From b4db588dd5b92d647b661c2dc17b40925af92348 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Gabriel Schneider <gbrls@0x4200.cafe>
Date: Mon, 21 Sep 2026 14:23:27 -0300
Subject: 9harness: the harness fs daemon

The last item of the 9P plan, replacing zmxify's introspection half: a
read-only, fresh-from-disk 9P view of every agent harness's state on
this machine, posted as `harness` like any other service, so a shell
inside a 9ns --mntgen mount reads it at /mnt/9p/harness with no setup.

  /pid /uptime   /claude/{projects,history,skills}
  /codex/{sessions,session-index,history}
  /omp /hermes /dsh     the mirrors
  /skills/{claude,codex,omp}

Nothing is cached: a lookup, getattr or readdir walks the real
filesystem, so a transcript grows as its harness writes it and a new
session appears as soon as its file lands. Writes answer EPERM, and no
name that looks like a credential, key, token or auth store is ever
answered at any depth.

Three findings from the adversarial pass, each with its regression:

- The read path composed <base>/<rel> and opened it in one call, which
  follows symlinks. A name swapped for a link between the walk and the
  read served bytes from outside every pinned root (proved against
  /etc/passwd). Every stat, read and readdir now resolves through
  openIn, which walks from the base one component at a time with
  O_NOFOLLOW, and O_PATH for the intermediates, so no component can
  redirect the walk. O_PATH also keeps a fifo in a root from parking the
  daemon in open(); a read refuses anything but a regular file.
- Joining a child onto an empty relative path returned an uncopied
  scratch slice, so every file at the top of a mirror root (/hermes/x,
  /dsh/x) listed but read back uninitialized stack bytes.
- A directory past the comptime caps was served short, and a short
  listing cannot be told from a small directory. The caps answer NFILE
  now. Staging also stops at the first record that does not fit instead
  of packing a shorter one behind it, which dropped that entry from the
  listing across the read boundary.

Suites: 13/13 unit (fake HOME, never the live roots), 36/0 end-to-end
including the mntgen money shot and the live ~/.claude/.credentials.json
proved unreachable, 131/131 programs-test.
---
 9harness/build.zig | 54 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 1 file changed, 54 insertions(+)
 create mode 100644 9harness/build.zig

(limited to '9harness/build.zig')

diff --git a/9harness/build.zig b/9harness/build.zig
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4cf84d6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/9harness/build.zig
@@ -0,0 +1,54 @@
+//! Build fragment for 9harness: the harness fs daemon (binary `9harness`),
+//! a read-only fresh-from-disk 9P2000 view of every harness's state,
+//! posted by default under the name `harness`. It is `@import`ed by the
+//! root build.zig and called with the root builder, so every `b.path(...)`
+//! here is relative to the cloud9 root (hence the `9harness/` prefix),
+//! every option is defined by the root and every step it registers lands
+//! in the root's step list under the `9harness` prefix.
+//!
+//! Steps: 9harness, 9harness-test, 9harness-itest.
+const std = @import("std");
+
+pub const Context = struct {
+    target: std.Build.ResolvedTarget,
+    optimize: std.builtin.OptimizeMode,
+    cloud9: *std.Build.Module,
+    /// The 9ns binary, for the --mntgen money shot in the integration
+    /// suite; null when 9ns is disabled, in which case the mntgen
+    /// section of the suite is skipped.
+    ns: ?*std.Build.Step.Compile,
+};
+
+pub const Artifacts = struct {
+    exe: *std.Build.Step.Compile,
+    /// `9harness-test`: the tree's unit tests (exclusions, path safety,
+    /// node ids, vanishing files — all against a fake HOME).
+    test_step: *std.Build.Step,
+    /// `9harness-itest`: test/e2e.sh (fixture roots + scratch registry,
+    /// plus the real-registry end-to-end when the `harness` name is free).
+    itest_step: *std.Build.Step,
+};
+
+pub fn add(b: *std.Build, ctx: Context) Artifacts {
+    const mod = b.createModule(.{
+        .root_source_file = b.path("9harness/src/main.zig"),
+        .target = ctx.target,
+        .optimize = ctx.optimize,
+        .imports = &.{.{ .name = "cloud9", .module = ctx.cloud9 }},
+    });
+    const exe = b.addExecutable(.{ .name = "9harness", .root_module = mod });
+    const install = b.addInstallArtifact(exe, .{});
+    b.getInstallStep().dependOn(&install.step);
+    b.step("9harness", "Build and install only the harness fs daemon").dependOn(&install.step);
+
+    const test_step = b.step("9harness-test", "Run the 9harness tree's unit tests (fake HOME; never the live roots)");
+    test_step.dependOn(&b.addRunArtifact(b.addTest(.{ .root_module = mod })).step);
+
+    const itest_step = b.step("9harness-itest", "Run 9harness/test/e2e.sh (posted name, reads, cmp of a transcript, mntgen mount, exclusions, live appends)");
+    const run = b.addSystemCommand(&.{"bash"});
+    run.addFileArg(b.path("9harness/test/e2e.sh"));
+    run.addArtifactArg(exe);
+    if (ctx.ns) |ns| run.addArtifactArg(ns);
+    itest_step.dependOn(&run.step);
+    return .{ .exe = exe, .test_step = test_step, .itest_step = itest_step };
+}
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