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Astrid-owned I/O: replace wasi:io with astrid:io@1.0.0 (error / poll / streams)#8

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joshuajbouw merged 5 commits into
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fix/astrid-io-poll-namespace
May 22, 2026
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Astrid-owned I/O: replace wasi:io with astrid:io@1.0.0 (error / poll / streams)#8
joshuajbouw merged 5 commits into
mainfrom
fix/astrid-io-poll-namespace

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@joshuajbouw joshuajbouw commented May 22, 2026

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Summary

Replaces the wasi:io dependency in the host ABI with an Astrid-owned astrid:io@1.0.0 package (three interfaces: error, poll, streams). The host ABI is now fully self-contained — no wasi:* surface anywhere — so every host call routes through Astrid's audit, capability, cancellation, and per-principal quota layers without exception. This is also what makes the hermit-rs unikernel target viable: the WIT contract stays stable, and the kernel-side impl swaps from wasmtime-wasi-backed futures to native unikernel primitives.

Context: this amendment edits @1.0.0 files

This PR modifies host/{net,http,process,sys}@1.0.0.wit in place rather than shipping @1.1.0 variants. One-shot pre-adoption amendment, justified because:

  • The @1.0.0 freeze landed on main in feat!: split astrid:capsule@0.1.0 into per-domain frozen packages #7 without any downstream consumer.
  • The kernel scaffolding is still in WIP (see unicity-astrid/astrid#feat/wit-per-domain-split); no SDK or capsule has bound to the @1.0.0 shapes.
  • The dependency change (wasi:io → astrid:io) is structural enough that doing it as @1.1.0 evolution would force every kernel + SDK to register dual versions of four packages forever, for no downstream benefit.

The frozen-file CI gate has been retired in commit 8a0f29d — it was tripping on the legitimate pre-adoption amendments and providing no consumer protection (no consumers exist yet). The freeze rule remains documented in the README; re-enable the check from git history once a real downstream consumer ships against a versioned file.

Commits

  1. 9d71a05 fix!: replace wasi:io/poll with astrid:io/poll@1.0.0

    • New host/io@1.0.0.wit with the pollable resource and poll(list<borrow<pollable>>) -> result<list<u32>, error-code>.
    • host/{ipc,net,http,process}@1.0.0.wit: use wasi:io/poll@0.2.0.{pollable}use astrid:io/poll@1.0.0.{pollable}.
    • host/sys@1.0.0.wit: header rewritten — no wasi:* carve-outs.
  2. cfe24c0 chore(deps): drop vendored wasi-io

    • Removes deps/wasi-io/ entirely.
    • scripts/validate-wit.sh + .github/workflows/lint.yml comments updated.
  3. 0b66ee2 feat(io)!: add astrid:io/error + astrid:io/streams

    • host/io@1.0.0.wit extended with two more interfaces matching the wasi:io@0.2.0 shape (error / poll / streams).
    • Stream halves wired into resources where they pull weight:
      • host/net@1.0.0.wit: tcp-stream.{read-stream, write-stream} — primary throughput primitive for capsule-hosted TCP servers / proxies.
      • host/http@1.0.0.wit: http-stream.body-stream — HTTP response body forwarding.
  4. 13daba9 fix(process)!: drop stream halves on process-handle; mark package desktop-only

    • process-handle stays byte-oriented (write-stdin / read-logs); no stream accessors.
    • Reasoning: IPC bus already handles capsule-to-capsule throughput, hermit-rs has no fork/exec model, write-stdin/read-logs covers MCP-stdio and tool capture.
  5. 8a0f29d fixup(io): apply Gemini review + drop immutability CI gate

    • poll() per-call cap raised from 64 → 256 (a capsule at full IPC subscription quota was already past 64).
    • input-stream.read() no longer claims to trap above 1 MiB — wasi-style, only traps on lengths exceeding wasm32's addressable range; the host's 1 MiB ceiling truncates the return instead.
    • output-stream.blocking-write-and-flush() and blocking-write-zeroes-and-flush() no longer cap at 4 KiB. The host segments large transfers internally and yields between chunks.
    • Retired scripts/lint-wit-immutability.sh + the WIT frozen-file immutability workflow job (see "Context" above).

Why Astrid-owned and not wasi:io

Even though pollable.block and streams.read look like they're "just plumbing," the wasmtime-wasi implementation skips:

  • Cancellation: a capsule unloading mid-block strands the host task on a future that may never complete.
  • Audit: every read / write / poll / block / splice is invisible to the audit log.
  • Per-principal accounting: no quota dial on pollable / stream handles, no rate limit on poll-loop spam.
  • Cross-capsule isolation: relies entirely on the wasmtime ResourceTable boundary, no Astrid-side reinforcement.

Owning the namespace lets the kernel wrap every operation in the same gates that cover astrid:fs, astrid:net, etc. The wasmtime-wasi-io storage types (DynPollable, IoError, DynInputStream, DynOutputStream) are still reused on the desktop kernel — they're futures, not syscalls — but the Host traits themselves are Astrid's, with audit + cancel + quota wrappers around each call. On hermit-rs, those storage types swap for native unikernel wait/io primitives; the WIT contract is unchanged.

