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Firebrand Quest

New: 2026-09-14Updated: 2026-09-14

A burning stick carried from the hearth — how a family owns a coding engine instead of renting a vendor harness

Five vendor harnesses already work. Firebrand exists anyway, for two reasons that are not optional: ownership without vendor gravity, and a laboratory you can only have if you built the loop. This quest is the architecture of that engine — legs, record, identity dial, tools, the Mac projection, the remote vessel — and the boundaries that stay shut so the engine never becomes a second Pippa.

10 tracks · 41 lessons · ~8h · difficulty: intermediate-to-advanced

Level 0Cold Stick
0 XP0/41 lessons0/14 achievements
0/100 XP to next level100 XP to go0% complete
Most people meet a coding agent as a product they log into. The product owns the loop, the tools, the transcript, the permission prompt, and the account. That is a good way to get work done and a bad way to learn what a harness is. Firebrand is the other move. It is a terminal program that runs prompt, model step, tool calls, tool results, repeat — against a workspace — with its own tools, its own subagents, and an append-only session record. A model is a leg: an endpoint plus an auth source plus a wire dialect. The loop never knows which. The primary planes are a local model through a local daemon and a cloud model through that same daemon after the operator has signed in there. Other brains are compatibility surfaces, not the point. Bare is the default. Identity, when attached, is a three-mode dial — bare, mini, full — resolved by model class, overridden by a workspace door file, and refused rather than trimmed when the closure is broken. The record is the lab notebook: everything the model could see, written before it is shown, folded back into a transcript on resume. The Mac app supervises the same engine over a stdio bridge and opens no engine port. The mobile app is the family's first native flight onto a phone, reached through one opt-in remote gateway. Anvil is the measuring instrument; Firebrand is a specimen that can join a run. Kiln is a workshop that never authors; this loop does author, and that difference is the whole contrast. Conceptual open-sourcing: the architecture is the deliverable, not a repository you clone.

Tracks

  1. 01🔥The Brand, Not the Launcher

    0/4 lessons

    Why own a loop when five vendor loops already answer

    A family that already uses vendor harnesses does not need another window. This track is the charter: ownership without vendor gravity, a laboratory you only get by building the loop, a cleanroom that is the definition of done, and a hard refusal to become a second Pippa. The mobile client is a later charter. It does not get to eat this one.

    The Firebrand Mac app: a native window over the same engine, with the session, a projector, and a terminal — not a second loop.
    The window is a projector. The engine is still the loop underneath.
    Lesson list (4)Quiz · 4 questions
  2. 02🪵A Model Is a Leg

    0/4 lessons

    Endpoint plus auth plus dialect — the loop never learns the vendor's name

    Chat products sell models as personalities. This track splits the noun. A leg is an endpoint, an auth source, and a dialect. The owned surface is two Ollama planes behind one native protocol. Subscription brains continue a login the operator already opened. The paid inference path for one brain stays banned, and observed fidelity never heads a cleanroom.

    Lesson list (4)Quiz · 4 questions
  3. 03🔁The Loop

    0/5 lessons

    Write before show, derive the stop, execute only a ready call

    A step is the atom: assemble a durable request, stream, normalize vendor wire into one event contract, execute only a ready call, continue until a recorded stop. Caps and breakers keep a small model from thanking you forever. Plan is a seam that costs more than the loop. Ask is the operator-choice primitive, not a vibe.

    Lesson list (5)Quiz · 4 questions
  4. 04📓The Record

    0/4 lessons

    If the model could see it, it is a line — and a transcript is a fold

    The notebook is the product: append-only JSONL, content-addressed bodies, chrome kept out. Resume is a dialect-parameterized fold, not a rewrite. Secrets stay out. Unresolved intent never auto-reruns. Fork copies a prefix. Claude-sdk fidelity is observed and never heads the cleanroom.

    Lesson list (4)Quiz · 4 questions
  5. 05🎚️The Identity Dial

    0/4 lessons

    Bare is the default; auto picks mini or full by class; the door is FIREBRAND.md

    A machine with no identity paths stays bare. Auto gives local models the budgeted mini protocol and cloud models the six-layer read-only load. FIREBRAND.md replaces local identity and layers last on cloud. Local never reads AGENTS.md or CLAUDE.md. remember is cloud-only visibility, not a second Pippa.

    Lesson list (4)Quiz · 4 questions
  6. 06🔧Tools Are Policy

    0/4 lessons

    Name, schema, run — exact hashes, depth one, optional that names itself

    The loop never learns what a tool is. Admission is the advertised schema. Bash permission is an exact command hash. Delegate is depth one, twice: the child cannot delegate, and apply is the parent under the parent's policy. Optional verbs and MCP attach; they do not boot the product.

    Lesson list (4)Quiz · 4 questions
  7. 07🖥️Mac Projection

    0/4 lessons

    No port, one locked view, a versioned pipe, a gardener not a second loop

    The Mac app projects the same engine the terminal runs. The engine opens no port. One locked web view paints; a second isolated view may hold sibling chrome. client/1 is versioned JSONL over stdio. The supervisor starts and recovers children. It does not author a turn. Swift packaging lives in swift-quest.

    Lesson list (4)Quiz · 4 questions
  8. 08📱The Remote Vessel

    0/4 lessons

    First flight refuses, one opt-in listener, allowlist not TTY, idle handoff

    One universal phone and tablet app talks to the same engine children. Unknown devices are refused. firebrand gateway is the repository's one opt-in listener and binds mesh-or-loopback only. Trust is an operator-edited allowlist; headless does not grow it. Smolder handoff is firebrand resume --if-idle with take=False. Gateway resume of a live session is last-opener-wins. Live-turn migration is not a product.

    Lesson list (4)Quiz · 4 questions
  9. 09🚧Boundaries Stay Shut

    0/4 lessons

    One leg to boot, a fence and a constructor, a table of owners, a hidden house

    Runtime-zero boot is one reachable local leg — listening yes, consulted never. Egress is an allowlist. Child environment is a constructor, not the room. Ownership is a table: Pippa, the notebook, the workspace, the hub. This quest teaches the loop and hides the checkout.

    Lesson list (4)Quiz · 4 questions
  10. 10🧪The Laboratory

    0/4 lessons

    Freeze the profile, compare without a score, sit on Anvil, keep the daemon version

    A strategy is a hashed profile frozen at session start. Diff and stats align notebooks; they do not rank souls. Anvil join POSTs role, harness, a bare model tag, effort, and mask — no profile hash. August 2026 measurements changed plan budgets, compaction, and the rule that a cell carries its daemon version. No leaderboard.

    Lesson list (4)Quiz · 4 questions
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