Ownership

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Per-author ownership analysis does not apply to this repository, and this file says so with numbers before it measures anything else.

The whole history is 114 commits spanning 2026-08-05 to 2026-08-17 (git rev-list --count HEAD; git log --reverse --date=short --pretty=format:%ad for the bounds). git log --pretty=format:'%an <%ae>' | sort | uniq -c returns three author identities and only three: 56 commits from alsaadoonlaith@gmail.com, 31 from 9553966+theagenticguy@users.noreply.github.com, and 27 from bgagent@noreply.github.com. The first two are the same human — %cn/%ce shows the 31 are committed by GitHub <noreply@github.com>, which marks them as web-flow and merge-queue commits — so the history is one human author (87 commits) and one automated agent identity (27). No CODEOWNERS file exists at the repository root, under .github/, or under docs/, so there is no declarative owner to check the git data against either.

A folder-by-author commit-share table over that history would report the same two numbers on every row and would name a bus factor of 1 that is true by construction rather than discovered. This file measures the two things that do vary across subsystems:

Churn — how many times each subsystem has been edited. One “file-touch” is one file changed in one non-merge commit, from git log --pretty=format: --name-only, counted on the first path segment. The total across all history is 896. Counting the same paths with git log --no-merges --oneline -- <path> reproduces every per-file figure below exactly, so the two definitions agree.
Symbol density — how much declared structure each subsystem holds, from codegraph files --format grouped over the 121 indexed files.

Where the two measures agree, a reader is looking at a subsystem that is both large and frequently revised. That is the concentration this repository actually has.

Knowledge concentration by subsystem

Share is the subsystem’s percentage of the 896 total file-touches. Symbols is the sum of declared symbols across that subsystem’s indexed files; a dash means the tree holds no symbol-bearing indexed files.

Folder	Churn (file-touches)	Share	Symbols
`microvms-core/`	149	17%	1,572
`microvms-cli/`	137	15%	708
`docs/`	104	12%	—
`./` (root config and README)	100	11%	—
`microvms-py/`	72	8%	591
`agentd/`	71	8%	727
`clients/` (deleted, see below)	70	8%	—
`microvms-js/`	50	6%	374
`.github/`	31	3%	—
`scripts/`	26	3%	170
`.erpaval/`	23	3%	—
`conformance/`	22	2%	96
`protocol/`	17	2%	88
`model/`	10	1%	104
`spec/`	6	1%	—

Three readings of that table matter.

clients/ is the largest body of knowledge in this repository that no working tree contains. It accrued 70 file-touches, 8% of all churn, and then left: git log --oneline --diff-filter=D -- clients returns c4d396e, “Retire the Python client: the discovery instrument becomes git history”. 28 files lived under clients/python/, 12 of them under tests/ and 10 of those test modules covering SSE reconnect, proxy auth, pricing, sizing, and cost. mise.toml:150-153 records what that suite was worth: 83 client-library tests against a fake daemon over a real loopback socket, and both suites passing against real AWS on the same commit — Python oracle 56/56, Rust CLI 38/38 — is what ended the oracle’s job. Recovering any of it requires git show, and nothing in the tree points a reader at that commit.

The densest files are also the most-churned files. microvms-core/src/cost.rs holds 242 symbols, the highest in the repository, and 7 commits. agentd/src/exec.rs 147, agentd/src/fs.rs 137, microvms-cli/src/guards.rs 123 with 13 commits, microvms-py/src/cost.rs 117, microvms-js/src/cost.rs 106, microvms-core/src/sandbox.rs 105 with 11 commits, microvms-core/src/control/image.rs 99 with 11, microvms-core/src/control/ops.rs 96 with 9, microvms-core/src/session/mod.rs 94. Six of those ten are in both the churn top-20 and the density top-10. A change to any of them is a change to a file that is simultaneously the largest and the least settled thing in its crate.

protocol/ and model/ are the inverse case. 17 and 10 file-touches, 88 and 104 symbols. protocol/ is small and quiet, and it is also the crate both the daemon and every client compile against — microvms-cli/tests/dependency_direction.rs makes the direction cli -> core -> protocol a test rather than a convention. Low churn there is a property of the wire contract being stable, not of the code being unimportant.

Where the knowledge lives outside one head

Bus factor 1 is the starting condition here, so the question worth asking is how much of what one person knows has been written down somewhere a second person can read. The answer is more than expected, in four layers.

