runa/docs/runtime.md

Phase 1 actor prototype

Start the server-owned, in-memory image:

mise run start

Then connect from another terminal with mise run repl, or use cargo run -p runa-cli -- --connect <loopback-address> repl for a custom listener. The CLI requires a subcommand: repl starts the interactive session, while image operations such as ps, spawn, and send run once and exit. Use runa-cli --help or runa-cli <command> --help for argument details. One-shot JSON values must be quoted as a single shell argument; actor names and let bindings exist only within a REPL session. The server (runa) defaults to 127.0.0.1:3737; --listen or RUNA_LISTEN select another loopback address. The REPL (runa-cli) accepts --connect or RUNA_CONNECT, defaulting to the same address. Explicit flags override environment variables. Both executables provide Clap-generated --help and --version. Quitting the REPL leaves the image running. Reconnecting clients can list and inspect the same actors; local bindings and history do not survive a REPL restart. Server exit still loses the entire image.

The WebSocket server loads counter.rn into the image's working source/actors/counter.rn. Commands include spawn, send, tick, inspect, ps, events, stop, kill, restart, pause, resume, reload, become, sources, write, commit, history, and rollback; enter help to see usage. Paths exclude the root and extension: spawn actors/counter 1. Spawn compiles the current working source, not a committed revision. write <path> <local-file> updates working source using source-identity conflict checks. commit <path> captures it without compilation, and generates a readable revision ID. history <path> lists snapshots; rollback <path> <revision> restores working source without making a commit. Saving, committing, spawning, and reloading are distinct operations. The CLI sends versioned requests to the loopback-only WebSocket listener using the runa-debug subprotocol. VS Code uses the same protocol and automatically refreshes on non-destructive server change notifications. These notifications do not tick the image or drain the REPL's explicit events queue. There is no stdio transport; all external clients use WebSockets.

Example:

runa> let sender = spawn actors/counter 0
sender = @<actor-reference>
runa> let receiver = spawn actors/counter 10
receiver = @<actor-reference>
runa> send sender {"op": "send", "value": 5, "target": {"$actor": "receiver"}}
message queued
runa> tick 100
runa> inspect sender
runa> inspect receiver

The sender commits state 1 and sends a structured message; the receiver commits state 15. Actor references are 21-character NanoIDs; names are local REPL bindings. Tab completes commands, behaviors, and bound actor references, while Up/Down navigate command history. tick <count> [instruction-budget] explicitly advances the scheduler. The default per-actor slice budget is 32 instructions.

State and messages use JSON literals in the REPL, preserving whitespace inside strings. spawn <path> <json> and let <name> = spawn <path> <json> require explicit initial state; send <actor> <json> takes one message value. For example, send receiver {"op": "add", "value": 7} adds to the bundled counter. Its supported operations are add and send; unknown operations fail explicitly.

The sole-key object {"$actor": "receiver"} resolves a local binding to a distinct actor-reference value. A literal @<NanoID> or raw NanoID string can be used in place of the binding. Ordinary strings are never implicitly converted to references. To encode a literal record that would otherwise match a marker, wrap it in {"$record": {...}}. The wrapper escapes only that record; nested values still use the normal conversion rules. Tab completion also offers references inside a "$actor" string.

Current contracts

• runa-actor owns actor references, mailbox and implementation IDs, structured messages, snapshots, statuses and lifecycle events.
• runa-core owns stable source/implementation identities, actor references, and the portable owned value model shared by the runtime and protocol.
• runa-code preserves original source, derives identities, caches compiled artifacts, mutable path-based working source, and independent commit snapshots.
• runa-rune owns compilation and typed bounded invocation execution.
• runa-runtime owns implementation registration, queues, private committed state, scheduling, message effects and lifecycle coordination.
• runa-image-api composes code publication and runtime operations behind a trusted in-process service boundary.
• runa-protocol defines versioned transport-neutral request, response, and event DTOs; it does not dispatch requests or access runtime state.
• runa dispatches those requests through runa-image-api and maps results to protocol replies; its executable accepts JSON text messages over loopback WebSockets, with a 1 MiB request limit.
• runa-client provides a correlated, bounded loopback WebSocket client.
• runa-cli provides an interactive CLI using the WebSocket client, without an embedded runtime. Connection errors are explicit; requests are never auto-retried.

The image API is process-local and intended for trusted callers. It has no transport, authentication, or authorization layer; do not expose it directly to untrusted clients. Its install operation also supports the runtime's explicit host-provided state-migration closure. Revision source retrieval returns the exact saved text.

An implementation is published once under an ID. Actors reference that exact implementation. Implementation IDs use source content and the compile fingerprint; actor references are random NanoIDs and mailbox IDs remain process-local counters. Incarnation counters use checked increments.

