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Cortex Session Handoff

Version: v0.2 Status: Review Owners: Foundation / Cortex Last Updated: 2026-03-25 Change Type: additive Migration Required: yes Depends On: Semantic Airgap, External Cognition Gateway, Partner-Fit Engine, Strategy Twin Supersedes: none Superseded By: none

Purpose

Give the Cortex session a concrete Python-owned implementation backlog grounded in the Foundation-V2 codebase and the new shared specs.

Rule

Per the house rules: - Codex session owns C++ and FMIE-native/runtime work - Cortex session owns Python module and Python service changes - Triton Front-end session owns Swift work

Python-Owned P0 Work

1. Semantic Airgap runtime

Add a Python service/module that enforces the Semantic Airgap before any frontier-model egress. Target integration points: - /mnt/Storage-1/worktrees/Foundation-V2/packages/answerer-py/src/answerer/__init__.py - /mnt/Storage-1/worktrees/Foundation-V2/packages/aristotle-client-py/src/aristotle_client/__init__.py - /mnt/Storage-1/worktrees/Foundation-V2/packages/deepthink-client-py/src/deepthink_client/__init__.py - /mnt/Storage-1/worktrees/Foundation-V2/services/haystack-pipeline/src/haystack_pipeline/components/answer_generator.py - /mnt/Storage-1/worktrees/Foundation-V2/services/haystack-pipeline/src/haystack_pipeline/generator.py - /mnt/Storage-1/worktrees/Foundation-V2/packages/triton-router-py/src/triton_router/__init__.py

2. External Cognition Gateway

Create the canonical outbound model gateway and move provider calls behind it. Suggested target package: - /mnt/Storage-1/worktrees/Foundation-V2/packages/external-cognition-gateway-py/

3. Shared types for receipts and trust

Extend shared Python types to include: - DisclosurePolicy - DisclosureTransform - TaskPacket - ExternalInferenceReceipt - ReasoningImport - trust status / trust score fields Target: - /mnt/Storage-1/worktrees/Foundation-V2/packages/foundation-shared/src/foundation_shared/types.py

4. Partner-Fit Engine

Implement the first Python service/module for partner ranking using: - Hermophylax corp profiles - opportunity candidates - contradiction structures - governed brief signals Targets: - /mnt/Storage-1/worktrees/Foundation-V2/services/hermophylax-py/ - /mnt/Storage-1/worktrees/Foundation-V2/services/foundation-api/src/foundation_api/intelligence.py - new package or service under Foundation-V2

5. Strategy Twin

Implement persistent strategy state and update rules. Likely targets: - /mnt/Storage-1/worktrees/Foundation-V2/services/foundation-orchestrator-py/ - /mnt/Storage-1/worktrees/Foundation-V2/services/foundation-api/src/foundation_api/intelligence.py - new shared twin package/service

Python-Owned P1 Work

Readiness Criteria Before Merge

Cortex work should not be considered complete until: - no canonical direct frontier-model call paths remain outside the gateway - all imported reasoning has receipts and trust metadata - partner-fit ranking can run locally without external reasoning - strategy twin stores belief and contradiction state over time

P0: Cortex Agent Implementation

The Cortex sovereign layer spec (v0.3) is now aligned with the canonical Cortex spec (v2.1). Implementation priorities:

6. Cortex Phase 1 Agent

Build the Cortex observer agent with 8-hour systemd timer cycle. Target: - /mnt/Storage-1/worktrees/Foundation-V2/agents/cortex/ (codebase) - /mnt/Storage-1/worktrees/Foundation-V2/deploy/cortex/ (systemd units) - /mnt/Storage-1/worktrees/Foundation-V2/deploy/circuit-breaker/ (external watchdog) - /mnt/Storage-1/worktrees/Foundation-V2/runtime/cortex/ (runtime state)

Sensors to implement: - kb-health, qdrant-health, service-health, crawl-freshness, grounding-quality - autoresearch-status, self-learn-ledger, eval-health, token-and-quota - contrastive-health, external-models, external-ecosystem, external-research - disclosure-risk (airgap packet counts, denied exports, trust scores, contradiction rates) - receipt-integrity (commitment hashes, trust labels, surrogate registry consistency)

7. Cortex Governed Observability Enforcement

Cortex must respect the three observability scopes: - Scope A (unrestricted): metrics, stats, counts, telemetry, receipts, commitments - Scope B (unrestricted): entity-level derived summaries, route distributions, crawl yields - Scope C (Tier 3, operator approval): raw tenant media/docs/queries, raw task packets

Implementation: Cortex data readers must tag every read with its scope. Scope C reads trigger an Approved Audit View request flow.

8. Cortex Frontier Model Airgap Compliance

When Cortex calls Anthropic for her own strategic reasoning, those calls must go through the Semantic Airgap. No VIP lane. - Cortex strategic prompts are mostly Scope A data (aggregate metrics, public external sources) — the airgap will rarely block - But the boundary must exist structurally — Cortex cannot be hardcoded to bypass disclosure policy

9. Circuit Breaker

Standalone external watchdog process. ~50 lines. No LLM, no dependencies. - Runs every 5 minutes on its own systemd timer - Lives in deploy/circuit-breaker/ — Cortex has no write access - Checks: action count, API spend, cycle duration, snapshot growth, config integrity, write scope - Kill: remove active.lock + SIGTERM. Only operator/systemd can restart.

FMIE Integration Points

What Cortex needs from FMIE (via governed views): - Media Passport metadata (provenance hashes, authenticity labels, transform history) — Scope A - Perception quality metrics (extraction confidence, OCR quality, STT accuracy) — Scope A - FMIE service health (throughput, queue depth, error rates) — Scope A - Transform-ready derived view availability (Cortex knows views exist, doesn't read raw content) — Scope B

What Cortex provides to FMIE (via peer-to-peer intelligence): - KB coverage gaps that FMIE perception could fill (e.g., "12 scanned PDFs have no OCR") - Quality signals from downstream (e.g., "FMIE v0.41 docs have 15% higher grounding than v0.37") - Strategic intel on new perception models from external scouting

Contract: FMIE should expose a health/stats endpoint that Cortex's disclosure-risk and receipt-integrity sensors can poll. Format: JSON, same pattern as existing Foundation service health endpoints.

Immediate Starting Point For Cortex

Start with Semantic Airgap + External Cognition Gateway. Those unblock the rest of the architecture and close the biggest V2 privacy gap. Then build Cortex Phase 1 (observer) with governed observability baked in from day one.

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