smoke: fix the snapshot canary that blocked v1.8.7, and make it bidirectional

Run 589 built the base cleanly and then failed both smoke jobs 81-passed/1-failed
on 'mempalace skill snapshot is current'. That canary greps a phrase from the
vendored mempalace skill to detect a stale snapshot, and the phrase it pinned was
'Attribute what you file yourself' — the heading of the hand-stamping instruction
that THIS release withdraws. So it fired correctly: the snapshot changed and the
expectation did not. Every publish job was skipped, so nothing reached the
registry and v1.8.7 was never consumed.

Rather than bump the string:

* the assertion is now BIDIRECTIONAL — the new phrase must be present AND the
  withdrawn one absent. A one-way canary only catches half the drift: it cannot
  notice a re-vendored stale snapshot that happens to contain the pinned phrase.
  Verified against v1.8.6's snapshot, which now correctly fails.
* the comment records the structural limit rather than just the fix: a phrase
  canary can only ever detect 'older than what I remembered to pin', never
  'older than skillset main'. Only a diff against the skillset repo can do that,
  which is now a Still-open item — it needs a CI clone credential for a private
  repo, i.e. a policy decision, not a code change.

Changelog consolidated: the SSH sidecar multiplexing default moves from
Unreleased into v1.8.7, since the retag will sit on a commit that contains it,
and the v1.8.7 summary now records the failed first attempt rather than quietly
presenting the second one as the whole story.

.env.example

@@ -18,6 +18,19 @@ SSH_KEY_PATH=~/.ssh
 # the staged files and the palace dedup keys pointing at them cannot be
 # separated.
 #
+# That palace root is resolved with mempalace's own precedence
+# ($MEMPALACE_PALACE_PATH -> $MEMPAL_PALACE_PATH -> ~/.mempalace/config.json ->
+# ~/.mempalace/palace), and the feeders derive their stage FROM it
+# (<palace-root>/pi-stage). Neither the image nor the entrypoint exports it, by
+# design: pinning the palace without carrying the stage along re-creates the
+# very split that a shared root removed. Override it only to move the palace off
+# the default -- e.g. onto a different mount -- and only to a path with the SAME
+# persistence as the palace itself. A stage that outlives its palace (or dies
+# first) makes a scoped `mempalace sync` prune conversation drawers, because
+# their dedup key is the staged path. Setting it to the default buys nothing.
+# Unlike WORKSPACE_PATH/SSH_KEY_PATH above, this is a path INSIDE the container.
+# MEMPALACE_PALACE_PATH=/home/developer/.mempalace/palace
+#
 # To instead share ONE MemPalace across containers/harnesses (pi + opencode
 # + native), set the URL below. When set, the extension connects over HTTP
 # and NO local mempalace-mcp is spawned; the devbox-palace volume is then

.gitea/workflows/docker-publish.yml

@@ -142,6 +142,7 @@ jobs:
       image: catthehacker/ubuntu:act-latest
     outputs:
       pi_version: ${{ steps.resolve.outputs.pi_version }}
+      mempalace_version: ${{ steps.resolve.outputs.mempalace_version }}
       fork_ref: ${{ steps.resolve.outputs.fork_ref }}
       obsmem_ref: ${{ steps.resolve.outputs.obsmem_ref }}
       toolkit_ref: ${{ steps.resolve.outputs.toolkit_ref }}
@@ -242,6 +243,54 @@ jobs:
           fi
           echo "pi_version=${PI_VERSION}" >> "$GITHUB_OUTPUT"
 
+          # ── mempalace core: same audit as pi, from Dockerfile.base ────
+          # Until now this pin had NO CI-side audit at all — a literal string
+          # in Dockerfile.base with zero references in this workflow, while
+          # PI_VERSION got a concreteness gate, a published-on-registry check
+          # and a drift warning. It is the same class of risk: the palace's MCP
+          # tool schema is the agent-facing contract, and a client/server skew
+          # against the shared central palace is a fleet-wide, not local,
+          # problem. Read from Dockerfile.base (not duplicated here) so a local
+          # `docker build` and CI install the same version by construction.
+          MEMPALACE_VERSION=$(sed -n 's/^ARG MEMPALACE_VERSION=\([^[:space:]]*\).*/\1/p' Dockerfile.base | head -n1)
+          if ! printf '%s' "${MEMPALACE_VERSION:-}" | grep -qE '^[0-9]+\.[0-9]+\.[0-9]+$'; then
+            echo "::error::ARG MEMPALACE_VERSION in Dockerfile.base is not a concrete version (got '${MEMPALACE_VERSION:-<empty>}'). CI refuses to build from a floating palace version — see the pin policy comment above that ARG."
+            exit 1
+          fi
+          # One fetch, two gates. `curl -sf` exits non-zero and prints nothing
+          # on 404 (PyPI's answer for an unpublished version), so an empty body
+          # lands in the "not published" branch with its own message.
+          MEMPALACE_PYPI=$(curl -sf "https://pypi.org/pypi/mempalace/${MEMPALACE_VERSION}/json" || true)
+          MEMPALACE_PUBLISHED=$(printf '%s' "$MEMPALACE_PYPI" | jq -r '.info.version // empty' 2>/dev/null || true)
+          if [ "${MEMPALACE_PUBLISHED:-}" != "${MEMPALACE_VERSION}" ]; then
+            echo "::error::Pinned mempalace version ${MEMPALACE_VERSION} is not published on PyPI (registry returned '${MEMPALACE_PUBLISHED:-<empty>}'). Fix ARG MEMPALACE_VERSION in Dockerfile.base."
+            exit 1
+          fi
+          # A yanked release still installs when pinned exactly (PEP 592), so
+          # `uv tool install mempalace==X` would succeed silently and ship a
+          # version upstream has withdrawn to the whole fleet. The escape hatch
+          # is the same one-line bump that got us here.
+          MEMPALACE_YANKED=$(printf '%s' "$MEMPALACE_PYPI" | jq -r '.info.yanked // false' 2>/dev/null || true)
+          if [ "${MEMPALACE_YANKED:-false}" = "true" ]; then
+            # Reason hoisted into its own variable rather than inlined as a
+            # $(...) inside the message: a jq program nested in a substitution
+            # inside a double-quoted string needs escaping that silently breaks
+            # the FILTER (jq compile error) while the surrounding `exit 1` still
+            # fires, so the gate looks correct and reports garbage. Caught by
+            # the mutation test, not by review.
+            MEMPALACE_YANK_REASON=$(printf '%s' "$MEMPALACE_PYPI" | jq -r '.info.yanked_reason // "no reason given"' 2>/dev/null || true)
+            echo "::error::Pinned mempalace version ${MEMPALACE_VERSION} is YANKED on PyPI (${MEMPALACE_YANK_REASON:-no reason given}). An exact pin installs a yanked release without complaint — bump ARG MEMPALACE_VERSION in Dockerfile.base."
+            exit 1
+          fi
+          # Informational only, exactly like pi's npm drift warning: a newer
+          # palace must never be adopted implicitly. `|| true` so a transient
+          # PyPI failure cannot fail a release whose pin is already verified.
+          MEMPALACE_PYPI_LATEST=$(curl -sf "https://pypi.org/pypi/mempalace/json" | jq -r '.info.version // empty' 2>/dev/null || true)
+          if [ -n "${MEMPALACE_PYPI_LATEST:-}" ] && [ "${MEMPALACE_PYPI_LATEST}" != "${MEMPALACE_VERSION}" ]; then
+            echo "::warning::mempalace ${MEMPALACE_PYPI_LATEST} is published; this build ships the audited pin ${MEMPALACE_VERSION}. To adopt it: read the upstream CHANGELOG for MCP tool-schema changes (the agent-facing contract) and for sync/delete semantics, check the skew it introduces against the central palace host's server version, then bump ARG MEMPALACE_VERSION in Dockerfile.base and note the audit in CHANGELOG.md."
+          fi
+          echo "mempalace_version=${MEMPALACE_VERSION}" >> "$GITHUB_OUTPUT"
+
           # pi-fork / pi-observational-memory (GitHub) → commit SHAs.
           FORK_REF=$(curl -sf -H "Accept: application/vnd.github.sha" \
             "https://api.github.com/repos/elpapi42/pi-fork/commits/master" || true)
@@ -337,6 +386,7 @@ jobs:
           echo "studio_tag=${STUDIO_TAG}" >> "$GITHUB_OUTPUT"
 
           echo "Resolved PI_VERSION=${PI_VERSION} (pinned in Dockerfile.variant; npm latest is ${PI_NPM_LATEST:-unknown})"
+          echo "Resolved MEMPALACE_VERSION=${MEMPALACE_VERSION} (pinned in Dockerfile.base; PyPI latest is ${MEMPALACE_PYPI_LATEST:-unknown})"
           echo "Resolved PI_ATELIER_REF=${ATELIER_REF} (pi-atelier ${ATELIER_TAG}, pinned)"
           echo "Resolved PI_FORK_REF=${FORK_REF}, PI_OBSMEM_REF=${OBSMEM_REF}"
           echo "Resolved PI_TOOLKIT_REF=${TOOLKIT_REF}, PI_EXTENSIONS_REF=${EXTENSIONS_REF}"
@@ -471,6 +521,7 @@ jobs:
       - name: Smoke test (amd64)
         env:
           EXPECTED_PI_VERSION: ${{ needs.resolve-versions.outputs.pi_version }}
+          EXPECTED_MEMPALACE_VERSION: ${{ needs.resolve-versions.outputs.mempalace_version }}
         run: bash scripts/smoke-test.sh pi-devbox:smoke
 
   # ── Phase 3b: amd64 smoke for the studio variant ────────────────────
@@ -533,6 +584,7 @@ jobs:
       - name: Smoke test studio (amd64)
         env:
           EXPECTED_PI_VERSION: ${{ needs.resolve-versions.outputs.pi_version }}
+          EXPECTED_MEMPALACE_VERSION: ${{ needs.resolve-versions.outputs.mempalace_version }}
         run: bash scripts/smoke-test.sh pi-devbox:smoke-studio
 
   # ── Phase 4: multi-arch publish ─────────────────────────────────────

.gitea/workflows/lint.yml

@@ -52,6 +52,55 @@ jobs:
           apt-get update
           apt-get install -y --no-install-recommends shellcheck python3-yaml
 
+      - name: "Shellcheck + syntax-check repository scripts (severity: error)"
+        # Gap being closed: everything else in this job shellchecks workflow
+        # `run:` steps ONLY, via actionlint. The repo's own shell scripts —
+        # entrypoint.sh, scripts/*.sh, and the extensionless tools under
+        # rootfs/usr/local/bin/ — have never been shellchecked. That exact gap
+        # (a sibling repo with no shell-script lint at all) is how a defect
+        # shipped invisibly for two months: `echo "$json" | python3 <<'EOF'
+        # ... json.load(sys.stdin)` cannot work — with no script argument
+        # python reads its SCRIPT from stdin, so the heredoc IS stdin and the
+        # json.load call hits EOF. shellcheck flags exactly this at severity
+        # ERROR (SC2259, "This redirection overrides piped input"); nothing
+        # ever ran it. Measured before adding this gate: `-S error` is 0
+        # findings across every shell file in THIS repo today, so it is free
+        # to add. `-S warning` is NOT free here (19x SC2088 tilde-in-quotes in
+        # scripts/recreate-sanity-check.sh, plus assorted SC2016 — both
+        # intentional), so warning-level would train people to ignore the job;
+        # hence error-only, matching the SHELLCHECK_OPTS philosophy below.
+        #
+        # Discovery is *.sh UNION a shebang scan, because rootfs/usr/local/
+        # bin/{pi-devbox-version,devbox-skill-reconcile,dot-watch,studio-expose}
+        # are shell scripts with no extension. -print0/mapfile -d '' so a path
+        # with a space cannot silently split, and the file count is asserted
+        # non-zero — a green tick over an empty file set is not a check.
+        run: |
+          # Union of two signals, because either alone misses a real case:
+          # a shebang scan misses a sourced fragment with no shebang, and a
+          # *.sh glob misses the extensionless tools in rootfs/usr/local/bin/.
+          # Silent skipping is precisely the failure mode this gate exists to
+          # prevent, so err toward over-collecting.
+          mapfile -d '' -t all_files < <(find . -not -path './.git/*' -type f -print0)
+          sh_files=()
+          for f in "${all_files[@]}"; do
+            case "$f" in *.sh) sh_files+=("$f"); continue;; esac
+            if head -n1 "$f" 2>/dev/null | grep -qE '^#!.*\b(bash|sh)\b'; then
+              sh_files+=("$f")
+            fi
+          done
+          echo "Checking ${#sh_files[@]} shell file(s)"
+          if [ "${#sh_files[@]}" -eq 0 ]; then
+            echo "::error::no shell files found — the shebang scan or the checkout is wrong"
+            exit 1
+          fi
+          shellcheck -S error -f gcc "${sh_files[@]}"
+          rc=0
+          for f in "${sh_files[@]}"; do
+            bash -n "$f" || { echo "::error file=$f::bash -n failed"; rc=1; }
+          done
+          exit "$rc"
+
       - name: Gitea shell guard (catches the actionlint blind spot)
         # actionlint models GitHub Actions, where the default run shell is
         # bash, so it does NOT flag bash syntax in a step that merely OMITS

AGENTS.md

@@ -76,10 +76,15 @@ re-brand of opencode-devbox's `pi-only` variant.
 4. Push tag: `git tag vX.Y.Z && git push origin vX.Y.Z`.
 5. Watch CI: smoke job builds amd64 only and asserts size + extensions +
    pi version + new-base-tooling presence. Variant build is multi-arch
-   (amd64 + arm64) only after smoke passes. **A tag push produces two runs, not
-   one** — `lint.yml` fires on every push (including tag refs) and
-   `docker-publish.yml` fires on `v*` tags. Watch the **publish** run; see
-   *Gitea API access* below for how to find it without picking lint by mistake.
+   (amd64 + arm64) only after smoke passes. A tag push fires **only**
+   `docker-publish.yml` — `lint.yml` is scoped to `branches: ['**']`, which
+   excludes tag refs on purpose (the tagged tree was already linted when the
+   commit hit `main`, and a fast lint run sorting above the slow publish run
+   made releases look finished before anything shipped). Verified on v1.8.4:
+   `refs/tags/v1.8.4` produced run 571 (publish) and nothing else. Still filter
+   discovery on `head_sha` **and** the workflow `path` — see *Gitea API access*
+   below — because that guard costs nothing and a future workflow added on `v*`
+   would silently reintroduce the ambiguity.
 6. Verify the Hub tags appear (latest + vX.Y.Z, the `-studio` pair, plus
    base-latest if the base was rebuilt this run).
 7. **Revoke any short-lived Gitea PAT** used during the release at
@@ -87,6 +92,34 @@ re-brand of opencode-devbox's `pi-only` variant.
    `GITEA_ACCESS_TOKEN` env var instead (see *Gitea API access* below) —
    its lifecycle is managed host-side, nothing to revoke.
 
+## Verifying this repo's reality from inside a container
+
+Most work on this repo happens **inside** a pi-devbox container, inspecting a
+host or a peer over SSH. That setup manufactures convincing false negatives, so
+when you are about to report that something is **absent, unreachable, or not
+running**, suspect your own command first. Recurring instances:
+
+- **`docker` is not on the host's non-interactive SSH `PATH`.** `ssh mac 'docker
+  ps'` says *command not found* on a host that plainly runs Docker; use
+  `/usr/local/bin/docker` (or `command -v docker` first). Every step in the
+  *Release-day checklist* that inspects a running container hits this.
+- **Don't `| head -N` a search whose answer you don't already know.** The host's
+  `~/.ssh/config` is ~500 lines; a `head -20` "proved" a peer absent that was
+  defined at line 454.
+- **The deployment compose file is not this repo's.** `docker-compose.yml` here
+  is a template pinning `:latest`; a real host runs its own per-machine file
+  (find it with `docker inspect <container> --format '{{ index .Config.Labels
+  "com.docker.compose.project.config_files" }}'`). Recreating from the repo copy
+  can silently move a host off `:latest-studio` onto `:latest`.
+- **A live SSH ControlMaster hides remote auth changes** — after editing a
+  peer's `authorized_keys`, prove access with `-o ControlPath=none -o
+  ControlMaster=no`, or the breakage surfaces in a later session instead.
+
+Depth and further mechanisms: the repo-authored `pi-devbox-environment` skill
+(`rootfs/usr/local/share/pi-devbox/skills/pi-devbox-environment/SKILL.md`) §2
+and §3 — that file is the one an agent actually loads mid-session, whereas this
+`AGENTS.md` is only auto-read when the cwd *is* this repo.
+
 ## Gitea API access (env token)
 
 `GITEA_ACCESS_TOKEN` + `GITEA_HOST` are passed into the container from the

CHANGELOG.md

@@ -11,6 +11,868 @@ Pre-v1.0.0 tags followed the pi npm version (`v{pi_version}[letter]`).
 
