Settles the design repository now that the self-upgrade build is on main:
- Records the two decisions that shipped without a record — ADR 0077 (the
controller/foundation/node vocabulary) and ADR 0078 (the store and broker are
ordinary modules); accepts ADR 0075 and 0076, which shipped work rests on.
- Fills issue 051's amended-design and wires ADR 0078 into 07-the-foundation.
- Sweeps the repo rename (mesh-control -> mesh-controller) into the mutable docs
now that the forge repo is renamed; updates the glossary note and repos.md.
- Fixes the six broken links from the design-doc renames, indexes the glossary,
regenerates the decisions reading order.
Both checks (records.py, index.py) are green. Statuses stay honest: the build is
on main and lab-proven but not deployed as the production mesh, so the to-be docs
remain in-progress and the as-is layer (the hal mesh) is unchanged — graduation
to implemented + as-is belongs to deployment, not merge.
https://claude.ai/code/session_01D6qtiYU3P9jk3pnAXyAFyx
The playbook offered `env-file` and `${secret:name}` as alternatives,
and that reading is what produced the bug every example module shipped
with: own-secrets pointing at a path named `.env`, mounted as env-file,
holding a bare password. The container starts with no password set —
which is a service running on the wrong credential, not a failure.
They are not alternatives. A sealed file holds a password and nothing
else, so env-file points at a file the module declares whose content
leaves a hole, and the host fills it on the machine. A provisioner is
the exception, because it reads a password file.
Written out as the three lines a module needs, with the failure it
prevents named, since the abstract version was already there and was
read the other way.
Written after porting the first real workload end to end. Every step
exists because skipping it cost something, and the ratio is recorded
because it is the lesson: six attempts, one real bug, and the mesh was
right every time.
The rule worth carrying out of it: read the host's log before
theorising. A declaration that was sent and not applied says so there
and nowhere else — it took an hour to look, and the answer was one line.
Skills take the hq- prefix: they are HQ process workflows, not mesh
workflows, and HQ is company-scoped now. hq-new-research, hq-graduate,
hq-new-issue, hq-diagnose, hq-amend-design, hq-handoff,
hq-sync-constitution, hq-status.
Forward-looking prose becomes Novox Mesh or simply the mesh — the root
README, AGENTS.md, the 00-META README, the mission's module example, and
one to-be document that addressed 'someone working on HAL'.
Three categories deliberately keep HAL, per ADR 0027:
The monorepo is still called hal on the forge. repos.md, every code: field
and every located-in: field name a repository that exists under that name,
and renaming them in prose would make them false.
The as-is layer and the research that measured it describe the system that
runs, and that system is called HAL. 124 modules, 9 daemons, a dead
containerised node — those are observations, not intentions.
Records 0001-0026 are immutable. A record says what was decided when it
was decided, and no record is edited for a name.
Also repoints ADR 0022's link at the renamed skill — a path fix, which the
immutability rule permits, not a change of meaning.
ADR 0027 — the product is Novox Mesh, shortened to mesh internally. HAL was
never chosen: it arrived with the dotfiles repository this grew out of, it
is borrowed, and it is borrowed from the canonical untrustworthy machine
intelligence, which is an odd flag for infrastructure trusted with
credentials. Timing is the substance of the decision, not an aside — the
skeleton is not built, so renaming costs a search and replace now and a
migration later.
Nox is an identity of Novox, and specifically the agent of the MESH rather
than of a node. Nodes keep their own identities. Nox addresses them, and a
human mostly talks to Nox — which makes it the concrete form of the
mission's vision: state an intent, and the mesh works out which node holds
the thing. It holds no private channel. The gap this opens is recorded:
ADR 0012 binds every agent to a home node, and a mesh-scoped agent has
none, so the model needs extending.
ADR 0028 — HQ is company-scoped, novox/hq, with the mesh as its first
product. Checked rather than assumed: the company organisation already
holds live projects that the mesh builds and deploys, so they are tenants
rather than peers, and the mesh is the ground they stand on. There is also
company work outside the mesh already, which strengthens the case and means
the eventual split is closer than "some day" — so each document's scope is
fixed now, in a table, making that split mechanical instead of
archaeological. The folders are deliberately not restructured yet.
The skeleton takes the new vocabulary: mesh-host, mesh-substrate,
mesh-control, mesh-surfaces, mesh-catalog. Substrate drops to four services
now that identity is a hosted workload rather than a dependency.
Research 009 opens the migration, with the reframing that lowers its risk:
replace the control plane, do not move the workloads. Their data never
moves, so it is re-declared rather than adopted — which keeps adoption out
of scope, as the lab design requires. Self-hosting is the last phase, or a
failed cutover takes away the means to fix it.
papa-hq has no ledger. Its root is AGENTS.md, CLAUDE.md, README.md, every
decision is a numbered record, and its graduation playbook has no path for
an unrecorded decision. hal-hq now matches.
The ledger's 41 entries classified as: 10 restating a record, 11 restating
design docs, 15 describing how this repository works with the reasoning
sitting in a README rather than anywhere citable, 3 small rules with no
home, 2 superseded stubs. Mostly a copy — and a hand-maintained index, the
exact pattern ADR 0022 had just rejected for the decision index on the
grounds it drifted after one addition. Keeping one copy of that while
removing another is not a position. It also collided by name with
02-DECISIONS/ in any directory listing.
Nothing was dropped. Records 0019-0025 give the repository decisions the
reasoning they never had: HQ is its own repository and is public, design
has two layers, work moves through playbooks, status lives in frontmatter,
issues have a front door, the numbering is the flow, HQ is the source of
the constitution. 0026 records the ledger's own removal.
The three orphan rules went to how-we-build, where a rule is enforced and
keeps the incident that earned it — the package rule was genuinely
unwritten anywhere. Two lab decisions stated only in the ledger went into
the lab design. "Deliberately not decided" went to the research effort and
design document each question actually belongs to.
The chronological view the ledger provided is now generated from record
frontmatter, which is what it was for.
The cost, stated in 0026 rather than glossed: a record is more work than a
table row, so the risk is a small decision going unrecorded because nobody
wanted to write a document. how-we-build takes rules cheaply, which is the
mitigation, not a solution.
papa-hq reads 01 research -> 03 decision -> 02 design. The order is a
scar, not a choice: 02-DESIGN existed from its initial commit, and when
adr/ was finally promoted on 2026-07-13 it took the next free number
rather than its place in the sequence. By then design was too settled to
renumber.
hal-hq was three commits old, so it is not. adr/ becomes 02-DECISIONS and
02-DESIGN becomes 03-DESIGN, and following the folder numbers now walks
the process in the order it happens: research produces a decision, the
decision authorises a design.
00-GENESIS becomes 00-META, matching papa's rename from the same
restructure.
Every path reference rewritten across documents, frontmatter, playbooks
and skills. All links resolve; all 58 frontmatter blocks parse and their
path fields still point at files that exist.
jschoubben