Cold Start Protocol¶

Purpose: Describe the procedure for automatically restoring the system from a completely powered-off state to full combat readiness. The protocol covers both a planned cold start (after manual Core Node power-on) and emergency awakening from Dormant Mode or recovery from Spore.

Target time: < 300 seconds until ready to make decisions via Fast Path.

1. Cold Start Stages¶

Power on → POST/BIOS → OS boot → systemd launches watchdogd → readiness checks → load GlobalState → start isolationd → start vLLM → Decision Pipeline active

1.1. Power On and Hardware Initialization (0–10 s)¶

Motherboard performs POST. External Arduino Watchdog is registered from the start.
Watchdog starts timer: if the first valid HMAC-heartbeat from the OS is not received within 120 seconds, Hard Kill occurs.

1.2. OS and System Daemons Boot (10–60 s)¶

Minimal OS boot (read-only rootfs, all non-critical services disabled).
systemd starts watchdogd — the first daemon that establishes UART communication with Arduino and begins sending heartbeats immediately after kernel load.

1.3. Readiness Checks (60–120 s)¶

The readinessd service performs a sequence of checks.

#	Check	Success Criteria	Action on Failure
1	GPU detect	All expected GPUs visible in `nvidia-smi`	Retry every 10 s, up to 5 attempts
2	Sandbox test	Kata Containers start with GPU passthrough < 500 ms	Fallback to gVisor (without GPU), Degraded Mode
3	Network isolation	All outgoing traffic except SOCKS5 blocked by nftables	Recheck rules, pause
4	TEE attestation	Trusted environment attestation valid	Transition to DEGRADED, attempt re-attestation
5	GlobalState restore	Last snapshot from IPFS loaded and signatures valid	Attempt loading previous snapshot

1.4. GlobalState Load (120–150 s)¶

The last valid GlobalState snapshot is loaded from IPFS.
Core Node signatures are verified. On mismatch — restore from previous snapshot.
ConsistencyRouter applies pending updates from EventBus (if network already available).

1.5. isolationd and vLLM Start (150–250 s)¶

isolationd transitions to INIT → VERIFIED → ARMED.
vllm_launcher starts DeepSeek-V4 instances with saved expert masks for Vagrant (20%) and Arbtiragius (30%).
Inference check: test prompt → response < 200 ms.

1.6. Decision Pipeline Activation (250–300 s)¶

Decision Pipeline switches to active mode.
First cycle: analyze current state, apply urgent security updates.
Core Node announces itself in the swarm (if phase ≥ 3) via Nostr Bridge.

2. Cold Start Modes¶

Hard Cold Start – initiated after physical Hard Kill or prolonged power loss. All stages are performed, GlobalState restored from IPFS.
Warm Start – initiated after software reboot without power loss. GPU and sandbox state preserved. Readiness Checks abbreviated. Time: < 90 s.
Recovery from Spore – special mode initiated by Spore Protocol. Steps: Zombie Seed → MVS search → Core DNA Spore → full state and model load. Expected total recovery time: up to 24 hours.