Answers the maintainer's questions on deployment.md: ax is a Kubernetes application (ax-server Deployment + Redis in ax-system) that schedules every Task as a gVisor actor on Agent Substrate (ate-system, WorkerPool CRD); there is one runner image and concurrency equals warm workers, one actor per worker. Names the three host-bound components (reconciler, receiver, Joern engine) with their planned in-cluster replacements, the production shape of the pre-push hook (local deterministic check in the deadline, delta Run on the plane asynchronously), the estimated per-push cost from the two measured per-candidate rates, what is not built (no `ousast plane scan`, no diff candidates task, population-only Workspace generation, no in-cluster reconciler), and a sizing table from plane/tasks/*.yaml. plane.md gets a two-line pointer to the section. Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5.1 <[email protected]> Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01EmM1j46qgKMh3zqD1QMwEo
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The plane on ax
Model-driven work over whole repositories runs on a separate agentic plane: a Run
(plane/runs/*.yaml, kind openultrasast.io/v1alpha1 Run) is a DAG of steps, and each step is
an ax Task (plane/tasks/) that binds its Workspaces (plane/workspaces/), at most one ax
Model (plane/models/: deepseek-flash for chat, openrouter-embedding for embeddings) and
its own budget: {usd, calls}. ax (google/ax over Agent Substrate, in a single-node kind cluster
on the maintainer's host) is the only executor; there is no local subprocess path. Bring-up and
the host's lessons are in ax on this host; where each part runs today (the
reconciler and the receiver on the host, the tasks in gVisor on Agent Substrate) and what a
separate Kubernetes cluster would take (planned) are on Deployment; this page
draws the flow.
Sources: src/openultrasast/plane/reconciler.py, router.py, egress.py, runner.py,
generate.py, memory.py, and src/openultrasast/plane/tasks/.
One task, end to end
ousast plane run RUN.yaml (the reconciler) does this for every ready task; --workers bounds
the tasks in flight, and a rerun skips tasks already done.
sequenceDiagram
autonumber
participant R as Reconciler (ousast plane run)
participant AX as ax control plane
participant EG as Egress gateway (atenet-egress)
participant RT as Substrate router (atenet-router)
participant RN as Runner (actor in gVisor)
participant RC as Artifact receiver (host)
R->>R: render Model, Workspaces, Task to task.yaml, read the Model's key from env or .env
R->>AX: ax apply -f task.yaml (creates the actor, egress denied)
R->>EG: EgressPolicy for this actor only
R->>AX: ax resume task (retried while the golden snapshot builds)
loop until phase Running
R->>AX: ax get task
end
R->>RT: POST /ousast/v1/start {run, task, credentials}
RT->>RN: forwarded to this task's actor only
RN->>RN: materialise Workspaces (git at pinned commits), after the start
RN->>RC: GET /inputs/producer/artifact (through the gateway)
RN->>RN: python -m openultrasast.plane.tasks.MODULE (key in its env only, metered budget)
RN->>RC: POST tar of OUSAST_OUTPUT_DIR (through the gateway) = completion
RN->>RN: write the completion marker
R->>AX: ax delete task, then delete the EgressPolicy
R->>R: summary.json into state.json, plane status writes attribution.json
What each step guarantees:
- Credentials (
router.py,runner.py). The reconciler reads the variable the Model'ssecretKey.keynames from the operator's environment or.env(which never overrides an exported variable). The key exists only in the start request; the runner keeps it in memory, passes it to the command's environment, redacts it from echoed stderr and never writes it. - Egress (
egress.py). One EgressPolicy per actor, deny by default, hostnames only: plain HTTP to the artifact receiver, TLS passthrough to the source hosts of the bound Workspaces and to the hosts the bound Model declares (openultrasast.io/egress-hosts). It is written betweenax applyand the resume, and deleted with the actor. - Inputs (
reconciler.py). Artifacts other tasks produced are never rendered into the manifest; the runner fetches them from the receiver after the start, and the receiver serves a running task its declared inputs only. - Completion (
runner.py). ax has no Completed phase: the runner's delivery of the output tar is the task's completion. A completion marker stops a resumed actor from repeating billed work; when the marker says the delivery failed, a later boot retries the delivery alone. - Budgets (
plane/budget.py). The metered client refuses the next call once a task'susdorcallsceiling is reached; the task endsunfinishedand resumes on a rerun with a larger budget. Model-free tasks run with{usd: 0, calls: 0}, so a stray call fails loudly. - Attribution.
ousast plane status RUNprints per task its status,calls,prompt,cache_hitandoutputtokens andusdfrom the tasks'summary.json, and writesattribution.jsonin the run directory ($OUSAST_RESULTS/plane/RUN/, default~/ousast-results/plane/).