 ---
 
+## v1.8.7 — 2026-08-25
+
+Patch release, and the fastest turnaround in the series (~9 h after v1.8.6) for
+one reason: **v1.8.6 shipped a container that cannot tell you which machine it
+is running on**, and that anonymity produced a real misattribution the same
+evening — a session on tor-ms22 read *another host's* diary out of the shared
+palace, reported its verification as its own, and built a causal inference on
+top of the coincidence. The client-side half of the fix lives in
+`mempalace-toolkit`, which the image clones **at build time**, so it can only
+reach the fleet through a tag. The CI-hardening work that had accumulated since
+v1.8.6 rides along.
+
+Gitea-hosted refs re-resolved immediately before tagging (2026-08-25T22:35Z):
+pi-toolkit `0e1369e6` and pi-extensions `20228878` **unchanged** since v1.8.6;
+mempalace-toolkit `0fe64c48` → `553d8657` (the provenance change below). CI
+re-resolves pi-fork / pi-observational-memory / pi-atelier / pi-studio at build
+time as usual. **Base rebuild is forced twice over** — `Dockerfile.base` changed
+(the `MEMPALACE_VERSION` audit) *and* `base_tag` deliberately folds in the
+mempalace-toolkit SHA ("otherwise a toolkit-only fix never lands") — so expect
+~67 min, and note that either cause alone would have sufficed.
+
+⚠️ **The first tag of this version did not publish.** Run 589 built the base
+fine, then **both** smoke jobs failed 81-passed/1-failed on a single assertion —
+`mempalace skill snapshot is current`, a canary pinning a phrase from the
+vendored skill. The phrase it pinned was the heading of the very instruction this
+release *withdraws*, so refreshing the snapshot without re-pinning the canary
+made it fire correctly on a healthy image. Every publish job was skipped, so
+nothing reached the registry and the version was never consumed; the tag was
+moved to include the fix below. Fixing the canary is what this release is
+*for*, in miniature: the gate was right and the expectation was stale.
+
+### Added
+
+- **Palace writes now carry the device that made them, and diary entries say so
+  in text.** The container is host-anonymous by construction — `hostname` is a
+  Docker hash, `$DEVBOX_HOST_ALIAS` is generic, the virtiofs source tag is
+  generic, and two hosts in this fleet are both `aarch64` — so nothing inside it
+  distinguished tor-ms22 from EMB-7KJ4VR4G. In a *local* palace that costs
+  nothing (one origin, so origin is a property of the whole store). In the
+  **shared** palace it means every drawer and all 621 diary entries read as
+  though written here, which is exactly how a v1.8.6 verification performed on
+  EMB was reported as tor-ms22's own.
+
+  Two halves, arriving by different routes:
+
+  | Half | Where it lives | How it gets into this image |
+  |---|---|---|
+  | the writer — stamps `<harness>@<device>` on `add_drawer`/`checkpoint`/`mine`/`event_append`/`artifact_put`, and prefixes diary entries with `HOST:<device>\|` | `mempalace-toolkit` `extensions/pi/mempalace.ts` (553d8657) | cloned in `Dockerfile.base` at `MEMPALACE_TOOLKIT_REF`, whose SHA is folded into `base_tag` |
+  | the consumer skill — stops telling the agent to do it by hand, adds the read-side warning | vendored `rootfs/…/skills/mempalace/SKILL.md`, refreshed from skillset `73c7c8e6` | `rootfs/*` is hashed into `base_tag` too |
+
+  Three design points worth recording, because each was arrived at the hard way:
+
+  - **The stamp goes in the *client*, not the agent.** RFC 001 §7.3.2 ranks
+    "agent stamps it via a skill instruction" as the ❌ *worst possible* place,
+    and the skill had carried exactly that instruction since 2026-08-23. It
+    failed as predicted: the agent that wrote the instruction then filed its own
+    provenance drawer without it. 199 rows reached the palace unresolvable.
+    One `execute()` wrapper cannot forget.
+  - **The diary marker is in the entry TEXT on purpose.** `diary_write` has no
+    metadata parameter, but the deeper reason is that mempalace's `search`
+    projects a fixed key set and `diary_read` returns content — **metadata is
+    invisible to the agent who will later read the entry**, so no metadata-only
+    fix, not even a server-authoritative one, would have prevented the
+    misattribution. The marker is an AAAK field, so it is machine-parseable
+    *and* the first thing a reader sees. The wake-up preamble now also names the
+    device and warns that `diary_read` interleaves every machine's diary.
+  - **A solitary devbox stamps nothing.** Gated on `MEMPALACE_PI_DEVICE` **and**
+    `MEMPALACE_REMOTE_URL` — both set only when the palace is actually shared
+    (RFC 001 R1). Unset either and behaviour is byte-identical to v1.8.6.
+
+  Never injected into `diary_write` or `kg_add`: mempalace 3.8.0 hard-rejects
+  undeclared arguments with JSON-RPC `-32602` rather than dropping them (the
+  behaviour changed since the RFC's 2026-08-09 note, now corrected), so a
+  blanket injection would **break** those two calls instead of being ignored.
+  The allowlist is per tool for that reason.
+
+- **CI now shellchecks the repo's own shell scripts, not just workflow `run:` steps.** `.gitea/workflows/lint.yml`'s `actionlint` job already shellchecks every workflow step, but nothing had ever pointed shellcheck at `entrypoint.sh`, `scripts/*.sh`, or the extensionless tools under `rootfs/usr/local/bin/` (`pi-devbox-version`, `devbox-skill-reconcile`, `dot-watch`, `studio-expose`). The gap is not hypothetical: a sibling repo (skillset's `ci-release-watcher` templates) shipped `echo "$json" | python3 <<'EOF' ... json.load(sys.stdin)` for two months without anyone noticing it silently returned nothing — with no script argument python reads its *script* from stdin, so the heredoc is stdin and the JSON load hits EOF. shellcheck flags exactly this at severity **error** (`SC2259`, "This redirection overrides piped input"); it had been available to catch it the whole time, just never run.
+
+  New step in the `actionlint` job, `Shellcheck + syntax-check repository scripts`, runs `shellcheck -S error` plus `bash -n` over every shell file in the repo, **discovered by `*.sh` union a shebang scan** (neither alone suffices) so the extensionless `rootfs/usr/local/bin/*` tools are covered too. Measured before adding it: `-S error` is 0 findings across all 11 shell files today, so the gate is green on arrival with no cleanup. `-S warning` is *not* free (19× `SC2088` tilde-in-quotes in `scripts/recreate-sanity-check.sh`, plus assorted `SC2016`, both intentional here) — a warning-level gate would train people to ignore it, so it stays error-only, same reasoning as the existing `SHELLCHECK_OPTS` exclusions on the actionlint step. File-count guard included: the step fails loudly if the shebang scan matches zero files, since a green check over an empty set is not a check.
+
+- **`MEMPALACE_VERSION` now gets the same CI audit as `PI_VERSION`** — closing
+  the item v1.8.6 (and v1.8.5 before it) listed as "Still open". The pin was a
+  literal string in `Dockerfile.base` with **zero** references anywhere in
+  `.gitea/workflows/docker-publish.yml`, while `PI_VERSION` had ~20: a
+  concreteness gate, a published-on-registry check, and a never-silently-adopt
+  drift warning. `resolve-versions` now applies all of them to the palace pin,
+  read from `Dockerfile.base` (not duplicated in the workflow, so a local
+  `docker build` and CI install the same version by construction):
+
+  | Gate | Behaviour |
+  |---|---|
+  | not a concrete `X.Y.Z` | **error** — no floating palace version, same policy as pi |
+  | not published on PyPI | **error** at resolve time, instead of a `uv tool install` failure mid-build |
+  | **yanked** on PyPI | **error** — an exact pin installs a yanked release silently under PEP 592, so `mempalace==X` would have shipped a withdrawn client to the whole fleet |
+  | newer release exists | **warning** naming what to audit before adopting (MCP tool-schema = the agent-facing contract; client/server skew against the central palace) |
+
+  Plus one smoke assertion, `installed mempalace matches CI's audited pin`,
+  gated on a new `EXPECTED_MEMPALACE_VERSION` env threaded into both the `smoke`
+  and `smoke-studio` jobs. It is **not** redundant with the existing `manifest
+  mempalace_version matches the installed core`: that one compares two
+  properties of a single image and therefore cannot notice that *both* are the
+  wrong version. The failure mode this one covers is a variant built `FROM` a
+  cached base whose `MEMPALACE_VERSION` pin was older — internally consistent,
+  silently stale, invisible to every other assertion (the risk
+  `scripts/check-base-hash.sh` exists to reduce but cannot eliminate).
+
+  **Mutation-tested rather than reasoned about**, by extracting the shipped
+  block out of the YAML and running it with a stubbed `curl`: 9 cases —
+  `latest` / `3.8` / absent ARG refused; 404 and a registry echoing a different
+  version refused; a yanked release refused *with its reason*; a newer release
+  warning without failing; a transient PyPI outage not failing a build whose pin
+  is already verified; happy path silent and emitting the job output. Then once
+  more end-to-end against live PyPI with the real `Dockerfile.base`. **This
+  found a genuine defect in the first draft**: the yank message inlined a jq
+  program inside a `$(...)` inside a double-quoted string, where the escaping
+  broke the *filter* (jq compile error) while the surrounding `exit 1` still
+  fired — a gate that looked correct and reported garbage. The reason is now
+  hoisted into its own variable. The new smoke assertion was checked the same
+  way, through the real `run` helper's `sh -c` quoting path: passes on `3.8.0`,
+  fails on `3.7.1` *and* on `3.8.01` (exact equality, not the substring match
+  the pi assertion uses), and skips cleanly when the env is unset so a local
+  `smoke-test.sh` run is unaffected.
+
+  ⚠️ **Costs a base rebuild on the next tag**: `Dockerfile.base` is hashed
+  wholesale into `base_tag`, and its now-false "Known gap, carried forward"
+  comment had to be corrected in place (leaving a comment that says the audit
+  does not exist would repeat the shipped-false-claim mistake corrected below).
+  Expect ~67 min, as for v1.8.5/v1.8.6.
+
+- **The SSH sidecar now defaults to connection multiplexing, without overriding
+  anyone's explicit choice.** `~/.ssh-local/config` already forced `ControlPath`
+  into the writable sidecar dir, but nothing supplied `ControlMaster` for targets
+  coming from the user's own bind-mounted `~/.ssh/config`. An entry that never
+  mentioned it therefore opened a **fresh TCP connection per `ssh` call** — and
+  an agent doing a dozen calls in a few minutes is exactly the traffic shape that
+  trips fail2ban or a CGNAT flow-table cap. Observed 2026-08-25 on this fleet:
+  ~12 connections to one host in 15 minutes, after which port 22 stopped
+  answering while HTTPS to the same estate stayed healthy in 0.44 s (that
+  asymmetry is the tell for rate-limiting rather than an outage).
+
+  **The fix is where the block sits, not what it says.** `ssh_config` is
+  first-value-wins, so position encodes intent, and the two settings need
+  opposite treatment:
+
+  | Setting | Position | Meaning | Why |
+  |---|---|---|---|
+  | `ControlPath` | **before** `Include ~/.ssh/config` | override | the user's value points at read-only `~/.ssh`; it cannot work here, so it must lose |
+  | `ControlMaster auto` + `ControlPersist 10m` | **after** the `Include` | default | an explicit per-host `ControlMaster no` must keep winning; we only supply an opinion where the user expressed none |
+
+  *Force what is broken, default what is merely absent.* The first draft of this
+  put both in the leading block, which would have silently overridden an explicit
+  `ControlMaster no` — the counterfactual is in the test below.
+
+  Verified with `ssh -G` (the resolved-config oracle) rather than by reading the
+  man page, against a fixture with one host set to `no`, one silent, one set to
+  `auto`: the explicit `no` resolves to `controlmaster false` **and** still gets
+  the writable `ControlPath`, the silent host resolves to `auto`, and the same
+  fixture under the rejected layout flips the `no` host to `auto` — so the test
+  discriminates the *position*, not merely the presence of the block. Then
+  end-to-end: the real script rendered in a sandbox `HOME`, block last, `bash -n`
+  clean, `shellcheck -S error` clean (the gate added in v1.8.7).
+
+  Measured effect on the author's own config (41 host aliases): **22 were silent
+  about `ControlMaster` and gain `auto` + 10 m persist; 0 are overridden**, since
+  the fleet contains no explicit `no`. Worth noting *how* the one deliberate
+  exception is written — `proxmox002-vpn` carries `# No ControlMaster — VPN means
+  direct route, no CGNAT flow cap`, i.e. the intent is expressed as **absence
+  plus a comment**, which `ssh` cannot distinguish from "no opinion". That host
+  does now get multiplexing; its comment says multiplexing is *unnecessary*
+  there, not harmful. Anything that must stay unmultiplexed needs a literal
+  `ControlMaster no`.
+
+  Why the ordering matters beyond this one config: `~/.ssh/config` is
+  **per-machine**, differs across the fleet, and future machines' versions do not
+  exist yet to be audited. A default-not-override design is correct without
+  needing to inspect any of them.
+
+  `ControlPersist` is deliberately short (10 m idle, and each new session resets
+  the idle timer — long enough to collapse an agent's burst, short enough that an
+  abandoned socket ages out). A per-host entry that sets its own value keeps it:
+  hosts already specifying `ControlPersist 4h` still resolve to 4 h. The known
+  cost of multiplexing is the **stale master** — socket present, daemon gone,
+  after a suspend or network change — which makes every later `ssh` to that host
+  hang; recovery is `ssh -F ~/.ssh-local/config -O exit <host>`, now documented
+  in the `pi-devbox-environment` skill along with `-O check`.
+
+### Fixed
+
+- **The vendored-snapshot canary was one-way, and pinned a phrase the same
+  release deleted.** `mempalace skill snapshot is current` grepped for
+  *"Attribute what you file yourself"* — the heading of the hand-stamping
+  instruction withdrawn above. It therefore did its job (snapshot changed,
+  expectation did not) and blocked an otherwise-green build. Two changes rather
+  than a string bump: the assertion is now **bidirectional** (the new phrase must
+  be present **and** the withdrawn one absent, so a re-vendored *stale* snapshot
+  fails as loudly as a forgotten bump — verified by running it against v1.8.6's
+  snapshot, which correctly fails), and the comment now states the structural
+  limit: a phrase canary can only detect *"older than what I remembered to pin"*,
+  never *"older than skillset main"*.
+
+- **Four build-provenance smoke assertions verified the presence of a manifest
+  field name and never looked at its value.** The originals were literally:
+
+  ```sh
+  run_expect "manifest records pi_version" "cat …build-manifest.json" '"pi_version"'
+  ```
+
+  which passes on `{"pi_version": ""}` and on `{"pi_version": null}`. The tell
+  was sitting in the passing output all along — `✅ manifest records pi_version
+  (got "pi_version")` echoes the *key* back as the thing it claims to have
+  found — and it was spotted while reading run 579's smoke log to confirm the
+  new v1.8.6 assertions had actually executed.
+
+  Replaced with checks against the values, and against ground truth where
+  ground truth exists:
+
+  | Assertion | What it now enforces |
+  |---|---|
+  | `manifest declares every required component key` | all seven components present by name, failing with *which* key vanished |
+  | `manifest component values are resolved 40-hex commits` | each value is a full 40-hex SHA; `null` allowed for `pi-studio` alone (absent in the non-studio variant) |
+  | `manifest pi_version matches the installed pi` | manifest value equals `pi --version`, same ground-truth shape as the mempalace check |
+  | `manifest top-level fields are well-formed, not merely present` | `release_tag` non-empty; `source_revision` 40-hex *when populated*; `build_date` ISO-8601 *when populated* |
+  | `pi-devbox-version --json round-trips the manifest byte-for-byte` | actual string equality with the file, since `--json` is a verbatim `cat` |
+
+  **Why five value-checks replace four name-checks (total assertion count
+  unchanged at 61), and specifically why key presence and value shape are kept
+  apart:** an "every component value is a valid SHA" loop passes **vacuously** on `components:{}`, because jq's `all()`
+  over an empty list is true. A single combined check would therefore go green
+  on a manifest that had lost every component — which is the same shape of hole
+  as the three false greens already recorded in this file. They are separate on
+  purpose.
+
+  Mutation-tested rather than reasoned about, twice: nine fabricated manifests
+  through the raw jq filters, then twelve through the shipped assertions using
+  the real `run` helper's `sh -c` quoting path (the quoting is load-bearing here
+  — a jq filter that dies on a quoting error exits non-zero and *looks* like a
+  caught defect). Measured against the old assertions on the same twelve
+  defects: **old caught 3, missed 9; new catches 12.** The three the old set
+  caught were key *disappearance* (grepping for a key name does fail when the
+  key is gone) and the literal string `"unknown"`; every value-level defect —
+  empty string, `null`, a 12-hex truncation, a wrong-but-plausible version, a
+  malformed `source_revision` — was invisible. Three legitimate variations are
+  correctly *not* flagged: empty `source_revision` and empty `build_date` (both
+  default empty on a plain local `docker build`, so demanding them would fail
+  honest local smoke runs) and `pi-studio: null`.
+
+- **Dropped the now-redundant `manifest has no unresolved ('unknown')
+  components` assertion.** The 40-hex value check strictly subsumes it:
+  `"unknown"` is not 40-hex, and only `rev()` in Dockerfile.variant ever emits
+  that string, feeding `components{}` exclusively. Removed rather than left in
+  place, because a redundant check that can never fail independently is one more
+  green tick that means nothing.
+
+- **Corrected a factually wrong "Still open" bullet in the v1.8.6 entry below**
+  (see the strikethrough there). It claimed `pi-devbox-version`'s human output
+  does not display `mempalace_version` and that only `--json` surfaces it. Both
+  halves are false — v1.8.6 shipped a `palace:` line with the same live-vs-baked
+  drift annotation `pi` already had. Verified by running the shipped script
+  against fabricated manifests: matching versions print `palace: 3.7.1`, a skew
+  prints `palace: 3.7.1 (baked as 3.8.0 — drift detected)`, and a pre-v1.8.6
+  manifest with no baked field prints the live value un-annotated. The bullet
+  appears to describe an intermediate state of the working tree and was never
+  re-checked before tagging. Left visible as a struck-through correction rather
+  than deleted, since v1.8.6 is already published and someone may have read it.
+
+---
+
+### Still open
+
+- **Make the vendored-snapshot check automatic instead of a remembered string.**
+  Tonight's failure is the third iteration of the same maintenance burden (v1.8.4:
+  phrase present in both copies; v1.8.7: phrase deleted by the release that
+  refreshed the snapshot). A phrase canary structurally cannot answer *"is this
+  snapshot older than skillset main?"* — only a diff can. Proposed: a lint job
+  that clones the skillset repo and compares
+  `rootfs/usr/local/share/pi-devbox/skills/mempalace/SKILL.md` against it,
+  failing with the diff when they drift. Open question first: the skillset repo is
+  **private**, so this needs a CI clone credential, which is a policy decision
+  rather than a code change.
+
+- **Provenance stops at Chroma's metadata.** The hourly reconciler on the palace
+  host stamps `device`/`agent_kind` in `chroma.sqlite3`, but knowledge-graph
+  triples and coordination events live in *separate* SQLite files
+  (`knowledge_graph.sqlite3`, `logstream.sqlite3`) it cannot reach. 156 triples
+  carry no origin field at all; `logstream`'s `from_agent` is free-form and
+  already inconsistent (`pi@tor-ms22`, `pi@emb-7kj4vr4g`, and bare `pi` in the
+  same table). Tracked in RFC 001 §7.3.1.
+- **The stamp is self-asserted, and cannot be otherwise yet.** mempalace 3.8.0
+  authenticates with a *single scalar* bearer token and has zero device concept,
+  so a verified stamp needs per-device credentials plus an origin field in six
+  write paths across three databases. Deferred to RFC 001 Phase 4, where it is
+  now motivated primarily by **revocation** (one shared token covers every
+  device, so cutting off one laptop means rotating the fleet) rather than by
+  provenance. Forward-compatible by design: every stamp records *how* it was
+  determined, so an authoritative pass overwrites with `device_source='token'`
+  and nothing has to be undone.
+- **`tor-ms22` and `tor-ms22-native` are one machine with two device values**
+  (4,680 and 3,826 rows). That is the hostname-as-identity cost RFC 001 §7.3.4
+  warned about, now visible in data: a rename splits one device's history
+  silently. Repairing it means a device-identity mapping, not a relabel.
+
+## v1.8.6 — 2026-08-25
+
+Patch release. Adopts the drift that accumulated in the ~2 days since v1.8.5
+(pi `0.84.3`, mempalace core `3.8.0`), then closes the documentation and
+observability gaps that v1.8.5 itself listed as "Still open". No component
+was adopted without an audit note recording *why* it is safe.
+
+All moving refs re-resolved immediately before tagging (2026-08-25T13:28Z):
+pi-toolkit `0e1369e6`, pi-extensions `20228878`, mempalace-toolkit `0fe64c48`
+and pi-observational-memory `ce9fc982` all unchanged since v1.8.5;
+pi-fork `f1ff8087` → `bf702b4c`; pi-atelier holds at `v0.8.2` (floor for
+pi ≥0.84 satisfied); pi-studio's CI-resolved newest tag has moved again to
+`v0.9.51`. Base rebuild is forced (Dockerfile.base changed), so the 16
+floating base-tooling ARGs re-roll — expect ~67 min as for v1.8.5.
+
+### Changed
+
+- **`mempalace` core `3.7.1` → `3.8.0`.** Released 2026-08-23T21:19Z, hours
+  after this project's own v1.8.5 tag the same day. Additive/reliability only
+  — reviewed for MCP tool-schema changes before bumping, as always: none.
+  `sync --apply` (PR #2320/#2322) no longer deletes a drawer solely because
+  its `source_file` was unreachable *at that moment* — it asks for
+  corroboration first. **This does not relax the standing landmine** against
+  running `mempalace_sync` / `mempalace_delete_by_source` beyond dry-run on
+  the shared central palace: that failure mode is paths *permanently* absent
+  from whichever host runs the sync, not transient unavailability, and 3.8.0
+  doesn't touch it. Server-side perf fix PR #2307 (long-running Chroma servers
+  no longer invalidate their own HNSW cache on their own writes) likewise does
+  not make `mempalace_reconnect` unnecessary — that tool covers *external*
+  writes bypassing the in-process client, a different scenario. Full reasoning
+  lives in the `Dockerfile.base` comment above `ARG MEMPALACE_VERSION`.
+  **Deployment note:** synlig's central palace currently serves `3.7.1`
+  server-side via `docker-compose.mempalace.yml` (which reuses this image) —
+  this client bump introduces version skew until that stack is separately
+  redeployed; sequence accordingly.
+
+- **`pi` `0.84.2` → `0.84.3`.** Published 2026-08-24T11:09Z. Release notes
+  carry one "Breaking Changes" line — `GoogleThinkingLevel` renamed to
+  `GoogleApiThinkingLevel` — checked against all four vendored packages
+  (`pi-fork`, `pi-observational-memory`, `pi-atelier`, `pi-studio`): zero
+  references, inert here. 0.84.3 also fixes two skill-discovery bugs that
+  land directly on this repo's own vendored-skill work: nested Markdown
+  skills inside `.agents/skills/` grouping directories not being discovered,
+  and root Markdown files (`README.md`/`AGENTS.md`) in skill directories being
+  wrongly reported as broken skills.
+
+### Added
+
+- **Browser automation is now documented to humans, not just to agents.**
+  `agent-browser` + Playwright + a headless Chromium (~625 MB — the single
+  largest addition in the image) previously had zero mentions in `README.md`,
+  `DOCKER_HUB.md` or `THIRD_PARTY.md`; it existed only in the agent-facing
+  `AGENTS.md` managed block. Added a `README.md` "Browser automation"
+  subsection, a `DOCKER_HUB.md` feature entry, and `THIRD_PARTY.md` license
+  rows for `agent-browser` (Apache-2.0), Playwright (Apache-2.0), and Chromium
+  (BSD-3-Clause for Chromium's own code plus a large set of bundled
+  third-party components under their own licenses; the binary here is not
+  compiled by this repo — it's Playwright's own "Chrome for Testing" download
+  via `playwright install --with-deps chromium`).
+- **`THIRD_PARTY.md` gains rows for `pi-atelier` (MIT) and `mempalace` core
+  (MIT per the GitHub repo; noted that the PyPI package's own metadata omits
+  a license classifier, so verify against the repo's `LICENSE` rather than
+  sdist/wheel metadata if clearance is needed from the artifact alone).**
+- **`typst` and `socat` added to `README.md`'s tooling inventory.** Both were
+  already used in prose (typst as pandoc's `--pdf-engine`, socat by
+  `studio-expose`) but missing from the "What's inside" lists, so the
+  inventory didn't match what the image actually ships.
+- **`mempalace` core version recorded in `/etc/pi-devbox/build-manifest.json`.**
+  Previously absent — a published image couldn't answer "which palace version
+  shipped?", and a palace bug couldn't be correlated to an image version.
+  Derived from the live installed binary (matching the manifest's existing
+  ground-truth-not-build-args philosophy), degrading to `null` rather than
+  failing the build if the binary is missing or its output format changes.
+  Verified landed: new top-level `"mempalace_version"` key, sibling to
+  `pi_version` rather than a member of `components{}` (that map is rendered
+  truncated to 12 chars by `pi-devbox-version`, which would mangle a longer
+  version string).
+- **New smoke assertions**, all landed in `scripts/smoke-test.sh`: (1) the
+  `pi-observational-memory` clone is checked for the actual `ce9fc98`
+  auth-fix markers pinned to their fix site, `src/runtime.ts`
+  (`availability_recheck`, `providerCredentialConfigured`,
+  `hasConfiguredAuth`) — not merely clone existence, and deliberately not a
+  repo-wide grep: all three identifiers also appear under `tests/`, so a
+  repo-wide search would stay green even with the fix reverted in
+  `src/runtime.ts` alone; (2) the manifest's new `mempalace_version` field is
+  asserted present, non-null, and equal to what `mempalace --version` reports
+  live, so the manifest can't silently drift from the installed package —
+  expected to fail against any pre-v1.8.6 image, by design; (3) a
+  behavioural check for the mempalace-toolkit feeder's `--agent` default
+  (see below — this one turned out to be possible after all).
+
+### Fixed
+
+- **A false claim was being published to Docker Hub on every release.**
+  `DOCKER_HUB.md` advertised "neovim (LazyVim defaults)". Nothing in this
+  repo installs LazyVim — the only nvim configuration is a 19-line
+  `sysinit.vim` that sets `termguicolors`. `update-description` pushes this
+  file verbatim (with `{{PI_VERSION}}` substituted) to the Hub description, so
+  the error was public, not internal. Corrected to describe what's actually
+  there.
+
+### Component audit for this release
+
+Checked against upstream 2026-08-25 (two days after v1.8.5's own audit):
+`mempalace` core moved `3.7.1` → `3.8.0` (see Changed, above — timing is
+notable: released *hours after* v1.8.5 tagged, so v1.8.5 could not have caught
+it no matter how carefully it was audited). `pi` moved `0.84.2` → `0.84.3`
+(see Changed). `pi-toolkit` `0e1369e6`, `pi-extensions` `20228878`,
+`pi-observational-memory` `ce9fc982`, and `pi-atelier` `v0.8.2` are all
+**unchanged** from v1.8.5 — in particular `pi-observational-memory` still sits
+exactly at the auth-fix commit with nothing landed upstream since, and
+`pi-atelier` is still the newest tag with the `≥0.7.1` floor for `pi ≥ 0.84`
