quilt-canary

The canary as a Quilt cell. Single-purpose byte-exact verification of FNV-1a 64-bit.

What this is

A canary is a small, portable, reproducible artifact. Its job is to verify that two systems agree on a single computation. The canary is the smallest possible canon.

This repo is the smallest polyformalism port. It contains:

1. The algorithm — FNV-1a 64-bit in 2 lines
2. The canary string — "café Δ 日本語" (16 UTF-8 bytes)
3. The canary hash — 0x024a555471370b18d (the witness)

That's it. No framework, no abstractions, no build system.

The algorithm

hash = 0xcbf29ce484222325 (offset)
for byte b in input:
    hash = hash XOR b
    hash = (hash * 0x100000001b3) mod 2^64
return hash

In Python:

def fnv1a_64(s: str) -> int:
    h = 0xcbf29ce484222325
    for b in s.encode("utf-8"):
        h = h ^ b
        h = (h * 0x100000001b3) & 0xffffffffffffffff
    return h

The canary string

"café Δ 日本語"

This string mixes ASCII, Latin-1, Greek, and CJK in 16 UTF-8 bytes. See CANARY.md for the rationale.

The canary hash

fnv1a_64("café Δ 日本語") = 0x024a555471370b18d
                          = 2,640,610,520,279,855,501 decimal

Quick start

Pick your language and verify:

# Python
python3 canary.py

# TypeScript
npx tsx canary.ts

# Rust
cargo run --release

# C#
dotnet run

# Bash (via Python bridge)
bash canary.sh

Expected output (any port):

0x024a555471370b18d

Polyformalism ports

| Language | File | Lines | |---|---|---| | Python | canary.py | 12 | | TypeScript | canary.ts | 18 | | Rust | src/main.rs | 18 | | C# | Program.cs | 22 | | Bash | canary.sh | 6 |

All ports produce 0x024a555471370b18d byte-exactly.

Why this repo exists

This is the minimum polyformalism artifact in the Quilt canon. It's a witness for the doctrine that:

Same algorithm. Many languages. Same result. Byte-exact.

The canary is the smallest possible statement of the polyformalism doctrine.

Layered navigation

| Layer | Where | |---|---| | CANON.md | CANON.md — what this repo is, in 24 lines | | README | README.md — quick start, navigation | | Algorithm | ALGORITHM.md — FNV-1a 64-bit explained | | Ports | PORTS.md — per-port reference | | Canary | CANARY.md — the canary string & hash |

License

MIT — Casey / SuperInstance, Sept 22-23, 2026