Draft, unpublished. This is the README the distribution will carry. It lives in commitwork's docs/stack/ until the distribution has a repository of its own, and it is a statement of intent until each component is public under the licence named below. Nothing here is a grant. Component names are the ones this tree carries; the product names are settled at release.

overwatch-layer is a Programmer Operating System: the visual shape of a programmer's own projects, with the IDE plugged into it. It is delivered as one distribution of four components, each with its own repository, release cadence and language, talking to the others over documented wires. Ruled by the operator on 2026-09-09: the distribution is the unit, the four stay separate repositories, and overwatch-layer sits on top of the other three rather than beside them.

The wires are contracts, and a component that speaks the contract can stand in for the one shipped here. Two substitutions are supported by design:

• An alternate database or memory layer. spine's ledger is one SQLite file behind an MCP surface, and memory-layer is an HTTP and MCP service. Another store that answers the same tool names and routes can replace either without the surface or commitwork knowing.
• An alternate orchestrator. The dispatch and session-runner half of overwatch-layer is reached over the same wires. A different orchestrator that files sessions and tasks into spine and reads memory from memory-layer is a supported configuration, not a fork.

What is not replaceable is the identity rule the wires carry: user_id names a person, never a project or a writer, and a session is identified by the triple sessionId|pid|procStart, because no one of the three is an identity on its own. A substitute layer must honour both.

• The wires are the licence boundary. Every component talks to every other as a separate process over argv, stdio JSON-RPC or loopback HTTP. That is data interchange, not linkage, and it is what lets a user's own code stay unencumbered (AGPL-SCOPE). A monorepo would not change the law, but it would blur the line a legal review resolves against.
• Two languages, three publish surfaces. memory-layer is a Cargo crate; the rest are Node with no node_modules. overwatch-layer holds the zero-dependency invariant unqualified and records the 2026-08-23 ruling that memory-layer stays out of its tree so the invariant is not a lie.
• History has to stay legible. memory-layer's fork point is a squashed import over an Apache-2.0 upstream, and its NOTICE says so; spine was split out of overwatch-layer on 2026-09-02 with its commits preserved. A merge that flattened either would destroy the record the licence obligations depend on.
• commitwork is separately fundable. Open-source security funders assess one project at a time under one OSI licence. It stays a project with its own name.

What is shared, and is held in this distribution rather than in any one component:

1. One licence stack. AGPL-3.0-or-later on every component, with PolyForm Internal Use 1.0.0 available by agreement for organisations that cannot take the AGPL. Details below.
2. One set of terms of use — TERMS-OF-USE.md — governing the hosted surface and the evaluation of unpublished builds.
3. One vulnerability-disclosure contact across all four: john@portll.net, the address commitwork's .github/SECURITY.md names. It is the contact the EU Cyber Resilience Act's Article 14 reporting duties (in force from 2026-09-11) point at, and there is exactly one so a reporter never has to guess which component owns a bug that crosses a wire.
4. One release manifest pinning the four versions that were tested together, with the compatibility matrix and the port and tool-name contract each depends on.

Until the distribution has its own repository, install the components individually from their repositories under the Portll GitHub organisation:

# memory-layer — memory server on 127.0.0.1:3030 (Rust)
./scripts/cargo-dev.sh build --release

# commitwork — security evidence; installs spine as a dependency at 1.0
npm test

# overwatch-layer — the surface; runs as a launchd job, published through a Cloudflare tunnel
npm test

Node ≥ 22.5 for spine (it uses the built-in node:sqlite); commitwork needs Node ≥ 22.18, the floor its package.json declares. No Docker is required for the default check set. Everything binds to loopback; the only thing that leaves the machine is what you route through the tunnel yourself.

commitwork runs repository checks and tracks remediation. spine records session and task activity. memory-layer stores and retrieves memory. overwatch-layer provides the operator interface. Each component documents its own inputs, outputs and operational limits.

Ruled by the operator on 2026-09-09. Every component is offered under either of the following, at your option:

1. GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 or later. The default. Running an unmodified component, locally or in your own CI against your own repositories, triggers no source obligation. Modifying one and offering the modified version over a network does (section 13).
2. PolyForm Internal Use 1.0.0, by agreement. For organisations whose policy bars AGPL regardless of deployment. The licence text is used verbatim and is not negotiated; a one-page order form carries the licensee, components, versions, term, fee, support level and governing law. Internal Use does not permit distribution or hosting for third parties; those remain a separate conversation. Contact john@portll.net.

Internal use is free under the AGPL and there is no intention of changing that. Where the copyleft boundary falls for each wire is written down in AGPL-SCOPE, ahead of publication, so a legal review resolves there rather than in a negotiation.

The wire layer is intended to be Apache-2.0. Schemas, MCP tool descriptors and any client SDK, and nothing else. An integrator's legal review then never has to read the scope document, and the copyleft on the core is untouched. The file list is not yet enumerated; until it is, everything is AGPL.

Upstream notice. memory-layer is a derivative work of shodh-memory (Apache-2.0). Those portions remain under Apache-2.0 and the attribution in its NOTICE must be retained in any redistribution. Apache-2.0 is one-way compatible with AGPL-3.0, which is what permits the combined work to be conveyed under the terms above.

Contributions. A contributor agreement will be required before non-trivial outside code is accepted, so that the licensor can offer the PolyForm grant over the whole work. Until one is published, a DCO sign-off is sufficient and no outside contribution is merged into a commercial build.

Measured 2026-09-09; the commitwork row re-measured 2026-10-07:

• TERMS-OF-USE.md — terms for the hosted surface and for evaluating unpublished builds; South Australian law; what the Australian Consumer Law does not let us exclude
• AGPL-SCOPE — where the copyleft boundary falls at each wire
• commitwork: README · LICENSING · SECURITY · TRAPS
• memory-layer: README.md, LICENSING.md, NOTICE, SECURITY.md in its repository
• spine: README.md, LICENSING.md in its repository
• overwatch-layer: HANDOFF.md, MCP-TOOLS.md in its repository