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Matthew Hamilton
Matthew Hamilton

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Retro-Downfall Arcanum

๐ŸŽฒ A Tale of Inference Woes ๐ŸŽฒ

Thy context window overflows with dread,
Thy API keys scattered 'cross thy thread.
Thou switchest providers mid-conversation,
And pray thy tokens find the right foundation.

No ward stands guard when tools go rogue,
No grimoire saves a session from the fog.
Thy agents wander, masterless and blind,
Thy prompts untestedโ€”leaving truth behind.

Thy wallet weeps. Thy latency doth creep.
Thy model's fine. Thy infrastructure? Not so deep.

Sound familiar?

I'm excited to share the public README for Arcanum โ€” a .NET 10, single-binary, Native AOT, local-first AI inference hub that treats your infrastructure with the seriousness of a dungeon master and the organization of a well-kept grimoire.

Arcanum is one self-contained native executable. No runtime prerequisite. No "install the framework first." Just arcanum serve and you're running a full inference platform on loopback.

What's in the bag of holding:

๐Ÿฐ Local-first & encrypted โ€” SQLCipher-encrypted Grimoire persists every session, entry, and memory. Your data never leaves your machine unless you tell it to.

โš”๏ธ Multi-provider native engine โ€” Any OpenAI-compatible API (DeepSeek, Groq, Ollama via /v1, LM Studio, etc.) plus local GGUF models via a managed llama-server lifecycle. One hub, zero vendor lock-in.

๐Ÿ”ฎ OpenAI API compatible โ€” POST /v1/chat/completions and GET /v1/models work with existing OpenAI clients out of the box. Drop-in replacement for your local stack.

๐Ÿ›ก๏ธ Wards & Sanctum โ€” High-risk tools require operator approval before execution. Per-campaign sandboxes enforce path containment, network policy, and OS-level CPU/memory/FD limits via cgroups v2 and setrlimit.

๐Ÿ“œ Spells, not prompts โ€” Versioned markdown workflows with dependency resolution, tool allowlisting, and semantic routing. Dry-run cast previews before spending a single token.

๐Ÿง™ Autonomous Apprentices โ€” Goal-driven agents with plan generation, retry/backoff, autonomous plan revision, DM escalation, and parallel step execution.

๐Ÿฐ The Conclave + A2A โ€” Cross-apprentice delegation and full Agent-to-Agent protocol support. Your agents coordinate with each other and external A2A-compatible agents.

๐ŸŒŒ The Weave & Saga (RAG) โ€” Five-phase embedding and semantic retrieval: session search, codebase retrieval, long-term associative memory, and embedding-based spell routing. All feature-flagged, all gracefully degrading.

โš–๏ธ The Proving Grounds โ€” Validate spells, prompts, and agent plans with Trials and Inquisitors before they hit production.

๐Ÿ”’ Native AOT โ€” Ships as a self-contained native binary. Zero runtime prerequisite. Fast cold start. Minimal reflection surface.

The full architecture, every configuration key, every endpoint contract, every design decision โ€” it's all documented. This is a project built for senior engineers and coding agents who want to understand why, not just how.

Built with .NET 10, ASP.NET Core Minimal API, EF Core 10 + SQLCipher, Microsoft.Extensions.AI, and ConsoleAppFramework.

๐Ÿ“– Check out the README on Google Drive

Feedback, questions, and war stories welcome. What's the one thing your inference stack is missing?

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