Two decisions taken with the author:
- Genesis delivers and the vault adopts. The vault cannot run first — it is built on the runtime base
the installation makes after the store, broker and controller, and it learns its work over the bus.
Genesis generates the foundation's first shared secrets, seals them to the operator key, and
delivers them to the vault through the path an operator's value takes; from then on the vault holds
and rotates them. This answers ADR 0085's own reason for rejecting vault-only minting, which 0113
now names instead of stepping around.
- Rotation re-confirms on every pass. An applier repeats its confirmation until acknowledged, so a lost
message costs one pass; an applier that stops after applying locks readers out until its supervised
restart, and that window is stated and shown, not claimed away.
Fixes:
- Scope: a shared secret is made by the vault; a private key (node sealing keys, the operator's key,
the certificate authority) is made where it is used. The inventory adds the makers the first version
missed: node and builder broker passwords, and enrolment tokens.
- Broker accounts are created by the broker's provisioner, not the controller, so the controller never
holds their plaintext; mesh-broker delivers amqp again — one broker per mesh — and only mesh-store
delivers nothing.
- secret is a reserved provision: only the mesh-vault holder may provide it, and no pin routes around it.
- A secret's contract says whether a recipient applies it or reads it at start; appliers are never
restarted for it, init-only secrets are applied, and confirmation is to-be 13's standard.
- Operator secrets are one rule everywhere: a secret requirement answered by the vault (0112 no longer
says otherwise). A data provider's adapter may return fields; the data-return check names a lab consumer.
- 'Holder' now means a seat's holder only; a secret has recipients.
A secret comes into being seven ways today: provider credentials, own secrets (54 modules), broker
accounts through a command that is easy to forget, a vault that only records what the controller
mints (6 modules), operator values, licences, and root secrets. The vault was built to end own secrets
and did not; the old path was never retired.
0113 is rewritten as a waterfall. The vault makes every secret and nothing else does. A provider that
needs a secret for a consumer requires it from the vault, declared once in its provision's contract
and expanded per consumer by resolution; the vault delivers it to both holders, each sealed to its own
node, so a provider's code is unchanged. Own secrets, broker passwords, operator values and licence
credentials take the same path. Genesis is not an exception: it raises the vault first and asks it,
so there is one way a secret is made from the first one on. The vault can sit at the bottom because it
requires nothing but a broker account.
One shared mint function in the SDK was considered and rejected: generation becomes uniform but custody
stays spread over every provider's machine, and each SDK language needs its own implementation.
Rotation is asked of the vault and is provider-first: the value goes to the holder that accepts it,
which confirms, before the holder that presents it gets it, so the lockout window shrinks to the
consumer's own restart, and an unconfirmed provider holds the rotation rather than half-doing it. The
host derives which processes to restart or recreate from the requirement a definition reads, so no
definition declares restart-on for a secret. A rotation shows unconfirmed until each consumer restarted
and passed its health check. Issue 103 becomes a prerequisite.
The file is renamed to match what it now decides. 0112 follows.
0113 — the plaintext claim was false under its own mechanism: handing a provider's answer to the
controller puts every secret on the broker and in the controller in the clear. The provider now seals
each secret field itself, to the consumer node's public key the mesh hands it, and the controller
carries sealed fields it cannot open. That is stricter than today, where the controller holds every
minted credential in the clear. Option 3 (plaintext to the controller) is recorded and rejected. The
foundation exception now covers root-secret rotation (0085) and forms like the broker admin's hash, so
no phase claims to remove the broker's bootstrap step. To-be 24 and 13 are named among what it amends.
27 — resolution is consistent with 0110: co-location and the only provider apply only where no seat
delivers the provision, so an unheld seat is refused even with one provider. The secret-field rule now
matches 0086 exactly (a declared env-file, never a container environment value). The seat placeholder
is the controller's, and the one module reading it moves to a host port. Contracts are held by the
controller and written down in phase 1, so they can be checked; every rule has a check. An operator's
secret is still the operator's, with the vault as custodian. Which seats a module holds is listed as
not settled.
0110 — the unheld-seat-with-one-provider case and the one-answer-for-everyone rule have checks; the
claim about moved manifests is corrected. 26 — the table governs and the code catches up, not the
reverse; scope and capacity agree with the glossary; moving a seat is described as it really is today.
0112 — aligned with 27, and lists 0049 and 26 among what it changes.
Issue 118 is renumbered 119: another branch took 118 first. 'Control-plane' is gone from 0110 and 0111.
The design pass. Everything a module needs is a requirement: a name, a contract, and one of four kinds
of provider — a module, the node's host, the mesh, the operator. Installing a module resolves every
requirement or refuses, naming everything missing at once. It retires six mechanisms that grew
separately: provisions through bindings, settings, assigned ports, machine facts, minted secrets and
literals in the definition.
