IOSHI
IOSHI is an architectural philosophy for personal computing. It makes one claim: a personal computer has three fundamental concerns, and reasoning about each separately makes the whole system more comprehensible, composable and durable.
Intelligence → Operating System → Hardware.
Each layer is an interface to the one below it and a surface for the one above. The separation is not arbitrary. It follows the three things that actually change at different rates and for different reasons.
Why the separation holds
Most stacks are layered by vendor convenience — what shipped together, what one company controls. IOSHI layers by rate of change, which is the only division that survives contact with a real machine over years:
- You might replace the operating system without touching the intelligence interface. An editor configuration is an editor configuration.
- You might add a machine without redesigning the software stack. Add a hardware module, choose a role, rebuild.
- You might evolve the intelligence interface continuously — new tools, new bindings, new theme — without disturbing the substrate underneath.
If a change forces edits in two layers at once, the boundary is in the wrong place. That is a falsifiable test, and it is the whole value of the model.
What it is not
IOSHI is not a product, a package, or a thing to install. It is a way of deciding where something belongs — and, just as often, where it does not.
The framework is implemented by a working distribution, so the claims here are not theoretical. Each concern below names what it holds, the principle that governs it, and the concrete instantiation used in practice.