gnome-jarvis/docs/bare-runtime.md

Bare runtime

The installed JARVIS daemon runs on the packaged Bare ELF runtime. Node.js is used in CI for npm dependency resolution and the portable test suite; it is not required on an end user’s machine.

flowchart LR
  Install[web installer] --> Bundle[rolling Bare bundle]
  Bundle --> ELF[bare-runtime ELF]
  ELF --> Entry[daemon/bare-entry.js]
  Entry --> Compat[bare-node-runtime map]
  Compat --> Harness[copied agent harness]
  Entry --> QVAC[@qvac/inference in process]
  QVAC --> GPU[QVAC GPU backend]

Bare has no Node standard library. JARVIS carries the official bare-node-runtime conditional map at the root, daemon, computer-use, and copied harness package boundaries. Portable source imports such as node:fs, node:path, and node:events resolve to bare-fs, bare-path, and bare-events. Process execution resolves to bare-subprocess. New direct runtime code should prefer bare-* names when it has no Node test counterpart.

The QVAC boundary has one deliberate runtime switch. Node uses the existing @qvac/sdk surface. Bare uses @qvac/inference in process and registers the LLM plugin once inside the copied harness engine. The daemon remains the single QVAC owner: no skill, job, or extension creates another inference runtime.

packaging/prepare-bare-deps.py applies the same official map to CommonJS dependencies at bundle-build time. Bare resolves imports at each package boundary, and some third party CommonJS packages do not declare their own map. The preparation changes only the release copy under node_modules.

Build and verify the bundle with:

npm ci
npm run bare:smoke
npm run package:bare

The release archive stores the Bare ELF at runtime/bare, copied into the bundle as a regular file so it is not a symlink back to the build machine. The installer also accepts node_modules/bare-runtime-linux-*/bin/bare. It does not fall back to a bare binary on PATH. The user unit starts %h/.local/share/jarvis-qvac/packaging/jarvisd-launch.sh, which resolves that ELF relative to the install. The checkout unit under systemd/user/ is not shipped.

GPU policy remains strict. The Bare QVAC engine must report a visible GPU and the master load path passes device: "gpu", full GPU layer offload, and GPU multimodal projection settings. A missing or unusable GPU stops inference and is reported by gpu-doctor; it never silently falls back to CPU.