Source files have canonical case-sensitive relative paths, without source/ or .rn, rejecting traversal and empty components. Writes require the expected current source identity (null means create). Conflicting saves do not overwrite another client's work. Commits are version control only, independent of compilation and actor installation; invalid Rune source can be committed. Commit IDs are generated from a readable lowercase alphabet, not caller-chosen revision numbers. Source and history remain in memory until server exit. The older named behavior registry survives as an internal compatibility helper, but its publish/history/install commands are not part of the v4 wire contract.

The runtime's low-level install operation switches an actor's implementation only when it is idle, has no active invocation, and has no reserved input. Queued messages may remain; they will use the newly installed implementation. Active or awaiting handlers keep their original implementation, and installation attempts during execution fail explicitly so the caller can retry at the next handler boundary. install preserves the current structured state unchanged. Client-facing reload and become <path> instead queue installation for the next handler boundary, keeping active frames immutable. Reload compiles the latest working source at the actor's current path; become chooses another path. Compilation failure preserves its current implementation and source binding.

Runtime callers that need a state transformation can use install_with_migration, which receives the committed state and computes its replacement before changing either state or implementation. The operation requires the same idle safe point; if the migration returns an error, neither value changes and no installation event is emitted. A successful changed state emits StateMigrated as well as BehaviorInstalled. This prototype accepts a host-provided migration closure only: it does not infer schema compatibility or execute migration code from Rune source. The closure receives an owned copy of the structured state; an invalid result also leaves the original state and implementation unchanged. Schema/version policy remains future work.

pause prevents an actor from being scheduled on subsequent worker ticks and retains its active invocation, reserved message, and prior Running, Awaiting, or Idle status. resume restores that status; an awaiting invocation resumes only if its future has been woken. These operations take effect between calls to tick and cannot interrupt a currently executing Rune slice or native callback. They provide cooperative scheduling control, not preemption.

Actor snapshots include basic execution telemetry while an invocation is active: completed VM instruction-step count, Rune instruction pointer, and call-frame depth. Paused invocations retain the same telemetry. These values are execution-local diagnostics only; they do not map to source locations or expose locals, and disappear when the invocation completes or is cancelled.

Runtime invocation cancellation (not exposed as a CLI/REPL command) is distinct from stop: it drops an actor's active invocation, moves its reserved message to the front of the mailbox, and returns the actor to Idle. The input is therefore eligible for retry on the next tick, ahead of messages that were already queued. Committed state is unchanged and no transition effects are applied. Cancellation is also available for paused invocations. It does not undo external side effects already performed by native callbacks, so retries may repeat such effects.

The source identity hashes the exact original UTF-8 bytes with the versioned runa-source:v1 domain. Whitespace/comment canonicalization is intentionally not attempted; textually different source has a different identity. The implementation identity includes the source ID, pinned Rune version, compiler settings/features, registered native-module manifest, runtime ABI version, and Cargo target triple. The native-module manifest and runtime ABI identifier must be updated when those compile inputs change.

The cache is in-memory only. Invalid source is retained in the current CodeStore for diagnostics, but does not produce a compiled artifact. Cache identity is not a claim that Rune bytecode is portable or safe to persist. CodeStore::compile_with_module requires an explicit stable module identity; callers must change it when registered native functions or their contracts change. The server creates a fresh CodeStore when its image starts.

State and messages are owned Value trees: null, boolean, signed 64-bit integer, UTF-8 string, list, string-keyed record, or actor reference. Public actor references are 21-character URL-safe NanoIDs. They are generated when actors are spawned and remain stable across stop/restart; mailbox IDs are separate internal counters. Rune handlers have this interface:

handle(ctx, state, sender, message) -> new_state
on_shutdown(state) -> new_state // optional

The runtime uses internal envelopes containing sender and data, then passes them separately to the handler. Host-originated messages have unit/null sender. Actors choose their own message data. For example:

pub fn handle(ctx, state, sender, message) {
    state.items.push(message.text);
    ctx.send(sender, #{accepted: true});
    state
}

The runtime allocates a fresh Rune object graph for each state and message input, and copies portable data back out before committing. ctx.send copies message data and records the executing actor as sender. ctx.send_from(sender, recipient, message) permits forwarding the original sender (including unit for host-originated input). A Rune handler can mutate its invocation-local draft but cannot mutate committed state, the reserved input, or another actor's data. Copies made for separate effect messages do not share mutable Rune objects.

Null maps to Rune unit (), lists to Rune vectors, records to anonymous objects (#{...}), and references to an opaque native runa::ActorReference. Effect targets must be references, not lookalike strings. References support equality and cloning in Rune and can be retained and forwarded through state/messages; this is not authentication. Floats, nonempty tuples, options, closures, futures, custom Rune structs, and other native objects are not portable actor data and fail conversion. Cyclic or excessively deep Rune output also fails without committing.

