM

conos vm report
conos vm build-runner
conos vm build-guest-initrd --state-root ~/.conos/vm
conos vm bundle-base-image --state-root ~/.conos/vm --image-id conos-base
conos vm install-base-image-bundle --bundle-dir ~/.conos/vm/image-bundles/conos-base

The managed VM path is the default execution boundary. agent-exec is blocked until runtime.json proves a live VM process plus guest-agent readiness. There is no silent fallback to host execution; local host execution requires an explicit --execution-backend local or --backend local opt-in.

The long-running runtime can also watch and recover the managed VM through launchd:

conos install-service --vm-watchdog --vm-auto-recover
conos start
conos status --vm-watchdog

When enabled, the daemon writes VM health into the service status snapshot. A bad VM boundary marks active runs DEGRADED; with --vm-auto-recover, the daemon calls the same recover-instance path used by the CLI.

For a bounded failure-injection check:

conos vm recovery-drill --instance-id default
conos vm recovery-soak --instance-id default --rounds 3

The drill kills the recorded VM runner process, confirms the boundary becomes unhealthy, recovers it, and verifies guest execution with a small agent command. The soak repeats that drill, records recovery-time distribution, and adds a small guest disk probe after each recovered round. The managed guest agent is configured as an early sysinit.target service and the Con OS cloud-init seed overrides systemd-networkd-wait-online.service, so VM recovery waits for the Con OS vsock boundary instead of a full network-online userspace chain. Repeated EFI-disk starts also reuse an existing Con OS observable GRUB configuration when the fallback loaders are already present, avoiding a full root-disk boot-artifact scan during normal recovery.

Product Operations

For ordinary operation, start with:

conos setup --one-click
conos validate-install
conos doctor
conos status
conos logs --tail 120
conos approvals
conos vm setup-plan
conos vm setup-default
conos vm status

conos doctor, conos status, conos vm setup-plan, and conos vm status include operator_summary plus machine-readable recovery_guidance. Common failures are mapped to stable issue codes:

  • missing_vm_runner: build the bundled Apple Virtualization runner with conos vm build-runner.
  • missing_vm_image: create, import, or bootstrap a Con OS base image before expecting VM execution.
  • vm_start_blocked or guest_agent_not_ready: inspect conos vm status, then use conos vm recover-instance or conos vm recovery-drill.
  • model_unavailable: check the model endpoint or login with conos llm check / conos auth codex status; model timeout does not secretly start fallback patching.
  • permission_denied or waiting_for_approval: use conos approvals and approve only the exact capability layer you want to allow.
  • test/verifier failures: inspect conos logs --tail 200 and the run evidence before resuming or retrying.

conos vm setup-plan is the product-level readiness gate for the default VM execution boundary. It is read-only: it does not download images or start a VM. It reports runner, base image, instance manifest, live runtime process, guest agent, and execution-boundary readiness, then returns the first safe next actions needed before open-ended tasks can run inside the built-in VM.

conos vm setup-default uses the same gate as an audited workflow. By default it is also a dry run. Add --execute to run the next setup stages, and add --allow-artifact-download only when you want Con OS to fetch a digest-pinned base image recipe.

conos setup --one-click is the user-level install path. It prepares runtime storage, installs the per-user launchd service file, runs the VM boundary gate, and returns a single one_click_report. It does not start the service unless --start-service is present, and it does not execute VM setup unless --execute-vm-setup is present.

conos validate-install is the post-install verifier. It separates missing setup work from live validation work: setup_actions means the installer still needs to prepare files, while validation_remaining means the remaining work is to start or prove the runtime/VM boundary on the current machine.

For deployment claims, use the stricter product gate:

conos validate-install --product

Product mode treats the managed VM default side-effect boundary as required. If the VM gate is not ready, the command fails and returns a product_deployment_gate report. Development-only local host execution remains available only through explicit backend opt-in and does not count as deployable AGI execution.

LLM Providers

conos llm --provider ollama profile --discover-visible --catalog-only
conos llm --provider codex profile --discover-visible --catalog-only
conos llm route --route patch_proposal --required-capability coding

When a provider is connected, Con OS can inventory visible models, build model profiles, and emit route policies. Cheap routes default to no-thinking; planning and patch design can use larger thinking budgets and longer timeouts. Model outputs pass through reliability adapters before they become tool kwargs or patch proposals: malformed JSON, missing required kwargs, repeated actions, and timeouts become structured trace records. Patch fallback is disabled by default when a real model times out; any escalation or fallback path must be explicit and auditable.

Open Task Benchmark

The real-project benchmark protocol starts in experiments/open_task_benchmark/. It is intentionally offline by default:

python experiments/open_task_benchmark/run_benchmark.py --mode package-only --limit 2
python experiments/open_task_benchmark/analyze_results.py --dry-run

The package generator creates leak-free task packages for public GitHub projects without cloning them. The analyzer normalizes Con OS, Codex, Claude Code, local-model, and baseline reports into comparable metrics: task success, verified success, cost, traceability, minimal patch score, repo cleanliness, test-modification violations, non-source artifacts, and Amplification Efficiency when a valid baseline cost/success pair exists.

Repository Layout

  • conos_cli.py: unified product CLI.
  • core/: runtime, orchestration, reasoning, auth, object, and world-model contracts.
  • integrations/local_machine/: the retained environment adapter.
  • modules/llm/: provider clients, model profiling, route policies, and budget controls.
  • modules/local_mirror/: empty-first mirror and managed VM provider.
  • modules/control_plane/: action governance and agent control-plane checks.
  • planner/, decision/, self_model/, modules/memory/: retained cognitive runtime support.
  • scripts/check_runtime_preflight.py: quickstart readiness checks.
  • scripts/check_conos_repo_layout.py: public/private boundary checks.
  • experiments/open_task_benchmark/: leak-free real-project task package and result comparison protocol.
  • tests/: tests for retained runtime capabilities.

Generated outputs belong under local runtime paths such as runtime/, reports/, audit/, or dist/; they are ignored and are not part of the distilled source package.