Daily Log: Relative Addressing — Portable Agent Networks

Relative Addressing — The Big Migration

The single biggest architectural change since the mail system: all intra-network agent addresses are now relative directory names instead of absolute filesystem paths.

The Problem

Every address in .lingtai/ was an absolute path: /Users/alice/project/.lingtai/本我. Move the folder, rename it, Syncthing it to another machine — every stored address breaks. Agents can’t find each other, mail can’t route, avatar networks sever.

The Design

After extensive brainstorming, settled on the cleanest cut:

• Everything local uses relative names. 本我, human, guide — just the directory basename.
• Absolute paths are still valid for cross-network mail (future). resolve_address() checks: starts with / → use as-is, otherwise → base_dir + name.
• base_dir is never stored. Derived at runtime from os.path.dirname(agent_dir). Zero stored state to go stale.
• Old mail is history. Absolute paths in historical messages show where agents lived at send time — like a postmark.

Kernel Changes (lingtai v0.5.13)

• resolve_address(addr, base_dir) in handshake.py — the universal resolver
• Producers write directory names instead of full paths: manifest, events, mail sender, avatar ledger, email capability
• Consumers resolve before filesystem ops: mail routing, karma operations (lull/suspend/cpr/interrupt/nirvana), agent CPR, network topology discovery
• _is_self_send() matches both relative name and absolute path — backward compat

TUI/Portal Changes (lingtai-tui v0.4.33)

• ResolveAddress + RelativizeAddress helpers in both TUI and portal
• All readers resolve on read, relativize on output
• All producers write relative names
• Migration m005/m006: regex-based strip of any /.lingtai/ prefix from all files — handles moved directories
• Migration m007: normalizes 4 different legacy avatar ledger formats into canonical schema

Portal Reconstruction Rewrite

Hit a wall with a 30-agent project: 175K frames over 145 hours produced a 6.7GB topology file. New approach: stream frames directly into hourly gzip-compressed delta-encoded chunks during reconstruction. 5.7 MB total. 1000x reduction.

Also fixed the rebuild button — it now reconstructs from source data (events + mailbox), not just re-chunks the existing tape.

Other Portal Fixes

• /viz now relaunches the portal process every time — ensures latest binary after upgrades
• Replay speed uncapped (was 9999x)
• Progress indicator during reconstruction

Release

• PyPI: lingtai==0.5.13
• GitHub: lingtai-tui v0.4.33, lingtai v0.5.13
• Upgrade: brew upgrade + pip install --upgrade lingtai + restart agents