Issue 132: a module can be recorded without the directory it lives in

Nine modules could not be rebuilt: their record named the repository and no directory, so every
build looked for a manifest at a repository root that has never had one. Resolved by mesh-controller
— `module add` takes the directory and the forge, and the rule is checked rather than described.

04-ISSUES/132-a-module-can-be-recorded-without-the-directory-it-lives-in/00-report.md

@@ -0,0 +1,60 @@
+---
+status: resolved
+opened: 2026-09-28
+located-in: [mesh-controller cmd/mesh-controller]
+fixed-by: mesh-controller — `module add` takes `--path` and `--self`, so a module handed over by hand records the whole location it came from; a record naming a repository and no directory says so in the reply; the rule is one function with a test beside it. The nine records already wrong were corrected by rebuilding each with its real directory, which is the same act through the same door.
+amended-design:
+---
+
+# 132 — A module can be recorded without the directory it lives in
+
+## What was observed
+
+Nine modules on one mesh could not be rebuilt. Each attempt failed the same way:
+
+> has no module.json at its root, so there is nothing saying what it is
+
+All nine were recorded as coming from a repository that holds many modules, each in its own
+directory — and each record named the repository and no directory. So every build cloned the
+repository and looked for a manifest where there has never been one.
+
+The failure only surfaced when something asked for all of them at once. Before that, the overview
+said every module was current with its source, because what it compares is what was built against
+what the mesh was last told the source has, and neither half knows whether the source can be found
+at all.
+
+## Why it matters beyond this instance
+
+**A module is a repository and a directory inside it** ([ADR 0069](../../02-DECISIONS/0069-a-module-is-a-repository-and-a-path.md)),
+and one of the two doors into the catalogue could record only the first half. A build records the
+directory it was given, so a module that arrived by being built is always whole; a module handed over
+by hand had no way to say where it lived, and the flag to say it did not exist. The rule was decided
+and enforced on one path out of two.
+
+**Half a location reads exactly like a whole one.** Nothing in the record is empty in a way a person
+would notice: the repository is there, the branch is there, the commit is there. The mesh only finds
+out at the moment it needs the manifest, which is the moment it is trying to rebuild — and the module
+stays on whatever it last built, indefinitely, with nothing saying why.
+
+**It is the same shape as [131](../131-nothing-tells-the-mesh-a-source-moved/00-report.md).** A
+comparison between two facts the mesh holds about itself will agree with itself. Whether the source
+can be found is a question only an attempt to read it answers, and the answer had nowhere to go.
+
+## What was done
+
+`module add` takes the directory and which forge holds the repository, so a hand-registered module
+records the same whole location a built one does. What a record must say to be worth anything is one
+function with a test beside it, rather than a paragraph in a help string: provenance together or not
+at all, a directory needs a repository to be inside, a path on the mesh's own forge is not an address.
+And a record that names a repository but no directory says so when it is made — not refused, because a
+module really at a repository's root is ordinary, but said, because the person adding it is the one
+who knows which it is.
+
+The nine wrong records were corrected by building each with its real directory, which re-records it.
+No row was written by hand.
+
+## What is still true
+
+A directory that does not exist in the repository cannot be refused when the module is added: the
+control plane does not clone, and inventing a check there would mean it did. The first build says so
+plainly, which is one build rather than nine, and the record it leaves behind is right from then on.