fix(hooks): the post-commit herd yields to the foreground (nice 19) — stop starving the lens hook

Operator: 'I thought we fixed this — UserPromptSubmit hook timed out after 30s.' Diagnosed precisely: the
hook is NOT slow — end-to-end it runs in 0.23s, machine clean. The 30s was machine SATURATION, and the
source is our own commits: post-commit fires ~31 detached heavy children (render, story, attestation,
signal, …) at the SAME priority as the interactive lens hook. A couple commits' worth stacked and starved
the nice-0 hook past 30s. The hook was never the bug; the herd's priority was.

Fix: renice the post-commit process to 19 once at the top. nice is fork-inherited, so the whole herd runs
low-priority — it still completes, but ALWAYS yields CPU to the nice-0 UserPromptSubmit hooks, so the lens
injection can never again be starved by our own background work (verified: a nohup child of the reniced
process reads nice 19). The deterministic on-chip receipt is a separate LLM-free path, unaffected. Guard:
tests/pmu-simulator/post-commit-herd-niced.test.mjs.

Originating-Terminal: 🔨 iTerm Builder
Relevant-Rooms: 🔨 builder, 🧪 laboratory, 🎤 voice
Story: The recurring '30s hook timeout' was never the hook — it was 31 equal-priority background jobs; nice makes the foreground always win.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_013BUf5M5p42Zw73VaGt33ZL

commit 7c0ff42ab — 144×144 lattice triptych (on-chip)

◎ the ingest chose B3,A1 — Tactics·Signal × Strategy·Law — acting on B,C2 — Tactics × Operations·Loop (grip 0.766) · the walk starts at the ACTOR's row · 2 file(s)

⏱ ingest 445.8ms (corpus→lattice) · definer walk 1206ms (row→transpose→row, ballistic XOR per hop) · total 1867ms
ingest here = commit-scoped SENSING only (this commit's message + changed files → lit anchors) — deep seed authoring lives in the reef-self-loop, off the commit path

rows = ACTOR (lens) · cols = PATIENT (object) · diagonal = self-reference; ◎ at actor-row × patient-col — every panel, same orientation. Heat above the diagonal = actors ranking ShortLex-earlier than their patients (the walk follows definers uphill in rank).
The 12 canonical lanes (rows top→bottom, cols left→right): A·Strategy · B·Tactics · C·Operations · A1·Law · A2·Goal · A3·Fund · B1·Speed · B2·Deal · B3·Signal · C1·Grid · C2·Loop · C3·Flow

PAIR LATTICE (the map we normally see)

PRE-WALK SENSE · INTENT grid — the snapshot, no point of view

the no-point-of-view snapshot — what the sensor lit before any walk; the leaf walk below is what bridges the two grids

	ABC A1A–O A2A–O A3A–O B1A–O B2A–O B3A–O C1A–N C2A–N C3A–N A1–C3
ABC A1–C3 A1A–O A2A–O A3A–O B1A–O B2A–O B3A–O C1A–N C2A–N C3A–N

PRE-WALK SENSE · REALITY grid — the snapshot, no point of view

the no-point-of-view snapshot, reality side — same sensor law

	ABC A1A–O A2A–O A3A–O B1A–O B2A–O B3A–O C1A–N C2A–N C3A–N A1–C3
ABC A1–C3 A1A–O A2A–O A3A–O B1A–O B2A–O B3A–O C1A–N C2A–N C3A–N

PRE-WALK Δ · straight comparison of the two ingested grids (green both · cyan intent-only · amber reality-only) · 5% overlap · ◎ = where the competence pixel sits in the raw overlap

good = green overlap without being a copy — near-100% is self-similarity, not alignment

	ABC A1A–O A2A–O A3A–O B1A–O B2A–O B3A–O C1A–N C2A–N C3A–N A1–C3
ABC A1–C3 A1A–O A2A–O A3A–O B1A–O B2A–O B3A–O C1A–N C2A–N C3A–N

◎ the pixel this commit belongs to

B3,A1 — Tactics·Signal × Strategy·Law (actor) acting on B,C2 — Tactics × Operations·Loop (patient) · grip 0.766

actor seed B3,A1 — Signal reach and message broadcast channels are governed by the binding mandate and governance rule of law. EU AI Act Article 14 requires human-on-the-loop oversight, with the supervisor able to interrupt the system at any moment. Compliance attaches to the artifact the artifact cannot escape — provenance is a regulatory primitive, not a feature. Constraints precede objectives. The cap-table, the license text, the consent envelope — each draws the inviolate line the action must respect, and the line is enforced before the optimization runs. A rule names what the system MAY NOT do. If the agent can do X, then 'forbid X' is not the constraint — it is wishful thinking dressed as policy. Constraints live in the gate, not in the prompt. Signal-to-noise is the inverse cube of bandwidth — narrow the channel, the message arrives; broaden it, recipients tune out. The right channel is the one whose floor matches the message's importance. A broadcast that addresses everyone addresses no one. Precision over reach until the address is calibrated; only then does scale convert prospects into recipients rather than into unsubscribes. Repetition is the cost of being heard. Three sends to one recipient beats one send to three; the first send announces, the second send is heard, the third send is remembered. Every message carries provenance. The sender's history is half the message's weight; an unknown sender pays in attention what a known sender pays in seconds saved.

