Issue 320 and ADR 0253: a condition says itself to the operator in plain words

The operator could not read the mesh's notifications: they were the summary meant
for an agent, with ids, commits, keys and verbs, in UTC. The condition now carries
a headline, an explanation and a resolved line beside its summary.

04-ISSUES/320-the-operator-could-not-read-the-meshs-notifications/00-report.md

@@ -0,0 +1,78 @@
+---
+status: located
+opened: 2026-10-08
+located-in: [mesh-controller internal/conditions (the condition's words), mesh-controller cmd/mesh-controller (every producer of a condition), mesh-catalog modules/messenger (compose, the digest)]
+fixed-by:
+amended-design: 03-DESIGN/01-to-be/45-a-core-that-cannot-fail-silently.md
+---
+
+# 320. The operator could not read the mesh's notifications
+
+## Symptom
+
+On 2026-10-08 the operator said they could not read the mesh's desktop notifications. One, exactly as
+it appeared on the laptop, with the plan id and the commit replaced here by placeholders:
+
+> CLEARED after 26 min: the walk of novox/mesh-catalog `<commit>` has waited 56m0s for mesh-delivery's
+> word to start: `mesh-delivery.show` for the delivery that landed as `<commit>` says why; `plans go
+> <plan id> --why ...` starts it by hand
+> about: plan `<plan id>` (waiting)
+> since: 2026-10-08 10:40 UTC
+> key: plan.`<plan id>`.waiting
+> more: conditions show plan.`<plan id>`.waiting
+
+What is wrong with it, as the operator listed it:
+
+- It is a wall of text, five lines and some sixty words for one fact.
+- It is full of identifiers: a plan id, a commit, a condition key and a verb's syntax.
+- Its time is UTC, not the operator's.
+- Its backticks are markdown, which a desktop popup shows literally.
+- A clearance repeats the whole problem.
+- It does not say in plain words what happened, whether the operator needs to act, or what to do.
+
+The same shape held for every open condition on the mesh that day: a module unhealthy on the laptop
+("… its unit `<name>.service` failed in the account's own service manager (exit-code)"), three failed
+units on a workstation, a cause repaired by hand thirty-five times, five deliveries held past their bound,
+each with `mesh-delivery.show <repository>@<commit>` in its line.
+
+## Cause
+
+**The condition had one line of words, and it served two readers.** To-be 45 §2 gave a condition one
+`summary`, "one line in the mesh's words", and §5 made a message out of that summary with the key,
+subject, kind, since-when and the verb that shows more. The summary was written for whoever looks closer
+— an agent at the mesh MCP server, a person reading `conditions` — and rightly carried what they act on:
+the plan, the commit, the verb. Nothing in the condition was written for the operator who reads a popup
+between other work, so the channel showed the agent's line to the operator.
+
+Issue 277 had already found the narrower half: a summary carried detail the content rule refuses, and the
+controller now holds every summary to that rule. Identifiers, verbs and markup pass that rule — they are
+not addresses, paths or secrets — so they reached the operator untouched.
+
+**The message added its own detail.** The messenger's compose added `about:`, `since:` in UTC, `key:` and
+`more:` lines to every message, and a digest added each key in brackets. A clearance was the whole
+summary again behind "CLEARED after …".
+
+## Fix
+
+[ADR 0253](../../02-DECISIONS/0253-a-condition-says-itself-to-the-operator-in-plain-words-beside-its-summary.md):
+every condition carries, beside its summary, a **headline**, an **explanation** and a **resolved line**
+in plain words, made where the condition is made and held to a checked plain rule; every channel shows
+those and says the time in the operator's zone; a clearance is one line.
+
+- novox/mesh-controller: the condition's three new fields, the plain rule, a wording for every kind the
+  controller raises, the richer words at the producers that know more (a walk's modules, a unit's name, a
+  hand-act's cause, a delivery's repository), and a lint over every condition the suite raises.
+- novox/mesh-catalog: the messenger shows the words, says since when in the operator's zone (the new
+  setting `time-zone`), says a clearance in one line, names nothing but titles in a digest, and lets a
+  module give the same words through `notify`.
+
+## How it is checked
+
+ADR 0253 §How it is checked: the plain rule's own test, a test per real notification above showing the
+words before and after, the suite-wide lint, and the messenger's tests of the four messages as the desktop
+shows them.
+
+## Design
+
+To-be 45 §2 gains the three fields, and §5's message is no longer the key, kind and verb but the
+headline, the explanation and since when.