+trivially satisfied. `pi-fork` has one upstream commit not adopted this
+release: `f1ff8087` → `bf702b4c`, a text-only rewording of the fork task
+preamble (no code-path change) — **left un-pulled** for this release since it
+is a moving ref CI resolves fresh at every build anyway; it will be adopted
+automatically on the next build regardless of this entry. `pi-studio` (studio
+variant) has drifted two tags upstream, `v0.9.48` (pinned at build time via
+CI's newest-semver-tag resolution) → `v0.9.51` at tag time, purely additive
+(watched PDF previews, opening PDFs directly in Studio, Studio header
+hide) — nothing to bump in this repo since studio-tag resolution happens in
+CI, not the Dockerfile, but note it **will** auto-adopt `v0.9.51` on the next
+studio-variant build. `mempalace-toolkit` unchanged — this release's manifest
+and pi-bump work in `Dockerfile.variant` stayed within that file's ownership
+and did not require a toolkit-side change.
+
+### Still open
+
+- **`MEMPALACE_VERSION` has no CI-side audit equivalent to `PI_VERSION`'s.**
+  `PI_VERSION` is verified published-on-npm and warns (never silently adopts)
+  on drift; `MEMPALACE_VERSION` is a literal Dockerfile string with zero
+  references in `.gitea/workflows/docker-publish.yml`. Flagged in v1.8.5's
+  audit as a gap; still a gap.
+- ~~**`pi-devbox-version`'s human-readable output does not display
+  `mempalace_version`.** Its render path is a fixed sequence
+  (`release_tag`, `build_date`, `source_revision`, `pi`, then `components{}`)
+  and the new top-level field isn't in it — only `--json` mode (which `cat`s
+  the manifest directly) surfaces it today. One line in
+  `rootfs/usr/local/bin/pi-devbox-version` would fix this; deferred since the
+  field's stated purpose (correlating a palace bug to an image) is already
+  served by `--json`, but worth doing in a follow-up if this becomes a
+  routine manual check.~~
+  **CORRECTION (2026-08-25, post-tag):** this bullet is wrong and was never
+  true of the tagged tree. `pi-devbox-version` *does* print a `palace:` line
+  in human mode, with live-vs-baked drift detection, degrading quietly on
+  pre-v1.8.6 manifests. Nothing is open here. See the Unreleased entry above.
+
+**Resolved during this release, not left open:** the feeder `--agent`
+default behavioural hook initially looked like it might need a
+mempalace-toolkit change (a `--print-config` flag that doesn't exist). It
+didn't — `mempalace-pi-session` assigns `AGENT` before argument parsing and
+`--help` exits 0 with no side effects, so `bash -x mempalace-pi-session
+--help` observes the real resolution (env interpolation and fallback)
+without needing a source change. The new smoke assertion exploits exactly
+that, checked both ways: with `MEMPALACE_PI_DEVICE` set it must resolve to
+`pi@<device>`; with it unset it must NOT be `pi@*` (catches a regression to
+the old unconditional `$USER`/`mempalace` default).
+  `mempalace-toolkit` commit `c64ffa1` changed the feeder's `--agent` default
+  from `$USER` to `pi@<device>`, but there is still no way for smoke to assert
+  this default is actually in effect from this repo alone, since
+  `mempalace-toolkit` is a separate repo this release does not modify. If the
+  concurrent smoke-test work could not find an honest assertion from the
+  existing `/opt/mempalace-toolkit` surface (help text, `--self-test`), this
+  remains open pending a toolkit-side `--print-config`-style hook — a
+  toolkit-repo change, not a pi-devbox one.
+- **16 base-tooling `ARG *_VERSION=latest` pins remain unrecorded.** (Corrected
+  count — v1.8.5's entry said "~14"; the actual count from `Dockerfile.base`
+  is 16, plus 5 more that float with no ARG at all: `rustup-init`, AWS CLI v2,
+  Chromium-via-Playwright, Node's minor version via `setup_22.x`, and
+  `DEBIAN_VERSION=trixie-slim` itself.) None of these are recorded anywhere
+  once the build completes — not in the manifest, not in a label — so a
+  published image cannot answer "which nvim/uv/chromium shipped?" without
+  exec-ing in and asking the binary.
+
+### Documentation
+
+- **`.env.example` documents `MEMPALACE_PALACE_PATH`.** It was the only MemPalace
+  variable the template never mentioned, while being the one that silently moves
+  the feeders' stage: the palace root resolves as `$MEMPALACE_PALACE_PATH` →
+  `$MEMPAL_PALACE_PATH` → `~/.mempalace/config.json` → `~/.mempalace/palace`, and
+  the stage is derived from it (`<palace-root>/pi-stage`). The comment states the
+  precedence, says why neither the image nor the entrypoint exports it (pinning
+  the palace without carrying the stage re-creates the split a shared root
+  removed — see v1.8.2), warns that a stage whose persistence differs from the
+  palace makes a scoped `mempalace sync` prune conversation drawers whose dedup
+  key is the staged path, and notes it is a *container* path unlike the
+  host-side `WORKSPACE_PATH`/`SSH_KEY_PATH` above it. Found while auditing a live
+  host whose `.env` sets the variable redundantly to the default.
+
+---
+
+## v1.8.5 — 2026-08-23
+
+Patch release with two fixes in the container's skill wiring — one behavioural,
+one a latent crash found while reviewing the first — plus the `mempalace-toolkit`
+change that makes palace writes carry provenance. **No component pin moved.**
+Every ref was re-resolved at tag time and is byte-identical to what v1.8.4
+shipped: `pi` `0.84.2` (still npm latest), `pi-atelier` `v0.8.2` → `159f34cf`
+(newest tag; the `≥0.7.1` floor for `pi ≥ 0.84` holds), `pi-studio` `v0.9.48` →
+`c3b83680`, `pi-fork` `f1ff8087`, `pi-observational-memory` `ce9fc982`,
+`pi-toolkit` `0e1369e6`, `pi-extensions` `20228878`, `MEMPALACE_VERSION` `3.7.1`
+(still PyPI latest, and the version the central palace serves — no client/server
+skew). The single moving part is `mempalace-toolkit` `fd8b15f5` → `0fe64c4`.
+
+### Fixed
+
+- **Vendored skills no longer silently shadow their live skillset
+  counterparts.** `~/.agents/skills` was *asymmetric*: `mempalace`,
+  `pi-devbox-environment` and `pi-extensions` resolved to the baked
+  `/usr/local/share/pi-devbox/skills/…`, while every other skill resolved to the
+  live `/workspace/skillset/skills/…`. Root cause was precedence-by-ordering in
+  `entrypoint-user.sh`: the baked links are created **early** (line 65 in
+  v1.8.4; the loop moved down as this fix added comments) — deliberately so, to
+  close a smoke-test readiness race — with `[ ! -e … ]` so they are
+  "created only when absent", and the skillset deploy runs **last**, where it
+  classifies the existing links as foreign and leaves them alone. The comment at
+  line 61 claimed the goal was "a same-named skillset skill … is never
+  clobbered" — but with baked-first plus create-when-absent, the *skillset* skill
+  was precisely the one that lost. Comment now describes the actual behaviour.
+
+  Observed cost, on two hosts independently: an edit to
+  `skillset/skills/mempalace/SKILL.md` (adding a drawer-attribution rule) was
+  pushed and present in the live clone (`md5 129bcc4752`), yet both the
+  EMB-7KJ4VR4G and tor-ms22 containers kept loading the baked copy
+  (`md5 5236024fef`) with zero occurrences of the new rule. The tor-ms22 agent
+  had to fetch the rule from the Gitea API to read it at all. Editing a skillset
+  skill therefore *appeared* to work and silently did nothing until an image
+  rebuild — for exactly the three skills most likely to be iterated on.
+
+  **The fix is not "the skillset always wins"**, because ownership is per-skill
+  (`rootfs/usr/local/share/pi-devbox/skills/VENDORED.md`): `pi-extensions`'
+  authoritative source is the *package* repo, copied over the snapshot at build
+  time, and `skillset` carries a downstream copy that can lag — handing that one
+  to the clone would regress the skill. So a new helper
+  `devbox-skill-reconcile` runs immediately after the skillset deploy and
+  repoints only the skills named in `skills/skillset-owned.txt` (today:
+  `mempalace`). Precedence is now user override → live skillset clone (owned
+  names only) → baked snapshot, with the early links untouched as the fallback,
+  so the readiness race stays closed. It only ever replaces a symlink that
+  points into the baked tree, so a real directory or a link pointing elsewhere
+  is never disturbed. Verify with `readlink -f ~/.agents/skills/mempalace`, not
+  by reading the entrypoint.
+
+- **A latent boot-abort in the baked-link block, found while reviewing the fix
+  above and fixed with it.** `[ ! -e "$link" ]` is TRUE for a *dangling* symlink
+  (`-e` follows the link), so once a link may point into `/workspace/skillset`
+  — which the fix above makes possible — a vanished mount turns the guard into
+  "create over a broken link", and plain `ln -s` then fails with `File exists`.
+  Under the entrypoint's `set -euo pipefail` that **aborts container start**
+  before `exec "$@"`, with a cryptic `ln` error and no pi. Reachable on a
+  `docker restart` or a host reboot under `restart: unless-stopped` (the writable
+  layer survives and `~/.agents` is not a volume on any host), though not on a
+  `compose up -d` recreate. Now `ln -sfn`, which heals the broken link back to
+  the baked fallback; the reconciler re-points it in the same boot if the clone
+  is back. A comment at the call site records why the `-f` must stay.
+
+- **README's skill-precedence documentation was wrong** in the same way the
+  entrypoint comment was: it claimed baked skills are "created only when absent
+  so a same-named skillset skill … is never clobbered" and that "a mounted
+  skillset always overrides them". Rewritten to state the real, per-skill
+  precedence and to name `skillset-owned.txt` and `devbox-skill-reconcile`.
+
+- **The smoke canary for a stale `mempalace` snapshot could not detect
+  staleness.** It grepped `"Shared palace: multiple harnesses"` — a phrase
+  present in *both* the stale and the fresh copy, so it passed throughout the
+  shadowing bug above. It now pins the newest section
+  (`"Attribute what you file yourself"`), and `VENDORED.md` records that
+  updating this string is part of refreshing the snapshot. Three further
+  assertions close the gaps that let the bug ship: skill link **targets** are
+  asserted (not merely `test -L`), the `skillset-owned.txt` list is asserted to
+  contain `mempalace` and *not* `pi-extensions`, and the reconciler's replace
+  path — which CI never exercises, since no smoke container mounts a skillset —
+  is covered by fabricating a skillset and asserting all three outcomes (owned
+  skill repointed, unowned skill left baked, user override untouched) — plus a
+  second case that a mutation test proved necessary: with the reconciler's
+  "is this link ours?" guard deleted, all three of those assertions still
+  passed, so the discriminating case is an *owned* name whose link is a user
+  override pointing outside the baked tree.
+
+### Changed
+
+- **Vendored `mempalace` skill snapshot refreshed** from `skillset` `936fed8` →
+  `670f7f1` (`md5 5236024fef` → `129bcc4752`), which adds the "Attribute what
+  you file yourself" rule: hand-filed drawers should carry
+  `added_by="<harness>@<device>"`. Without this refresh the symlink fix above
+  would only help hosts that mount `skillset`; a bare container would still ship
+  the pre-attribution-rule skill.
+
+- **Component audit for this release — no pin edits needed.** Every component
+  except `pi`/`pi-atelier` is pinned to a moving ref that CI resolves at build
+  time, and each was checked against upstream on 2026-08-23: `pi` `0.84.2`
+  (still npm latest, published 2026-08-14), `pi-atelier` `v0.8.2` (newest tag;
+  the `≥0.7.1` floor for `pi ≥ 0.84` is satisfied), `pi-fork` `f1ff8087`,
+  `pi-observational-memory` `ce9fc982`, `pi-toolkit` `0e1369e6`,
+  `pi-extensions` `20228878`, `pi-studio` `v0.9.48` → `c3b83680` — all
+  **byte-identical to what v1.8.4 shipped**. `MEMPALACE_VERSION` stays `3.7.1`
+  (still PyPI latest, and the version the central palace serves, so no
+  client/server skew). The one component that moved is `mempalace-toolkit`
+  `fd8b15f5` → `0fe64c4`, which is this release's other payload: the feeder now
+  defaults `--agent` to `pi@$MEMPALACE_PI_DEVICE` so palace writes carry
+  provenance, with `$USER` still the fallback when the variable is unset
+  (`AGENT="${MEMPALACE_PI_DEVICE:+pi@${MEMPALACE_PI_DEVICE}}"`), so un-enrolled
+  hosts are unaffected. Nothing landed upstream after the
+  `pi-observational-memory` merge `ce9fc982`, so the eight-week-bug fix in
+  v1.8.4 is not destabilised. All of the above was re-resolved immediately
+  before the tag and was unchanged — worth repeating for any future release,
+  because six of nine components are moving refs that CI resolves at build
+  time, so the build, not the Dockerfile, decides what ships.
+
+  Two notes for whoever runs the build. This release changes
+  `entrypoint-user.sh`, `rootfs/**` and the resolved toolkit SHA — all three feed
+  the base-image hash — so expect a **full multi-arch base rebuild** (~95 min,
+  as on v1.8.3/CI 562), not a fast variant-only publish. And that rebuild
+  re-resolves the ~14 base-tooling `ARG *_VERSION=latest` pins; measured drift
+  on 2026-08-23 was one patch (`nvim v0.12.4 → v0.12.5`), so the window is
+  favourable, but it is not covered by version assertions.
+
+- **`pi-devbox-environment` skill — new §2 subsection "A negative result is
+  usually your own filter", plus ControlMaster masking in §3.** This is baked
+  (`rootfs/usr/local/share/pi-devbox/skills/`, symlinked to
+  `~/.agents/skills/`), so it is an image-behaviour change even though no
+  package moved. Motivated by three false negatives an agent produced in a
+  single session, each from its own filter rather than from the world: a
+  `| head -20` "proved" an SSH peer absent that was defined at **line 454** of a
+  ~500-line config; `ssh mac 'docker ps'` "proved" the host had no Docker, when
+  the non-interactive SSH `PATH` simply lacks `/usr/local/bin`; and a `grep 'ssh
+  '` "proved" no ControlMaster was running, when master processes **rename
+  themselves** to `ssh: <controlpath> [mux]`. The rule now stated: a positive
+  result carries its own evidence, absence has to be *earned*. §3 additionally
+  documents that a live master socket makes later commands authenticate **not at
+  all**, so "it still works" proves nothing after editing a peer's
+  `authorized_keys` — verify with `-o ControlPath=none -o ControlMaster=no`, or
+  the breakage surfaces in a future session with no memory of the edit.
+- **`AGENTS.md`: a stale CI claim corrected.** It said "a tag push produces two
+  runs, not one — `lint.yml` fires on every push (including tag refs)". That
+  stopped being true when lint was scoped to `branches: ['**']`, which excludes
+  tag refs by design; `refs/tags/v1.8.4` produced run 571 (publish) and nothing
+  else. The `head_sha` + workflow-`path` filter advice stays, because it costs
+  nothing and any future `v*`-triggered workflow would reintroduce the
+  ambiguity. Also adds a short "Verifying this repo's reality from inside a
+  container" section, including the trap that **this repo's `docker-compose.yml`
+  is a template pinning `:latest`** while a real host runs its own per-machine
+  file — so recreating from the repo copy can silently move a host off
+  `:latest-studio`.
+
+---
+
+### Still open
+
+- `build-manifest.json` records the `mempalace-toolkit` SHA but **not** the
+  mempalace **core** version, so a palace bug cannot be correlated with an
+  image. `mempalace --version` prints it; adding it is a one-line change to the
+  manifest `RUN` in `Dockerfile.variant` plus one smoke assertion, and is
+  variant-only (no base rebuild cost).
+- Smoke asserts the `pi-observational-memory` clone **exists** but not that it
+  contains the ambient-auth fix. npm still ships pre-fix `3.0.4`, so an
+  accidental switch from the `/opt` clone to an npm install would be a silent
+  regression. Cheap guard: `grep -rl availability_recheck` must be ≥1.
+- The feeder's new `pi@<device>` default has no behavioural test hook
+  (`--dry-run` never prints the agent; `--self-test` only covers the remote-mine
+  response classifier). Cheapest available check is a source-shape grep for
+  `MEMPALACE_PI_DEVICE:+pi@`.
+
+---
+
+## v1.8.4 — 2026-08-22
+
+Patch release, and the one that ends an eight-week bug: **the baked
+`pi-observational-memory` finally records observations on a Bedrock host that
+uses ambient AWS credentials.** The fix is ours, but it is no longer a patch —
+upstream merged it, so this release picks it up through the ordinary
+`PI_OBSMEM_REF=master` path with no local carry. Also **bumps pi-atelier
+`v0.8.1` → `v0.8.2`** (audited below) and bakes the `todo` extension's new
+`edit` action. `pi` stays `0.84.2` (still the npm latest, published
+2026-08-14) and `MEMPALACE_VERSION` stays `3.7.1` (still the PyPI latest).
+
+### Fixed
+
+- **om consolidation on request-time-signed providers — upstream, not patched
+  (`pi-observational-memory` `37986b6` → `ce9fc98`).** Under `37986b6`, om's
+  pre-flight gate treated "pi exposes no `apiKey` and no auth header" as
+  *unauthenticated* and skipped every consolidation. On Bedrock with ambient
+  AWS credentials that is the normal case — pi signs SigV4 at request time —
+  so om recorded **nothing for eight weeks** with no error, no cost and no log
+  line. Every pi-devbox image up to and including v1.8.3 has that behaviour.
+
+  Two commits, both authored here and now upstream verbatim: `6f694e6` fixes
+  the gate itself (it must not require a credential *payload*), and `699ccc7`
+  adds the second half of pi's own rule — `hasConfiguredAuth` reads an
+  availability snapshot that stays empty when the startup availability pass was
+  skipped/aborted/failed, so on the otherwise-fatal path om now asks pi to
+  re-check the credential live (refresh scoped to the provider, network-free),
+  rate-limited 60 s per provider, bounded by a raced timeout, logged as
+  `resolve.availability_recheck`. Filed as upstream issue #51, merged as PR #52
+  (`ce9fc98`, 2026-08-22T04:46:18Z), which also carries PR #49's `env`/`baseUrl`
+  forwarding merged four minutes earlier; the maintainer resolved the textual
+  conflict between them keeping both behaviours. Verified on `ce9fc98` here:
+  `tsc --noEmit` clean, `vitest` 257 tests / 27 files green.
+
+  **Note for anyone carrying the local workaround:** the interim fix was a
+  `packages[]` override in `~/.pi/agent/settings.json` pointing pi at a patched
+  clone outside the image. From this release on, delete the override — the
+  baked `/opt/pi-observational-memory` has the fix. Confirm with
+  `/etc/pi-devbox/build-manifest.json` → `components.pi-observational-memory`
+  before removing it. The npm-published `pi-observational-memory` is **still
+  `3.0.4` and still broken**; the image does not use npm for this component, so
+  the release cadence there is irrelevant to us.
+
+### Changed
+
+- **`PI_ATELIER_REF` / `PI_ATELIER_VERSION` `v0.8.1` → `v0.8.2`, audited per the
+  floor note above the ARG.** Only one version sits between old and new and its
+  changelog is two lines, both Workspace-Pulse-internal: inspection requests are
+  now coalesced and serialized so short Turns avoid duplicate Git work and
+  overlapping inspections cannot run concurrently, and live tool-driven Pulse
+  updates are preserved while a fresh inspection is guaranteed at Turn end and
+  retired sessions can no longer publish stale results. **Nothing touches pi's
+  private TUI renderer**, which is the coupling that produced the
+  0.6.0/0.7.0-under-pi-0.84 startup hang, and `pi` is unchanged at `0.84.2`, so
+  this bump does not re-enter that risk class. Both the seam and the pin floor
+  (never pair pi-atelier < 0.7.1 with pi >= 0.84) are unaffected.
+- **`pi-studio` `65995fe` (0.9.44) → `v0.9.48`** — 14 commits, four releases.
+  Studio-side only (`INSTALL_STUDIO=false` by default, so this lands in the
+  studio variant): open Studio in Muxy's browser, local PDF preview actions,
+  previews survive Pandoc probe failures, legacy LaTeX styles tolerated in
+  Pandoc previews, native dialogs replaced in embedded browsers, and file-copy
+  import fixes with an explicit fallback. CI resolves the highest semver tag,
+  not `main`, so this is `v0.9.48` exactly.
+- **`pi-fork` `4a09af4` → `f1ff808`** — one commit, "Add fork runtime
+  awareness" (2026-08-19).
+- **`mempalace-toolkit` `b609cf5` → `fd8b15f`** — two commits, **docs only**
+  (backup/recovery + units; the convos-miner mtime correction finished). The
+  `fix(pi-session)` false-success guard was already baked in v1.8.3 — checked
+  by ancestry (`git merge-base --is-ancestor 6e1f4f3 b609cf5`), not by reading
+  the log, because a commit's *date* does not tell you which side of a pin it
+  fell on.
+- **`aws-cli` 2.36.24 → 2.36.29** and the other `*_VERSION=latest` tools
+  (bat/eza/fzf/gitleaks/nvim/micro/zoxide/yq/typst/tealdeer/agent-browser/
+  playwright/gosu/git-lfs/uv) refresh implicitly, as designed.
+- `pi-toolkit` unchanged (`0e1369e`, local `main` == baked).
+
+### Added
+
+- **`todo` extension: an `edit` action** (`pi-extensions` `98eb07b` →
+  `2022887`). The tool is a verbatim vendored copy of pi's own
+  `examples/extensions/todo.ts`, which offers list/add/toggle/clear and no way
+  to change an item's text. On a long-lived list that forces either a "patch"
+  item describing a *different* item, or clear-and-re-add of everything — both
+  hit for real on 2026-08-17 while tracking a 17-item fleet plan, which ended up
+  with `#18` correcting `#17`. `edit` takes `id` + `text` and keeps the id and
+  the done status; `nextId` is untouched. Id stability is the point, because ids
+  are the only handle a palace snapshot of a plan can refer to.
+- Verified live in-container before committing, by repointing
+  `~/.pi/agent/extensions/todo.ts` at a working copy for one session (unknown
+  id and missing text both error as intended; editing a completed item kept its
+  id and its `done` state), then reverting the symlink to the image copy.
+
+### Notes
+
+- **No pi-atelier change was needed for the `todo` action.** Its `tool_result`
+  hook only checks that `details.todos` is a well-shaped array and ignores the
+  action string, so the new action flows through its normalizer and sidebar
+  untouched. Worth knowing while reading agent transcripts: that hook
+  *replaces* todo tool output with `N/M done · see sidebar` whenever the sidebar
+  todo panel is visible (`showSidebarTodos`), so an agent sees only the counter
+  and not the item text — upstream's `list` otherwise returns every item. That
+  is a deliberate context saving, not a tool limitation.
+- The vendored copy now carries a numbered **LOCAL DELTAS** list in its header
+  (the earlier `ctx.mode !== "tui"` → `!ctx.hasUI` API fix, and this action), so
+  reconciling a future upstream version stays mechanical rather than
+  archaeological.
+- **A second om fix is NOT in this image and will not be.** Upstream PR #24
+  ("advance coverage watermark when observer records nothing", head
+  `joakimp:fix/observer-empty-coverage-watermark` `b577b29`) is open but
+  design-rejected by the maintainer on 2026-07-03: an empty observer verdict is
+  usually a *technical* failure, so advancing the watermark would leave a gap in
+  the observed session, and in the genuinely-nothing-to-observe case the next
+  observer simply gets more context. So the observer can still re-fire on a
+  growing span after an empty verdict — that is upstream's intended behaviour,
+  not an image defect. Do not "fix" it by rebasing that branch.
+
+---
+
+## v1.8.3 — 2026-08-16
+
+Patch release. **Bumps mempalace to `3.7.1`** and closes the gap that made the
+baked mempalace skill go stale for four commits. `pi` stays `0.84.2` (still the
+npm latest) and pi-atelier stays `v0.8.1`; every git-ref component
+(pi-toolkit, pi-extensions, pi-fork, pi-observational-memory, pi-studio,
+mempalace-toolkit) was checked against its upstream head and is unchanged.
+
+- **`MEMPALACE_VERSION` `3.6.0` → `3.7.1`.** Verified against the 3.7.1 source
+  rather than its changelog, because the risk is to palaces users cannot
+  reconstruct: legacy drawers lack the new `chunk_total` completion marker and
+  **both** decision sites trust them (`if chunk_total is None: ... trust the
+  match as before`), so there is **no mass re-mine**; `NORMALIZE_VERSION` is `2`
+  in both versions, so the "pre-v2 drawers are stale" gate does not fire either;
+  `chromadb<2,>=1.5.4` keeps the same major, so no index-format migration; there
+  is no auto-migration (the source says *"We do NOT auto-migrate"* twice) and
+  `rebuild_index` has exactly one call site, the explicit `repair rebuild`; the
+  single new palace file (`logstream.sqlite3`) is created lazily on first
+  logstream use. Downgrade stays possible — 3.6.0 has zero references to
+  `chunk_total` and ignores it as unknown metadata.
+
+  Two behaviour changes worth knowing, both turning a silent condition into a
+  hard refusal: `MEMPALACE_MCP_ALLOW_PEER_WRITER` **no longer works on
+  local/chroma palaces** (it is now gated on `backend_requires_single_writer()`,
+  and `_MULTI_PROCESS_WRITER_BACKENDS` is `{pgvector, qdrant}`), and writer-lock
+  *setup* failures now **fail closed** (`refusing this mutating tool`) instead of
+  proceeding with a warning. Neither affects this image's normal
+  MCP-server-plus-CLI-feeder pattern, which already serialised on the same
+  `mine_palace_*.lock` under 3.6.0 — "process-lifetime single-writer ownership"
+  in the upstream changelog describes tightened escape hatches, not a new lease.
+
+  What 3.7.1 buys a **shared central** palace is the real motivation: the stale
+  chromadb `SharedSystemClient` cache is now dropped on reconnect (under 3.6.0 a
+  peer's writes could be overwritten by a stale in-memory HNSW segment, *"index
+  count going backwards"*), the writer lease is released on SIGTERM/SIGHUP
+  instead of leaking a lock naming a dead PID, and an interrupted mine is no
+  longer permanently skipped as though complete.
+
+  **Upgrading a server requires restarting it** — 3.7.1 refuses mutating tools
+  when the served library drifts from what is installed, and `mempalace_reconnect`
+  cannot clear that (it reopens the database but cannot reload Python modules).
+  The fleet primary was upgraded and restarted before this image was tagged.
+
+  Note: opencode-devbox still pins `3.6.0`. The two images are meant to move in
+  lockstep, so that pin diverges until opencode-devbox cuts its own release.
+
+- **Vendored `mempalace` skill snapshot refreshed** to skillset `936fed8` (was
+  `63f3bf5`). This is the gap worth naming: `~/.agents/skills/mempalace`
+  symlinks to the **image-baked** copy under
+  `/usr/local/share/pi-devbox/skills/`, and `entrypoint-user.sh` creates that
+  link *first* while the skillset deploy never clobbers an existing name — so in
+  a devbox container the vendored snapshot always wins, and editing the skillset
+  repo alone changes nothing a container reads. Two commits' worth of guidance
+  had been invisible here: the multi-machine shared-palace section (device
+  provenance in `source_path`, mined drawers carrying the *mine* date with
+  UUIDv7 recovery, the naive-local vs UTC timestamp mismatch, `agent_name` not
+  being device-scoped, single-writer/no-queue semantics) and the
+  hand-crafted-provenance guard.
+
+- **`pi-global-AGENTS.append.md`** gains `### If the palace is central, it is
+  shared — three rules`: never run `mempalace sync` against a shared palace (it
+  prunes drawers whose sources look missing, which on a central palace is most
+  of the content, including other machines' — compounded by RFC-001 §7.2, since
+  feeders stage *inside* the palace root); a client-side timeout is not a
+  failure (single writer, one large mine blocks everyone, so
+  `mine timed out after 30000ms` usually means the mine completed — verify
+  before retrying or you file a duplicate); and the `mempalace` CLI is not
+  remote-aware, so it always opens a local-disk palace and can silently
+  disagree with the MCP tools.
+
+- **`mempalace-census` is now on `PATH`.** It shipped inside the image at
+  `/opt/mempalace-toolkit/bin/` but was never symlinked into `/usr/local/bin`
+  like its three siblings, so RFC-002 Phase A censuses had to be invoked by
+  absolute path. Added to the symlink set, the `chmod +x` set, and the
+  build-time `--help` smoke chain.
+
+---
+
 ## v1.8.2 — 2026-08-16
 
