open-standards/joule-code/CHANGELOG.md

Changelog

All notable changes to the Joule Code standard are recorded here. The format follows the spirit of Keep a Changelog; the standard versions independently of its siblings (tags joule-code-vX.Y.Z).

[Unreleased]

Added

• §5.1 Grant-gated consultation (OPTIONAL) — the JCP binding: tier as granted action (l0…l4), energy class as chained budget debit, denial as fallthrough, every consultation sealed as a chained JCR-1 receipt. Reference binding: the joule-code-jcp crate (JcpGate::wrap over any Stage); no l4 in the chain → no remote frontier agent, structurally. Conformance gains class C5 with a published vector file (gated_cascade_vectors.json, fixed fixture identities, deterministic end to end) run by the harness against the real jcp runtime alongside C1–C4.

• joule-code-cascade ships a reference L0 (Cache) stage: a content-addressed cache of resolved coding operations keyed by (prior, intent). A hit closes the request at L0 (picojoule class) without consulting any higher tier — the first concrete cascade stage, making stop-at-first-close demonstrable in the reference library. A third party may use it or substitute its own.

• joule-code-cascade ships a generic FnStage: any tier (L1 Lawful, L2 Embed, L3 Model) can be expressed by supplying a resolver closure, so a consumer binds the JouleClaw agent schema — or any other runtime/model — to the cascade without this crate depending on it. (A test wires an L3 model stage behind an empty L0 and confirms it closes at L3.)

• examples/l3-jouleclaw/ — a consumer binding showing JouleClaw's L3 (Model) tier wired into the cascade: a jouleclaw_llm_cheap::LlmBackend behind a FnStage(L3) that generates a CodingOp + joules-class receipt. Three backends share the slot: EchoBackend (model-free, for the unit tests); JouleclawRuntimeBackend, which runs a GGUF model in-process on JouleClaw's own from-scratch tensor runtime (jouleclaw-runtime over jouleclaw-loader-gguf and the reference/Apple kernel backends — no llama.cpp, no FFI); and LlamaCompletionBackend, which shells out to llama.cpp. The run binary generates with a local model (in-process runtime by default; JOULE_CODE_L3_ENGINE=llama for the shell-out), content-addresses the result as a CodingOp, and meters host energy over the inference for the receipt (honest provenance: HwShunt on RAPL/NVML, Estimator on Apple). Verified live: the llama.cpp path against a local 350M GGUF, and the in-process from-scratch runtime against ternary-bonsai-1.7b-q2_0 (qwen3, Q2_0) — real text, a real op_id, the cascade closing at L3 (tests/runtime_l3.rs, opt-in via --ignored). Standalone workspace, so the standard's lib stays free of a JouleClaw dependency; jouleclaw_dispatch::ModelBank selects the cheapest capable backend in production.

• joule-code-collab (Research) lands the federated-collaboration interface (Collab trait: submit / committed / membership), a single-node reference cluster (LocalCluster), and the BFT consensus core (LockstepCluster): a multi-node lockstep deterministic simulation with BFT supermajority commit — an op commits only when ≥2f+1 of n=3f+1 honest nodes independently validate it, and committed ops are op_id-ordered so every honest node derives a byte-identical log. Tested: commits with honest agreement, tolerates f Byzantine nodes (safety), loses liveness only beyond f, rejects non-members despite quorum, deterministic round ordering. It also adds protected — FROST threshold authorization of protected operations: a t-of-n FROST (Ed25519) aggregate signature over an op's op_id, verifiable against the cluster's single group key (no member holds the whole key; fewer than t cannot authorize). Tested: a 2-of-3 threshold authorizes and binds exactly one op_id; below threshold cannot. And MLS group keying (RFC 9420, via openmls, tests/mls_keying.rs): the cluster members form an MLS group and derive a shared group key with no central server — verified that members agree on the exported secret, that adding a member advances the epoch, and that a member an epoch behind derives a different (forward-secret) key. (SPEC §7, spec/collab.md.)

• examples/transport-moqt/ — the CommunicationOS (MoQT) transport binding, the last of the four federation layers. A consumer binding that carries a collaboration's committed (consensus-ordered) coding operations over inv-moq — CommunicationOS's MoQT (Media over QUIC Transport) protocol with its JWP receipt extension. The end-to-end test wires the whole stack in-process: LockstepCluster commits ops → each is published as a MoQT object → every object carries a real Ed25519/BLAKE3 signed receipt → a subscriber receives all ops, verifies the receipts against the publisher key, and recovers the original SignedOp intact; a second test shows a receipt-requiring subscriber rejecting an untrusted publisher's group (ownerless authenticity). Driven through inv-moq's MockFabric (real signatures + BLAKE3 merkle receipts, no QUIC; the quic feature is the real-wire path behind the same trait surface). Standalone workspace, so the reference library stays free of a joulesperbit dependency. The four federation layers — consensus, threshold authorization, group keying, transport — are now all implemented and tested. (SPEC §7, spec/collab.md.)

[0.2.0] — draft

Changed

• Receipts now seal as JCR-1 envelopes. The receipt's signed form is the family-shared JCR-1 wire format — canonical det-CBOR (RFC 8949 §4.2.1, length-first key order) inside a COSE_Sign1 envelope (RFC 9052, EdDSA alg = -8), as the joule-code/1 profile. This replaces v0.1's bespoke estimated_uj ‖ sequence ‖ nonce preimage. A Joule Code receipt now verifies under the family's existing JCR-1 tooling and its cross-language (Python/Go) reference verifiers. (SPEC §6.1.)
• joule-code-receipt gains a jcr1 module (canonical CBOR + COSE_Sign1, vendored from the JCR-1 reference, no JouleClaw dependency) and Receipt::to_jcr1_wire / seal / verify_envelope; the bespoke sign/verify are removed.
• Conformance C3 vectors regenerated as JCR-1 COSE_Sign1 envelopes; the harness verifies the envelope and that its payload is the receipt's canonical core. A byte-equality test pins the canonical encoder against a published JCR-1 vector.

[0.1.0] — draft

Initial draft standard.

Added

• SPEC.md — normative specification: the cascade requirement (L0–L4, stop-at-first-close), the receipt requirement (measured + estimated, Provenance), and the no-capture requirement.
• The coding-operation cargo: content-addressed (BLAKE3-256), signed (Ed25519, prior-state-bound) transitions over a source tree; deterministic CBOR canonical form.
• The receipt schema in Joule Wire Protocol form, energy-signed.
• The cascade interface and the agent-schema binding to JouleClaw; the L4 binding to remote frontier agents over ACP.
• The federated-collaboration binding, specified at interface level and classified Research.
• joule-code-rs/ reference library: joule-code-schema, joule-code-cargo, joule-code-receipt, joule-code-cascade, joule-code-conformance.
• conformance/v1/ reference vector pack (C1–C4), internally consistent pending regeneration against the reference library.