The logstream has carried cross-machine work since 2026-08-18 — patch handoff,
review, a v1->v2 supersede — and nothing in this repo said it existed. That gap
had a measurable cost this morning: another host addressed a retraction to
pi@tor-ms22 by name and it was read only because the human said "read the
logstream", while the agent was actively rebuilding the thing it warned about.
Split by what each document is authoritative for, so there is one copy of each
claim rather than three that drift:
- README § Cross-machine agent coordination — what the CONTAINER needs.
MEMPALACE_REMOTE_URL selects the shared palace; MEMPALACE_PI_DEVICE is what
makes this machine reachable, because where every host is a thin client of one
palace the stamped agent name is the only thing that distinguishes them. Stated
as a rule with teeth: set both or neither, since a container missing the device
var can read the log but is addressable by nobody.
- AGENTS.md release checklist step 2 — the vendored-snapshot refresh, as a
MECHANISM in the document a releasing agent actually reads, not a comment
hoping to be noticed. It says the refresh costs a base rebuild, that skipping
it is legitimate (every enrolled host reads its live clone), and that skipping
it silently is not.
- CHANGELOG — the three-way split itself, plus the measurement that shaped the
ack contract: unfiltered, the mailbox returned 5 events, 4 of them finished
broadcasts from eight days earlier; with status="open", exactly the 1 that
needed an answer.
Norms live in the skillset skill (82a8d3c, already live on every host that mounts
the skillset — no rebuild) and mechanism in mempalace-toolkit's
extensions/pi/README.md (e70bef2, which also documents the edge stamper that
553d8657 shipped undocumented). Deliberately NOT duplicated here.
Consequence recorded rather than hidden: the skill edit lands in the skillset, so
this repo's SKILLSET_SNAPSHOT_REF now honestly reports itself behind, and
--check exits 1 with "has moved to 82a8d3c; the snapshot describes the older
c04cd15". That message is also fixed in this commit — it previously blamed "the
working tree" even when the tree was clean and only the ref had moved, which is
the same defect class as a canary pinned to a phrase the release deleted: a
message that names the wrong cause. Now distinguishes moved-HEAD from dirty-tree,
verified against both plus the in-sync case.
joakimp
49a6534093