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Le Sanctum

2026-04-27: The Vajrayogini Cut

Pencil sketch on dark void of a single sharp blade resting across the page, severing two tangled threads — one frayed colima rope, one memory-vault loop closing on itself — atmospheric, anatomical

Two carryover issues from the 2026-04-26 trilogy redux were still bleeding when this session opened. By the end of it, both were closed at the root, not papered over.

Issue one: Colima 0.10.1 → OrbStack

Section titled “Issue one: Colima 0.10.1 → OrbStack”

The redux’s sweep had named the symptom: colima ssh reports a healthy Docker daemon and healthy containers, but the host couldn’t reach 127.0.0.1:8123 or 127.0.0.1:3100 because Lima’s host-side TCP forwarding died within minutes. The smoking gun in ~/.colima/_lima/colima/ha.stderr.log was failed to set up forwarding tcp port 8123: exit status 255 — the SSH ControlMaster connection backing Lima’s port forwards was dropping, and colima restart only bought ~3 minutes of uptime before the master died again. 0.10.1 is the latest Homebrew stable; no upgrade available.

Three options had been on the table:

  1. Migrate to OrbStack (drop-in Docker replacement, native networking)
  2. Bind containers to the bridged vmnet interface
  3. Add a watchdog action that detects the symptom and runs colima restart

A watchdog daemon that restarts a broken thing every few minutes is exactly the kind of workaround Steve Jobs would reject. Replace the broken thing.

What changed

Section titled “What changed”
Terminal window
brew install --cask orbstack

OrbStack is the Apple-platform-native Docker replacement built by ex-Docker-Mac engineers. Native virtualization, native networking, no SSH-forwarded ports.

Migration steps:

  1. Audit data risk. HA’s volumes are bind-mounted to /Users/neo/.openclaw/homeassistant on the host filesystem — survives an engine swap. Outline’s volumes (postgres, redis, minio, outline-data) live inside the Colima VM — they need backup-and-restore.
  2. Backup outline. pg_dump to a host SQL file; tar minio + outline file storage; copy docker-compose.yml + .env. All four artifacts live at ~/.sanctum/backups/outline-pre-orbstack-20260427-1909/.
  3. Stop Colima containers cleanly. colima ssh -- docker stop $(docker ps -q).
  4. Switch DOCKER_HOST. ~/.zshrc updated to point at unix:///Users/neo/.orbstack/run/docker.sock. Comment in the file dates the swap.
  5. Bring HA up under OrbStack. Same compose file, no edits. Live in 3 seconds, port :8123 answering 200 with no Lima fragility underneath.
  6. Bring outline up under OrbStack. Backing services first (postgres + redis + minio), drop the auto-init outline DB, restore from pg_dump, rename the temp DB to outline, restore minio + file-storage tars, start outline app.
  7. Stop Colima entirely. colima stop. Containers are no longer needed in the Lima VM.
  8. Update the watchdog runtime catalog. colima-restart-then-up actions become orb-restart-then-up; comments updated to reflect that under OrbStack, compose-up is fast and idempotent and the daemon-restart path is for daemon-level edge cases only.

The signal-cli stack that was retired in the yoda-chat consolidation (2026-04-26) was deliberately NOT brought up under OrbStack — nothing live consumes its ports. Forgotten work shouldn’t disappear, but neither should it spin without a consumer. The data lives bind-mounted at ~/.openclaw/signal-cli/data-{rest-api,yoda} if a future session ever wants it back.

Issue two: phase-4 valve — shed-effectiveness gating

Section titled “Issue two: phase-4 valve — shed-effectiveness gating”

The memory-vault re-shed loop was the same shape as the SIGSTOP redux, one layer up. The valve sheds memory-vault on every ORANGE tick. launchd respawns it. Swap stays at 26 GB. The valve hits ORANGE again on the next cooldown, sheds again. 3 sheds in 12 minutes that day, 10 across the prior four days. The shed succeeded every time; it just wasn’t doing anything.

The principle (vajrayogini): a remediation should be observable in the signal it tries to relieve. If the last N applications didn’t move the metric, escalate or stop.

What ships

Section titled “What ships”

A new effectiveness.rs module in sanctum-pressure-valve:

  • When a Shed action fires, the valve records pre_swap_mb and the cooldown deadline.
  • Every subsequent tick after the deadline, the valve compares current swap_used_mb to pre_swap_mb. If the delta is below SHED_DELTA_MB (100 MB — well above measurement noise), the shed is recorded as ineffective.
  • After MAX_FAIL_STREAK_BEFORE_SKIP (2) consecutive ineffective sheds for the same label, the planner skips that label for INEFFECTIVE_WINDOW_SECS (30 min). Single-data-point false positives don’t trigger; runaway loops close within minutes.
  • After the window, the marker decays and the label is reconsidered fresh.

The planner in action.rs::plan now takes a closure: is_label_ineffective: F where F: Fn(&str) -> bool. The closure is called for each TIER_3 / TIER_2 candidate; ineffective labels are skipped, the iteration falls through to the next label or to Noop. Tests pass |_| false to recover the pre-phase-4 behavior.

The heartbeat at ~/.openclaw/state/sanctum-pressure-valve.json gains an ineffective_targets: [(label, secs_remaining)] field, only serialized when non-empty so quiet operation produces a quiet heartbeat.

Five new unit tests cover the module — effective_shed_clears_streak, two_ineffective_sheds_skip_label, ineffective_marker_decays_after_window, pending_evaluations_only_fire_when_due, snapshot_lists_active_skips. 49 valve tests pass total; clippy -D warnings clean. Live-deployed on manoir.

What’s whole now

Section titled “What’s whole now”

Per the doctrine — “closed-loop, honest, bounded, defense-in-depth, fix root cause in layers”:

  • HA + outline reachable from host — closed-loop (OrbStack’s native networking is the loop), no SSH ControlMaster fragility, no daemon to fight every 3 minutes.
  • Family-facing services don’t lie — honest (OrbStack reports failures up; the watchdog reports them up).
  • Memory-vault re-shed loop — closed (phase-4 measures and closes the loop).
  • Valve action is observable in its target signal — defense-in-depth (the valve now reports its own effectiveness, not just its own activity).

Honest gaps that remain

Section titled “Honest gaps that remain”
  • Memory pressure root cause is structural: 64 GB Mini at 26 GB swap with LM Studio coder-14b (8.4 GB), sanctum-mlx 35B (varies), Colima retired. Phase-4 closes the loop’s noise, but doesn’t invent more RAM. A future session may need to evict at the next tier (KillAllowed) or reduce the resident model footprint.
  • Watchdog still references colima in some places (catalog updated; legacy boot scripts and Living Force manifests cleaned in a follow-up). Documented as such; not blocking.
  • OrbStack failure mode is unknown — every tool fails differently. The first OrbStack flap will teach us its character; until then we’re trusting it on reputation.
Section titled “Related”