modules/rules/ — rules and alerts (layer 1)#

The first layer-1 module (spec v0.1 §11): rules written as CEL conditions (open-questions Q10) over a context built from the log, each evaluation written back as a decision event (§7.7) that names the observations it read, the rule and its version, the condition as written, the conclusion and the trust level. Everything here runs as advisory: it says, it never acts.

The first rule is the frost watch: at dusk, will tonight's forecast low reach the farm's warning threshold? Backtested as §11 requires, on NOAA's forecasts for McAllister Farm against its SCAN station, October 2025 to April 2026, through CEL:

The same numbers the Python scoring gave when the threshold was chosen (docs/notes/forecasts.md) — the rule language changes how a rule is written and logged, not what it concludes.

pip install -r modules/rules/requirements.txt          # cel-python and starlark-pyo3, Apache-2.0
python3 modules/rules/frost_backtest.py --cache NBM_CACHE --from 2025-10-15 --to 2026-04-30
cd modules/rules && python3 -m unittest discover -p 'test_*.py'

Regimens#

A condition is one expression. A regimen is a sequence: water bed 3, wait for it to soak in, check the probe saw it. Q10 chose Starlark for these, and regimen.py runs them on starlark-pyo3 (Apache-2.0), a binding to the Rust implementation. A regimen is a file defining plan(ctx, params) that returns steps built with say(...), wait(minutes) and check(condition, ...). Starlark plans, CEL checks, and the runner keeps time. Each step's outcome is a decision (§7.7) carrying the regimen's version and the SHA-256 of its source, and a run's plan is logged when it starts, so a restarted runner carries on without planning again on data that has since changed.

A regimen cannot reach the world, and the tests hold it to that. open, load, import, while, recursion and a hundred-million-step loop are each refused: the last by an instruction budget of about a million. A plan that is not a plan is refused too: an unknown step, a malformed message key, a wait into the past or past fourteen days, a condition that does not compile as CEL. Nothing acts while commands wait on §6, so every step is advisory. The first regimen is the soil advisory's watering check.

A decision anyone can read#

A decision carries enough to be said and placed without the module that made it, so a notifier or a page can carry any module's alerts without importing any module:

• Its sentence. message.key is chosen when the rule is judged — a rule's message_variants pick the sentence that fits ("not refilling, and the stock are not drinking" has no hours left to give) — and message.params fill it.
• What it is about. subject names an entity and message.subject_param the slot its label fills, in the reader's language (rules.render(decision, language, state)).
• The things it names. A parameter listed in message.key_params holds a language-pack key, not a word, and is said in the reader's language when rendered: the sowing advisory's crop is sowing.crop.bean, said "beans" or "frijoles".
• Its units. message.units names the parameters that carry a unit, as UCUM codes. rules.render(decision, language, state, units="us") says them in the reader's system (UNIT_SYSTEMS: "metric", "us") when the module wrote a sentence for it, under its key with the system after a dot (sowing.cold.us, zoneflow.low.metric) and in the reader's own language; otherwise it says the message as written, so a number never meets another unit's word.
• Which question it answers. topic defaults to the rule and its subject: "is the north trough empty?" The soil advisory answers "what does bed 3 need today?" whichever rule held, so it names its own. The latest decision on a topic is the standing answer (rules.standing), and valid_until says when an answer goes stale: tonight's frost watch stands until dawn, a morning's soil advice for a day, a raised trough alert until the monitor clears it.

Code AGPL-3.0-or-later (LICENSE), like the reference server; strings in packs/ under the rules. prefix. It imports layer zero (the SDK and tools/nbm_verify.py for the backtest) and nothing in layer zero imports it.