TTama
Docs/Concepts

Concepts

Posture

What single answer does Tama give to "is this machine enforcing the policy it claims to enforce"? Posture: the joined comparison of three release identities plus the live enforcement signals, ordered by severity. It is a derived judgment, not a stored state — nothing on disk says "posture"; every element of it is readable independently.

What single answer does Tama give to "is this machine enforcing the policy it claims to enforce"? Posture: the joined comparison of three release identities plus the live enforcement signals, ordered by severity. It is a derived judgment, not a stored state — nothing on disk says "posture"; every element of it is readable independently.

#What it is

The comparison of three identities that are equal exactly when nothing drifted:

| Identity | Source | Meaning | |---|---|---| | Bundled | tama-build.json → hookRelease.releaseId | What the signed app carries | | Installed | hooks-runtime/installed.json → releaseId | What the last successful install wrote | | Loaded | session record → runtime.loadedReleaseId | What a live session actually executes |

plus the enforcement signals around them: catalog validation, managed dispatchers (the emergency-disable state), the privileged backend status, live session count, and per-session hook runtime state (Loaded / Reload required / Reload scheduled / Load failed). Installed and loaded identities that disagree are exactly the drift the screen exists to surface.

#Who computes it

The desktop's AppModel, continuously: it polls session records once per second while an authorized control surface is open, reads installed.json and the emergency state through HookEmergencySwitch, and asks macOS for the privileged backend status. Two composed judgments matter:

  • setup-ready session — a live session whose loaded release equals the installed release, whose registered hook count equals its loaded count with no unknown ids, no pending reload, no registry load error, and whose system policy reports kernel-gated mode;
  • setup complete — bundled catalog valid, runtime installed, hooks not globally disabled, privileged backend Enabled, and at least one setup-ready session (desktop/setup).

#Who displays it

The Posture screen is the headline surface (desktop/posture): identity fields (Bundled release, Installed release, Loaded release, Catalog checksum, Node version/executable), catalog counters, structural validation, the most recent blocking decision across sessions, and the two opposing actions — Disable all hooks behind its confirmed dialog, Re-enable all hooks when bypassed. Unauthorized inspection shows Not inspected for the installed and loaded fields rather than pretending to know; no live session shows No live session; a runtime that reported no checksum shows Not reported by a live session.

#Reading it from a terminal

The same comparison, one identity at a time — executed end-to-end in walkthrough-runtime-status:

python3 - <<'PY'   # bundled
import json; print(json.load(open("Tama.app/Contents/Resources/tama-build.json"))["hookRelease"]["releaseId"])
PY
cat ~/Library/Application\ Support/Tama/hooks-runtime/installed.json   # installed
tama-cli sessions --json                                               # loaded, per session

#Not to be confused with

  • Validation. Structural validation judges the bundled catalog snapshot in isolation (duplicate ids, event-less hooks, unmappable sources); posture judges the relationship between bundle, installation, and live sessions. A valid catalog with a stale loaded release is bad posture.
  • The system policy status. Enabled / Requires administrator approval / Not registered is macOS's answer about the privileged backend (desktop/settings); it is one input to posture, not the judgment.
  • Coverage. Coverage is registry-declared provider wiring — what should dispatch; posture is what is loaded and deciding right now.