Issues 164-168: found provisioning every dependency on ace

164 a credential that must be accepted is minted anyway
165 one accepted value must be accepted once per consumer
166 a requirement cannot be optional
167 code several modules share has no home
168 a setting reaches every file and every contribution

04-ISSUES/166-a-requirement-cannot-be-optional/00-report.md

@@ -0,0 +1,24 @@
+---
+status: open
+opened: 2026-09-30
+located-in:
+  - mesh-controller internal/catalogue (requires is a list of hard requirements)
+fixed-by:
+amended-design:
+---
+
+# 166 — A requirement cannot be optional
+
+## What was observed
+
+Making every dependency on ace a provision turned soft dependencies into hard ones. grafana now
+requires `influxdb-api` (a data source), ombi requires `sonarr-api`, `radarr-api` and `lidarr-api`,
+home-assistant requires the Servarr APIs and `mqtt-topic`. Each is optional to the software — grafana
+runs without a data source, ombi without lidarr — but a mesh without influxdb cannot assign grafana at
+all, and a mesh without lidarr cannot run ombi.
+
+## What would be right
+
+A requirement a module can run without: resolved and bound when a provider exists, absent (with its
+`${bound:…}` placeholders refused or defaulted explicitly, never rendered empty) when none does — so
+the module description stays true on every mesh.