!!! note "The golden snapshot"
Agent Substrate boots every new actor template once as a golden actor to snapshot it, with
the same image, Task and environment, and inside the sandbox nothing tells that boot from the
real one. So the runner's command never starts by itself: it waits for the start request,
which the reconciler sends through atenet-router to the task's actor, never to the golden
one. Workspaces are prepared only after the start, so the golden boot touches no network and a
started actor already runs under its egress policy (a clone at boot failed on the live cluster
while the actor was being restored, 2026-09-29; runner.py, _run_once). The first resume of
a new image can time out while the snapshot is built, which is why the reconciler retries it
for up to OUSAST_RESUME_TIMEOUT seconds (900).
The Runs: validation and loop
ousast plane workspaces POPULATION --validation-set ... (generate.py) writes one chain per
case; --loop adds the alerts step per case and the loop's singleton steps. Every step except
the verify passes (and roles in harvest Runs) is model-free.
Per case
flowchart LR
facts["facts: repo-facts"] --> va["va: verify pass a"]
facts --> vb["vb: verify pass b"]
va --> agree["agree: a vs b"]
vb --> agree
agree -- "disputed only" --> vc["vc: verify pass c"]
va --> final["final: 2-of-3"]
vb --> final
vc --> final
final --> features["features: one record per candidate"]
alerts["alerts: quick scan on vulnerable and fixed pins (--loop)"] -.-> features
features --> remember["remember: memory.jsonl"]
alerts -.-> remember
final --> remember
The loop (with --loop)
flowchart LR
store[("Memory store")] -- "seeded before the Run, after the train-on-test guard" --> snap["memory-snapshot"]
rem["remember of every case"] --> measure["loop-measure"]
snap --> measure
measure --> propose["loop-propose: rules M1 and M2, M3 advisory"]
snap -- "index.json" --> propose
propose --> improve["loop-improve: one evolve round, unchanged validator and gate"]
improve --> outcome["gate.json, journal.json, and rule_policy.json only if accepted"]
- Before the Run
ousast plane runseeds from the store (memory.seed): a task whoseopenultrasast.io/memory-key(repository, pin, candidates digest, runner image digest) has stored facts gets them and is marked done, and the sandboxedmemory-snapshottask gets the store's rows after the guard. After the Run it ingests every deliveredmemory.jsonl(ousast plane remember RUNrepeats this by hand). See Memory. - The loop's rules and its guard are described in
Architecture. Adopting an accepted ledger stays a
maintainer commit (
src/openultrasast/plane/tasks/loop.py). ousast plane harvestwrites the decision engine's harvest Runs (verify a/b with agree, and modelroles);ousast plane alerts-engineproduces a Run'salertsfrom the Joern engine image on the host for PHP and other languages quick mode does not cover.
Where this runs in production
ax is a Kubernetes application over Agent Substrate, every Task runs the one runner image as an actor that occupies a whole worker, and the reconciler, the receiver and the Joern engine are host processes today: Production topology: ax on a Kubernetes cluster draws it and sizes the pre-push hook at scale.
Tasks
| Task | Model | Does |
|---|---|---|
repo-facts |
none | functions per product file, and each candidate's call sites in other files |
verify (passes a, b, c) |
deepseek-flash |
batched tool hunt per file over the candidates, with their known callers |
agree |
none | a and b agreed or disputed; after pass c on the disputed, 2-of-3 (the step final) |
features |
none | one feature record per candidate for the decision engine |
remember |
none | the case's artifacts as memory rows |
alerts |
none | the quick scan on the vulnerable and fixed pins (loop Runs) |
loop |
none | the steps snapshot, measure, propose, improve |
roles |
deepseek-flash |
per-repository source, sink and sanitizer roles without a vocabulary |
Source: ax on this host.