Commit Graph
7 Commits
Author SHA1 Message Date
jschoubben 333356cff3 Order the records the way the system is learned
Jochen asked whether the order made sense. It did not -- it followed when
things happened to be decided, which after consolidation is fictional anyway
since record 5 alone folds decisions taken across a week.

Concretely wrong before: the domain statement sat at 8, after five engineering
rules; the constitution was scattered across 5, 12 and 17; the tiers landed at
15, 16, 21 and 22 with process records in between.

Now it walks: what the mesh is (1-3), its tiers from the bottom up (4-8), what
runs on them and how it gets there (9-10), how it is built (11-16), how it is
checked (17-18), how we work (19-23).

Two things made this safe rather than free. It is a permutation, not a
compaction, so the renames go through temporary names -- otherwise two files
want one slot and one is lost. And the reference rewrite is a single
simultaneous pass, because almost every number moved into a slot another number
was vacating; replacing one at a time would have cascaded and pointed things at
the wrong record while still resolving.

Verified: 284 [ADR NNNN](path) links across the repository, all with matching
text and target.

The ordering principle is now stated in 19 rather than left implicit -- the
repository already said "the numbering is the flow" about its folders, and
there was no reason for the records to be the exception.
2026-08-28 23:30:42 +02:00
jschoubben e1febe8e0f Renumber the records 1 to 23
The consolidation left a sparse sequence -- 1, 4, 6, 7, 9, 10, 12, 15, 16, 18,
19, 25, 34, 35, 36, 37, 40, 42, 44, 45, 48, 49, 58 -- where the gaps were only
the archaeology of what used to be there.

Renumbered contiguously. Renames run in ascending order, so every target number
is already free and no two files ever collide.

The reference rewrite is one simultaneous pass rather than a sequence of
replacements. Numbers moved into slots other numbers were vacating -- the node
host went 37 to 16 while the lab went 16 to 9 -- so replacing one at a time
would have cascaded and silently pointed things at the wrong record.

Seven plain-text references survived the merges as prose rather than links,
naming records that no longer existed: the enrolment token, the link boundary,
what a declaration is, reachability, the repository structure. Each mapped to
the consolidated record that now holds it.

Verified rather than assumed: every [ADR NNNN](path) link now has matching text
and target, checked across the whole repository, and the checker passes.

Frontmatter `consolidates:` lists dropped -- they named records that are gone,
and each consolidated record already says in prose what it absorbed.
2026-08-28 23:28:34 +02:00
jschoubben 77f3a4cea7 Consolidate: 65 decision records to 23
Every remaining cluster merged. Each was one design that had been split across
several records because it was worked out over days rather than at once.

  the node host          8 -> 1    applies not decides, depends on nothing,
                                   per operating system, root service, the
                                   launcher, episodic, what a declaration is,
                                   actions from the bundle only
  a node and how it joins 4 -> 1   what a node is, joining, the link as
                                   security boundary, the enrolment token
  modules and the graph   7 -> 1   everything is a module, no domain modules,
                                   three edges, provisioning, the core library
  substrate and control   6 -> 1   the test, seven contexts, one control plane,
    plane                          the authority is not a database, the named
                                   products, the pinned bundle
  connectivity            3 -> 1   a route is a grant, reachability declared,
                                   filter rules
  delivery                5 -> 1   reconciliation not a pipeline, artifacts,
                                   the three silos, a failed step, the verdict
  the lab                 5 -> 1   (earlier)
  how this repository     10 -> 1  (earlier)
    works

Nothing was dropped. Each consolidated record carries the reasoning of the ones
it absorbs -- the measurements, the incidents, the alternatives rejected --
because that reasoning is the only reason to keep a record at all. What is gone
is the fragmentation: eight files to read to understand tier 0, when tier 0 is
one component.

The four superseded records went too. They existed to point at their
successors, and the successors now contain what they said.

The checker made this safe. Each merge left dangling links -- 38 files after
the host merge alone -- and it named every one. Nothing was found by reading,
and a manual pass would certainly have missed some, including references inside
AGENTS.md which every session loads.
2026-08-28 20:03:24 +02:00
jschoubben 5e83ac2c22 Consolidate: 65 decision records to 52
Jochen: a normal application has 3-5 ADRs, maybe 10 for a large one, and we are
at 65. Fair, and the cause is mine -- I recorded every FINDING as a decision
rather than every fork in the road.

Two merges, both cases where one decision had been split across many records
because it was taken over several days rather than at once.

0019 absorbs ten records about how this repository works: what it is and that
it is public, the folder flow, the two design layers, the issue front door,
status in frontmatter, playbooks, the naming rule, the product name. Those were
never ten decisions -- they were one, seen from ten angles as the repository
took shape.

0016 absorbs the five about the lab: a node is a virtual machine, a router is
scenery, a scenario declares the underlay, a scenario is a closed address
space, and the two scenario classes. Same pattern -- one design, split by the
order it was worked out in.

The consolidated 0019 also raises the bar for what earns a record, since that
is what produced 65: a record is warranted when there is a genuine fork -- a
direction reversed, an alternative that will be proposed again, something
contested. A finding is not a decision, and a bug is certainly not. Everything
else belongs in the design document where the reasoning is actually read.