 Patch release. **Ships the fix for a silent transcript-feed failure**, plus the

DOCKER_HUB.md

@@ -65,12 +65,19 @@ The entrypoint deploys/registers all of these on first container start. Re-runni
 ### Document and image tooling
 
 - **pandoc** — universal Markdown↔HTML/Org/RST/etc. conversion. Useful well beyond pi: agent-driven doc exports, format conversion, etc.
+- **Typst** — markup-based typesetting, used as pandoc's `--pdf-engine`
 - **graphviz** (`dot`) — diagram rendering pipelines
 - **imagemagick** (`magick`) — image conversion / resizing
 
+### Browser automation
+
+- **agent-browser** — CLI for driving a real browser (open pages, click/fill/`eval`, snapshot the DOM, screenshots) so agents can verify front-end work instead of guessing
+- **Playwright** + a headless **Chromium** are pre-installed and pinned together; `AGENT_BROWSER_EXECUTABLE_PATH` is preset to the baked browser, so `agent-browser open <url>` works out of the box with no setup
+- **socat** — TCP bridge used to expose the pi-studio server outside the container's loopback
+
 ### Modern CLI tooling
 
-- **Editor**: neovim (LazyVim defaults), tmux (configured for 0-indexed sessions)
+- **Editor**: neovim (system-wide `termguicolors` default; bring your own config/plugins), tmux (configured for 0-indexed sessions)
 - **Search/nav**: ripgrep, fd, fzf, zoxide
 - **Display**: bat, eza, htop, tree
 - **Data**: jq, yq

