Epistemic Fold v0.1.0

Epistemic Fold v0.1.0

A contract-preserving context runtime for DeepSeek Harness:
a compaction backend that treats folding a trajectory as a verifiable
transaction, not a lossy summary.

History ≠ Memory ≠ Context

An agent may fold a trajectory out of the working context only after its
externally relevant epistemic effects have been materialized, preserved, and
made recoverable.

Install

Three channels, and they differ in one way that matters — whether the build runs
for you. All three are verified below.

1. Tarball (simplest — no build step, no allowlist)

Download dsh-epistemic-fold-0.1.0.tgz from this release:

dsh plugin --profile <name> add file:/path/to/dsh-epistemic-fold-0.1.0.tgz

The tarball already contains the built lib/, so nothing runs prepare and no
allowBuilds entry is needed.

2. Git (recommended for tracking main)

dsh plugin --profile <name> add github:orangeofcarl0-sys/dsh-epistemic-fold

The first run stops with ERR_PNPM_GIT_DEP_PREPARE_NOT_ALLOWED. That is pnpm
blocking build scripts, not a defect: dsh prints the exact allowBuilds line
to paste into the profile's pnpm-workspace.yaml. Add it and re-run; the install
then builds lib/ and generates the preset rows as part of prepare.

3. Local checkout

cd /path/to/dsh-epistemic-fold
npm install        # builds lib/ — the file: channel does NOT do this for you
npm run preflight  # verifies the tree is installable

The file: channel does not run the build. Without npm install the install
copies a directory whose main does not exist, and the loader reports
failed to import for an entry that is itself the install doctor. preflight
catches that before you install.

After installing

Bundle order is a correctness requirement: dsh-epistemic-fold must be
listed after @deepseek-ai/dsh-web-app in dsh.profile.bundles, because the
substitution patch overrides rows that dsh-web-app declares.

The preset menu does not change. EF substitutes itself into DSH's own
standard, ptc and cordis presets, so there is nothing new to choose.
minimal is left exactly as DSH ships it.

What ships

• Exact archive / recall — an immutable, hash-verified CheckpointBundle
  durable before any lossy surface replacement commits
  (BundleDurable ≺ SurfaceLoss).
• Fold Frontier — frozen checkpoints are never re-folded, so the cached
  prefix stays byte-stable across folds.
• Deterministic current state derived from raw session events, with
  provenance. Narrative summaries can never verify state
  (Raw → Summary → State is forbidden).
• Bounded recall — context_search / context_recall, paginated and
  provenance-checked.
• Modes — economy / balanced / quality, plus legacy and mode: basic
  (which stands aside entirely and delegates to a byte-identical Basic backend).
• Interaction surface — the /context command plane and a Sidebar
  observation panel that reaches both the native right sidebar and
  dsh-better-sidebar.

Evidence status

The project's rule is that a claim carries its evidence status. This release
follows it:

Status	What
MEASURED	Archive/recall closure, Fold Frontier, deterministic state. The economy tier is at parity with Basic at roughly 1/17 the cost, reproduced over two independent n=9 runs.
HYPOTHESIS	The balanced and quality steadiness benefits. The RC2.1 A/B measured no gain, and the tiers say so rather than borrowing an unearned name.
OPEN	The route-level realized cost gate (dispersion at n=8). It is a pricing question and is explicitly not allowed to drive the architecture.
NOT IMPLEMENTED, by evidence	M1, M3b, M4/M5, RecallPrune — deferred by evidence. DeltaLeaf was rejected on a measured ROI upper bound of 3.7–16.6%.

reliability is deliberately not offered: there is no live evidence for what
the right reliability configuration is, and naming one would assert a conclusion
the project does not have.

Verification at this tag

• 768 tests pass, 23 skipped. The skips are the opt-in live tier
  (EF_LIVE=1), which skips without a resolved route rather than passing
  unmeasured.
• Two typecheck projects clean — src/ and tests/ under full strict,
  and client.js (the browser face) in its own project, since it requires
  React from the host loader rather than depending on it.
• CI runs two lanes on every push: a pinned DSH baseline (mandatory) and DSH
  master (an allowed-to-fail compatibility probe).
• Consumer path verified end to end: the packed tarball installs into a real
  profile and boots with EF's doctor reporting zero import failures.

Compatibility

Verified running on DSH 0.2.0-rc.2. engines.dsh and the peer ranges are
>=0.1.7-rc.2; the 0.1.7-rc.2 commit (477b4f42…) is the test baseline CI
pins, not a claim about your install.

The frameCheckpoint seam that system-dedup framing needs is carried inside
EF's own vendored copy of the Basic backend, so EF mounts on any DSH build and
needs no patch script. If that vendored copy is ever damaged, the engine refuses
to start rather than silently running the costlier framing.

Release hygiene

No machine-specific paths and no credential values, in the tree or the
history — the history matters because a value removed from the working tree
still lives in every clone. tests/release-hygiene.spec.ts enforces this on
every push, covering both slash styles and distinguishing a credential value
from the name of the variable holding one.

The runner scripts require LHTB_ROOT / TAU2_ROOT and read the credential
store from DSH_CREDENTIALS or ~/.dsh, with an actionable error when either is
missing. There is deliberately no default path: both benchmark checkouts live
outside this repository, and a baked-in path could only be right on the machine
it was written on.

Distribution

Git and tarball channels only. The package is private and not published to
the npm registry, so dsh plugin add dsh-epistemic-fold (bare name) will not
resolve.

The tarball ships the built lib/, the docs/, and the auditable economics
profiles under profiles/economics/ — so a consumer following the README to any
of those finds what it references.

Documentation

49 documents in docs/,
in three kinds — design records, evaluation reports, and defect records. Where a
later document falsified an earlier conclusion, the earlier one says so in place
rather than being rewritten; the audit trail is the point.

New readers: 00
for the model,
42
to install and operate it, and
47
for how the recent work is verified.

License

MIT. src/basic/ is vendored from DeepSeek Harness (MIT) with the
frameCheckpoint seam inlined — see
THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md.