Each state/message is limited to depth 32 (root depth 0), 4,096 value nodes (including the root), and 1 MiB of UTF-8 string/key bytes. A transition permits at most 4,096 send effects. Transport line-size limits apply separately. These are conversion limits, not a Rune heap quota or hostile-code sandbox. Schema/version policy remains future work. Actor contexts expose only ordinary data sends, never privileged system messages.

Scheduling and lifecycle

tick(nonzero_budget) gives each runnable actor one bounded slice in actor reference order. FIFO queues are bounded, including the reserved message in capacity accounting. A queued message is reserved when its invocation starts. Subsequent messages stay queued, including while the actor awaits. A wake marks an awaiting actor runnable; the caller still needs to drive ticks.

Successful handlers validate every send target and its aggregate queue capacity before updating state, acknowledging the reserved message, and enqueueing effects. Invalid effects fail the actor without partial sends or a state commit. This is a logical, single-worker in-memory atomicity guarantee: observers using the runtime see either the transition before commit or after commit, not an intermediate state/effect set. It is not crash-safe or durable. External side effects performed by native callbacks are outside this boundary and cannot be rolled back.

Runtime errors retain the last committed state and reserved message, set an observable failed status, and emit a failure event. The failed message is not silently acknowledged or automatically retried. External sends return errors for unknown, unavailable, or full actors.

System messages are host-only commands, separate from ordinary data messages: stop, kill, restart, pause, resume, reload, and become. A record containing kind: "stop" sent by an actor is just application data. Graceful stop finishes the active handler, then runs optional on_shutdown(state) with cooperative instruction slices and commits its returned state. It does not drain queued input. A missing hook stops normally; a failing hook marks the actor failed and retains its last committed state. Stop unpauses a paused actor so shutdown can progress; explicit scheduler ticks are still needed. Kill drops the invocation immediately between slices, skips shutdown, and retains committed state, mailbox and reserved message. Restart preserves its actor reference, mailbox ID, implementation ID, committed state, and queued-message order; it increments its incarnation and puts the reserved message at the front of the queue. It can also restart a running actor, killing the current invocation first. It does not reload working source. Repeated failure of the same reserved message can therefore block later messages until an operator changes the implementation or otherwise resolves it; there is no automatic poison-message policy or supervision.

Transition and retry guarantees

Situation	State	Reserved input	Effects	Status
Handler returns a valid transition	New state commits	Acknowledged	All validated sends enqueue	Idle
Rune execution or transition decoding fails	Last committed state retained	Retained	None from the returned transition	Failed
Any target is unknown, stopped, failed, or over capacity	Last committed state retained	Retained	No sends from the transition enqueue	Failed
Graceful stop	Active handler then shutdown state commits	Active input acknowledged	Valid active-handler sends commit	Stopped after shutdown
Kill during an invocation	Last committed state retained	Retained	None from incomplete invocation	Stopped
Restart after stop or failure	Retained until retried	Moved to queue front	None until retry completes	Idle
Pause between ticks	Last committed state retained	Retained	None while paused	Paused
Resume a paused invocation	Retained until invocation completes	Retained	None until completion	Prior runnable/awaiting status
Cancel an invocation	Last committed state retained	Moved to queue front	None from incomplete transition	Idle

Mailbox capacity counts queued plus reserved messages. Before applying a transition, the runtime validates all effects, including aggregate sends to a single target. For a self-send, the completing input is acknowledged as part of the same transition, freeing its reserved slot before the new effects are enqueued. An invalid target or over-capacity effect rejects the entire returned transition.

These are process-local guarantees only. A host crash loses state, mailboxes, reservations and events. External/native callback effects may already have occurred even when the Rune invocation later fails or is stopped.

Lifecycle tests verify that failed and cancelled reservations retry from the last committed state, that stop/restart preserves reserved-first FIFO order, and that cancellation followed by installation retries queued input in order with the new implementation. Tests also cover that a running actor's queued messages are not processed until the reservation finishes. Transition tests cover malformed results, runtime failures, invalid targets, aggregate capacity, and successful message effects.

Limits

This is not yet a full image: no persistent behavior registry or mailboxes, transactional outbox, supervisors, GUI, or automatic image bootstrap. The behavior registry and implementation installation are process-local; installation requires an idle handler boundary and does not upgrade active execution. The example counter script is bundled through include_str!. Messages are not accepted by stopped/failed actors.

Native functions must be nonblocking. Dropping a future proves cleanup only for the controlled test operation, not rollback of arbitrary external effects. Instruction slices cannot interrupt a native callback.

The execution decision records the scheduling trade-offs. Heap profiling and source-level debugging remain open.