diff --git a/02-DECISIONS/0004-a-node-and-how-it-joins.md b/02-DECISIONS/0004-a-node-and-how-it-joins.md
index 34ca3ca..a958a76 100644
--- a/02-DECISIONS/0004-a-node-and-how-it-joins.md
+++ b/02-DECISIONS/0004-a-node-and-how-it-joins.md
@@ -215,15 +215,26 @@ before the mesh has configured it, so it can resolve no mesh name.
 **Both are the same shape: a node needs a fact about the mesh before it has any trustworthy way
 to obtain one.** So that fact arrives by a path other than the mesh.
 
-**The token carries four things**, and it is the only thing a joining node needs:
+**The token carries five things**, and it is the only thing a joining node needs:
 
 | | |
 |---|---|
+| **who it is** | the name the mesh calls this machine |
 | **where** | the broker's **address**, not a name — there is no resolution yet, and this is why none is needed |
 | **what it is connecting to** | the fingerprint of the broker's certificate |
 | **who it will believe** | the control plane's signing identity |
 | **the right to join** | a one-time secret, useless once used and useless after it expires |
 
+*The first row was added 2026-08-30, from raising a mesh end to end for the first time.* It reads
+like an oversight and is not: **the node cannot work its own name out.** The name is the mesh's,
+chosen when the record was created, and the broker account the node authenticates as is named
+after it — so it must be known *before* the mesh can tell the node anything. It is not a secret,
+and whoever issues the token already has it.
+
+Without it, enrolment fails at the broker with an empty username and a message about credentials,
+which points at everything except the cause. **A missing fact that surfaces as an authentication
+error is worse than one that surfaces as a missing fact.**
+
 **Carried out of band**, by the person adopting the machine. That is what breaks both circles:
 its authenticity comes from the channel it travelled, not from anything the node can check
 afterwards. **Trust on first use, with the first use moved out of band** — the difference between
diff --git a/03-DESIGN/01-to-be/07-the-substrate.md b/03-DESIGN/01-to-be/07-the-substrate.md
index 6f1c623..03bb12c 100644
--- a/03-DESIGN/01-to-be/07-the-substrate.md
+++ b/03-DESIGN/01-to-be/07-the-substrate.md
@@ -2,7 +2,7 @@
 layer: to-be
 status: designed
 code: []
-updated: 2026-08-27
+updated: 2026-08-30
 decisions:
   - 02-DECISIONS/0004-a-node-and-how-it-joins.md
   - 02-DECISIONS/0005-the-node-host.md
@@ -200,3 +200,32 @@ host's vocabulary grows by one shape rather than by one resource type per substr
   [the node host](05-the-node-host.md), never proved. If it is false, the tier boundary moves.
 - **How the substrate is updated once a mesh exists.** Pinned by hand at bootstrap; afterwards
   the control plane could deliver it like anything else, and nothing says whether it does.
+
+## Raised, and observed
+
+*Written 2026-08-30, the first time a bare machine became a running mesh and something joined it.*
+
+**It works, and what that means precisely:** a machine with a container runtime and nothing else
+applied the bundle its host carries and ended with a store, a database per context, those
+contexts' schemas, a broker holding a certificate it generated itself, and the control plane
+serving on top of them. Eleven resources, one command, no mesh to ask anything of.
+
+**Then it joined itself.** The same machine took a token, checked the broker against the
+fingerprint pinned in it, generated three keypairs, and enrolled — which is
+[ADR 0004](../../02-DECISIONS/0004-a-node-and-how-it-joins.md)'s *the first node is a node whose
+mesh is not up yet*, observed rather than argued. Its specialness lasted one command.
+
+**And a credential crossed.** With a second node recorded, the machine was declared the provider
+of a database and pushed to over the broker. What arrived and what did not is the whole of the
+[secrets argument](../../02-DECISIONS/0009-modules-and-the-graph.md), measured on a real machine:
+
+| | |
+|---|---|
+| the password, in plain text | **on the machine only**, one file, mode 0600 |
+| in the declaration that crossed the broker | absent |
+| in the control plane's database | absent |
+| in what the node reported back | absent |
+
+**One fault, and it was in the joining.** The token did not say what the mesh calls the machine,
+so enrolment needed a flag its own help said it did not — and failed at the broker with an empty
+username. Recorded in ADR 0004 as the fifth thing a token carries.
\ No newline at end of file