patient seed B,C2 — Tactics provide the maneuver choice and timing to test a hypothesis within the iterative feedback loop. Each iteration is a hypothesis tested against the ground truth of the world. Loops shorter than the feedback half-life waste the half-life; loops longer than it pay compounding interest on the wait. Cycles compound when each turn's exhaust feeds the next turn's intake. Closed loops compound; open loops decay. The closing of the loop IS the productivity, not the running of it. Iteration discipline: one commit per iteration, never bundled. Bundled iterations destroy the bisect, and the bisect is the future agent's only tool for finding which round of feedback produced which artifact. Tactics is the choice of which leverage to pull at which beat. Not what we want, but how the want lands on Tuesday: the sequence of irreversible commitments, each made before the next one's information is available. Speed of feedback dominates speed of execution. Tactics that converge fast beat tactics that compute long, because the loop closes around the world's response before the world has moved. The tactical map is a ranked list of moves where each move carries a cost-of-delay. Pick the move whose cost of doing it tomorrow exceeds the cost of doing it imperfectly today. Execution is a sequence of bets made under uncertainty. Tactics is the discipline of betting the right size on the bet whose information value pays for the loss-if-wrong.

INTENT · leaf-walk clouds · BLUE→VIOLET by ply (◎ = the competence pixel: actor∩patient)

good = the clouds concentrate where the commit SAYS it works

	ABC A1A–O A2A–O A3A–O B1A–O B2A–O B3A–O C1A–N C2A–N C3A–N A1–C3
ABC A1–C3 A1A–O A2A–O A3A–O B1A–O B2A–O B3A–O C1A–N C2A–N C3A–N

REALITY · leaf-walk clouds · ORANGE→RED by ply (◎ = the same pixel — the shared perspective)

good = the same clouds as intent — shipped where declared

	ABC A1A–O A2A–O A3A–O B1A–O B2A–O B3A–O C1A–N C2A–N C3A–N A1–C3
ABC A1–C3 A1A–O A2A–O A3A–O B1A–O B2A–O B3A–O C1A–N C2A–N C3A–N

DELTA · graded cloud divergence (green agree · magenta declared-not-done · amber done-not-declared) · 3% agree

good = mostly green; magenta = said-not-done (chase it in the code), amber = done-not-said (chase it in the docs)

	ABC A1A–O A2A–O A3A–O B1A–O B2A–O B3A–O C1A–N C2A–N C3A–N A1–C3
ABC A1–C3 A1A–O A2A–O A3A–O B1A–O B2A–O B3A–O C1A–N C2A–N C3A–N

TOLERANCE · cloud topology (dim green in-shape · hot amber bleed · red orthogonal concentration)

red only matters above the flip — a few amber is normal bleed

	ABC A1A–O A2A–O A3A–O B1A–O B2A–O B3A–O C1A–N C2A–N C3A–N A1–C3
ABC A1–C3 A1A–O A2A–O A3A–O B1A–O B2A–O B3A–O C1A–N C2A–N C3A–N

SHORTLEX-3 PROJECTION (ABC · A1..C3 · the 132 children — candidate, pre-ratchet)

PROJECTED INTENT · the commit’s claims, head→axis_i tail→axis_j (cyan)

the three-length view — good = claims land inside their own zone

	ABC A1A–O A2A–O A3A–O B1A–O B2A–O B3A–O C1A–N C2A–N C3A–N A1–C3
ABC A1–C3 A1A–O A2A–O A3A–O B1A–O B2A–O B3A–O C1A–N C2A–N C3A–N

PROJECTED REALITY · same projection law (amber)

same projection law — good = reality occupies the zones intent does

	ABC A1A–O A2A–O A3A–O B1A–O B2A–O B3A–O C1A–N C2A–N C3A–N A1–C3
ABC A1–C3 A1A–O A2A–O A3A–O B1A–O B2A–O B3A–O C1A–N C2A–N C3A–N

STRAIGHT COMPARISON · green both · cyan intent-only · amber reality-only · 4% overlap

good = the zones agree; cross-zone scatter is the drift to read

	ABC A1A–O A2A–O A3A–O B1A–O B2A–O B3A–O C1A–N C2A–N C3A–N A1–C3
ABC A1–C3 A1A–O A2A–O A3A–O B1A–O B2A–O B3A–O C1A–N C2A–N C3A–N

shortlex-3 zone occupancy (lit cells per diagonal square)
INTENT: 0 in the 3×3 ABC corner · 6 in the 9×9 A1..C3 square · 1435 in the 132×132 children square · 327 cross-zone
REALITY: 2 in the 3×3 ABC corner · 2 in the 9×9 A1..C3 square · 1344 in the 132×132 children square · 210 cross-zone
axes: identical 144 ShortLex names both sides (symmetric); weights asymmetric
zone 3 = candidate children, pre-ratchet (repo-derived dumps not yet past the perturbation-probe gate) · intent 38 claims @ θ 0.625 · reality 160 claims @ θ 0.6406 · projection 2474ms

SHAPE-MATCH σ = 0.83 — the real intent↔reality definer walk vs random-reality (actual 0.1009 vs random 0.07). >0 = the walk distinguishes real alignment from noise; aggregate over independent walks → the divergent series.
σ_drift · weak · panel story is not yet evidence

Most out-of-lane row: C3 · Flow — that lane is drifting most (read the red band in that row).