Dockerfile.base

@@ -384,7 +384,60 @@ ARG INSTALL_MEMPALACE=true
 # mempalace_checkpoint (#2023/#2034).
 #
 # Keep in lockstep with opencode-devbox when bumping.
-ARG MEMPALACE_VERSION=3.6.0
+#
+# 3.7.1 (from 3.6.0) is safe for anyone with an EXISTING LOCAL palace: verified
+# against the 3.7.1 source, not the changelog. Legacy drawers lack the new
+# `chunk_total` marker and both decision sites trust them ("trust the match as
+# before"), NORMALIZE_VERSION is 2 in both, chromadb stays <2 (no index-format
+# migration), there is no auto-migration ("We do NOT auto-migrate"), and the one
+# new palace file (logstream.sqlite3) is created lazily on first logstream use.
+# Two behaviour changes to know: MEMPALACE_MCP_ALLOW_PEER_WRITER no longer works
+# on local/chroma palaces, and writer-lock setup failures now fail CLOSED
+# (refuse the write) rather than fail open. Neither affects the container's
+# normal MCP-server-plus-CLI-feeder pattern, which already serialised on the
+# same lock under 3.6.0.
+#
+# 3.8.0 (2026-08-23, PyPI, released hours after this project's own v1.8.5 tag
+# the same day) is additive/reliability only — reviewed for MCP tool-schema
+# changes before bumping, as always: there are NONE. Two PRs matter:
+#   - PR #2320/#2322: `sync --apply` no longer deletes a drawer solely because
+#     its source_file was unreachable AT THAT MOMENT — it now asks for
+#     corroboration first. This fixes losing a whole mined project to one
+#     `sync --apply` while its volume happened to be unmounted.
+#     IMPORTANT — do not over-read this fix: it addresses TRANSIENT
+#     unreachability, not the standing landmine (documented in the operator's
+#     global AGENTS.md) against running `mempalace_sync` / `mempalace_delete_by_source`
+#     beyond dry-run on the SHARED central palace. On that palace most
+#     source_file paths are PERMANENTLY absent from whichever host runs the
+#     sync — a different machine's paths simply do not exist here, ever, not
+#     merely "right now". That is a different failure shape than #2320/#2322
+#     fixes. The landmine still stands; this bump does not relax it.
+#   - PR #2307: long-running Chroma servers no longer invalidate their own
+#     HNSW cache on their own writes (server-side perf fix). This does NOT
+#     make `mempalace_reconnect` unnecessary — that tool exists for EXTERNAL
+#     writes bypassing the in-process client (e.g. direct sqlite backfills,
+#     CLI commands against a running server), a different scenario #2307
+#     does not touch.
+#
+# CI-side audit (added after v1.8.6, closing that release's "Still open" item):
+# resolve-versions now treats this pin exactly as it treats PI_VERSION — it
+# reads the ARG from THIS file, refuses a non-concrete value, verifies the
+# version is published on PyPI, refuses a YANKED release (an exact pin installs
+# one silently under PEP 592), and WARNS — never silently adopts — when PyPI has
+# a newer release. smoke-test.sh then asserts the installed core equals that
+# audited pin, which catches a stale cached base layer that no manifest-internal
+# check can see. So a bump here is now gated end to end; what remains manual is
+# the JUDGEMENT above (MCP schema review, server/client sequencing), which is
+# the part that should stay manual.
+#
+# Deployment sequencing note for whoever ships this bump: synlig (the shared
+# central palace host) currently serves mempalace 3.7.1 SERVER-SIDE via
+# docker-compose.mempalace.yml, which reuses this same devbox image. Bumping
+# this ARG changes only the CLIENT version baked into pi-devbox images: it
+# introduces client/server skew until synlig's compose stack is separately
+# rebuilt/redeployed with the new pin. Not something to code around here —
+# just sequence the redeploy.
+ARG MEMPALACE_VERSION=3.8.0
 ENV UV_TOOL_DIR=/opt/uv-tools
 ENV UV_TOOL_BIN_DIR=/usr/local/bin
 RUN if [ "${INSTALL_MEMPALACE}" = "true" ]; then \
@@ -425,11 +478,14 @@ RUN if [ "${INSTALL_MEMPALACE}" = "true" ] && [ "${INSTALL_MEMPALACE_TOOLKIT}" =
       ln -sf /opt/mempalace-toolkit/bin/mempalace-session /usr/local/bin/mempalace-session && \
       ln -sf /opt/mempalace-toolkit/bin/mempalace-docs    /usr/local/bin/mempalace-docs && \
       ln -sf /opt/mempalace-toolkit/bin/mempalace-pi-session /usr/local/bin/mempalace-pi-session && \
+      ln -sf /opt/mempalace-toolkit/bin/mempalace-census  /usr/local/bin/mempalace-census && \
       chmod +x /opt/mempalace-toolkit/bin/mempalace-session /opt/mempalace-toolkit/bin/mempalace-docs \
-               /opt/mempalace-toolkit/bin/mempalace-pi-session && \
+               /opt/mempalace-toolkit/bin/mempalace-pi-session \
+               /opt/mempalace-toolkit/bin/mempalace-census && \
       mempalace-session --help >/dev/null && \
       mempalace-docs    --help >/dev/null && \
       mempalace-pi-session --help >/dev/null && \
+      mempalace-census  --help >/dev/null && \
       echo "mempalace-toolkit installed at $(cd /opt/mempalace-toolkit && git rev-parse --short HEAD)" ; \
     fi
 
@@ -671,12 +727,14 @@ COPY rootfs/usr/local/share/pi-devbox/ /usr/local/share/pi-devbox/
 COPY rootfs/usr/local/bin/studio-expose /usr/local/bin/studio-expose
 COPY rootfs/usr/local/bin/dot-watch /usr/local/bin/dot-watch
 COPY rootfs/usr/local/bin/pi-devbox-version /usr/local/bin/pi-devbox-version
+COPY rootfs/usr/local/bin/devbox-skill-reconcile /usr/local/bin/devbox-skill-reconcile
 COPY entrypoint.sh /usr/local/bin/entrypoint.sh
 COPY entrypoint-user.sh /usr/local/bin/entrypoint-user.sh
 RUN chmod +x /usr/local/bin/entrypoint.sh /usr/local/bin/entrypoint-user.sh \
     /usr/local/bin/studio-expose \
     /usr/local/bin/dot-watch \
     /usr/local/bin/pi-devbox-version \
+    /usr/local/bin/devbox-skill-reconcile \
     /usr/local/lib/pi-devbox/*.sh 2>/dev/null || true
 
 # Start as root — entrypoint adjusts UID/GID then drops to developer

Dockerfile.variant

@@ -56,7 +56,22 @@ ARG USER_NAME=developer
 # current when it was first populated (shipped the same bytes for pi-devbox
 # v0.74.0..v0.75.5; discovered + fixed in v0.75.5b, 2026-05-23). The `latest`
 # branch below is kept only for a deliberate local `docker build` override.
-ARG PI_VERSION=0.84.2
+#
+# AUDITED AT 0.84.3 (2026-08-25, was 0.84.2): upstream's notes carry a
+# "Breaking Changes" heading — `GoogleThinkingLevel` renamed to
+# `GoogleApiThinkingLevel`. INERT FOR THIS IMAGE: all four vendored companions
+# (/opt/pi-fork, /opt/pi-observational-memory, /opt/pi-atelier, /opt/pi-studio)
+# were grepped for that symbol and reference it ZERO times, so nothing here
+# couples to the renamed type. Recorded because the heading will look alarming
+# to the next reader doing step 1 above — the audit is done, don't redo it.
+# Adopted for two fixes that land squarely on this repo's own vendored-skill
+# wiring (see devbox-skill-reconcile, v1.8.5): nested Markdown skills inside
+# `.agents/skills/<group>/` directories were not discovered, and root Markdown
+# files such as README.md / AGENTS.md inside a skill dir were reported as
+# broken skills unless they declared valid skill frontmatter.
+# pi-atelier needs no companion bump: v0.8.2 clears the >=0.7.1 floor that
+# pi >= 0.84 requires (see PI_ATELIER_REF below).
+ARG PI_VERSION=0.84.3
 ARG PI_TOOLKIT_REF=main
 ARG PI_EXTENSIONS_REF=main
 # Repo URLs default to the canonical gitea origin but are overridable so a
@@ -92,9 +107,9 @@ ARG PI_OBSMEM_REF=master
 # the /opt checkout. Adding an install here would be a no-op that only costs
 # build time.
 ARG PI_ATELIER_REPO=https://github.com/michaelmjhhhh/pi-atelier.git
-ARG PI_ATELIER_REF=v0.8.1
+ARG PI_ATELIER_REF=v0.8.2
 # Human-readable tag PI_ATELIER_REF was resolved from; recorded as a label.
-ARG PI_ATELIER_VERSION=v0.8.1
+ARG PI_ATELIER_VERSION=v0.8.2
 
 RUN set -e && \
     # git_fetch_ref: clone-equivalent helper that accepts EITHER a branch name
@@ -297,6 +312,19 @@ RUN set -e; \
     mkdir -p /etc/pi-devbox; \
     rev() { git -C "$1" rev-parse HEAD 2>/dev/null || echo "unknown"; }; \
     PI_V="$(pi --version 2>/dev/null | head -n1 | tr -d '\r\n')"; \
+    # mempalace CORE (the PyPI package behind the MCP tools) is installed in
+    # Dockerfile.base via `uv tool install`, so no /opt clone reveals it and
+    # until v1.8.6 the manifest could not answer "which palace shipped here?" —
+    # a palace bug could not be correlated to an image, which is precisely the
+    # correlation this file exists to provide. Read from the INSTALLED BINARY,
+    # not from ARG MEMPALACE_VERSION, per the ground-truth rule above: that is
+    # what catches an install which resolved to something other than the pin.
+    # `mempalace --version` prints "MemPalace 3.7.1" — NAME-PREFIXED, unlike
+    # pi's bare "0.84.2" — hence the $NF pick rather than a straight read. The
+    # leading-digit test then rejects usage/error text (a renamed flag prints a
+    # usage block) and degrades to JSON null, so this can never fail the build.
+    MP_V="$(mempalace --version 2>/dev/null | head -n1 | tr -d '\r' | awk '{print $NF}')"; \
+    case "$MP_V" in [0-9]*) MP_CORE="\"${MP_V}\"" ;; *) MP_CORE='null' ;; esac; \
     STUDIO_REV='null'; \
     if [ -d /opt/pi-studio/.git ]; then STUDIO_REV="\"$(rev /opt/pi-studio)\""; fi; \
     { \
@@ -305,6 +333,10 @@ RUN set -e; \
       echo "  \"build_date\": \"${BUILD_DATE}\","; \
       echo "  \"source_revision\": \"${SOURCE_REVISION}\","; \
       echo "  \"pi_version\": \"${PI_V}\","; \
+      # Sibling of pi_version, NOT a member of components{}: that map holds git
+      # SHAs and `pi-devbox-version` renders it with .value[0:12], which would
+      # silently truncate a longer version string.
+      echo "  \"mempalace_version\": ${MP_CORE},"; \
       echo "  \"components\": {"; \
       echo "    \"pi-toolkit\": \"$(rev /opt/pi-toolkit)\","; \
       echo "    \"pi-extensions\": \"$(rev /opt/pi-extensions)\","; \

README.md

@@ -70,9 +70,27 @@ so `TERM=xterm-kitty` is understood. Override either in your own
 ### Document and image tooling
 
 - `pandoc` — universal Markdown↔HTML/Org/RST/etc. converter
+- `typst` — markup-based typesetting, wired up as pandoc's `--pdf-engine` (see
+  [Generating a PDF with pandoc + typst](#generating-a-pdf-with-pandoc--typst))
 - `graphviz` — `dot` rendering for diagram pipelines
 - `imagemagick` — image conversion / resizing (invoked as `magick`)
 
+### Browser automation
+
+- `agent-browser` — CLI for driving a real headless browser: open pages,
+  click/fill/`eval`, snapshot the DOM, take screenshots. Useful whenever a task
+  involves a web UI or verifying how a page actually renders (live DOM, WebGL,
+  layout, popup positioning) instead of guessing from source.
+- `playwright` + a pre-installed headless **Chromium** back it.
+  `AGENT_BROWSER_EXECUTABLE_PATH` is preset to the baked browser via a stable
+  `/usr/local/bin/agent-chrome` symlink (insulated from Playwright's
+  per-version/arch install directory), so `agent-browser open <url>` works
+  out of the box with no setup. Run `agent-browser skills get core --full`
+  for the command set and workflow patterns.
+- `socat` — TCP bridge used by `studio-expose` to reach pi-studio's
+  loopback-bound server from outside the container (see
+  [Using pi-studio](#using-pi-studio--studio-variant))
+
 ### Language toolchains
 
 - `python3` + `python3-venv` + `python3-pip` (system Python)
@@ -547,7 +565,8 @@ directory, and they compose:
   `~/.agents/skills/` by `entrypoint-user.sh` on every start. They need no
   external mount, survive volume recreate (the source is an image path, not a
   home dir a named volume would shadow), and are created only when absent so a
-  same-named skillset skill or user override is never clobbered. The bundled
+  user override is never clobbered. Precedence against a mounted `skillset` repo
+  is per-skill, not blanket — see *Skillset repo* below. The bundled
   **`pi-devbox-environment`** skill is delivered this way — it teaches agents
   the container's persistence model, host/LAN SSH reachability, split-DNS
   mechanisms, the interactive-vs-tool-shell alias gotcha (`dssh`/`dscp`),
@@ -558,8 +577,11 @@ directory, and they compose:
   pi session to read `~/.agents/skills/pi-extensions/SKILL.md` at start (to fix
   fork/recall under-utilisation). That pointer would dangle in a container
   started *without* the private `skillset` repo, so the image also bakes
-  fallback copies of **`pi-extensions`** and **`mempalace`**. They are
-  symlinked only when absent, so a mounted skillset always overrides them. The
+  fallback copies of **`pi-extensions`** and **`mempalace`**. Whether a mounted
+  skillset overrides them depends on who *owns* the skill (see *Skillset repo*):
+  `mempalace` is skillset-owned, so the live clone wins; `pi-extensions` is
+  owned by its package repo, so the baked copy keeps winning — the skillset's
+  copy of it is a downstream duplicate that can lag. The
   `pi-extensions` skill is *layered*: a committed snapshot in `rootfs/` is the
   floor, and `Dockerfile.variant` copies the canonical, package-owned copy from
   the pinned `pi-extensions` clone (`/opt/pi-extensions/skill/`) over it at
@@ -573,7 +595,16 @@ directory, and they compose:
 - **Skillset repo (optional).** If a `skillset` repo is mounted (at
   `$HOME/skillset` or `/workspace/skillset`, or via `SKILLSET_CONTAINER_PATH`),
   `deploy-skills.sh` symlinks its skills in too. Image-baked skills are
-  classified as foreign-links by its `--prune-stale` pass and left untouched.
+  classified as foreign-links by its `--prune-stale` pass and left untouched —
+  which through v1.8.4 meant the baked copy *always* won, so an edit pushed to a
+  skillset-owned skill was invisible until the next image build. Since v1.8.5
+  `devbox-skill-reconcile` runs right after the deploy and repoints the links for
+  skills the skillset owns, listed in
+  `/usr/local/share/pi-devbox/skills/skillset-owned.txt` (today: `mempalace`).
+  Effective precedence, highest first: **user override** (a real directory, or a
+  symlink pointing outside the baked tree) → **live skillset clone** (owned names
+  only) → **baked snapshot** (everything else, and every skill when no skillset
+  is mounted). Check with `readlink -f ~/.agents/skills/<skill>`.
 