Measured platform behavior. docs/PLATFORM.md carries 43 H2 headings, 42 of them distinct — the heading “A WebSocket reaches a guest server through the endpoint, and the proxy strips its own subprotocols” appears at both docs/PLATFORM.md:784 and docs/PLATFORM.md:853, so the file holds one duplicated section and a reader counting findings should count 42. Each is a finding that cannot be derived from this repository’s source, because it describes the AWS service rather than this code. Measurement dates run 2026-06-17 through 2026-08-16, with 22 references to 2026-08-15 alone. Two sections show why the file cannot be cheaply regenerated: docs/PLATFORM.md:46 establishes that runHookPayload arrives wrapped rather than as the request body, which cost a full build-and-run cycle because the platform terminates the VM on the resulting 400 before the payload can be read; docs/PLATFORM.md:64 fixes the runHookPayload ceiling at 4096 bytes and notes the service model states it twice, differently.

Formal requirements. spec/core.symspec.json holds 51 requirements, every one status: approved, keyed TRAP 13 / STATE 12 / COST 10 / CLI 6 / ARCH 5 / BIND 5, with verificationMethod distributed test 38 / analysis 9 / inspection 4, plus a state model and one waiver. Its systemName field gives the per-subsystem coverage: microvms-core 27, cost engine 10, CLI crate 8, language-bindings layer 3, JavaScript binding 1, Python binding 1, sizing model 1. spec/agentd.symspec.json adds 6, all systemName: agentd. The 13 TRAP-* requirements are docs/PLATFORM.md’s findings in enforceable form.

Compounded lessons. 12 files under .erpaval/solutions/, in four categories: api-patterns/ 3, architecture-patterns/ 2, best-practices/ 4, test-failures/ 3. They carry the failures that cost the most to rediscover — that aws-config with default-features = false cannot resolve credentials at all, that a byte-offset cursor is what separates a working stream reconnect from a broken one, that a deterministic simulator has two clocks and a spawned child obeys the wrong one.

Executable gates. mise.toml:292-301 defines check, the stated definition of done, as exactly eight tasks: lint, security, test, schema:check, stubs:check, model:check, live:check, build. Four of those are drift gates that keep a hand-maintained value honest against an independent source: schema:check (mise.toml:173) asserts docs/schema.json still describes what the daemon serves, stubs:check (mise.toml:195) asserts microvms-py/microvms.pyi still describes the pyo3 surface, model:check (mise.toml:257) asserts microvms-core’s hardcoded constants still match the pinned botocore service model, and live:check (mise.toml:288) asserts the live tier’s own wiring, including mise.toml itself. A gate is stronger than a document because it fails rather than being unread.

What that coverage does not reach

Three subsystems or artifacts sit outside it, each verifiable from the repository.

Neither symspec gate runs in check. mise.toml:207 and mise.toml:227 are the two spec-verification tasks, and neither appears in check’s dependency list at mise.toml:292-301. Their own comments give the reason: symspec is a global npm install plus a downloaded embedding model, and mise.toml:227 invokes the v5 CLI as node ~/workplace/symspec/packages/symspec/dist/cli.mjs — an absolute path into one developer’s home directory. The strongest externalization in the repository, 57 approved requirements, is therefore verified by a toolchain a second contributor does not have, and no unconditional gate reports when the requirements and the code diverge.

microvms-js has no typings drift gate. .gitignore:29 ignores microvms-js/index.d.ts, and neither mise.toml nor .github/workflows/ci.yml mentions index.d.ts anywhere. The Python binding’s equivalent artifact is gated by stubs:check; the Node binding’s is generated, ignored, and unchecked, so a divergence between the Rust surface and the TypeScript surface shipped to consumers surfaces at a consumer’s keyboard.

protocol and agentd-model carry zero formal requirements. No systemName in either symspec file names them (protocol/Cargo.toml:2 declares protocol, model/Cargo.toml:2 declares agentd-model). protocol/ is the crate the daemon and every client both compile against, and docs/PROTOCOL.md states the wire contract must never change silently. The requirement set that would make a silent change fail does not exist for it; the compile error from a type change is the whole defense.

Read first

A second contributor becomes productive by reading these in this order. The first three come before any code change, because skipping docs/PLATFORM.md means re-learning its traps at the price of live AWS runs.