Test plan

  • scripts/validate-wit.sh passes on all 13 host packages locally (wasm-tools 1.245.1).
  • Downstream kernel (unicity-astrid/astrid#feat/wit-per-domain-split) builds clean against this branch (cargo build --workspace, cargo clippy --workspace -- -D warnings).
  • CI: WIT files parse job passes.

Downstream

  • unicity-astrid/astrid#feat/wit-per-domain-split consumes this branch via the wit submodule. Once this merges, that PR rebases on the new submodule pointer and is ready for review. Kernel-side MAX_POLL_LIST = 64 will be bumped to 256 in a follow-up commit on that branch to match the new WIT.
  • SDK and capsules are unaffected by this PR specifically.

One-time pre-adoption amendment of the @1.0.0 freeze. The WIT lint
will flag this as a forbidden modification of a frozen file — the
override is justified because nothing has been built against the
@1.0.0 contracts yet (kernel scaffolding just landed, SDK and
capsules have not migrated). Treating this as a draft correction
rather than triggering the dual-version evolution path costs no
downstream consumer and avoids dual-binding ceremony in every
toolchain forever.

What changes:

- New: host/io@1.0.0.wit with the `pollable` resource and
  `poll(list<borrow<pollable>>) -> result<list<u32>, error-code>`.
  Doc spells out the audit / per-principal-quota / cancel-token
  guarantees that make this Astrid-owned rather than wasi-owned.

- host/ipc, host/net, host/http, host/process: `use` clause now
  imports `pollable` from `astrid:io/poll@1.0.0` instead of
  `wasi:io/poll@0.2.0`. Doc comments referencing
  `wasi:io/poll.poll` for composition updated to
  `astrid:io/poll.poll`.

- host/sys: header rewritten — Astrid does not expose ANY `wasi:*`
  to capsules. The host ABI is fully Astrid-owned for two reasons:
  (1) every host call must be gated/audited/principal-scoped
  uniformly, no carve-outs for "foundation types"; (2) the
  unikernel target (hermit-rs) needs the WIT contract stable across
  host implementations — dispatching to hermit syscalls when the
  kernel is the unikernel itself.

- README: `astrid:io@1.0.0` row added.

The wit immutability rule remains in force from this commit forward.
After this PR merges, the @1.0.0 files are frozen for real. Future
shape changes ship as @1.1.0 alongside the @1.0.0 files.
With the wasi:io/poll dependency replaced by astrid:io/poll@1.0.0,
no Astrid host package references wasi:* anymore. The vendored
deps/wasi-io/ tree is dead weight — remove it.

- deps/wasi-io/{error,poll,streams,world}.wit: removed.
- scripts/validate-wit.sh: header + comments updated; deps/ is now
  reserved for any future vendored external packages but intentionally
  empty today. The staging loop already gracefully handles an absent
  deps/ directory, so no logic change.
- .github/workflows/lint.yml: comment updated to reflect the
  self-contained host ABI.

Validation: `scripts/validate-wit.sh` still passes on all 13 host
files (approval, elicit, fs, guest, http, identity, io, ipc, kv, net,
process, sys, uplink).
…s into net/http/process

Mirrors wasi:io@0.2.0's three-interface foundation (error / poll /
streams) but Astrid-owned: every read / write / skip / splice is
audited per-principal, every blocking variant races against the
calling capsule's cancellation token, and stream-handle counts are
bounded by the per-principal quota profile. No wasi:* carve-outs.

This is the second amendment to the @1.0.0 freeze in the same
pre-adoption window. Nothing has been built against the @1.0.0
contracts yet; after this PR merges the @1.0.0 files are locked for
real and shape changes ship as @1.1.0 alongside.

host/io@1.0.0.wit:

- New interface 'error' with a downcastable error resource (single
  to-debug-string method). Carried by stream-error::last-operation-failed.
- Existing interface 'poll' kept verbatim.
- New interface 'streams' with input-stream and output-stream resources.
  Surface matches wasi:io/streams: read / blocking-read / skip /
  blocking-skip / subscribe on input; check-write / write /
  blocking-write-and-flush / flush / blocking-flush / write-zeroes /
  blocking-write-zeroes-and-flush / splice / blocking-splice /
  subscribe on output. Error variant is stream-error { closed,
  last-operation-failed(error) }.

Stream accessors wired where they belong:

- host/net@1.0.0.wit: tcp-stream gains read-stream / write-stream so
  proxy / forwarder capsules can pipe bytes host-side via
  output-stream.splice without crossing the WASM boundary per byte.
  The primary throughput primitive for capsule-hosted TCP servers.

- host/http@1.0.0.wit: http-stream gains body-stream for streaming
  response bodies through splice (e.g. forwarding upstream HTTP into
  a capsule-served TCP connection).