 To make agents *proactively* load a baked skill at session start (rather than
 only on description match), the image appends a short, gated pointer to the
@@ -774,8 +805,9 @@ docker inspect --format '{{json .Config.Labels}}' joakimp/pi-devbox:latest | jq
 `org.opencontainers.image.{version,revision,created}` plus
 `se.jordbo.pi-devbox.*-ref` record the intended pi version and companion
 refs. The on-disk `/etc/pi-devbox/build-manifest.json` records **ground
-truth** — the actual checked-out commit of each `/opt` clone and the live
-`pi --version` — so a tag is reconstructable after CI logs rotate:
+truth** — the actual checked-out commit of each `/opt` clone, the live
+`pi --version`, and (from v1.8.6) the live `mempalace --version` of the
+installed palace core — so a tag is reconstructable after CI logs rotate:
 
 ```bash
 docker run --rm --entrypoint= joakimp/pi-devbox:latest cat /etc/pi-devbox/build-manifest.json
@@ -990,8 +1022,8 @@ resolved to `latest` at build time:
 | Component | Pin | Where |
 |---|---|---|
 | pi | `0.84.2` | `ARG PI_VERSION` — `Dockerfile.variant` |
-| pi-atelier | `v0.8.1` | `ARG PI_ATELIER_REF` — `Dockerfile.variant` |
-| mempalace | `3.6.0` | `ARG MEMPALACE_VERSION` — `Dockerfile.base` |
+| pi-atelier | `v0.8.2` | `ARG PI_ATELIER_REF` — `Dockerfile.variant` |
+| mempalace | `3.7.1` | `ARG MEMPALACE_VERSION` — `Dockerfile.base` |
 
 The objective is **not** to freeze versions. Bumping is routine — usually one
 line plus a changelog note. The objective is that adopting a new upstream

THIRD_PARTY.md

@@ -18,8 +18,23 @@ for OS packages, the per-package copyright files inside the image at
 | pi-fork | github.com/elpapi42/pi-fork | MIT |
 | pi-observational-memory | github.com/elpapi42/pi-observational-memory | MIT |
 | pi-studio *(`-studio` variant only)* | github.com/omaclaren/pi-studio | MIT |
+| pi-atelier | github.com/michaelmjhhhh/pi-atelier | MIT |
 | pi-toolkit, pi-extensions, mempalace-toolkit | authored by the maintainer (Joakim Persson) | MIT |
 
+## MemPalace (AI memory)
+
+| Component | Upstream | License |
+| --- | --- | --- |
+| mempalace (core, MCP server) | github.com/MemPalace/mempalace (PyPI: `mempalace`) | MIT — the GitHub repo declares MIT; the PyPI package's own metadata omits a license classifier, so if you need clearance from the package artifact alone, verify against the repo's `LICENSE` file rather than the sdist/wheel metadata |
+
+## Browser automation
+
+| Component | Upstream | License |
+| --- | --- | --- |
+| agent-browser | github.com/vercel-labs/agent-browser (npm: `agent-browser`) | Apache-2.0 |
+| Playwright | github.com/microsoft/playwright (npm: `playwright`) | Apache-2.0 |
+| Chromium | chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src | BSD-3-Clause for Chromium's own code, plus a large set of bundled third-party components each under their own license (see Chromium's own `LICENSE`/`about:credits`). The binary in this image is **not compiled here** — it is the build Playwright downloads for its pinned version ("Chrome for Testing"), installed via `playwright install --with-deps chromium` at `/usr/local/share/ms-playwright/`. Treat Playwright's own distribution terms for that build as authoritative over any summary here. |
+
 ## Tooling baked into the base image
 
 | Component | Upstream | License (best effort) |

entrypoint-user.sh

@@ -58,10 +58,17 @@ fi
 # the runtime skill-link assertion. Pointing at the image path (/usr/local/...)
 # keeps the skill fresh from the image and surviving volume recreate (unlike
 # anything baked under a home dir, which a named volume would shadow). Created
-# only when absent, so a same-named skillset skill (deployed later, at the end
-# of this script) or a user override is never clobbered; the skillset deploy
-# classifies these as foreign-links and its --prune-stale pass leaves them
-# alone (only dangling symlinks are pruned).
+# only when absent, so a user override is never clobbered.
+#
+# NB: "created only when absent" does NOT hand a same-named skillset skill
+# priority — the opposite. The skillset deploy runs at the end of this script
+# and classifies these links as foreign, so through v1.8.4 the BAKED copy
+# always won and an edit pushed to a skillset-owned skill was invisible until
+# the next image build. The links below are therefore the FALLBACK only;
+# devbox-skill-reconcile (invoked right after the skillset deploy) hands the
+# skillset-OWNED skills back to the live clone. Ownership is per-skill, listed
+# in skills/skillset-owned.txt — see VENDORED.md for why pi-extensions must
+# keep losing to the baked copy.
 DEVBOX_SKILLS_SRC=/usr/local/share/pi-devbox/skills
 if [ -d "$DEVBOX_SKILLS_SRC" ]; then
   mkdir -p "$HOME/.agents/skills"
@@ -69,7 +76,16 @@ if [ -d "$DEVBOX_SKILLS_SRC" ]; then
     [ -d "$_sk" ] || continue
     _skname=$(basename "$_sk")
     if [ ! -e "$HOME/.agents/skills/$_skname" ]; then
-      ln -s "${_sk%/}" "$HOME/.agents/skills/$_skname"
+      # -sfn, not -s: `[ ! -e ]` is TRUE for a DANGLING symlink (-e follows the
+      # link), and since v1.8.5 these links can point into /workspace/skillset
+      # (see devbox-skill-reconcile, invoked after the skillset deploy). If that
+      # mount vanishes while the writable layer survives — a `docker restart` or
+      # a host reboot under restart: unless-stopped, as opposed to a recreate —
+      # plain `ln -s` fails with "File exists" and, under `set -e`, aborts
+      # container start before `exec "$@"`. With -f the broken link heals back to
+      # the baked fallback, and the reconciler re-points it in the same boot if
+      # the clone is back.
+      ln -sfn "${_sk%/}" "$HOME/.agents/skills/$_skname"
     fi
   done
 fi
@@ -385,6 +401,13 @@ elif [ -x /workspace/skillset/deploy-skills.sh ]; then
 fi
 if [ -n "$SKILLSET_DEPLOY" ]; then
   "$SKILLSET_DEPLOY" --bootstrap --prune-stale >/dev/null 2>&1 || true
+  # The deploy leaves the early baked links (above) in place as foreign links,
+  # which silently shadows the live clone for skills the skillset OWNS. Repoint
+  # just those; baked stays the fallback, user overrides still win. `|| true`:
+  # a skill-link refinement must never break container start.
+  if command -v devbox-skill-reconcile >/dev/null 2>&1; then
+    devbox-skill-reconcile "$(dirname "$SKILLSET_DEPLOY")" || true
+  fi
 fi
 
 # ── Execute command ──────────────────────────────────────────────────

rootfs/usr/local/bin/devbox-skill-reconcile

@@ -0,0 +1,91 @@
+#!/bin/sh
+# devbox-skill-reconcile — hand skillset-OWNED skills back to the live clone.
+#
+# WHY THIS EXISTS
+# ---------------
+# entrypoint-user.sh links the image-baked skills into ~/.agents/skills/ EARLY
+# (before pi-deploy), because the smoke readiness probe gates on markers that
+# only land later, and a link created after that gate produced a flaky
+# assertion. Those links are created with a `[ ! -e ]` guard — "only when
+# absent" — and the skillset deploy runs LAST, treating already-present links
+# as foreign and leaving them alone. Net effect through v1.8.4: the baked copy
+# always won, so an edit pushed to a skillset-owned skill was invisible in
+# every container until the next image build (measured on two hosts: live
+# skillset md5 129bcc4752 vs baked 5236024fef, the new section absent).
+#
+# The fix is NOT "the skillset always wins". Ownership is per-skill (see
+# rootfs/usr/local/share/pi-devbox/skills/VENDORED.md):
+#
+#   pi-devbox-environment  authored in pi-devbox   → baked IS canonical
+#   pi-extensions          owned by the package repo, copied over the snapshot
+#                          at build time; skillset carries a DOWNSTREAM copy
+#                          that can lag → baked must keep winning
+#   mempalace              owned by the skillset repo; baked is a snapshot
+#                          fallback for containers with no skillset mounted
+#                          → the live clone must win when it is present
+#
+# So only skills listed in skills/skillset-owned.txt are handed over. Baked
+# links stay as the fallback (the early-link race fix is untouched), and a user
+# override always beats both: a real directory is never replaced, and neither is
+# a symlink that already points somewhere other than the baked tree.
+#
+# Usage: devbox-skill-reconcile <skillset-root> [skills-dir] [baked-src]
+#   skillset-root  the mounted skillset repo (contains skills/<name>/)
+#   skills-dir     default $HOME/.agents/skills
+#   baked-src      default /usr/local/share/pi-devbox/skills
+#
+# Idempotent, and silent unless it changes something. Exits 0 when there is
+# nothing to do (no skillset, no list) so the entrypoint never fails on it.
+set -eu
+
+SKILLSET_ROOT="${1:-}"
+SKILLS_DIR="${2:-$HOME/.agents/skills}"
+BAKED_SRC="${3:-/usr/local/share/pi-devbox/skills}"
+BAKED_SRC="${BAKED_SRC%/}"          # a trailing slash would make the prefix
+                                   # match below ("$BAKED_SRC"/*) match nothing
+
+[ -n "$SKILLSET_ROOT" ] || exit 0
+[ -d "$SKILLSET_ROOT/skills" ] || exit 0
+[ -d "$SKILLS_DIR" ] || exit 0
+
+# Absolutise BOTH roots before they are used, because each has its own way of
+# failing silently when relative: a relative symlink TARGET is resolved against
+# the link's directory (~/.agents/skills), not $PWD, so it would dangle on
+# creation; and a relative BAKED_SRC would never prefix-match the absolute
+# target that `readlink` reports, so every skill would be skipped and the fix
+# would look like it had simply done nothing.
+SKILLSET_ROOT=$(CDPATH= cd -- "$SKILLSET_ROOT" 2>/dev/null && pwd) || exit 0
+BAKED_SRC=$(CDPATH= cd -- "$BAKED_SRC" 2>/dev/null && pwd) || exit 0
+OWNED_LIST="$BAKED_SRC/skillset-owned.txt"
+[ -f "$OWNED_LIST" ] || exit 0
+
+while IFS= read -r _line || [ -n "$_line" ]; do
+    # strip comments and surrounding whitespace; skip blanks
+    _name=$(printf '%s\n' "$_line" | sed -e 's/#.*$//' -e 's/^[[:space:]]*//' -e 's/[[:space:]]*$//')
+    [ -n "$_name" ] || continue
+    # defensive: a list entry must be a plain skill name, never a path
+    case "$_name" in */*|.*) continue ;; esac
+
+    _live="$SKILLSET_ROOT/skills/$_name"
+    _link="$SKILLS_DIR/$_name"
+
+    # the skillset does not ship it → the baked fallback is all there is
+    [ -d "$_live" ] || continue
+    # a real directory is a user override → never touch
+    [ -L "$_link" ] || continue
+
+    # only ever replace OUR OWN link. readlink is deliberate: `readlink -f`
+    # would resolve a link that already points into the skillset clone and,
+    # since both trees hold a same-named skill, could not tell them apart.
+    _target=$(readlink "$_link" 2>/dev/null || true)
+    case "$_target" in
+        "$BAKED_SRC"/*|"$BAKED_SRC") ;;   # baked link → ours to replace
+        *) continue ;;                     # user/foreign target → leave alone
+    esac
+
+    # -n so an existing symlink-to-directory is replaced rather than followed
+    # (without it, ln would create $_link/$_name inside the baked tree).
+    if ln -sfn "$_live" "$_link" 2>/dev/null; then
+        printf 'skill %s: baked snapshot -> live skillset (%s)\n' "$_name" "$_live"
+    fi
+done < "$OWNED_LIST"

rootfs/usr/local/bin/pi-devbox-version

@@ -55,6 +55,10 @@ release_tag=$(jq -r '.release_tag' "$MANIFEST")
 build_date=$(jq -r '.build_date' "$MANIFEST")
 source_rev=$(jq -r '.source_revision' "$MANIFEST")
 pi_version_baked=$(jq -r '.pi_version' "$MANIFEST")
+# `// empty` matters: images built before v1.8.6 have no such field, and
+# `jq -r` renders a JSON null as the 4-char string "null" — which would
+# print as a bogus version rather than being treated as absent.
+mp_version_baked=$(jq -r '.mempalace_version // empty' "$MANIFEST")
 
 if [ "$MODE" = "quiet" ]; then
   printf '%s (%s)\n' "$release_tag" "${source_rev:0:7}"
@@ -71,6 +75,16 @@ if command -v pi >/dev/null 2>&1; then
   pi_version_live=$(pi --version 2>/dev/null | head -n1 | tr -d '\r\n')
 fi
 
+# Same check for the palace, which matters more than it looks: mempalace is
+# the one component that is BOTH client (here) and server (synlig runs this
+# same image), so a skew between the two is a real failure mode rather than
+# cosmetic. `mempalace --version` prints "MemPalace 3.8.0" — name-prefixed,
+# unlike pi's bare "0.84.3" — hence $NF rather than reading the whole line.
+mp_version_live=""
+if command -v mempalace >/dev/null 2>&1; then
+  mp_version_live=$(mempalace --version 2>/dev/null | head -n1 | awk '{print $NF}' | tr -d '\r\n')
+fi
+
 printf 'pi-devbox %s\n' "$release_tag"
 printf '  built:  %s  (source %s)\n' "$build_date" "${source_rev:0:12}"
 if [ -n "$pi_version_live" ] && [ "$pi_version_live" != "$pi_version_baked" ]; then
@@ -79,5 +93,15 @@ else
   printf '  pi:     %s\n' "${pi_version_live:-$pi_version_baked}"
 fi
 
+# Printed only when known, so this degrades quietly on pre-v1.8.6 images
+# instead of showing an empty or "null" palace line.
+if [ -n "$mp_version_live" ] || [ -n "$mp_version_baked" ]; then
+  if [ -n "$mp_version_live" ] && [ -n "$mp_version_baked" ] && [ "$mp_version_live" != "$mp_version_baked" ]; then
+    printf '  palace: %s  \033[33m(baked as %s — drift detected)\033[0m\n' "$mp_version_live" "$mp_version_baked"
+  else
+    printf '  palace: %s\n' "${mp_version_live:-$mp_version_baked}"
+  fi
+fi
+
 printf '  components:\n'
 jq -r '.components | to_entries[] | select(.value != null) | "    \(.key): \(.value[0:12])"' "$MANIFEST"

rootfs/usr/local/lib/pi-devbox/setup-lan-access.sh

@@ -197,6 +197,45 @@ EOF
 )
 fi
 
+# ── Multiplexing default, deliberately LAST ───────────────────────────
+# Why this block exists: ControlPath above is forced, but ControlMaster is not
+# set anywhere for targets that come from the user's own ~/.ssh/config. A target
+# whose entry omits ControlMaster therefore opens a NEW TCP connection per ssh
+# call, and an agent doing a dozen calls in a few minutes can trip fail2ban or a
+# CGNAT flow-table cap on the far end — observed 2026-08-25: ~12 connections in
+# 15 min and port 22 stopped answering while HTTPS to the same estate stayed fine.
+#
+# WHY IT IS AT THE BOTTOM, and ControlPath is at the top. ssh_config is
+# first-value-wins, so position encodes intent:
+#   * BEFORE the Include = an OVERRIDE. Correct for ControlPath, whose value in
+#     the user's config points at read-only ~/.ssh and simply cannot work here.
+#   * AFTER  the Include = a DEFAULT. Correct for ControlMaster, because an
+#     explicit per-host 'ControlMaster no' (or 'auto', or any value) in the
+#     user's own config must keep winning. We are supplying an opinion only
+#     where the user expressed none.
+# That asymmetry is the whole design: force what is broken, default what is
+# merely absent. It also means this needs no audit of anyone's ~/.ssh/config —
+# which matters because that file is per-machine, differs across the fleet, and
+# future machines' versions do not exist yet to be audited.
+#
+# Caveat worth knowing (and documented in the pi-devbox-environment skill): a
+# stale master socket — file present, daemon gone, e.g. after the host suspends
+# or changes network — makes every later ssh to that host hang. Recovery is
+# 'ssh -F ~/.ssh-local/config -O exit <host>'. ControlPersist is deliberately
+# short (10m idle, and each new session resets the idle timer) so an abandoned
+# socket ages out on its own rather than lingering for hours.
+MULTIPLEX_DEFAULT_BLOCK=$(cat <<'EOF'
+
+# Multiplexing DEFAULT — intentionally after the Include above, so any explicit
+# per-host ControlMaster in your own ~/.ssh/config still wins (first-value-wins).
+# Applies only to targets that never mentioned ControlMaster at all.
+# Stale socket after a suspend/network change? ssh -O exit <host>.
+Host *
+    ControlMaster auto
+    ControlPersist 10m
+EOF
+)
+
 cat > "$CONFIG" <<EOF
 # AUTO-GENERATED by setup-lan-access.sh on every container start. Do not edit
 # by hand — edits are overwritten. Used via: ssh -F ~/.ssh-local/config <host>
@@ -216,6 +255,7 @@ ${JUMP_BLOCK}
 ${LAN_CONF_BLOCK}
 ${AUTOJUMP_BLOCK}
 ${INCLUDE_BLOCK}
+${MULTIPLEX_DEFAULT_BLOCK}
 EOF
 chmod 600 "$CONFIG" 2>/dev/null || true
 

rootfs/usr/local/share/pi-devbox/pi-global-AGENTS.append.md

@@ -41,3 +41,32 @@ especially load-bearing here — a pi-devbox container is frequently recreated,
 the palace is your only memory across recreates. Without the habit it is just
 storage, not memory. (The skill is the consumer side; feeding the palace is the
 separate `opencode-mempalace-bridge` skill, if present.)
+
+### If the palace is central, it is shared — three rules
+
+If `MEMPALACE_REMOTE_URL` is set, the MCP tools write to a **central palace
+shared with other machines**, not to a local one. Your drawers are not the only
+ones in there, and most drawers' `source_file` paths do not exist on this host.
+The skill covers the orientation side (provenance, chronology, whose diary is
+whose); these three are here instead because getting them wrong does *damage*
+rather than merely confusing you:
+
+- **Never run `mempalace sync` / `mempalace_sync` against a shared palace.** It
+  prunes drawers whose source files look gitignored, deleted, or moved — and on
+  a shared palace that describes most of the content, including every other
+  machine's. Compounding it (RFC-001 §7.2): feeders now stage *inside* the
+  palace root, so a scoped sync can delete the very drawers it just filed.
+  `mempalace_delete_by_source` is exact-match rather than existence-based, but
+  its blast radius is now the whole fleet's palace — leave it on its default
+  `dry_run=true` and confirm the match count before committing.
+- **A timeout is not a failure.** The palace is single-writer, and one large
+  mine can block every client for minutes, so a write or mine that exceeds the
+  client's deadline has usually *completed* server-side. Verify with
+  `mempalace_get_drawer` or `mempalace_search` before retrying — a blind retry
+  files a duplicate. `[mempalace ext] feed (tick) failed: mine timed out after
+  30000ms` is the common benign instance: the transcript is already in the
+  server's inbox and the mine is idempotent, so nothing is lost either way.
+- **The `mempalace` CLI is not remote-aware.** It always opens a palace on
+  local disk, so `mempalace search` can return older and different results than
+  the MCP tools while both look correct. Use the MCP tools for the central
+  palace; the CLI only for a local one.

rootfs/usr/local/share/pi-devbox/skills/VENDORED.md

@@ -1,9 +1,10 @@
 # Vendored fallback skills
 
 Most directories here are **image-baked skills** that `entrypoint-user.sh`
-symlinks into `~/.agents/skills/` on container start (only when a skill of the
-same name is not already present, so a mounted `skillset` repo or a user
-override always wins).
+symlinks into `~/.agents/skills/` on container start. They are the **fallback**
+layer: see *Runtime precedence* below for which copy actually wins when a
+`skillset` repo is mounted (through v1.8.4 the answer was "always the baked
+one", which was a bug).
 
 | skill | owner | how it gets here |
 |-------|-------|------------------|
@@ -38,6 +39,35 @@ its skill file needed baking.
   *different* skill, `opencode-mempalace-bridge`), so there is no public
   package source to copy from. This snapshot is refreshed manually per release.
 
+## Runtime precedence (v1.8.5+)
+
+The baked links are created **early** in `entrypoint-user.sh` (before pi-deploy,
+to close a smoke readiness race) with a create-only-when-absent guard, and the
+skillset deploy runs **last** and treats them as foreign links. Through v1.8.4
+that combination meant the baked snapshot always won: an edit pushed to
+`skillset/skills/mempalace/SKILL.md` was invisible in every container until the
+next image build (measured on two hosts — live `md5 129bcc4752` vs baked
+`5236024fef`, new section absent). Editing those skills *appeared* to work.
+
+`devbox-skill-reconcile` now runs immediately after the skillset deploy and
+repoints the links for skills the **skillset owns**, listed one per line in
+`skillset-owned.txt`. Precedence, highest first:
+
+1. **user override** — a real directory, or a symlink pointing outside the baked
+   tree; never touched by anything
+2. **live skillset clone** — but only for names in `skillset-owned.txt`
+3. **baked snapshot** — everything else, and every skill when no skillset is
+   mounted
+
+Ownership is per-skill on purpose: `pi-extensions`' authoritative source is the
+package repo (copied over the snapshot at build), and `skillset` carries a
+downstream copy that can lag, so handing it to the clone would *regress* the
+skill. Only `mempalace` is skillset-owned today.
+
+Verify with `readlink -f ~/.agents/skills/<skill>` — not by reading the
+entrypoint. Smoke covers both directions (baked resolution with no skillset
+mounted, plus a fabricated-skillset run of the reconciler).
+
 ## Refreshing the snapshots
 
     cp <pi-extensions-pkg>/skill/SKILL.md                    pi-extensions/SKILL.md
@@ -50,4 +80,9 @@ also carries a copy, but it is a downstream duplicate and can lag), and
 `mempalace` from `skillset`. Copying `pi-extensions` from `skillset` would
 regress the snapshot to whatever that repo last mirrored.
 
-Snapshot provenance at last refresh: skillset `63f3bf5`, pi-extensions pkg `e73cb9f`.
+Snapshot provenance at last refresh: skillset `670f7f1`, pi-extensions pkg `e73cb9f`.
+
+When you refresh the `mempalace` snapshot, also update the phrase asserted by
+the "mempalace skill snapshot is current" smoke test — it deliberately pins the
+**newest** section, because the previous canary grepped a phrase that survived
+the very edit that made the snapshot stale, and so passed on stale content.

rootfs/usr/local/share/pi-devbox/skills/mempalace/SKILL.md

@@ -79,6 +79,79 @@ mempalace_search(query="<keywords>", wing="<project>")
 
 **Never guess about facts that might be in the palace.** Wrong is worse than slow. Say "let me check" and query.
 
+#### Search Before You *Probe*
+
+The rule above covers **questions**. This one covers **actions** — and it is the one
+that actually gets skipped, because mid-task the impulse is to go and *look* rather
+than to remember. The palace is a **fleet** record: another machine's agent has
+usually already paid the cost of discovering how this environment is wired, and its
+notes include the corrections that came afterwards, which a fresh probe cannot show
+you.
+
+**Before you SSH somewhere to find out how it is set up, enumerate infrastructure,
+or derive a deployment — search.** Concrete triggers, all meaning *search first*:
+
+- about to run `ssh <host> …`, `docker ps`, `systemctl list-units`, `ip addr` to
+  discover how something is deployed or connected
+- about to establish topology: which hosts/runners/services exist, where they live,
+  which of them can reach which
+- about to conclude "this isn't documented anywhere" or "there's no way to know"
+- about to assert an environment fact you learned **earlier in this same session**
+
+**That last trigger is the sharp edge.** A compacted session summary is lossy by
+design, and a belief you formed 40 turns ago may already be *retracted* in the
+palace by another machine. Trusting your own context over the shared record is how a
+withdrawn claim gets re-published as fact.
+
+Search broadly before narrowing — fleet knowledge often sits in another machine's
+wing, or inside a mined conversation, not where you would file it yourself:
+
+```
+mempalace_search(query="<topic> <host> <mechanism>")     # no wing filter first
+mempalace_search(query="…", wing="<likely-wing>")        # then narrow
+```
+
+Two or three searches cost seconds. Re-deriving infrastructure costs minutes **and
+can be wrong**: a probe shows one host's present state, while the palace records
+intent, history, and what was already disproved.
+
+> **Worked example (real, 2026-08-25).** An agent evaluating whether to add an ARM
+> CI runner probed hosts directly instead of searching. It concluded "the runner
+> lives on synlig" — there are **four** — and that "synlig is on the home LAN" —
+> it is an OpenStack VM with a public floating IP that cannot reach the home LAN at
+> all. Both facts were already in the palace, the second one as an **explicit
+> retraction of the very same mistake** made weeks earlier. The palace also held
+> the runner labels and the deliberate `capacity: 1` setting, which the probe never
+> revealed. Cost: a wrong recommendation written into the palace twice, then
+> corrected twice.
+
+
+**A search that comes back empty is not an answer — least of all about recent work.**
+Semantic search is weakest exactly where the fleet record is freshest: a drawer filed
+minutes ago is unranked against a keyword-shaped query, and the drawer you most need
+is *by construction* the newest one, because the other machine files its release,
+handoff and correction drawers at the **end** of its session. So a single miss proves
+nothing. **If the work is 0-2 days old and the first search looks stale or empty,
+enumerate before concluding:**
+
+```
+mempalace_list_drawers(wing="<wing>", since="<today>")   # or room=, or no filter
+mempalace_diary_read(agent_name="<you>", wing="<wing>")  # the other machine's handoff
+```
+
+Enumeration is exact where embeddings are probabilistic. Treat "I searched and found
+nothing" as a hypothesis you have not yet tested, and never as licence to go probing.
+
+> **Worked example (real, 2026-08-25, same fleet as above).** An agent asked to
+> orient on an in-flight release *did* search first — `"v1.8.6 release run 579
+> Docker Hub verification"` — and got back only v1.6.4 / v0.78.0 era hits, because
+> the release drawer it needed was **58 seconds old**. It accepted the miss and went
+> off to probe Docker Hub and the Gitea API. The user had to prompt "maybe there is a
+> note in mempalace"; `list_drawers(wing="pi-devbox", since=<today>)` then returned
+> the drawer immediately, along with the diary entry naming the exact open item. The
+> rule above was present and correct in this very file at the time — the failure was
+> not knowing to *retry differently* after a bad first hit.
+
 #### Mine New Projects
 
 When working on a new codebase for the first time:
@@ -275,18 +348,31 @@ Wings are top-level categories, typically one per project or domain:
 - Named after the project directory (e.g., `cli_utils`, `opencode_devbox`)
 - Agent diaries live in `wing_<agent_name>` (e.g., `wing_orchestrator`, `wing_pi`)
 
-#### Multi-harness palace
+#### Shared palace: multiple harnesses, and possibly multiple machines
 
-A single palace can be fed by multiple coding-agent harnesses. On this machine the palace is shared between **opencode** and **pi** (Mario Zechner's pi-coding-agent). Implications:
+A single palace can be fed by multiple coding-agent harnesses, and — when
+`MEMPALACE_REMOTE_URL` points at a central palace — by multiple *machines*. On
+this machine the palace is shared between **opencode** and **pi** (Mario
+Zechner's pi-coding-agent). Implications:
 
 - **`wing_conversations` mixes sources.** Both harnesses' session feeders write into the same wing. To tell them apart, look at the `source_file` metadata on each drawer:
   - `pi_<uuid>.jsonl` → pi session
   - `<slug>_ses_<id>.jsonl` → opencode session
   - The first chunk of each session also carries a `| source: opencode` or `| source: pi` marker in the synthetic header line.
 - **Other wings may belong to other harnesses.** For example `wing_pi` is pi's diary, not opencode's. Don't assume every diary entry was written by you — check `agent_name` on the entry.
-- **Session feeders run on different schedules.** Pi sessions are fed Tue 03:00, opencode sessions Mon 03:00. Recent sessions from either harness can lag the palace by up to a week, so absence-of-evidence in `wing_conversations` is not evidence-of-absence for recent work.
+- **Session feeders run on different schedules.** Pi sessions are fed Tue 03:00, opencode sessions Mon 03:00 (launchd `Weekday`: `0`/`7`=Sunday, `1`=Monday, `2`=Tuesday — misreading this by one day is easy). Recent sessions from either harness can lag the palace by up to a week, so absence-of-evidence in `wing_conversations` is not evidence-of-absence for recent work.
 - **Reading another harness's diary is useful.** When orienting after a gap, `mempalace_diary_read agent_name=pi` (or whichever sibling agent has been active) often gives a fresher picture than waiting for the conversations feeder to catch up.
 
+When the palace is **central** (shared across machines), these further things apply:
+
+- **Check which machine a conversation came from.** Transcripts are fed per device, so `source_path` reads `…/mempalace-feed/<device>/pi_<uuid>.jsonl` while the displayed `source_file` is only the basename. One search can legitimately return hits from several machines at once — look at the device segment before attributing a decision to *this* project.
+- **Provenance is stamped for you — leave it alone.** Drawers carry `device` and `agent_kind` metadata (plus `device_source`/`agent_kind_source` recording *how* each was determined, so an inference is never mistaken for a fact). You do **not** set these, and you no longer set `added_by` either: the pi bridge defaults the writer field to `<harness>@<device>` on `add_drawer`/`checkpoint`/`mine`/`event_append`/`artifact_put`, and prefixes diary entries with `HOST:<device>|`, from host-supplied `$MEMPALACE_PI_DEVICE`. RFC 001 §7.3.2 ranks "agent stamps it via a skill instruction" as the *worst possible* place for exactly the reason you would expect — it is per-call boilerplate that gets forgotten, and it did: the agent who wrote the previous version of this bullet then filed its own provenance drawer as `added_by=checkpoint`. Two things remain yours: pass `source_drawer_id` on `kg_add` (triples have no provenance field, so that pointer is the only path back to a device), and pass an explicit `added_by` **only** when deliberately filing on behalf of another device. Never invent values for `device`/`agent_kind`/`origin_device` — a fabricated value is worse than a blank, because it silently corrupts a future merge.
+- **Metadata is invisible to search — so check the text, not the fields.** `search` results are built from a fixed key list and `diary_read` returns content, so neither ever shows `device`/`added_by`. Only `mempalace_get_drawer` reveals them. This is why diary entries carry an in-text `HOST:<device>` marker: it is the only attribution a reader actually sees. **A diary entry with no `HOST:` marker predates the convention and may be from any machine — do not assume it is this one's history.**
+- **Mined drawers carry the MINE date, not the session date.** When history is imported, or re-mined on the palace host, `filed_at`/`created_at` is the *import* time — so sorting by them does not give chronological order. Real session time is recoverable from the UUIDv7 in `pi_<uuid>.jsonl`: the first 12 hex digits are milliseconds since the epoch (and UUIDv7 sorts lexicographically in time order, so a plain filename sort is already chronological). Agent-authored drawers and diaries have no such backdoor — for those `filed_at` is the only chronology, which is why it must never be restamped.
+- **Beware the timezone mismatch when you combine those.** Palace `filed_at`/`created_at` are naive timestamps in the palace host's local time, while a UUIDv7 decodes to UTC. Comparing them directly introduces a silent offset (2 h for a CEST host). Normalise before drawing conclusions about ordering.
+- **`agent_name` is not device-scoped.** `mempalace_diary_read(agent_name="pi")` returns *every* machine's `pi` diary, interleaved. Read the entry before assuming it is your own history — and note that a container cannot tell you which machine it is on (`hostname` is a docker hash, `$DEVBOX_HOST_ALIAS` is generic). `$MEMPALACE_PI_DEVICE` is the cheap answer; `ssh -F ~/.ssh-local/config host hostname` is the independent one.
+- **One writer, no queue.** A concurrent mine returns a structured `already-running` error rather than waiting its turn, and one large mine can make the palace unresponsive to every client for minutes. After another client's mine, call `mempalace_reconnect` to see the new drawers. A client-side timeout is not evidence of failure — verify before retrying, or you file a duplicate.
+
 ### Rooms
 
 Rooms are aspects within a wing:
@@ -318,9 +404,13 @@ Entity-relationship triples with temporal validity. Query with `mempalace_kg_que
 ## Anti-Patterns
 
 - **Don't guess when you can search.** If a question touches past work, search first.
+- **Don't probe what the fleet already knows.** Before SSH-ing into a host, enumerating infrastructure, or deriving how something is deployed, search the palace. A probe reveals one host's present state; the palace holds intent, history and prior corrections — including the ones that contradict what you are about to conclude.
+- **Don't trust this session's context over the palace.** A compacted summary is lossy, and another machine may have corrected the fact since. Verify load-bearing environment claims against the shared record before acting on them.
+- **Don't take one empty search as proof the palace is silent.** Fresh drawers rank worst, and the drawer that matters is usually the newest one. For anything 0-2 days old, enumerate with `mempalace_list_drawers(since=…)` and read the other machine's diary before you go and probe.
 - **Don't infer elapsed time from session or container boundaries.** A restart isn't a new day. Compare the actual timestamp (`timestamp` / `created_at`) against the current date/time before saying "yesterday", "last week", etc.
 - **Don't skip the diary.** A session without a diary entry is a session forgotten.
 - **Don't summarize drawer content.** File verbatim — the embedding model needs the original words.
 - **Don't mine .git directories or node_modules.** The CLI miner respects .gitignore by default.
 - **Don't create duplicate drawers.** Use `mempalace_check_duplicate` before adding manually.
 - **Don't treat the palace as a task list.** It's for knowledge and context, not todos.
+- **Don't invent provenance metadata, and don't hand-stamp it either.** An earlier version of this list told you to set `added_by="<harness>@<device>"` by hand; that instruction has been withdrawn, because RFC 001 §7.3.2 places provenance at the client/server boundary and the pi bridge now does it uniformly (see *Provenance is stamped for you* above). DO NOT invent values for the palace's own metadata fields (`device`, `agent_kind`, `origin_device`): those are stamped by infrastructure that also records *how* each was determined, and a fabricated value is worse than none because it silently corrupts a future merge. DO pass `source_drawer_id` on `kg_add`. And never put a machine name in a diary's `agent_name` — it becomes the wing name and hides your entries from `diary_read`.

rootfs/usr/local/share/pi-devbox/skills/pi-devbox-environment/SKILL.md

@@ -130,6 +130,36 @@ are "command not found" there — you must spell out the underlying command.
 If a command "works in my terminal but not when the agent runs it," this alias
 gap is the first thing to suspect.
 
+### A negative result is usually your own filter
+
+**When you are about to report that something is absent, unreachable, or not
+running, the filter you wrote is the prime suspect — not the thing.** This
+environment produces false negatives cheaply, and they are convincing because
+the command "succeeded". Three real instances from one session, all wrong, all
+mine:
+
+| Claim I made | Why it was false |
+|---|---|
+| "`tor-ms22` is not in the SSH config" | `grep … \| head -20` — the entry was at **line 454**. `~/.ssh/config` here is ~500 lines. |
+| "the Docker host has no `docker`" | non-interactive SSH `PATH` lacks `/usr/local/bin` (§2, §3). It was at `/usr/local/bin/docker`. |
+| "no ControlMaster is running" | pattern `ssh ` (trailing space) cannot match a master: those processes **rename themselves** to `ssh: <controlpath> [mux]`. |
+
+Habits that would have caught all three:
+
+```sh
+# don't cap the output of a search whose answer you don't already know
+grep -n -i -A6 'tor-ms22' ~/.ssh/config          # not | head -20
+
+# on the host, resolve the binary instead of trusting PATH
+ssh -F "$HOME/.ssh-local/config" mac 'command -v docker || ls /usr/local/bin/docker'
+
+# match a process's ACTUAL argv, not the name you imagine
+ps -eo pid,etime,args | grep -Ei 'mux|mosh|ssh'
+```
+
+A positive result needs no such scepticism — it carries its own evidence. Only
+absence has to be *earned*, so spend the extra command there.
+
 **`dscp`/`scp` with accented filenames on a macOS host.** macOS stores filenames
 in Unicode **NFD** (decomposed — e.g. `ä` is `a` + combining U+0308), while the
 string you type or paste is usually **NFC** (precomposed `ä`, U+00E4). The bytes
@@ -155,6 +185,16 @@ entrypoint's `setup-lan-access.sh` writes a **writable SSH sidecar** at
 - A `Host *` block redirecting `ControlPath` into the writable `~/.ssh-local/cm`
   (because `~/.ssh` is typically bind-mounted **read-only**, so a master socket
   can't be created under it), plus `Include ~/.ssh/config`.
+- A **trailing** `Host *` block supplying `ControlMaster auto` + `ControlPersist
+  10m` as a *default*. Position is the design: `ControlPath` sits **before** the
+  `Include` (an override — the value in your own config points at read-only
+  `~/.ssh` and cannot work here), while `ControlMaster` sits **after** it (a
+  default — an explicit per-host `ControlMaster no`/`auto` in your own config
+  still wins, because ssh_config is first-value-wins). **Force what is broken,
+  default what is merely absent.** Without this, a target whose entry never
+  mentioned `ControlMaster` opens a fresh TCP connection per `ssh` call, and an
+  agent making a dozen calls in a few minutes can trip fail2ban or a CGNAT
+  flow-table cap on the far end.
 - Aliases **`host` / `mac`** → `host.docker.internal` (user comes from
   `HOST_SSH_USER`) — i.e. SSH back into the Docker host.
 - On VM-backed hosts only: an **SSH-jump-via-host** block so the container can
@@ -169,12 +209,48 @@ ssh -F "$HOME/.ssh-local/config" mac 'hostname; whoami'      # reach the host
 ssh -F "$HOME/.ssh-local/config" <lan-peer> '…'             # reach a LAN peer (if configured)
 ```
 
