tibet-continuityd 0.5.5

Continuity daemon and sealed handoff tool — watch, sniff, verify, triage, reseal, police, and send continuity-bearing TBZ objects across local and cross-host lanes.

tibet-continuityd

Continuous integrity daemon and sealed handoff tool for continuity-native systems.

tibet-continuityd is the resident trust and continuity guardian of the TIBET stack.

It watches an inbox, sniffs what arrived, classifies trust and mismatch, optionally verifies and forks sealed objects, reseals trusted forward state, emits audit records, and can now also send sealed envelopes across hosts.

In short:

• daemon
  • watch, sniff, verify, classify, triage, seal, police
• CLI
  • pack and send sealed continuity objects to another host
• discipline
  • name is hint, content is truth, arrival is event

Why it exists

Modern agentic and stateful systems fail when they silently trust:

• filenames
• resumed state
• imported sessions
• unpacked blobs
• unexpected arrivals
• stale or disguised handoff material

tibet-continuityd exists to put a resident gate in front of those arrivals.

It turns:

• file arrival
• cross-host handoff
• resumed state
• imported continuity material

into something that can be:

• sniffed
• verified
• classified
• quarantined
• triaged
• resealed
• audited

Core model

Arrival → Sniff → Classify → Verify/Fork → Trust → Seal → Police

The daemon treats every arrival as a meaningful event.

It does not assume:

• extension is truthful
• resumed state is safe
• transport success implies continuity legitimacy

Design axiom

Name is hint. Content is truth. Arrival is event.

What it does today

Daemon behavior

• watches inbox lanes for arrivals
• recognizes TBZ/ICC-style sealed bundles via magic bytes
• detects disguised payloads and extension/content mismatch
• classifies arrivals into trust/triage/quarantine/reject paths
• emits audit JSONL suitable for machine analysis and operator review
• supports:
  • passive
  • active
  • strict modes
• supports:
  • coalescing
  • verify-fork
  • trust-kernel handoff
  • reseal/outbox
  • police scan for unpacked drift
  • backpressure monitoring

CLI behavior

The tcd CLI now supports:

• tcd run
  • run the daemon
• tcd send FILE --to HOST:PATH
  • seal and send over scp
• tcd send FILE --to jis:org:service@host
  • convention-based identity-bound routing
• tcd send FILE --transport http --to http://host:port
  • sealed HTTP inbox delivery to a peer listener

This means tibet-continuityd is no longer only a passive inbox daemon.

It is also becoming the first practical post-email sealed handoff primitive in the stack.

Current feature surface

Watch

• inbox watcher on Linux
• arrival detection
• lane-local event flow

Sniff

• TBZ magic-byte detection
• sealed bundle recognition independent of extension
• detection of:
  • executable
  • PDF
  • JSON text
  • empty payloads
  • disguised vendor-style names

Classify

• trusted-candidate
• triage-disguised
• reseal-candidate
• quarantine
• reject

Verify / Fork

• optional cryptographic verify path
• forward-only continuation discipline
• trusted fork semantics for admitted sealed material

Trust / Seal

• optional trust-kernel integration
• reseal to outbox
• forward continuity discipline instead of silent mutation

Police

• periodic scan for unpacked or policy-breaking material
• age-based alerting for lingering unsafe state

Backpressure

• queue pressure observation
• low/high watermark monitoring
• intended as part of larger lane health discipline

Send

• pack local file or directory as sealed envelope
• preserve semantic surface fields
• deliver through:
  • scp
  • http
• target peer daemon processes arrival through the same watcher/sniff pipeline as local files

Install

pip install tibet-continuityd

Optional stacks:

pip install "tibet-continuityd[verify]"
pip install "tibet-continuityd[phantom]"
pip install "tibet-continuityd[full]"

Quick start — local daemon

TIBET_CONTINUITYD_INBOX=/tmp/tibet/inbox \
TIBET_CONTINUITYD_QUARANTINE=/tmp/tibet/quarantine \
TIBET_CONTINUITYD_TRIAGE=/tmp/tibet/triage \
TIBET_CONTINUITYD_AUDIT=/tmp/tibet/continuityd-audit.jsonl \
tcd run

Drop a TBZ-prefixed file into the inbox:

printf 'TBZ\x01\x00\x00\x00' > /tmp/tibet/inbox/sample.claude.tza

The daemon will emit an arrival and sniff decision.

