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Agent OS
AOS-HW-011 Normative foundation

Open, Documented, and Reversible Hardware Catalog

Open, Documented, and Reversible Hardware Catalog: scope, decisions, requirements, evidence, risks, and traceability for the Agent OS programme.

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Open, Documented, and Reversible Hardware Catalog

This specification treats hardware support as an evidence programme with explicit documentation rights, recovery paths, quality gates, and replacement strategies.

Table of Contents

Purpose and Scope

Area: Hardware Programme.

This specification treats hardware support as an evidence programme with explicit documentation rights, recovery paths, quality gates, and replacement strategies.

This document owns the semantics implied by Open, Documented, and Reversible Hardware Catalog. 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. Score candidates separately for documentation, redistributable firmware, recovery, debug, IOMMU, display, camera, modem isolation, power control, longevity, unit availability, and vendor responsiveness.
  2. Run QEMU, documentation-first boards, open phone form factor, semi-open quality, Pixel 9, camera laboratory, and future custom-device tracks in parallel.
  3. A candidate is purchased only after SKU and documentation gates pass.

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. Score candidates separately for documentation, redistributable firmware, recovery, debug, IOMMU, display, camera, modem isolation, power control, longevity, unit availability, and vendor responsiveness.
  • R02. Run QEMU, documentation-first boards, open phone form factor, semi-open quality, Pixel 9, camera laboratory, and future custom-device tracks in parallel.
  • R03. A candidate is purchased only after SKU and documentation gates pass.
  • 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

  • Completed target dossier.
  • Reproducible recovery and first-boot evidence.
  • Second-vendor portability result.
  • 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-OPEN-090 Produce the BeagleY-AI and AM67A target dossier P1 M1 Run the relevant document, schema, conformance, build, experiment, or hardware checks; independently review boundary compliance and acceptance criteria.
AOS-OPEN-091 Produce the NXP i.MX 8M Plus target and camera dossier P1 M1 Run the relevant document, schema, conformance, build, experiment, or hardware checks; independently review boundary compliance and acceptance criteria.
AOS-OPEN-092 Produce the RK3588 performance-target dossier P1 M1 Run the relevant document, schema, conformance, build, experiment, or hardware checks; independently review boundary compliance and acceptance criteria.
AOS-OPEN-093 Produce the VIM3/A311D reference dossier P1 M1 Run the relevant document, schema, conformance, build, experiment, or hardware checks; independently review boundary compliance and acceptance criteria.
AOS-OPEN-094 Refresh the PinePhone Pro native phone-form dossier P1 M1 Run the relevant document, schema, conformance, build, experiment, or hardware checks; independently review boundary compliance and acceptance criteria.
AOS-OPEN-095 Compare Fairphone and Sony as semi-open quality bridges P1 M1 Run the relevant document, schema, conformance, build, experiment, or hardware checks; independently review boundary compliance and acceptance criteria.
AOS-OPEN-096 Select two unrelated documented SoC families for native ports P0 M1 Run the relevant document, schema, conformance, build, experiment, or hardware checks; independently review boundary compliance and acceptance criteria.

Risks and Open Questions

  • “Open source” may cover only kernel sources, not datasheets, firmware, ISP or secure boot.
  • Consumer boards can disappear or revise silently.
  • A strong SoC without recovery/debug access is a weak research target.
  • 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

Candidates

AOS-OPEN-090 — Produce the BeagleY-AI and AM67A target dossier; AOS-OPEN-091 — Produce the NXP i.MX 8M Plus target and camera dossier; AOS-OPEN-092 — Produce the RK3588 performance-target dossier; AOS-OPEN-093 — Produce the VIM3/A311D reference dossier; AOS-OPEN-094 — Refresh the PinePhone Pro native phone-form dossier; AOS-OPEN-095 — Compare Fairphone and Sony as semi-open quality bridges

Selection

AOS-OPEN-096 — Select two unrelated documented SoC families for native ports