+**Always go through the sidecar, never `-F ~/.ssh/config`.** This is the single
+easiest way to break SSH from inside the container, and the failure actively
+misleads: the read-only path makes the master socket uncreatable, so
+multiplexing appears *impossible* rather than misconfigured. What follows is a
+burst of fresh connections and, on a rate-limiting peer, a block that looks like
+an outage. The tell that it is rate-limiting and not an outage: HTTPS to the same
+estate keeps working while port 22 stops answering. (Recorded 2026-08-25 — an
+agent hit exactly this, concluded "ControlMaster is impossible here", disabled
+multiplexing, and filed that as a lesson. The sidecar had solved it since v1.4.)
+
+If every `ssh` to one host suddenly hangs, suspect a **stale master** — socket
+file present, daemon gone, typically after the host suspended or changed
+network. Check and clear it:
+
+```sh
+ssh -F "$HOME/.ssh-local/config" -O check <host>   # "Master running (pid=…)" or no master
+ssh -F "$HOME/.ssh-local/config" -O exit  <host>   # tear down a stale one
+```
+
 Two related mechanisms (don't reinvent them):
 
 - **ControlMaster multiplexing** is preconfigured (`/tmp/sshcm/`) to survive
   CGNAT per-destination flow caps on residential ISPs. If `~/.ssh/config` pins
   a `ControlPath` under the read-only `~/.ssh`, override with
   `-o ControlPath=none` (or use the sidecar, which already redirects it).
+- **A live master socket MASKS auth and config changes on the far end.** Once
+  `~/.ssh-local/cm/<user>@<host>:22` exists, later commands ride it and
+  authenticate **not at all** — so after editing remote `authorized_keys`,
+  `sshd_config`, host keys, or firewall rules, "it still works" proves nothing.
+  A corrupted `authorized_keys` then bites on the next *cold* connect, likely in
+  a future session with no memory of the edit. Prove it immediately instead:
+
+  ```sh
+  ssh -F "$HOME/.ssh-local/config" -O check <host>        # 'Master running (pid=N)'
+  ssh -F "$HOME/.ssh-local/config" -o ControlPath=none -o ControlMaster=no \
+      -o BatchMode=yes <host> 'echo COLD AUTH OK'
+  ```
+
+  To attribute a socket rather than guess whose it is: `ps -p <pid> -o
+  pid,ppid,lstart,etime,args`. A `mosh` the *user* started on the host
+  bootstraps with the **host's** `~/.ssh/cm/` and is invisible from in here;
+  only a mosh started *inside* the container shares `~/.ssh-local/cm/`.
 - **`pi --ssh <host>`** rewires pi's own read/write/edit/bash tools to run on a
   remote host; it has its own writable-socket fallback. See the `pi-extensions`
   skill for that path.
@@ -257,6 +333,10 @@ hardcode. Details are in the `mempalace` skill.
 - [ ] Writing durable output? → `/workspace`, not the ephemeral layer.
 - [ ] Using `dssh`/`dscp`/`ll` in the bash tool? → spell out the real command.
 - [ ] Assuming a hostname / domain / nameserver / host OS? → stop, detect it.
+- [ ] About to report something **absent / unreachable / not running**? → re-run
+      without your own `head`/pattern/`PATH` assumptions first (§2).
+- [ ] Changed remote `authorized_keys` / `sshd_config`? → prove it with a **cold**
+      connect; a live master socket hides breakage (§3).
 - [ ] "Resolves but won't connect"? → check route *and* DNS (§3 + §4).
 - [ ] `apt`/toolchain install? → tell the user it's ephemeral unless imaged.
 - [ ] Editing a skill? → `readlink -f ~/.agents/skills/<name>` first (§1).

