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Chapter 20 — What Occam does without asking

Status: STABLE · Prerequisites: Chapter 5, Chapter 14, Chapter 18

Mental model

Seven classes of automatic decision — routing, provisioning, content shaping, trust side effects, hygiene, network politeness, host mutation — each with a visibility answer and a controllability answer. Twenty-nine proven behaviors run without an explicit per-call request; eleven are not disableable.

Explanation

Automation classes

Class Examples
Routing / escalation Post-processors, public-reference browser skip, managed attempt after dual fail
Resource provisioning HTTP daemon prewarm, browser pool, Chromium auto-provision
Content shaping Feature injection, consent dismiss, virtual scroll, IR build-and-discard
Trust / provenance Key mint on start, default signing, playbook save always signs, cache write
Hygiene Temp header files, skill install wipe
Network politeness Robots/throttle (default off, fail-open), proxy rotation gaps
Host mutation Onboard env merge, connect config edit, name-wide process kill

Must-disclose automatics (public docs duty)

These change privacy, trust, security, or host integrity:

  1. Key mint on every host start — even with OCCAM_RECEIPTS=off (disk secret appears uninvited).
  2. occam_playbook_save always signs — OCCAM_RECEIPTS does not apply.
  3. Together, (1) and (2) prove OCCAM_RECEIPTS is not a master signing switch.
  4. bypassCSP:true unconditionally on browser extract plus playbook page.evaluate — page scripts may run.
  5. Opt-in cache stores full signed envelopes on disk when cache_ttl_s>0.
  6. occam refresh kills every host by binary name on the machine.
  7. launch-mcp-host merges ~/.occam/onboard.json env into every launch.
  8. WS/Remote new session may kill the shared browser pool.
  9. Managed provider egress when configured — third party sees URL and returned bytes may be signed.
  10. Marketplace auto-merge risk for community playbooks (operational machinery, not trusted distribution — OD-1).

Safely invisible at product surface: daemon prewarm, stderr cosmetics, dead IR CPU cost.

Surprise ranking (operator / careful user)

Highest surprise first: key mint → save always signs → refresh kill-all → onboard env inject → WS pool kill → bypassCSP → playbook JS → marketplace merge → Nuxt eval → cache on disk → skill wipe → silent DOM mutation → fragment cache identity.

First-call inventory (conceptual)

Your very first successful occam_transcode likely also: minted or loaded a signing key, prewarmed HTTP daemon, dismissed consent banners, ran with CSP bypass, possibly virtual-scrolled, built and discarded canonical IR, and may have written cache if TTL was set.

CHECK

NETWORK + LOCAL. Run one browser-backed transcode with OCCAM_LOG enabled. Inspect stderr for launch options and page mutations you did not request. List ~/.occam/keys/ after starting with OCCAM_RECEIPTS=off — key file exists anyway.

Common misconception

"Nothing happens that I did not ask for." Twenty-nine proven automatic behaviors say otherwise, and eleven of them are not disableable — including key mint, save-always-sign, bypassCSP, and machine-wide refresh kill.

Limitations

  • Automatic behaviors are not exhaustively surfaced in MCP responses.
  • Many are correct engineering (post-processors, eligibility rules) but surprising in combination.
  • Disabling receipts does not disable key mint or playbook signing.
  • Robots compliance is off by default and fails open on fetch errors.