Quick start — send over SCP

tcd send hello.txt \
  --to root@target-host:/var/lib/tibet/inbox \
  --surface-context first-real-cross-host-push \
  --surface-profile claude \
  --surface-priority normal

What happens:

1. local file is packed as a sealed .tza envelope
2. Ed25519 signing is applied through the TIBET drop toolchain
3. scp delivers the bundle to the peer inbox
4. peer continuityd sees the arrival and runs the normal intake flow

Quick start — send over HTTP

Start the peer daemon with an HTTP inbox listener:

TIBET_CONTINUITYD_INBOX=/tmp/tibet/inbox \
TIBET_CONTINUITYD_AUDIT=/tmp/tibet/audit.jsonl \
TIBET_CONTINUITYD_HTTP_PORT=8443 \
tcd run

Then send:

tcd send hello.txt \
  --transport http \
  --to http://target-host:8443 \
  --surface-context http-proof \
  --surface-profile claude \
  --surface-priority normal

Flow:

1. pack sealed envelope
2. HTTP POST /inbox/<filename>
3. peer HTTP inbox writes to the daemon inbox
4. inotify watcher sees the new object
5. sniff/classify path runs normally

Note:

• the HTTP inbox listener is transport-friendly, but in this release the HTTP layer itself is not the trust source
• the sealed bundle remains the integrity-bearing object

Quick start — identity-style target

Convention-based target form:

tcd send hello.txt --to jis:humotica:continuityd@p520

Current behavior:

• resolves to default SSH user + default inbox path by convention
• can optionally consult the AINS resolve API
• is a stepping stone toward richer identity-bound routing

Modes

passive

• observe
• classify
• audit
• advise

active

• verify/fork/seal behavior enabled where configured
• operational continuity handling

strict

• stronger policy expectations
• suited for sealed-only or higher-trust lanes

Disposition table

Intake class	Trigger	Disposition
sealed-tbz	TBZ magic + recognized surface	trusted-candidate
sealed-tbz-no-ext	TBZ magic, no/unknown extension	trusted-candidate
disguised	vendor-like name, no TBZ magic	triage-disguised
json-text	raw JSON state in sealed-oriented lane	reseal-candidate
executable	ELF / PE / executable signature	quarantine
pdf	PDF magic	reject
unknown	everything else	quarantine
empty	zero-byte file	reject

Proven proofs so far

Portable evaluation

The external evaluation kit proves:

• preflight passes on fresh hosts
• conformance vectors classify correctly
• mini-pipeline runs end-to-end

Dual-node host simulation

The dual-node lab proves:

• node A to node B handoff shape
• sniff → verify-fork → seal on both sides
• same stage/disposition pattern despite reseal

Real cross-host SCP handoff

Proven:

• real host A packs and sends
• real host B receives and sniffs
• sealed bundle survives host boundary
• older peer daemon versions still recognize the container by magic bytes

Real HTTP transport handoff

Proven:

• tcd send --transport http --to http://host:port
• peer HTTP inbox listener receives the bytes
• writes them into the inbox
• daemon watcher processes the arrival normally

This is the first practical proof that sealed continuity objects can be carried through a simple HTTP ingress without changing the continuity discipline.

Operational paths

The package now has three practical deployment/use surfaces:

• package runtime
  • tcd run
• cross-host push
  • tcd send
• reference deployment kit
  • portable eval
  • systemd appliance
  • dual-node lab

Reference deployment kit:

• reference-deployment/README.md

FHS and first-run note

Production defaults are FHS-oriented:

• /var/lib/tibet/...
• /var/log/tibet/...

For laptop or peer-eval use, set user-writable env vars explicitly.

That split is intentional:

• production appliance defaults
• local/peer override paths

Why this is different from plain file transfer

scp, HTTP, or future mux transport are not the core innovation by themselves.

The important thing is that what moves is a:

• sealed
• signed
• continuity-bearing
• sniffable
• classifiable
• triageable

object.

Transport is replaceable.

Continuity discipline is the point.

Related stack pieces

• tibet-drop
  • pack/verify/seal primitives
• tibet-phantom
  • resumable state and ICC bridge
• tibet-mux
  • future unified transport lane
• tibet-overlay
  • identity-oriented routing substrate
• tibet-triage
  • human-visible escalation surface

Project direction

Near-term direction includes:

• richer identity-bound routing via AINS/JIS
• mux-backed transport as an alternative carrier
• stronger mirrored surface checking
• safer first-run ergonomics for non-root hosts
• deeper causal record integration

License

MIT — Humotica + Root AI + Codex (2026)