Goodbye Systems, Hello Channels!

This week I replaced the original systems concept in rngo with channels in rngo 0.33.0.

A channel is an interface to the system-under-test through which rngo can push effects, pull signals or do both.

For example, you might have the following in a project at .rngo/channels/db.yml:

format:
  type: sql
target:
  type: stream
  command: sqlite3 db1.sqlite

A channel must specify a target, which defines how the channel sends raw input and receives raw output (analogous to import in a system).

In the above example, the target is of type stream, which means the CLI will start the specified command in a sub-shell prior to each simulation and send effects to stdin and receive signals from stdout and stderr.

A channel may also specify format, which defines how the channel will adapt an effect value prior to sending it to the target. Currently, the only supported type is sql.

If format is not specified, the JSON representation of the effect value will be sent to the target

#Effect

Effects now reference a channel, naturally, and no longer have a format field, which has been replaced by metadata:

widgets.update:
  trigger: hz(100, day)
  channel: db
  metadata:
    table: WIDGETS
  schema:
    type: object
    properties:
      id:
        type: number
        ...

metadata takes an arbitrary map, but its fields may be meaningful to the referenced channel. For example, in this case, the "db" channel will use table to format SQL statements.

#Read-Only Channels

Some channels are not intended to send input, but only receive output, e.g. a log file:

target:
type: stream
command: tail -F logs/app.log

For these, there's of course no need to specify a format. The channel will just listen tostdout / stderr and output signals

#Looking Forward

Next week, my goal is to iterate on the rngo agent skills to streamline rngo spec definition both during project initialization and on an ongoing basis.

My goal is to for coding agents to be able to fully initialize rngo for a real-world project and run a simulation from a simple prompt.