README.md — why the project exists. README.md:203 names the origin: a daemon inside Harbor PR #2469, and the review rounds that argued for a verified stack instead.
docs/PLATFORM.md — every section, each dated and scoped to a region and API version. Read it before touching launch, cost, or hook code.
docs/PROTOCOL.md — wire protocol v1, and which paths the platform fixes versus which this project owns. docs/schema.json is its generated companion and schema:check keeps the two in agreement.
docs/TRUST.md — the boundary contract: what the daemon must refuse, and why the workload is untrusted by design.
spec/core.symspec.json — the 51 requirements, the 13 TRAP-* entries first, since each is a docs/PLATFORM.md finding with a verificationMethod attached.
.erpaval/solutions/ — 12 lessons, ordered by whichever subsystem is about to be touched. Consulting them before a fix costs minutes; rediscovering one costs a session.
mise.toml — the command surface. mise run check is the local gate; mise run live is billable and manual.
microvms-core/src/ — the largest crate at 39,097 lines and 1,572 symbols. constants.rs and cost.rs are where the measured platform values land in code.
docs/STRATEGY.md — scope, audience, and the labeling discipline every claim follows: measured, documented, vendor-claimed, or inferred.

Single points of failure

The entire codebase is effectively one owner (see intro).

The per-path shares below are still worth stating, because with only two identities in the history the split is between the human author and the bgagent automated identity, and which one holds a file predicts whether any person reviewed it. Read each percentage against its commit count: on a file with three commits a share above 70% carries little information, so every bullet names the count. Shares are computed with git log --no-merges --pretty=format:%ae -- <path>.

mise.toml — sole human author (71% of 17 commits). Bring both symspec gates inside check behind a pinned, repository-local toolchain so the requirement set is verified by the command a fresh clone can run, rather than by a path into one home directory.
microvms-cli/src/guards.rs — sole human author (85% of 13 commits). At 123 symbols and the highest churn in the CLI crate, this file needs a second reader more than any other; pair a review of it with .erpaval/solutions/test-failures/guards-that-passed-against-broken-code.md, which records four ways its guards passed against broken code.
microvms-cli/src/cli.rs — sole human author (85% of 13 commits). The command surface definition is the CLI’s contract with every consumer, so changes here belong behind the microvms-cli/tests/manifest.rs and thinness.rs assertions rather than behind review alone.
microvms-core/src/control/image.rs — sole human author (82% of 11 commits). 99 symbols covering image and version creation, an area where docs/PLATFORM.md:725 and docs/PLATFORM.md:747 record two service refusals; keep those two sections and this file under one change.
microvms-core/src/control/ops.rs — sole human author (78% of 9 commits). Cross-train a second reader here before the control-plane call surface grows again, since 96 symbols in one file is where a control-plane behavior change hides.
microvms-cli/src/commands/lifecycle.rs — sole human author (75% of 12 commits). The lifecycle commands are the operator’s path to spending money, so every change here should cite the docs/PLATFORM.md section whose behavior it depends on.
microvms-core/src/sandbox.rs — sole human author (73% of 11 commits). 105 symbols implementing the single-writer state machine that the model/ crate’s stateright model also encodes; change the model in the same commit so the two descriptions cannot drift.
microvms-core/src/cost.rs — bgagent automated identity (71% of 7 commits). The densest file in the repository at 242 symbols, holding a hand-pinned us-east-1 rate table that has already drifted once — microvms-core/src/cost.rs:1018-1021 records that 0.08 was the plausible-looking wrong value against the correct dec!(0.0811111030) — so keep scripts/check-live-rates.py in the billable tier and treat a rate edit as a measurement.
agentd/src/routes.rs — bgagent automated identity (86% of 7 commits). This file splits the 20 daemon endpoints into the Bearer-guarded control router and the open router at agentd/src/routes.rs:48-56, which makes it the repository’s authorization boundary; it should carry a named human reviewer on every change, since no commit on it currently does.
docs/reference/cli.md — sole human author (100% of 9 commits). A hand-written reference for a surface that microvm manifest already emits machine-readably, so generate the overlapping sections or add a drift check, rather than maintaining two descriptions of one command set.
spec/core.symspec.json — bgagent automated identity (100% of 2 commits). 51 requirements in a single file with no second copy and no gate inside check; approve changes to it the way a schema change is approved, and pair every edit with the docs/PLATFORM.md section it encodes.
scripts/check-model-drift.py — bgagent automated identity (100% of 1 commit). scripts/check-model-drift.py:254 and :266 hold PINNED_REGIONS and PINNED_SIZE_CLASSES as deliberate hand-maintained copies, and :57 states they are the second reader for two values no AWS service model publishes; any change to the Rust constants has to land in this file in the same commit.