ADR 0113, proposed: a provider makes what it provides, and the mesh carries it back sealed to the
consumer's node. It is the return path ADR 0048 left "to a separate decision", now needed three ways:
data provisions with nothing to answer with, contracts needing a value the controller cannot make, and
a vault that generates nothing. Who a consumer is stays the mesh's (ADR 0049). Genesis is the one
exception. On acceptance it supersedes 0048 and amends 0085.
ADR 0112 is revised from three sources to that single concept.
ADR 0110 is amended for two points raised in review. The vault gets the mesh-vault seat (issue 106).
A seat's holder outranks co-location for a provision it delivers. Writing that down exposed an
inconsistency: mesh-store delivering postgres-database would have sent every database consumer to the
control-node, against to-be 23's node-local stores. So a seat delivers a provision only where the mesh
has one answer for everyone — artifact store, npm registry, git, vault — and mesh-store and mesh-broker
deliver nothing. 23 and 26 follow.
'Control plane' becomes 'controller' in the records written today.
- Secrets follow ADR 0085 as amended: a module's own secret is a provision the controller mints and
the vault records. The previous commit had that backwards. Whether the vault should generate
instead is recorded as an open question, not decided.
- A directory's contract is owner and mode only. The persistence flag was the keep flag ADR 0030
refused; a directory is kept while it holds anything, and disposable data is a named volume (0107).
- An operator's shared data stays an access (ADR 0051), which rejected an operator-owned directory.
Only where its path is written moves to the assignment.
- The records it changes on acceptance are named: 0051, 0091, 0046 (settings keyed by instance),
0084 (a provider is a node and an instance), and the glossary, which gains its new words only
when the record is accepted.
- How it is checked covers every stated rule. Container-side paths are no longer flagged by the
host-path rule, and code fallbacks are covered.
- Provisions are what other modules provide. A seat's occupant is not listed as one, and the vault
is not described as selectable per assignment.
- 'Control plane' becomes 'controller'. The provider count is ten of eleven, not eleven of twelve.
The first draft listed minted secrets under what the mesh generates. ADR 0085 made a module's own
secret — a password, an internal token, an external key it was handed — a secret provision answered
by the vault, like a database by the store. What the mesh still mints is the delivery credential for
each provision a module takes (ADR 0048), the vault's own included.
Issue 118 records what a review of where module code reads its files found: 789 host-path strings
in 70 of the catalogue's 71 definitions, every one a decision the definition makes about a machine.
Mounts are checked (ADR 0091); the same paths retyped as values are not. It records what that has
already allowed — a DNS provider that would provision nobody silently, a contributions file that
names credentials by host path and so forces every provider to mount at the identical path, an SDK
loop that treats an unwritten contributions file as empty without a word, defaults in code that
disagree with their own manifests — and that no module can be assigned to one node twice, because
every identity is keyed by the module's name.
ADR 0112, proposed for review, answers it the way ADR 0038 answered ports: a definition names
variables, and installing it resolves every one or refuses, from three sources — the assignment's
own configuration, provisions the mesh resolves against a contract, and what the mesh generates or
knows. A directory becomes a provision: the module requires one by name with its owner, mode and
persistence, and where it lands is the assignment's. The mesh's own files stop carrying host paths.
An assignment gets an identity of its own, so a module may run twice on one node.
Checking copies for agreement was rejected as checking something that should not exist; rewriting
paths per assignment was rejected as inferring which strings are paths by their shape. Syntax, a
node's default layout, and when a second instance becomes possible are left to the design.
The enumeration behind the first set read manifests in two repositories and missed a claim made
in the control plane's own code: the private-network module it ships claims the-private-network at
node scope. A closed set without it would refuse the control plane's own module. Thirteen claims in
use, naming twelve seats.
Seats have been doing two jobs and neither is written down. The mechanism ADR 0009 introduced is
enforced — a second holder is refused — but any well-formed name becomes a seat by being claimed,
and nothing can say which seats a mesh has or who holds them: holdings are assembled while planning
and discarded. The enumeration done while preparing this missed the control plane's own manifest,
because core modules' manifests live in its repository rather than the catalogue.
0110 closes the set. Each seat has a name, a scope, what occupying it delivers, and the record that
made it one; a claim outside the set is refused. A seat is held by a module assignment, and what the
mesh knows about the holder is what it knows about that assignment — nothing is stored beside it. A
seat may deliver a provision, and then its holder answers for it among several providers: pin, then
the holder, then the only provider, then refused. That keeps 0009's "refused, never guessed": the
seat is the choice made once, mesh-wide, instead of a pin per consumer node. The first set is the
eleven seats already claimed plus 0109's npm-package-registry, so nothing in use is refused.
Two concepts — seats for exclusion, a new word for consumable singulars — was rejected: both mean
"this mesh's one X", and the overview a person wants is one list.
0111 gives the mesh a git seat and makes a build source one of two explicit forms: a repository on
the seat's holder, recorded by its path and cloned from wherever the holder runs at build time; or
an external URL, recorded and cloned exactly as given. Recognising self-hosted sources by matching
URLs against the forge's address was rejected — it fails in the one case it exists for, after the
forge moves. Credentials for private repositories are left undecided and said so.