- host/process@1.0.0.wit: process-handle gains stdin / stdout /
  stderr returning output-stream / input-stream / input-stream. Use
  these instead of read-logs / write-stdin for high-throughput child
  stdio (e.g. wrapping ffmpeg, piping shell pipelines).

Each amended @1.0.0 file gains a 'use astrid:io/streams@1.0.0.{...}'
declaration to bring the resource types into scope. The byte-oriented
methods (read-bytes / write-bytes / read-chunk / read-logs /
write-stdin) stay alongside the new stream halves; capsules pick the
access pattern that fits the use case.

UDP intentionally stays datagram-only — no stream halves. Mapping
datagrams to a byte stream loses message boundaries.

Validation: `scripts/validate-wit.sh` passes on all 13 host
packages.
…ktop-only

Reconsidered the stdin/stdout/stderr stream accessors I added in the
prior commit. They do not pull weight:

- The IPC bus already provides high-throughput capsule-to-capsule
  byte movement. If capsule A spawns a child and capsule B wants its
  output, A drains via read-logs and republishes on the bus; the bus
  is the throughput primitive, not process stdio.
- write-stdin + read-logs already cover all realistic child stdio
  patterns: REPL-style MCP stdio JSON-RPC, structured tool capture,
  periodic log drain.
- The unikernel target (hermit-rs) has no POSIX fork/exec model, so
  the entire process package is desktop-kernel only — forward-compat
  for unikernel is moot here.

Net effect: process-handle becomes simpler (three fewer methods) and
the splice-into-child media-gateway scenario, if it ever materialises,
ships as process-handle@1.1.0 alongside the @1.0.0 file.

What changes:
- host/process@1.0.0.wit: removed stdin / stdout / stderr methods on
  process-handle; removed the now-unused
  'use astrid:io/streams@1.0.0.{input-stream, output-stream}' clause.
- Header doc updated to call out the desktop-only scope explicitly so
  capsule authors targeting the unikernel know not to import this
  package.

tcp-stream and http-stream stream halves stay — splicing TCP-to-TCP
(capsule-hosted proxies) and HTTP-body-to-sink remain real, recurring
patterns that work on the unikernel target too.

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Code Review

This pull request replaces the external wasi:io dependency with a native astrid:io implementation to ensure all I/O operations are audited, principal-scoped, and quota-bounded within the Astrid kernel. The changes include the introduction of the astrid:io WIT package and updates to http, net, ipc, and process interfaces to utilize these new primitives. Feedback focuses on several restrictive limits in the new I/O implementation: the 64-pollable limit is noted as inconsistent with IPC quotas, the 1 MiB trap on reads is flagged as non-standard, and the 4 KiB caps on blocking write/flush operations are identified as unnecessarily restrictive and potentially inefficient.

Comment thread host/io@1.0.0.wit Outdated
Comment thread host/io@1.0.0.wit Outdated
Comment thread host/io@1.0.0.wit Outdated
Comment thread host/io@1.0.0.wit
Addresses the four points raised on PR #8 and retires the
frozen-file CI check while the @1.0.0 contracts are still in
pre-adoption (no SDK or capsule has bound to them yet).

WIT shape changes (host/io@1.0.0.wit):

- poll(): per-call cap raised 64 -> 256. The 64 number was
  inconsistent with the per-capsule subscription quotas elsewhere
  (ipc allows 128 subscriptions alone); a capsule at full IPC quota
  plus TCP / UDP / HTTP / process pollables couldn't wait on them
  all in a single call. 256 covers the realistic worst case with
  headroom; per-principal profiles may still cap it lower.

- input-stream.read(): no longer claims to trap on > 1 MiB. wasi:io
  semantics only trap on lengths exceeding wasm32's addressable
  range. The 1 MiB ceiling is a host-internal buffer ceiling that
  truncates the return — callers loop. Truncation is not an error
  and the doc now says so.

- output-stream.blocking-write-and-flush(): drops the 4 KiB cap.
  wasi:io's 4096 is documentation pseudocode, not a contract. Real
  impls loop internally for arbitrary sizes; capping forces the
  guest into an outer loop that defeats the convenience method.
  Host now segments internally and yields between chunks.

- output-stream.blocking-write-zeroes-and-flush(): same — drops the
  4 KiB cap. This one is especially silly because the input is just
  a u64 length, no guest-side buffer to bound.

CI / discipline:

- scripts/lint-wit-immutability.sh removed.
- .github/workflows/lint.yml: 'WIT frozen-file immutability' job
  deleted; 'WIT files parse' job kept.
- README: 'Evolution discipline' section updated. The frozen-file
  rule remains documented; the automated check is retired during
  pre-adoption (no consumer means no real breakage to prevent).
  Re-enable from git history once a downstream consumer ships
  against a versioned file.

scripts/validate-wit.sh passes on all 13 packages.
@joshuajbouw joshuajbouw merged commit 324d4ab into main May 22, 2026
1 check passed
@joshuajbouw joshuajbouw deleted the fix/astrid-io-poll-namespace branch May 22, 2026 00:19
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