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+---
+status: open
+opened: 2026-10-03
+located-in:
+  - mesh-controller
+  - mesh-catalog
+fixed-by:
+amended-design:
+---
+
+# 213 — The controller is a Go program, and it still runs in a container
+
+## What was observed
+
+2026-10-03. The controller — the program that holds the `mesh-controller` seat and answers its
+verbs (`status`, `nodes`, `push`, `assign` …), composes every machine's declaration and plans the
+builds — runs on its machine as a container built from an image:
+
+```
+mesh-controller   Up …        (docker ps on the machine that runs it)
+```
+
+It is written in Go and compiles to one static binary, as the node host does. The host is delivered
+as a bundle and run as a process; the node's tool runtime now is too
+([ADR 0193](../../02-DECISIONS/0193-every-bundle-the-runtime-serves-is-launched-and-the-runtime-knows-no-language.md)).
+The controller is the one piece of the mesh's own Go code still shipped as an image.
+
+## Why it matters beyond this instance
+
+[ADR 0188](../../02-DECISIONS/0188-a-modules-own-code-is-bundles-in-any-language-and-a-tools-bundle-speaks-mcp-to-the-runtime.md)
+§1 says a module's own code is bundles, never an image, and §3 that a bundle that is a service is a
+`process` the host runs. The controller breaks the rule it is the mechanism of: the registration
+gate that will refuse an image of a module's own code has to exempt the controller, or refuse it.
+It also costs what an image costs — a container runtime on its machine as a hard requirement,
+eight mounts standing in for files a process would simply read, an image rebuild for a binary
+change — and
+every restart of it is a container recreation, which is how the controller restarts in the middle
+of a plan today.
+
+## What a fix has to settle
+
+- The controller's module declares a Go bundle (`system`, `binary`) and a `process` running it
+  (`./<binary>`, mesh-host #81), with its credential and store connection as files and words, not
+  container mounts and a container network name.
+- What the container gives it now that a process would not: it runs on the host's network already,
+  as an unprivileged user (65534), with eight mounts. Each mount named and replaced by a path, and
+  the user by an account the host declares.
+- The handover: the controller restarting itself as a process, on the one machine that runs it,
+  without a window where nothing answers the mesh's verbs.
+
+Located only by owner; the move is a change of the controller's module and its deployment, not of
+its code.