loomctl external: list, add, check — and its first run found two changed documents

Go, standard library only, with git shelled out for list alone. list enumerates a
publisher's .loom/published by partial clone and ls-tree; add fetches one document,
writes it under .loom/externals and records the resolved origin and the publisher's
ETag in .loom/externals/.locks; check asks conditionally and reports.

The first real run did what the tool exists for. All eight documents adopted by
hand before it existed reported unlocked — the tool refuses to invent a lock by
adopting whatever the remote currently serves, since that would assert the local
copy is the one being served, which is the thing it was about to check. Locking
them fetched two that had moved: bedrock/starting.md, which now says the worked
example is private and will not link to something you cannot fetch, and cart.md,
which went to v1.

cart v1 changes a role we cast: a cart is not committed, because a committed cart
grows a third file by itself — version control does not require anybody to ask, so
the two-file rule is never invoked — and because ignored, gone means gone. Adds
.loom/cart/ to .gitignore and supersedes the isolation entry rather than editing
it. osprey and marmalade are already in history and are left there: rewriting to
honour a rule adopted afterwards costs more than it buys.

Records the conflict this creates rather than settling it: the annotation protocol
here says commit before dissolving because git is the only archive, and an ignored
cart has no archive, so dissolving would destroy the annotations outright.

Credentials are read-only, per host, and passed to git through the environment
rather than argv, because argv is visible to every process on the machine.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_018UTxuSizozEA8yDitPuris
This commit is contained in:
2026-09-07 14:48:29 -04:00
co-authored by Claude Opus 5
parent f0b3269610
commit 1543df0a0c
12 changed files with 897 additions and 7 deletions
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@@ -518,3 +518,55 @@ the cart that named it.*
**Recorded rather than fixed.** *The role still works; its justification was
written for a case that has not yet occurred.* **If a round ever does produce code
while it is open, nothing here changes.**
## 2026-09-07 — `loomctl external` exists, and its first run reconciled two documents `marmalade`
**Built: `list`, `add`, `check`.** *Go, no dependencies outside the standard
library, `git` shelled out for `list` only.*
**The first real run did the thing the tool is for.** *Eight documents were
adopted by hand before it existed; `check` reported all eight `unlocked`, and
`add` locked them* — **and two came back changed**, `bedrock/starting.md` *and*
`cart/cart.md`. **Neither change would have been noticed by anybody.**
**Believed to advance:** *the lock is what makes `check` possible at all.* **With
no lock there is nothing to compare and the only honest report is `unlocked`** —
*and the tool refuses to invent one by adopting whatever the remote currently
serves.*
**Belief that could be shown wrong:** *that a per-person path derived from the URL
is good enough.* **`<host>/<owner>/<repo>/<name>.md` guesses that the first two
path segments name an owner and a repository**, *which is true of gitea, GitHub and
GitLab and is not a rule.* **`--path` exists for when it is wrong.**
## 2026-09-07 — supersedes the isolation role: a cart is not committed `marmalade`
**`cart` is now `v1` and it changed the thing we cast a role on.**
> **So the cart is not committed.** *It lives in the working tree of the machine
> the two presences share, and `.loom/cart/` is ignored by version control.*
**The reason is not tidiness:** *a committed cart grows a third file by itself.*
**The two-file rule defends against somebody asking for one; version control does
not require anybody to ask** — *anyone who can clone can add a third, and the
agreement's test is never invoked because nobody had the conversation.*
**And it is what makes a round end.** *Committed, a cart is gone from the tree and
permanent in history* — **so "gone" means "no longer live" and the negotiation
stays quotable forever.** *Ignored, gone means gone.*
**So `.loom/cart/` is now in `.gitignore`.** *The isolation role entry above
assumed the cart lived on the default branch; **the cart lives on no branch.***
*What survives of that entry is the other half: work is isolated on a branch named
for the round that authorised it.*
**Not undone: `osprey` and `marmalade` are already in this repository's history.**
*Rewriting history to honour a rule adopted afterwards would cost more than it
buys*, **and the two rounds are quotable forever, which is exactly what `v1` says
not to want.** *Recorded rather than repaired.*
**Belief that could be shown wrong, and it is a real conflict:** *the annotation
protocol this repository works under says **commit before dissolving, git is the
only archive of the conversation.*** **An ignored cart has no archive**, so
dissolving a notes file destroys the annotations outright. *One of the two is
wrong and it is not ours to settle.*
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@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
# loomctl locks — one record per adopted document.
# path<TAB>url<TAB>etag The url is resolved: a short form would follow
# whatever the default branch is at the time you ask.
git.hypertheory-labs.dev/loom/annotating/annotating.md https://git.hypertheory-labs.dev/loom/annotating/raw/branch/main/.loom/published/annotating.md "9b1f7e6ca92f2339b2d433686c27845362944bdb"
