overthinkos/ov

ov -- Overthink CLI binary

Layer Properties

| Property | Value | |----------|-------| | Install files | tasks:, bin/ov |

What It Provides

The ov binary inside containers serves two purposes:

1. Native D-Bus agent — ov eval dbus commands on the host delegate to the in-container binary via engine exec container ov eval dbus <cmd> . <args>. The in-container ov connects to the local D-Bus session bus using godbus/dbus/v5 (pure Go, no external tools needed). This is the primary path for ov eval dbus notify, ov eval dbus call, ov eval dbus list, and ov eval dbus introspect.

2. In-container CLI — full ov functionality available inside the container for scripting, service management, and automation.

Updating the Binary — dual-path gotcha

The ov layer's copy: bin/ov task is resolved relative to the layer directory, so the image build reads layers/ov/bin/ov — NOT the repo-root bin/ov. Two independent paths need to stay in sync:

| Path | Who reads it | |------|-------------| | bin/ov (repo root) | Host-side ov invocations; users running /tmp/ov style tests | | layers/ov/bin/ov | The ov layer's COPY into images during ov image build |

Canonical workflow — task build:ov compiles to repo-root AND syncs to the layer:

task build:ov                              # Builds + syncs both paths; rebuild images after.
ov image build <image>                     # Rebuild affected images.

Manual workflow — if you skip task build:ov and build with go build directly, you MUST sync the layer path, or images will bake the previous binary:

cd ov && go build -o ../bin/ov .           # Only updates repo-root bin/ov.
cp bin/ov layers/ov/bin/ov                 # REQUIRED — sync to layer path.
ov image build <image>                     # Rebuild affected images.

Why this bites: ov image build uses auto-generated intermediate images (e.g., ghcr.io/overthinkos/fedora-ov-2-dbus-nodejs) that cache the ov layer. If you update bin/ov in repo-root but forget the layer copy, the intermediate's cache hit serves stale content. After cleaning up a stale dual-path situation, podman rmi 'ghcr.io/overthinkos/fedora-ov-2*' forces a clean intermediate rebuild.

ov status Probe

The ov probe checks:

1. Whether the ov binary exists in the container
2. The CalVer version (ov version)

Shows as ov:ok (2026.94.1417) in ov status detail view. Returns - for images without the ov layer.

Note: ov version writes to stdout via fmt.Println (the prior println(version) emitted to stderr; the move to fmt.Println landed with the MCP server work so the in-process tool-call path — which captures os.Stdout — returns the CalVer correctly). The layer test at layers/ov/layer.yml asserts stdout: matches [0-9]{4}\.[0-9]+. The ov status probe uses CombinedOutput() so it's agnostic to the stream.

Usage

# image.yml -- now included in all images with supervisord
my-image:
  layers:
    - ov

Used In Images

• Part of the ov-full composition layer (githubrunner, fedora-ov, arch-ov)
• Now directly added to all images with supervisord (openclaw, jupyter, ollama, sway-browser-vnc, selkies-desktop, immich, etc.)

Related Layers

• /ov-coder:ov-full -- composition that includes ov + virtualization + gocryptfs + socat
• /ov-coder:ov-mcp -- layers: [ov, supervisord] meta-composition that deploys ov mcp serve (~192-tool MCP gateway) with a /workspace bind mount (volume NAME project) for build-mode tools + auto-fallback to overthinkos/overthink when nothing is bound
• /ov-foundation:dbus -- D-Bus session bus (ov eval dbus commands need this)
• /ov-selkies:swaync -- notification daemon (needed for ov eval dbus notify to show popups)

When to Use This Skill

Use when the user asks about:

• Installing the ov binary inside containers
• The ov-full composition layer
• In-container ov CLI usage
• Native D-Bus support (ov eval dbus commands delegate to in-container binary)
• Updating the ov layer binary after code changes

Related

• /ov-build:layer — layer authoring reference (layer.yml schema, task verbs, service declarations)
• /ov-build:eval — declarative testing (eval: block, ov eval image, ov eval live)