Architecture

Architecture

Token Terminator is designed as an optimization layer, not a replacement runtime.

Ownership boundary

The host runtime owns

• conversation/transcript persistence;
• memory and context-engine lifecycle;
• provider client and response streaming;
• tool execution;
• authoritative session/request identity.

Token Terminator owns

• its private SQLite artifact vault;
• content-addressed evidence and observations;
• exposure/receipt accounting;
• temporal terminal baselines;
• request-reduction metrics and experiment ledger;
• middleware transformations at adapter-defined boundaries.

That separation is deliberate. Token Terminator can disappear or fail and the host should still behave normally.

Pipeline

A typical request cycle can touch five reduction paths:

1. Terminal rewrite — eligible terminal commands can be rewritten through RTK before execution.
2. Temporal delta — after a repeated terminal command actually executes, the new exact output may be represented as a smaller diff/no-change receipt.
3. Native tool-result compression — supported large tool outputs can be compacted after exact evidence is vaulted.
4. Evidence vault / receipts — duplicate or previously exposed evidence can be represented by bounded recovery receipts.
5. Final request compiler — the fully assembled provider request is deep-copied, compacted, measured, and accepted only if the final payload is smaller.

Optional tokenizer-aware measurement adds a second acceptance gate after character reduction.

Hermes adapter seams

The first-party Hermes adapter connects the core through:

• tool_request middleware for terminal rewrites;
• transform_tool_result for native and temporal result reduction;
• observational lifecycle and post_tool_call hooks;
• llm_request middleware for provider-bound request compilation;
• the compact token_terminator recovery/status tool.

Porting to another runtime

A custom adapter needs four things:

1. stable session/request/tool-call identifiers;
2. a tool-result transformation seam;
3. a final provider-request seam;
4. a recovery tool exposed to the model.

The adapter must interpret None or an exception as pass through unchanged. See Async and Adapter Integration for the API shape.