git.hypertheory-labs.dev/loom/bedrock/loom-directory.md https://git.hypertheory-labs.dev/loom/bedrock/raw/branch/main/.loom/published/loom-directory.md "ee0f49cb900c0812678061971194325d9cba366a"
git.hypertheory-labs.dev/loom/bedrock/publication.md https://git.hypertheory-labs.dev/loom/bedrock/raw/branch/main/.loom/published/publication.md "eb0cb63629a36b056f215dfbe24567d1918cec38"
git.hypertheory-labs.dev/loom/bedrock/recording-decisions.md https://git.hypertheory-labs.dev/loom/bedrock/raw/branch/main/.loom/published/recording-decisions.md "970d4b4da76aac99c9b1f1b6580ec20daa42e329"
git.hypertheory-labs.dev/loom/bedrock/sibling-facets.md https://git.hypertheory-labs.dev/loom/bedrock/raw/branch/main/.loom/published/sibling-facets.md "a46446a34ccb8bfc533d3cce19f4c88548c4fa04"
git.hypertheory-labs.dev/loom/bedrock/starting.md https://git.hypertheory-labs.dev/loom/bedrock/raw/branch/main/.loom/published/starting.md "7d997a30248a88c90b23f2f9453d7cfceb03848e"
git.hypertheory-labs.dev/loom/cart/cart.md https://git.hypertheory-labs.dev/loom/cart/raw/branch/main/.loom/published/cart.md "49fc852bdd280293f0f5e0050034e3b89ff7255e"
git.hypertheory-labs.dev/loom/externals/externals.md https://git.hypertheory-labs.dev/loom/externals/raw/branch/main/.loom/published/externals.md "9641f0e77b6f5c0161fa7593805277ba0c1e6176"
@@ -60,9 +60,13 @@ what they came for.*
## Look at one instead of reading this
**[`jeffry/homelab-cluster`](https://git.hypertheory-labs.dev/jeffry/homelab-cluster)**
— *six documents, one gap, no decomposition, and a `README` that says what the
root documents are for and what these are for.*
**There is a worked example — six documents, one gap, no decomposition — and it
is private.**
**It is a better answer than this page**, and if the two ever disagree, it is
right.
*It describes a cluster in enough detail to be a target list, so it is not
published, and **this page will not link you to something you cannot fetch.***
**If you have access, ask for it by name; if you do not, the two questions at the
top are the whole of it.**
> **A public page naming a private thing as its canonical answer is worse than no
> example**, and this page did exactly that until somebody measured it.
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@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
# Agreement — the cart
**v0.** Depends on `annotating/v0`.
**v1.** Depends on `annotating/v0`.
**How two parties work out what something means before one of them changes it.**
@@ -104,9 +104,54 @@ already rejected, and the rejection is gone because it lived in an annotation
that died with the round.
**A decline needs no file of its own.** It is an entry in whatever durable record
you keep, and **it should say what you believed, not just what you chose** — only
you keep**which must outlive the cart**, *and therefore cannot be inside it* and **it should say what you believed, not just what you chose** — only
a belief can later be shown wrong.
## The cart is local, and that is what keeps it to two files
**A cart is two developers working side by side.** *Everything else — the wider
team, the people who need to know, the thing that has to be tracked — is issues,
chat, whatever you already have.* **This is not that channel and it does not scale
into one.**
> **So the cart is not committed.** *It lives in the working tree of the machine
> the two presences share, and `.loom/cart/` is ignored by version control.*
**The reason is not tidiness. A committed cart grows a third file by itself.**
*The rule above defends against somebody asking for one; **version control does
not require anybody to ask.*** *Anyone who can clone can add `joe-rose.md`, and
then `sue-rose.md`, and the agreement's defence — **what happens to this file when
the person changes?** — is never invoked, because nobody ever had the
conversation.*
**This is also what makes a round actually end.** *Committed, a cart is gone from
the tree and permanent in history — **so "gone" means "no longer live" and
negotiation stays quotable forever.*** **Ignored, gone means gone**, which is what
the round dying was for.
*The cost, stated: **two presences who do not share a filesystem cannot use a
cart.*** *That is a real limit and it is the right one — if you need a medium
between machines, you need the other channel, and reaching for a cart there is
how it becomes a chat log.*
## What is not yet a decision goes in the write-ahead log
**A round produces things that are neither questions nor decisions:** *something
observed, something that may turn out to be noise, something you would kick
yourself for losing and cannot yet justify writing down.*
**`event-log.wal.md`, in the cart.** *Findings, not decisions.* **Nothing in it is
durable and nothing in it has been decided.**
**At conversion, each entry either becomes an entry in the durable record or is
discarded.** *Same two exits as a polad, and for the same reason: **conversion is
when you know most about it.***
> **Write the reason it is not yet an entry.** *An observation you cannot justify
> promoting is worth keeping; **one you have not said why you are hesitant about
> will be promoted by whoever finds it, on the strength of it having been written
> down.***
## Where a cart lives, and the shelf
**A fixed path, and at most two things in it:**