Turn the VPS into a cybernetic operating layer.
The next high-effort, high-impact move is not another ingestion source or another cron. It is a unified control plane that observes, prioritizes, executes, filters, and explains itself across Hermes, GBrain, audio-memory, cron, gateway, services, workers, docs, and delegation.
The bottleneck has changed.
Hermes can already transcribe, remember, publish, schedule, inspect, delegate, and run infrastructure. The missing capability is judgement-shaped orchestration: deciding what matters, suppressing what does not, and moving important loops forward without creating another surface Connor has to manage.
Current shape
Powerful organs: Hermes as operator, GBrain as memory, audio-memory as capture, cron as heartbeat, gateway as nervous system, open-tabs as cockpit, docs as clarity, Codex/delegation as execution leverage.
Required shape
One integrated organism: signal becomes evidence, evidence becomes interpreted open loops, open loops become prioritized work, work becomes verified execution, and the verified result becomes durable memory.
The operating loop
Every subsystem should be judged by whether it strengthens this loop. If it does not, delete it, merge it, or demote it.
The control plane kernel
Normalize every important input into a durable local event, classify it, connect it to an open loop, choose an executor, verify the result, and only interrupt Connor when judgement or approval is truly required.
event → classify → candidate → open_loop
→ rank → delegate/schedule/execute
→ verify → close/promote_to_memory
→ brief only if it matters
Core components
The control plane is deliberately boring: source registry, event spine, open-loop engine, notification policy, capability registry, and a small worker queue.
Source registry
Defines what each source is allowed to ingest, store, summarize, write to GBrain, and act on.
Event spine
One normalized event schema for Telegram, audio, crons, service health, docs, open-tabs, finance, notes, and future integrations.
Open loops
The emotional core: what is open, why it matters, evidence, next action, owner, executor, and closure state.
Noise firewall
Interrupt only for true exceptions, approvals, obligations, blockers, and high-leverage decisions. Everything else batches.
Capability registry
Hermes knows exactly what it can do, how to call it, what it requires, and how to verify it.
Worker queue
Crons trigger workers; workers do jobs; Hermes supervises and explains. SQLite first, not distributed theatre.
Commander brief
Replace scattered morning pings with one ranked, contextual, judgement-aware daily operating message.
Weekly prune
Propose what to pause, merge, delete, convert to deterministic scripts, or promote into product insight.
Implementation plan
Build the spine first. Do not start by adding every new ingestion source. Integrate the sources that already exist, prove ranked truth, then add sensitive sources carefully.
Spine, not UI
Create /root/hermes-control-plane with SQLite schema, JSON CLI, source registry, event table, open-loop table, job table, capability registry, and notification policy.
- ingest cron audit
- ingest audio-memory status
- ingest GBrain salience
- ingest service health
- rank open loops
One commander brief
Merge noisy daily surfaces into a single morning message while keeping watchdogs exception-only.
- today’s One Thing
- system exceptions
- business leverage
- life/relationship/body
- one thing to ignore
Sensitive ingestion
Add finance, subscriptions, notes, email, calendar, and messaging only after privacy and write policies exist.
- raw local by default
- summaries to GBrain
- approval-gated action
- no autonomous money movement
The most important simplification
Stop treating ingestion, memory, crons, and agents as separate projects. They are all one loop: signal → evidence → interpretation → open loop → priority → execution → verification → memory.
The system succeeds when it absorbs more complexity than it creates.
The Commander Brief
The user-facing product is not a dashboard first. It is a trusted, low-noise daily operating message.
Notification law
Immediate interruption only for safety/security, money/deadline risk, material service failure, active blockers, high-priority commitments, or approval needed for meaningful action.
Everything else is batched, summarized, or silently handled.
The cybernetic enhancement test
This is not measured by number of integrations. It is measured by trust, quiet, execution, and the felt reduction of cognitive load.
Trust markers
- Fewer messages, higher trust.
- Hermes can say “I handled this” and show evidence.
- Hermes can say “ignore this” and be right.
- Actions are reversible, sourced, and approval-bounded.
Execution markers
- “What’s open?” returns ranked truth, not a dump.
- Open loops map to capabilities and workers.
- Delegation starts from real priorities.
- Done means verified, not claimed.
System markers
- Crons become quieter over time.
- Audio-memory produces themes and decisions, not just transcripts.
- GBrain feels like accumulated understanding, not filing.
- Services expose machine-readable health.
Life markers
- Connor builds more.
- Connor loves more cleanly.
- The system absorbs complexity rather than generating it.
- Connor brings judgement, taste, courage, and clarity — not admin.
First CLI shape
The first version should be operational before it is pretty.
hcp ingest --source cron-audit hcp ingest --source audio-memory hcp ingest --source gbrain-salience hcp loops list --json hcp loops rank --json hcp brief morning --telegram --dry-run hcp prune recommend --json hcp jobs run --once --json hcp doctor --json