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Agent OS
AOS-ARCH-017 Normative foundation

Kernel Boot and Bring-up Sequence

Kernel Boot and Bring-up Sequence: scope, decisions, requirements, evidence, risks, and traceability for the Agent OS programme.

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Kernel Boot and Bring-up Sequence

This specification defines a native Agent OS contract. Android, Linux, Fuchsia and other systems may inform the design, but do not become ambient native ABI dependencies.

Table of Contents

Purpose and Scope

Area: System Architecture.

This specification defines a native Agent OS contract. Android, Linux, Fuchsia and other systems may inform the design, but do not become ambient native ABI dependencies.

This document owns the semantics implied by Kernel Boot and Bring-up Sequence. It does not assert that every described subsystem already exists. It defines the target model, constraints, evidence needed to trust an implementation, and the boundary with adjacent documents.

Normative Position

  1. Define ROM/firmware handoff, verified stages, measurements, anti-rollback, A/B or equivalent atomic update, recovery, and user-visible failure states.
  2. Separate device keys, release keys, recovery authority, and development unlock policy.
  3. Updates include kernel, services, drivers, firmware metadata, schemas, and migrations as an atomic compatibility set.

Operating Model

The operating model is contract-first and evidence-driven. A component declares its authority, resources, lifecycle, error model, cancellation and timeout behavior, observability, version, and compatibility promise. Backends are replaceable only when the same conformance suite passes and no forbidden platform type leaks into portable layers.

Implementation proceeds through a reference model or mock, deterministic QEMU evidence where relevant, documentation-first physical hardware, and quality-hardware evidence. Pixel 9 adapters remain quarantined according to ADR-0004.

Requirements

  • R01. Define ROM/firmware handoff, verified stages, measurements, anti-rollback, A/B or equivalent atomic update, recovery, and user-visible failure states.
  • R02. Separate device keys, release keys, recovery authority, and development unlock policy.
  • R03. Updates include kernel, services, drivers, firmware metadata, schemas, and migrations as an atomic compatibility set.
  • R04. Specify normal, partial, denied, timeout, cancellation, restart, upgrade, and permanent-failure behavior.
  • R05. Expose structured diagnostics without leaking secrets or vendor-specific implementation details.
  • R06. Link material unknowns to a claim and, when testable, an experiment with an owner and gate.
  • R07. Update affected documentation and task data when evidence changes the model.

Failure and Degradation

Degradation must be explicit rather than accidental. The system reports capability absence, reduced quality, unavailable provider, stale data, or unsafe condition through typed states. It must not silently fall back to broader authority, unrestricted legacy execution, unverified firmware, lossy data migration, or irreversible agent action.

Recovery defines what state is retained, reconstructed, re-enrolled, compensated, or intentionally discarded. Unsupported hardware or providers are rejected at binding time where possible.

Evidence and Acceptance

  • Power-cut update tests.
  • Rollback/freeze attack tests.
  • Reproducible recovery from corrupted slots and migrations.
  • Evidence records target identity, hardware revision, firmware, source commit, toolchain, configuration, seed, timestamps, artifacts, expected result, actual result, and reviewer.
  • Acceptance requires the referenced tasks to meet their own criteria; prose completion is not implementation completion.

Implementation Obligations

Task Obligation Priority Gate/Milestone Verification
AOS-P9-091 Produce Pixel 9 boot-chain and early-diagnostics dossier P0 M7 Run the relevant document, schema, conformance, build, experiment, or hardware checks; independently review boundary compliance and acceptance criteria.

Risks and Open Questions

  • A partially updated system can be unrecoverable.
  • Vendor firmware rollback rules may conflict with project recovery.
  • Development unlock paths can weaken production guarantees.
  • Open-question rule: an unanswered high-impact question becomes a claim/experiment record and cannot be hidden in meeting notes.
  • Stop rule: work stops or changes track when legal rights, recovery, debug access, safety, or the required evidence path is unavailable.

Related Documents

Planning Reference Anchors

Pixel

AOS-P9-091 — Produce Pixel 9 boot-chain and early-diagnostics dossier