CHAINSTATE OS is a proposed Linux-based cognitive operating system. Eight separated trust planes, a seven-stage governed reasoning loop, BranchState continuity with TIMEMACHINE rollback, metacognitive isolation, an independent falsifiability kill gate, and constitutional safety — designed to run on your hardware, answer to you, and fail closed.
Simulated control surface for CHAINSTATE OS. Pick a command from the side rail to see the terminal output and watch the state tiles react; live telemetry runs on the right. SIMULATED — no real substrate is attached to this page.
$ cs status SUBSTRATE .... LOCAL NETWORK ...... SAFE-DEGRADED POLICY ....... ENFORCED METACOG ...... ISOLATED KILLGATE ..... INDEPENDENT RECEIPTS ..... APPEND-ONLY BRANCH ....... experiment-01 Demo telemetry is simulated.
The full substrate map: the seven-stage governed cognition loop on top, the eight separated trust planes in the middle, and the continuity + release infrastructure below. No edge skips a trust plane — correlation is not identity, and approval is not execution. Hover any node for a summary; click for the full specification.
| LAYER | SPECIFICATION | STATUS |
|---|---|---|
| Base system | Linux (hardened distribution target), immutable base image, signed A/B system partitions, verified boot chain | DESIGN |
| Cognitive runtime | Local model host with pluggable backends (GGUF / ONNX / vendor runtimes), retrieval store, proposal generator confined to the Cognitive plane | DESIGN |
| Metacognitive layer | Isolated uncertainty estimator and hypothesis-killing evaluator; user-local state cannot rewrite substrate metacognition | DESIGN |
| Constitutional engine | Hard-veto policy machine: consent, provenance, capability budgets, fail-closed defaults for ambiguous sensitive actions | DESIGN |
| Execution sandbox | Namespaced, quota-limited process cells; signed skill plugins with declared capability limits | DESIGN |
| Continuity | BranchState append-only receipt chain, TIMEMACHINE branch/rollback, conflict-aware offline peer sync | DESIGN |
| Hardware abstraction | CPU / GPU / NPU / FPGA / RISC-V targets; UCI-1 + RISC-V acceleration path; optional optical inference backend | ROADMAP |
| Sensor fusion | LiDAR, radar, EO/IR, MEMS, hyperspectral and audio fusion pipeline behind default-deny actuation policy | ROADMAP |
| Distribution | GitHub releases: signed packages, SHA-256 checksums, SBOM, sandboxed installer with entitlement verification | BETA |
| Demo site | This page — static HF Space, in-browser simulation, wallet connection UI | LIVE |
H(r₀) = SHA-256(genesis ‖ device_id) H(rₙ) = SHA-256(H(rₙ₋₁) ‖ actionₙ ‖ planeₙ ‖ tₙ) Append-only: valid(rₙ) ⇒ valid(r₀ … rₙ₋₁) Any rewrite of rₖ invalidates all H(rₖ₊₁ … rₙ).
B(t) = B₀ − Σᵢ c(aᵢ) for approved actions aᵢ ≤ t execute(a) permitted ⇔ c(a) ≤ B(t) ∧ veto(a) = ⊥ ∧ sig(skill) valid Budget exhaustion ⇒ fail closed, not fail open.
For hypothesis h with evidence E: U(h) = 1 − max P(h | E) kill(h) ⇔ U(h) > τ_kill ∨ falsifier(h, E) = ⊤ The kill-gate evaluator is independent: weights(killgate) ∩ writable(user_state) = ∅
branch b = (root, Δ₁ … Δₙ) merge(b₁, b₂) defined ⇔ conflict(Δ(b₁), Δ(b₂)) = ∅ else: user-arbitrated three-way merge over receipts TIMEMACHINE: restore(t) replays r₀ … r_t exactly; state(t) is a pure function of the receipt prefix.
The paper proposes a reference architecture for a locally owned cognitive operating system. Its core claims:
Separation of trust planes. Interface, Skill, Cognitive, Metacognitive, Constitutional, Execution, Continuity and Hardware are distinct privilege domains. A proposal generated in the Cognitive plane holds no authority until it survives Challenge, Authorization and Execution — approval is not execution.
Governed cognition loop. Every action traverses OBSERVE → REPRESENT → HYPOTHESISE → CHALLENGE → AUTHORIZE → EXECUTE → REFLECT, with receipts appended at each transition.
Continuity as a first-class citizen. BranchState treats system state as a pure function of an append-only receipt chain, enabling TIMEMACHINE rollback, branching experiments and conflict-aware offline peer sync.
Independent falsifiability. A metacognitive kill gate, isolated from user-writable state, actively attempts to falsify the system's own hypotheses before they can act.
Hardware pluralism. The substrate abstracts CPU, GPU, NPU, FPGA and RISC-V targets, with UCI-1 + RISC-V acceleration and an optional optical inference backend on the roadmap, plus a default-deny fused-sensor pipeline (LiDAR, radar, EO/IR, MEMS, hyperspectral, audio).
Status labels in the paper distinguish LIVE, BETA, DESIGN and ROADMAP. This page does not imply production maturity.
DESIGN BranchState + TIMEMACHINE continuity core
ROADMAP UCI-1 + RISC-V acceleration
ROADMAP LiDAR / radar / EO-IR / MEMS / hyperspectral / audio fusion
ROADMAP Optional optical inference backend
DESIGN Independent falsifiability kill gate
DESIGN Offline-first peer continuity
One-time. ETH settlement through a backend-generated quote on Base. Payment is only valid once independently verified by the backend — the browser alone is never trusted to confirm payment.
Wallet not connected.
Public download does not grant installation. The installer requires backend entitlement, bundle hash, expiry and a same-wallet signature.
REPOSITORYThis static Space is demo + checkout UI only. Secrets and payment authority stay off the Space, on the separate backend.
SPACEEvery release ships signed packages, SHA256SUMS, an SBOM and verify-bundle.sh. Verify before installing. The R&D paper is attached to releases and linked from this Space.
CHAINSTATE / OS