rootfs/usr/local/share/pi-devbox/skills/skillset-owned.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,16 @@
+# Skills in this directory whose OWNER is the skillset repo.
+#
+# Read by devbox-skill-reconcile, which runs after the skillset deploy in
+# entrypoint-user.sh: for each name below, if the mounted skillset ships a
+# skill of that name, the baked link in ~/.agents/skills/ is repointed at the
+# live clone. The baked copy remains the fallback for containers started
+# WITHOUT a skillset mount, and a user override always wins over both.
+#
+# Add a name here ONLY if the skillset repo is the authoritative source (see
+# the ownership table in VENDORED.md). Do NOT add:
+#   pi-devbox-environment — authored in this repo; baked IS canonical
+#   pi-extensions         — owned by the pi-extensions package repo and copied
+#                           over the snapshot at build time; the skillset copy
+#                           is a downstream duplicate that can lag, so letting
+#                           it win would regress the skill.
+mempalace

scripts/smoke-test.sh

@@ -5,6 +5,7 @@
 #
 # Verifies:
 #   - pi binary present and (if EXPECTED_PI_VERSION set) matches CI's resolved version
+#   - mempalace core matches the audited pin (if EXPECTED_MEMPALACE_VERSION set)
 #   - new v1.0.0 base additions (pandoc, graphviz, imagemagick, yq, tealdeer)
 #   - typst PDF engine for pandoc (Unreleased) — `pandoc --pdf-engine=typst`
 #   - non-modal editors nano + micro (alongside nvim)
@@ -151,6 +152,33 @@ run "pi stage follows MEMPALACE_PALACE_PATH" '
         mempalace-pi-session --dry-run --reason smoke --sessions-dir "$(mktemp -d)" 2>&1) || true
   echo "$out" | grep -q "stage=/tmp/alt/.mempalace/pi-stage/"
 '
+# The feeder's --agent default is WHO a drawer is attributed to. mempalace core
+# records neither the machine nor the harness on a write, and one shared bearer
+# token means the server cannot tell clients apart, so toolkit c64ffa1 changed
+# this default from $USER to pi@$MEMPALACE_PI_DEVICE — the one string that makes
+# a write attributable to both. Nothing ever PRINTED the resolved value (the
+# banner shows mode= and stage= only), so an image built from a pre-c64ffa1
+# toolkit ref would ship unattributed writes with every check still green.
+#
+# `--help` assigns AGENT (script top) before it parses args, then exits 0 with
+# no side effects — so `bash -x` observes the REAL resolution, env interpolation
+# and fallback included, rather than grepping the source for a literal line that
+# any reformat would break. Two-sided on purpose: device set => pi@<device>;
+# device UNSET => must not be pi@anything. The second half is what fails against
+# the old unconditional $USER default, which ignored the device entirely.
+#
+# Probes the PATH entry (a symlink into the /opt clone) rather than that clone
+# path directly: this is the invocation the systemd/launchd timers and
+# entrypoint-user.sh actually use, so it is the default that reaches the palace.
+run "feeder resolves --agent to pi@<device> (drawer attribution)" '
+  f=$(command -v mempalace-pi-session) || { echo "feeder not on PATH" >&2; exit 1; }
+  with=$(MEMPALACE_PI_DEVICE=smoke-device bash -x $f --help 2>&1 | sed -n "s/^+* *AGENT=//p" | tail -n1)
+  without=$(env -u MEMPALACE_PI_DEVICE bash -x $f --help 2>&1 | sed -n "s/^+* *AGENT=//p" | tail -n1)
+  echo "resolved with-device=[$with] without-device=[$without]" >&2
+  [ "$with" = "pi@smoke-device" ] || exit 1
+  case "$without" in pi@*) exit 1 ;; esac
+  echo ok
+'
 # Regression guard for the pi transcript exporter. If pi ever changes its
 # session JSONL shape, the exporter stops recognising sessions and the palace
 # silently gets nothing (or, worse, raw JSON chunked as prose). Feed it a
@@ -235,6 +263,16 @@ run "image-baked mempalace fallback skill" \
 # baked copy must be the fresh package copy (Option 1), not the stale snapshot.
 run "pi-extensions skill refreshed from package when present" \
     "if [ -f /opt/pi-extensions/skill/SKILL.md ]; then cmp -s /opt/pi-extensions/skill/SKILL.md /usr/local/share/pi-devbox/skills/pi-extensions/SKILL.md; else true; fi"
+# Runtime ownership handover (v1.8.5): the baked links are a FALLBACK, and
+# skillset-OWNED skills must be repointed at the live clone when one is mounted.
+# The list is data, so assert its content, not just its presence: mempalace in,
+# pi-extensions deliberately out (its skillset copy is a lagging duplicate).
+run "devbox-skill-reconcile helper present + executable" \
+    "test -x /usr/local/bin/devbox-skill-reconcile"
+run "skillset-owned list ships and names mempalace" \
+    "grep -qx 'mempalace' /usr/local/share/pi-devbox/skills/skillset-owned.txt"
+run "skillset-owned list excludes pi-extensions (ownership)" \
+    "! grep -qx 'pi-extensions' /usr/local/share/pi-devbox/skills/skillset-owned.txt"
 
 # ── tmux 0-indexing (required for pi-studio variants) ─────────────────
 echo ""
@@ -253,6 +291,26 @@ run "pi-fork clone + node_modules" \
     "test -f /opt/pi-fork/package.json && test -d /opt/pi-fork/node_modules"
 run "pi-observational-memory clone + node_modules" \
     "test -f /opt/pi-observational-memory/package.json && test -d /opt/pi-observational-memory/node_modules"
+# ...and that the clone carries the AUTH FIX, not merely that it exists. om's
+# pre-flight hasUsableAuth() check silently disabled `recall` for ~8 weeks once
+# pi moved to request-time SigV4 signing and stopped exposing a static Bedrock
+# key; upstream fixed it in ce9fc98, adopted in v1.8.4. PI_OBSMEM_REF tracks
+# master, so an upstream revert or force-push would ship a dead `recall` with
+# the clone assertion above still green — the exact gap flagged as open in the
+# v1.8.5 changelog.
+#
+# Pin the markers to src/runtime.ts, the fix SITE, rather than grepping the
+# repo: two of these three strings also appear under tests/, so a repo-wide
+# grep stays green with runtime.ts itself reverted. That is a false green of the
+# same family as the old skill-snapshot canary.
+run "pi-observational-memory carries the ce9fc98 auth fix (recall stays alive)" '
+  f=/opt/pi-observational-memory/src/runtime.ts
+  test -f "$f" || { echo "fix site missing: $f" >&2; exit 1; }
+  for m in availability_recheck providerCredentialConfigured hasConfiguredAuth; do
+    grep -q "$m" "$f" || { echo "marker absent from runtime.ts: $m" >&2; exit 1; }
+  done
+  echo ok
+'
 # pi-atelier: deliberately NO node_modules assertion, unlike its siblings —
 # it declares zero runtime dependencies (only peerDeps, satisfied by the baked
 # pi) and has no build step, so Dockerfile.variant skips `npm install` for it.
@@ -291,24 +349,118 @@ echo ""
 echo "── Build provenance ──"
 run "/etc/pi-devbox/build-manifest.json present" \
     "test -f /etc/pi-devbox/build-manifest.json"
-run_expect "manifest records pi-extensions component" \
-    "cat /etc/pi-devbox/build-manifest.json" '"pi-extensions"'
-run_expect "manifest records pi-atelier" \
-    "cat /etc/pi-devbox/build-manifest.json" '"pi-atelier"'
-run_expect "manifest records pi_version" \
-    "cat /etc/pi-devbox/build-manifest.json" '"pi_version"'
+# These next checks replace three that grepped the manifest for the FIELD NAME
+# and never looked at the value:
+#
+#     run_expect "manifest records pi_version" "cat …manifest.json" '"pi_version"'
+#
+# which passes on {"pi_version": ""} and on {"pi_version": null}. The tell was
+# visible in its own passing output — `✅ manifest records pi_version (got
+# "pi_version")` echoes the key back as the thing it claims to have found.
+# Two failure modes were therefore invisible: a key that survives with an empty
+# or garbage value, and a key that vanishes from the manifest while every
+# remaining value still looks fine.
+#
+# Those two need SEPARATE assertions, and the reason is a trap worth keeping in
+# writing: an "every component value is a valid SHA" loop passes VACUOUSLY on
+# components:{} — jq's all() over an empty list is true — so the value check
+# alone would go green on a manifest that lost every component. Mutation-tested
+# 2026-08-25 across nine fabricated manifests (empty map, deleted key, "",
+# null, "unknown", 12-hex truncation, 40 non-hex chars, legit null pi-studio).
+run "manifest declares every required component key" '
+  req="pi-toolkit pi-extensions pi-fork pi-observational-memory pi-atelier mempalace-toolkit pi-studio"
+  for k in $req; do
+    jq -e --arg k "$k" "(.components|has(\$k))" /etc/pi-devbox/build-manifest.json >/dev/null \
+      || { echo "manifest lost component key: $k" >&2; exit 1; }
+  done
+'
+# Subsumes the old `! grep -q \"unknown\"` check ("unknown" is not 40-hex), and
+# also catches "", null and truncated SHAs, which that grep let through. null is
+# legitimate for pi-studio alone: the non-studio variant has no such clone.
+run "manifest component values are resolved 40-hex commits" '
+  jq -e "
+    .components
+    | to_entries
+    | all(if .key == \"pi-studio\" and .value == null then true
+           else (.value|type) == \"string\" and (.value|test(\"^[0-9a-f]{40}\$\")) end)
+  " /etc/pi-devbox/build-manifest.json >/dev/null
+'
+# pi_version against ground truth, same shape as the mempalace check below.
+# Chains with the "pi version matches build arg" assertion earlier in this file:
+# together they tie build arg -> installed binary -> recorded manifest, so a
+# manifest written from a stale variable cannot pass by agreeing with itself.
+run "manifest pi_version matches the installed pi" '
+  m=$(jq -r ".pi_version // empty" /etc/pi-devbox/build-manifest.json)
+  b=$(pi --version 2>/dev/null | head -n1 | tr -d "\r")
+  echo "manifest=[$m] installed=[$b]" >&2
+  [ -n "$m" ] && [ "$m" = "$b" ]
+'
+# Top-level provenance fields: assert the SHAPE of each value, and only when the
+# field is populated. source_revision and build_date legitimately default to
+# empty (Dockerfile.variant ARGs) on a plain local `docker build`, so demanding
+# them would fail honest local smoke runs; a populated-but-malformed value is
+# the actual defect. release_tag defaults to "dev", so empty means a broken write.
+run "manifest top-level fields are well-formed, not merely present" '
+  j=/etc/pi-devbox/build-manifest.json
+  t=$(jq -r ".release_tag // empty" $j)
+  r=$(jq -r ".source_revision // empty" $j)
+  d=$(jq -r ".build_date // empty" $j)
+  echo "release_tag=[$t] source_revision=[$r] build_date=[$d]" >&2
+  [ -n "$t" ] || { echo "release_tag empty (ARG default is dev)" >&2; exit 1; }
+  if [ -n "$r" ]; then
+    printf "%s" "$r" | grep -qxE "[0-9a-f]{40}" || { echo "source_revision not a 40-hex commit" >&2; exit 1; }
+  fi
+  if [ -n "$d" ]; then
+    printf "%s" "$d" | grep -qE "^[0-9]{4}-[0-9]{2}-[0-9]{2}T" || { echo "build_date not ISO-8601" >&2; exit 1; }
+  fi
+'
+# mempalace CORE was absent from the manifest through v1.8.5: the toolkit SHA
+# was recorded but the palace version behind the MCP tools was not, so a palace
+# bug could not be correlated to an image version. Assert the field exists AND
+# equals the installed binary — recording it from ARG MEMPALACE_VERSION instead
+# would look identical here yet drift silently the first time an install
+# resolved to something other than the pin, which is the whole reason this file
+# is built from ground truth. `// empty` matters: jq -r prints the 4-char
+# string "null" for a JSON null, which would satisfy a naive -n test.
+run "manifest mempalace_version matches the installed core" '
+  m=$(jq -r ".mempalace_version // empty" /etc/pi-devbox/build-manifest.json)
+  b=$(mempalace --version 2>/dev/null | head -n1 | tr -d "\r"); b=${b##* }
+  echo "manifest=[$m] installed=[$b]" >&2
+  [ -n "$m" ] && [ "$m" = "$b" ]
+'
+# ... and, when CI supplies it, that the installed core is the version CI
+# actually AUDITED (published + not yanked on PyPI, in resolve-versions). This
+# does NOT duplicate the check above, which compares two properties of one
+# image and so cannot notice that BOTH are the wrong version. The live failure
+# mode it covers: the variant builds `FROM` a base tag chosen by base-decide's
+# content hash, so a bug in that hashing (the reason scripts/check-base-hash.sh
+# exists) could reuse a cached base built from an OLDER MEMPALACE_VERSION pin —
+# internally consistent, silently stale, invisible to every other assertion.
+if [ -n "${EXPECTED_MEMPALACE_VERSION:-}" ]; then
+  run "installed mempalace matches CI's audited pin (${EXPECTED_MEMPALACE_VERSION})" "
+    b=\$(mempalace --version 2>/dev/null | head -n1 | tr -d '\r'); b=\${b##* }
+    echo \"installed=[\$b] audited_pin=[${EXPECTED_MEMPALACE_VERSION}]\" >&2
+    [ \"\$b\" = \"${EXPECTED_MEMPALACE_VERSION}\" ]
+  "
+fi
 # Every component must be a resolved commit (or null for pi-studio in the
-# non-studio variant) — 'unknown' means a clone silently failed to resolve.
-run "manifest has no unresolved ('unknown') components" \
-    "! grep -q '\"unknown\"' /etc/pi-devbox/build-manifest.json"
-# pi-devbox-version wraps the manifest into a human-first command (this
-# PR); verify the binary is present, executable, and both output modes work.
+# non-studio variant) — now enforced by the 40-hex value check above, which
+# strictly subsumes the old whole-file grep for '"unknown"'. Only rev() ever
+# emits "unknown" and rev() feeds components only, so nothing is lost.
+# pi-devbox-version wraps the manifest into a human-first command; verify the
+# binary is present, executable, and that all three output modes work.
 run "pi-devbox-version binary present + executable" \
     "test -x /usr/local/bin/pi-devbox-version"
 run_expect "pi-devbox-version human output shows release tag" \
     "pi-devbox-version" "pi-devbox "
-run_expect "pi-devbox-version --json round-trips the manifest" \
-    "pi-devbox-version --json" '"release_tag"'
+# --json is a verbatim `cat` of the manifest, so "round-trips" is assertable
+# literally. The old form grepped the output for the string "release_tag" — the
+# key name again — which would pass on a truncated or re-serialised dump.
+run "pi-devbox-version --json round-trips the manifest byte-for-byte" '
+  a=$(cat /etc/pi-devbox/build-manifest.json)
+  b=$(pi-devbox-version --json)
+  [ "$a" = "$b" ] || { echo "--json output differs from the manifest on disk" >&2; exit 1; }
+'
 run_expect "pi-devbox-version --quiet is a compact one-liner" \
     "pi-devbox-version --quiet | wc -l" "1"
 # OCI labels live in the image config, not the container fs — inspect them
@@ -368,6 +520,68 @@ exec_test "settings.json bootstrapped"             'test -f $HOME/.pi/agent/sett
 exec_test "pi-devbox-environment skill linked"     'test -L $HOME/.agents/skills/pi-devbox-environment && test -f $HOME/.agents/skills/pi-devbox-environment/SKILL.md && echo ok'
 exec_test "pi-extensions skill linked (fallback)"  'test -L $HOME/.agents/skills/pi-extensions && test -f $HOME/.agents/skills/pi-extensions/SKILL.md && echo ok'
 exec_test "mempalace skill linked (fallback)"      'test -L $HOME/.agents/skills/mempalace && test -f $HOME/.agents/skills/mempalace/SKILL.md && echo ok'
+# The vendored mempalace snapshot is refreshed MANUALLY per release (see
+# rootfs/usr/local/share/pi-devbox/skills/VENDORED.md). Through v1.8.4 it also
+# silently SHADOWED the live skillset copy, so staleness was invisible — and the
+# canary that was supposed to catch it could not: it grepped "Shared palace:
+# multiple harnesses", a phrase present in BOTH the stale and the fresh copy.
+# A snapshot canary must pin the NEWEST section, so update this string whenever
+# the snapshot is refreshed — that is the point of it.
+#
+# v1.8.7: this fired for real, and on the release that changed the snapshot. The
+# pinned phrase was "Attribute what you file yourself", the heading of the
+# instruction telling agents to hand-stamp added_by — which that same release
+# WITHDREW (RFC 001 §7.3.2 ranks agent-side stamping worst-possible; the bridge
+# now does it). So the canary correctly reported "snapshot changed, expectation
+# did not", and blocked publication of an otherwise-green build (81 passed, 1
+# failed, twice). Two lessons kept in the assertion itself:
+#   * it is now BIDIRECTIONAL — the new phrase must be present AND the withdrawn
+#     one absent, so a re-vendored stale snapshot fails just as loudly as a
+#     forgotten bump. A one-way canary only catches half the drift.
+#   * a phrase canary can only ever detect "older than what I remembered to pin",
+#     never "older than skillset main". The real fix is a CI job diffing this
+#     file against the skillset repo — see the Unreleased changelog note.
+exec_test "mempalace skill snapshot is current"    'f=$HOME/.agents/skills/mempalace/SKILL.md; grep -q "Provenance is stamped for you" "$f" && ! grep -q "Attribute what you file yourself" "$f" && echo ok'
+# Link TARGETS, not just link existence: with no skillset mounted (as here) the
+# baked tree must be what resolves, for all three vendored skills.
+exec_test "vendored skills resolve to the baked tree (no skillset mounted)" \
+    'for s in mempalace pi-extensions pi-devbox-environment; do
+       case "$(readlink -f $HOME/.agents/skills/$s)" in
+         /usr/local/share/pi-devbox/skills/$s) ;;
+         *) echo "$s resolves to $(readlink -f $HOME/.agents/skills/$s)" >&2; exit 1 ;;
+       esac
+     done; echo ok'
+# The handover path itself. CI never mounts a skillset, so without this the
+# v1.8.5 fix would ship untested: fabricate a skillset + a skills dir holding
+# baked-style links, run the reconciler, and assert all three outcomes —
+# owned skill repointed, unowned skill left baked, user override untouched.
+exec_test "reconciler: owned skill handed to live clone, others untouched" \
+    'set -e; t=$(mktemp -d); mkdir -p $t/ss/skills/mempalace $t/ss/skills/pi-extensions $t/skills
+     echo LIVE > $t/ss/skills/mempalace/SKILL.md; echo LIVE > $t/ss/skills/pi-extensions/SKILL.md
+     ln -s /usr/local/share/pi-devbox/skills/mempalace     $t/skills/mempalace
+     ln -s /usr/local/share/pi-devbox/skills/pi-extensions $t/skills/pi-extensions
+     mkdir -p $t/skills/mine; echo MINE > $t/skills/mine/SKILL.md
+     devbox-skill-reconcile $t/ss $t/skills >/dev/null
+     devbox-skill-reconcile $t/ss $t/skills >/dev/null   # idempotent
+     [ "$(readlink $t/skills/mempalace)" = "$t/ss/skills/mempalace" ] || { echo "owned skill NOT repointed" >&2; exit 1; }
+     [ "$(readlink $t/skills/pi-extensions)" = /usr/local/share/pi-devbox/skills/pi-extensions ] || { echo "unowned skill was repointed" >&2; exit 1; }
+     [ "$(cat $t/skills/mine/SKILL.md)" = MINE ] || { echo "user override clobbered" >&2; exit 1; }
+     rm -rf $t; echo ok'
+# The case above cannot fail if the reconciler stops checking WHERE a link
+# points — a mutation test showed all three of its assertions still passing with
+# that guard deleted, which is the same false-green shape as the old snapshot
+# canary. This one discriminates: an OWNED name (so it is considered) whose link
+# is a user override pointing outside the baked tree (so it must be left alone).
+exec_test "reconciler: user override on an owned name is left alone" \
+    'set -e; t=$(mktemp -d); mkdir -p $t/ss/skills/mempalace $t/skills $t/mine-skill
+     echo LIVE > $t/ss/skills/mempalace/SKILL.md; echo USERLINK > $t/mine-skill/SKILL.md
+     ln -sfn $t/mine-skill $t/skills/mempalace
+     devbox-skill-reconcile $t/ss $t/skills >/dev/null
+     [ "$(cat $t/skills/mempalace/SKILL.md)" = USERLINK ] || { echo "user symlink override clobbered" >&2; exit 1; }
+     rm -rf $t; echo ok'
+# mempalace-census gained a /usr/local/bin symlink in v1.8.3; its three siblings
+# had one since they were added, so this asserts the set stays complete.
+exec_test "mempalace-census on PATH"               'command -v mempalace-census >/dev/null && mempalace-census --help >/dev/null && echo ok'
 
 # pi-fork + pi-observational-memory are registered by entrypoint-user.sh via
 # `pi install /opt/<pkg>`, which runs slightly after the keybindings marker.