Three-colour tolerance (out-of-lane = reality fires where intent is weak, in orthogonal blocks): green=in-lane agreement · amber=a few out-of-lane (tolerated) · red=armed — orthogonal out-of-lane 17% vs tolerance 25%.
544 green · 340 amber · 0 red · 168 XOR-friction cells.

Both axes = the 144 ShortLex anchors, cell=row⊕col, on the chip. INTENT=docs+rules · REALITY=code · DELTA=friction.

tile dump — what the SimHash matched on the diagonal (inspect the sensor; tap to expand)

A,A The lattice we build today is what next year's underwriter inherits.

intent 78% (no distinctive match)

reality 70% # ── Living competence map (the dogfood, on EVERY commit) — THE FAST CHIP PATH ── # Runs the SA

B,B Tactics is the choice of which leverage to pull at which beat.

intent 77% (no distinctive match)

reality 70% (no distinctive match)

C,C Operations is the loop that runs whether anyone watches.

intent 78% (no distinctive match)

reality 72% (no distinctive match)

A1,A1 EU AI Act Article 14 requires human-on-the-loop oversight, with the supervisor able to interrupt the system at

intent 78% (no distinctive match)

reality 72% (no distinctive match)

A2,A2 The target is the cell coordinate the system MUST occupy by end-of-quarter.

intent 81% Guard: the post-commit herd yields to the foreground (operator 2026-07-05: the interactive lens

reality 75% (no distinctive match)

A3,A3 Every dollar builds either the floor (substrate that lifts future bets) or the ceiling (cap on the next round)

intent 75% (no distinctive match)

reality 70% # ── Punch-list cycle (runs on EVERY commit, content or not) ──────────── # One task per commit

B1,B1 Latency is the price of a missed beat.

intent 70% (no distinctive match)

reality 75% # ── Preview send on draft-OR-outbox edit (L1.PV-1 + L1.PV-2) ─────────── # Whenever a commit l

B2,B2 The deal sets the exchange rate between two value substrates.

intent 73% (no distinctive match)

reality 73% (no distinctive match)

B3,B3 Signal-to-noise is the inverse cube of bandwidth — narrow the channel, the message arrives; broaden it, recipi

intent 67% (no distinctive match)

reality 69% # ── Meta-reorganize + predict-next-5 (every commit, async) ───────────── # Fires scripts/room-

C1,C1 Power flows where the grid lets it.

intent 73% (no distinctive match)

reality 70% (no distinctive match)

C2,C2 Each iteration is a hypothesis tested against the ground truth of the world.

intent 72% (no distinctive match)

reality 72% (no distinctive match)

C3,C3 Flow is the rate at which committed work crosses the finish line.

intent 77% (no distinctive match)

reality 77% (no distinctive match)

commit context — 2 file(s)

fix(hooks): the post-commit herd yields to the foreground (nice 19) — stop starving the lens hook

Operator: 'I thought we fixed this — UserPromptSubmit hook timed out after 30s.' Diagnosed precisely: the
hook is NOT slow — end-to-end it runs in 0.23s, machine clean. The 30s was machine SATURATION, and the
source is our own commits: post-commit fires ~31 detached heavy children (render, story, attestation,
signal, …) at the SAME priority as the interactive lens hook. A couple commits' worth stacked and starved
the nice-0 hook past 30s. The hook was never the bug; the herd's priority was.

Fix: renice the post-commit process to 19 once at the top. nice is fork-inherited, so the whole herd runs
low-priority — it still completes, but ALWAYS yields CPU to the nice-0 UserPromptSubmit hooks, so the lens
injection can never again be starved by our own background work (verified: a nohup child of the reniced
process reads nice 19). The deterministic on-chip receipt is a separate LLM-free path, unaffected. Guard:
tests/pmu-simulator/post-commit-herd-niced.test.mjs.

Originating-Terminal: 🔨 iTerm Builder
Relevant-Rooms: 🔨 builder, 🧪 laboratory, 🎤 voice
Story: The recurring '30s hook timeo

hooks/post-commit
tests/pmu-simulator/post-commit-herd-niced.test.mjs

Produced on the chip by the running pipeline (scripts/pmu/pipeline.mjs → runPipeline → walk + xor), commit-scoped · on-chip per-walk 1143.15ns (this commit). Recompute: node scripts/pmu/commit-triptych.mjs --commit 7c0ff42ab

Commit artifacts (open on a computer — Gmail mobile won't follow file:// links; the inline images above are the phone-viewable form): reef grid · this triptych · the HDL — all three are also attached to this email.