The board is a web application, not a category

Supersedes 0032, which decided the right thing and described it wrongly.
The decision is unchanged: the account that installed the host owns the
mesh, and there is no user model.

What was wrong was inventing "a surface that delegates authentication"
for the board. It is a web application with a login, in the way every
web application has a login. That is a fact about an application, not a
property of the mesh.

The cost was not cosmetic. It made the identity module look like part of
the mesh's authority — something the mesh depends on to know who anybody
is — when the mesh knows nothing about people at all and one of the
applications running on it happens to have a login.

Keeps the line that is worth writing down, and states it more plainly:
signing in to an application must not become authority over the mesh.
Today it cannot, because the board reads and does not act. The moment it
can assign a module, whoever it lets in has mesh authority — and it
would arrive as a feature rather than as a decision. So a surface that
can change the mesh is a change to who owns the mesh, and is taken as
one. Not forbidden; just not something that turns up in a pull request
titled "add assign button".

02-DECISIONS/0032-the-local-account-owns-the-mesh.md

@@ -1,10 +1,11 @@
 ---
 topic: how we work
-status: accepted
+status: superseded
 date: 2026-08-31
 deciders: jochen
 reconstructed: false
 extends: 02-DECISIONS/0031-the-control-plane-authenticates-nobody.md
+superseded-by: 02-DECISIONS/0034-the-local-account-owns-the-mesh.md
 ---
 
 # 32. The local account owns the mesh; a surface delegates to a module

02-DECISIONS/0034-the-local-account-owns-the-mesh.md

@@ -0,0 +1,81 @@
+---
+topic: how we work
+status: accepted
+date: 2026-08-31
+deciders: jochen
+reconstructed: false
+supersedes: 02-DECISIONS/0032-the-local-account-owns-the-mesh.md
+---
+
+# 34. The local account owns the mesh, and a web application's login is not that
+
+*Supersedes [ADR 0032](0032-the-local-account-owns-the-mesh.md), which decided the right thing and
+described it wrongly. The decision below is unchanged; what it said about the board was an
+invention.*
+
+## Context
+
+ADR 0032 answered *who owns the mesh* — the account that installed the host — and then framed the
+board as **a surface that delegates authentication**, a category it made up for the occasion. It
+does not need one.
+
+**The board is a web application.** It has a login, provided by the identity module, in the way
+every web application has a login. That is a fact about an application, not a property of the
+mesh, and giving it a name in the mesh's vocabulary implied a relationship that is not there.
+
+The cost of the invented category was not cosmetic. It made the identity module look like part of
+the mesh's own authority — something the mesh *depends on* to know who anybody is — when the truth
+is that the mesh knows nothing about people at all, and one of the applications running on it has
+a login.
+
+## Decision
+
+**The account that installed the host owns the mesh on that node.** Authority is a local login.
+There is nothing else to hold, no user model, no roles, and nothing to administer.
+
+**This follows from what was already decided.**
+[ADR 0004](0004-a-node-and-how-it-joins.md) says there is no authorisation between nodes — every
+node is the operator's own, so a message from one is a message from them, and *the mesh boundary
+is the security boundary.* A user model inside that boundary would guard nothing: anyone it could
+stop could read the node's key off the disk.
+
+**A web application's login is its own business.** The board authenticates its users through the
+identity module. So might anything else the mesh runs. **None of that is mesh authority**, and the
+mesh does not learn who anybody is from it.
+
+## The line this draws, which is the reason to write it down
+
+**Signing in to an application must not, on its own, become authority over the mesh.**
+
+Today it cannot: the board reads and does not act
+([`11-a-board.md`](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/11-a-board.md) — *not the way to change things*). Looking
+at a page tells you what is true and changes nothing.
+
+**The moment the board can assign a module, whoever it lets in has mesh authority** — and it would
+arrive as a feature rather than as a decision. That is the failure this record exists to make
+visible, because it is the kind that is only obvious afterwards.
+
+So: **a surface that can change the mesh is a change to who owns the mesh**, and is taken as one.
+Not forbidden — wanting to manage nodes from a browser is reasonable — but not something that
+turns up in a pull request titled *add assign button*.
+
+## Consequences
+
+**The identity module is not special.** Not substrate ([ADR 0031](0031-the-control-plane-authenticates-nobody.md)),
+not part of the mesh's authority, and nothing about the mesh stops working when it is down. Some
+applications cannot be logged into, which is what it means for an application's login provider to
+be unavailable.
+
+**Anyone with a shell on a node has full authority there.** Unchanged from ADR 0032, and still the
+sentence that decides who gets an account on a machine. The protection is the machine's own login
+and the overlay that keeps it unreachable from outside ([ADR 0007](0007-connectivity.md)).
+
+**A node cannot be operated by somebody without a login on it.** The cost of having no user model.
+If that is ever wanted, the paragraph above says what it costs.
+
+## References
+
+- [ADR 0032](0032-the-local-account-owns-the-mesh.md) — superseded; same decision, invented category
+- [ADR 0004](0004-a-node-and-how-it-joins.md) — the mesh boundary is the security boundary
+- [ADR 0031](0031-the-control-plane-authenticates-nobody.md) — the control plane authenticates
+  nobody

02-DECISIONS/README.md

@@ -128,6 +128,7 @@ python3 00-META/checks/index.py            fail if stale
 - **0022** — [The constitution absorbs what is already enforced](0022-the-constitution-absorbs-what-is-enforced.md)
 - **0023** — [The approval is the checkpoint, not the second pair of hands](0023-approval-is-the-checkpoint.md)
 - **0025** — [The design record is read where it is written, never copied to be found](0025-the-design-record-is-read-not-copied.md)
-- **0032** — [The local account owns the mesh; a surface delegates to a module](0032-the-local-account-owns-the-mesh.md)
+- **0032** — [The local account owns the mesh; a surface delegates to a module](0032-the-local-account-owns-the-mesh.md)  *(superseded)*
+- **0034** — [The local account owns the mesh, and a web application's login is not that](0034-the-local-account-owns-the-mesh.md)
 
 <!-- index:end -->