Design: new to-be 26 (the seats); 23 gains the seat step in resolution; 18's source entry names
the two forms; the glossary's seat and provision entries say where they meet. 0109 is carried from
its own branch so every link here resolves.
Extends ADR 0075. Surfaced fixing builder's hand-faked package-registry
binding tonight: gitea's manifest declares the provision once with a single
npm-path, conflating what should be independently assignable per ecosystem
(npm/cargo/docker/...) the same way artifact-store and package-registry
were themselves split. Cited in 22-the-work-ahead.md's Phase 2, where the
target state this decision points at was already described a week ago.
Numbered 109, not 108: route-proxy's policy feature (mesh-controller PR
still-unwritten decision record — reserved but never committed. Renumbered
around it rather than colliding.
Issue 116 found the mesh's proxy applies nothing to a request — host lookup, forward. Against
what the replaced ingress actually relies on, four capabilities are missing: authentication
(three dependents, each gating an admin surface with no login of its own), refusal scoped to a
path (one, a live incident mitigation), path-scoped routing with priority, and redirect.
Policy goes on the route rather than beside it. A proxy-side settings layer keyed by route name
would keep the grant literally clean, but then "what protects this route" is answered from two
files nothing keeps in step — and a route's protection is part of what a route is.
The set is closed at those four, so a fifth is an amendment and each addition is earned by a
dependent that exists. An open middleware surface was rejected: it recreates what is being
replaced, and narrowing one later is far harder than widening a closed one.
Where policy needs a credential the declaration names a secret and never carries the value,
which keeps the existing secret machinery the only thing holding credentials. Inlining a hash
was rejected as the first credential in a declaration — a precedent easier to set than withdraw.
This re-keys the routing table by host and path with priority, which follows from the decision
rather than being a separate one: two of the four need one host routed more than one way. Equal
priorities must resolve identically every time or the proxy stops being reproducible.
The record says how it is checked, including the negative case that rots quietly — a
declaration carrying a credential value rather than a reference must be refused, so the
rejected option cannot return by accident.
08-connectivity §3 names the record and gains the subsection; issue 116 gains amended-design.
Records the rule the operator gave directly, mid-session, after checking
that HAL's own postgres and lavinmq both used a directory bind and the
mesh's adoption of them three weeks ago switched to a named volume without
a reason recorded anywhere.
Already built and rolled out on novox (mesh-catalog PR #54) before this
record -- urgent enough to fix first and write down after. Includes the
incident: the new host directories needed the container's own UID, which a
named volume gets for free and a directory bind does not; mesh-store
crash-looped on Permission denied until ownership was matched to what the
original volume already had.
Closes issue 115. Checks pass.
The decision (the mesh assigns a container's machine-side port; a module
says only what it needs) was proposed 2026-09-01, and the machinery
already implements it in full -- internal/inventory/ports.go's PortFor,
declaration.go's publishedOn. What was missing was the catalogue actually
complying: 14 of 46 modules baked a machine-side number into their own
manifest anyway. mesh-catalog PR fixes 11 of them (the two defensible
kinds -- foundation, protocol-fixed -- are left alone, per the issue's own
categories). Accepting the decision now that it's actually enforced, and
closing the issue it was blocking.
Checks pass.
Implemented in mesh-controller #49 and mesh-host #24. One proposal was rejected on the
record's own terms: converging the hub is not made to wait on other machines' migrations.
Two birth-address outages and a registry that would have been the third; a
container that keeps a stale environment after its file changes; a host command
that applied a converged declaration to an adopted node; the hub and the vault
without seats. And the decision the operator made under it all: the hub adopts
the predecessor's tunnel in place, key and peers and range and port.
The controller kept one report per machine, replaced, so a resource nothing can
ever apply looked like a failure that had just happened, every few minutes, for
ever. It now counts identical reports and status says stuck after three.
The end-to-end design held 'the run rebuilds what it tests' for binaries and images
and not for manifests. The beds' inline copies fell into three kinds; only the first
is a stale copy. The other two are named: a mesh test wearing a catalogue module's
name (074) and a stocked runtime image the run never rebuilds (075).
A seeded file is created once (0087); the foundation filters before anything
listens (0088); a machine becomes the last thing it was told (design 05).
Each says how it is checked.
Closes issue 041 by decision and by code on the same branch: the catalogue
engine refuses a secret in a container's env, and a secret-carrying env-file
unless the container declares its reason; the controller reads all six of
its credentials from files; design 13 states the rule and how it is checked.
Recorded on the record, dated, before anything shipped against the sentences
that change. The vault is installed at genesis like the store and broker, one
per mesh, and holds every secret a module has for itself sealed a second time
to an operator key whose private half never enters the mesh — the break-glass
path the first version left open, without a key one place holds.
Design 24 says how; 07 and 21 say what genesis does not yet do; issue 071
names the fixed credentials the foundation is raised with today.
jochen
jschoubben