The checker earned its place here. Deleting nine records left 13 dangling links
across the repository and it named every one, including in AGENTS.md. Nothing
was found by reading.

Remaining clusters worth the same treatment: the host (8 records), delivery
(5), modules (6), connectivity (4), substrate and control plane (4). That would
be 52 down to roughly 30.
2026-08-28 18:53:19 +02:00
jschoubben 4ab8a0507f Delivery is reconciliation, not a pipeline; research 008 closes
Jochen: don't rebuild the current coordinator, use it as a pitfall list. That
reframed the last open question rather than answering it.

0058 stopped deploy being a stage that pushes to nodes, and said plainly what
it did not fix: detection. A merge that created no pipeline, and nothing said
so. That is not a defect in the detector -- it is what happens when correctness
depends on an event ARRIVING.

0063 applies 0058's move one level up. The control plane holds what source
exists and what has been built from it, and builds the difference. A change
becomes a build because source is ahead of artifacts, which is a comparison
answerable at any moment. An event makes it fast; nothing makes it necessary,
so a missed webhook costs latency and cannot cost correctness.

The mesh becomes one idea at two layers: the control plane reconciles artifacts
against source, the host reconciles machine state against declarations. The
pipeline as a state machine disappears, and with it the stage list that a
verify step was once omitted from.

That reframing answered the three questions still open in 008, so it graduates
with all six closed. A deployed state is two comparisons rather than an event.
A verdict is about an ARTIFACT and gates whether it may be declared -- sharper
than the question expected. And "before self-hosting" mostly dissolves, because
a reconciler needs source and artifacts as bindings where a pipeline's stages
name their targets.

Four costs recorded, and one is a real risk rather than a trade: a reconciler
that cannot reach its target retries forever, and without something noticing,
the failure is silence -- the exact fault this removes, reintroduced elsewhere.
Also named: the run identity people actually use is lost, and "did my change go
out?" needs a replacement or this will be worse to live with than what it
replaces, whatever its properties.
2026-08-28 02:59:42 +02:00
jschoubben 9dc57b4712 Graduate 005; record what 0058 answered in 008
Continuing the sweep. Both were answered by records that did not cite them,
which is the same pattern 003 showed -- an effort stays active because the
decision that resolved it was reached from another direction.

005 graduates. Three of its four questions are answered: provider modules do
not group (0044), the ~50 modules that co-change with nothing stay as they are,
and 'group or leave' was never the right pair -- 0054 reframes it as authority
versus package. Worth noting the debt runs the other way too: this effort's
measurement, that reachability is the ONLY place modules genuinely co-change,
is what 0054 rests on and why connectivity is a context while nothing else
needed one.

Its fourth question moves rather than closes. Whether applications leave the
monorepo before or after they group is a sequencing question, so it belongs to
009-migration.

008 stays active, with its central question marked answered: the coordinator
converges nodes on a declaration rather than dispatching stages (0058). The
three-silo split survives with the third redefined. What 0058 explicitly does
NOT answer is how a change becomes a pipeline reliably -- detection is upstream
of everything it changed and remains the fragile input.
2026-08-28 01:40:02 +02:00
jschoubben daf3e17c32 self-hosting, provisioning and delivery efforts, and the dotfiles origin
The identity provider is settled as not-substrate: the mesh does not
require one, tier 2 authenticates natively, and it is a hosted service
like any other. Four substrate services, not five. The tier test's second
step gains the verb that matters — can the control plane START without it,
not function fully without it.

That verb answers the forge and the registries. They are not substrate and
they are not duplicated: the control plane starts and manages nodes
without a forge, it just cannot change itself. One gitea module, tier 4,
and the mesh's own instance is distinguished by what it is bound to rather
than by being a different module — the same answer as postgres, from the
same test. It also buys a property worth having: if the forge dies the
mesh keeps running.

Delivery needing them is not an upward dependency, resolved the way the
constitution already says to: tier 2 declares requirements, tier 4
provides implementations, the binding is data. The mechanism is
provisioning, and the new idea is that the control plane is itself a
consumer.

Self-hosting therefore becomes a state the mesh REACHES, not a
precondition. A first node comes up from pinned external artifacts and
re-binds to internal providers once they exist. Today's mesh assumes the
second state from the first moment, which is why the first-node path needs
a script that papers over an impossibility and is the least-exercised code
in the system. Made explicit, the transition is also reversible.

Research 007 and 008 opened for the two areas flagged as important and
complex, scoped from the weaknesses the as-is layer already documents
rather than started blank.

And the origin: this began as a dotfiles repository. The first two days
adopt dotfiles, add per-node overrides, and introduce service symlinking
with an ignore file. The flat one-directory-per-tool catalogue, linking
over copying, adoption of already-configured machines, per-node overrides
and the desktop modules are all inherited rather than chosen for a mesh.
That is the single most useful fact for anyone changing the catalogue, it
strengthens ADR 0018 — the case for links was never made for a mesh — and
it explains research 005's silent fifty: dotfiles-era entries for one tool
never shared a domain because they never had one.
2026-08-23 20:55:14 +02:00