ADR 0203: the account's environment is one module's (seat node-environment);
every module contributes variables and PATH entries, rendered by the
controller as a POSIX file and as environment.d.
ADR 0204: shell code is contributed to the login shell in named slots, and
login-shell becomes the mesh's node-login-shell.
ADR 0205: software the distribution does not package ships as a pinned
archive of the module.
Issue 225: undeclaring a user stops a node applying; the shell is never
given back or checked.
To-be 41 carries the work packages; to-be 38 WP5 points to it.
The operator's proposal: one module, holding a mesh seat node-environment, is
the only writer of the account's environment. It renders contributed variables
and PATH entries as a POSIX file shells source and as environment.d for the
graphical session. The shell's contribution shrinks to shell code; the shell
render-then-service-manager-again positions become options weighed against it.
Opened after the zsh module's rollout (to-be 38 WP5) was stopped: every machine
carries the same predecessor-written startup file, the module's block would
duplicate it and drop lines, nothing installs the prompt, and execute never
reads .zshrc. Weighs how modules contribute environment and shell code, where
the operator's own lines go, ordering, and what a contribution is addressed to.
Events miss a machine that joins after them and replay history where only the
latest matters. A module now declares state it owns and reads; the controller
creates the buckets, the runtime serves them on the bundle's channel. Designs 32
and 25 amended; grants measured against a running server.
Found preparing WP4, before the first module's bundle was loaded beside the runtime's own:
proven with a two-copies probe, located in mesh-tools (node-tools), fixed by mesh-tools #32.
Design 38 WP4 records it and the two things the package left to the module — escalation
through sudo, and the filter file read from the manifest's path rather than a container env.
The build role was a mesh seat with one holder and its worker a push consumer with one delivery in
flight, so thirty-five images rebuilt serially on one machine while three others idled. The bus was
drawn for the alternative — a seat's accept subjects on a queue group of holders (design 25) — and
0190 uses it as one pattern for every role: a node seat with accepts, every holder pulling one ask
when idle, the asker addressing the role. Building is the first use: node-build-agent, held by the
build-agent module on every machine with a container runtime. Notes in 0121 and 0162 where their
facts went stale.
The operator's direction, absent from every record until now: the SDK must not limit who writes a
module; tools and services may be written in any language; one module may ship several bundles
(tools, a seat's implementation, a daemon); skeleton first, a full implementation when the work
requires it. ADR 0175 had the runtime import a bundle, which only JavaScript can be.
0187 makes a tools bundle a process the node's runtime launches and speaks MCP over stdio to —
the vocabulary the runtime already speaks outward — so any language with an MCP library can write
one today and the mesh's SDK per language is thin; the transport stays in the runtime (0039's
refusal, kept). Importing a TypeScript bundle is the shortcut, not the contract. Notes in 0175,
0039 and 0150 say where their mechanism moved; design 38 records WP1 as built and adds WP1b (the
launcher and the skeleton SDKs); the glossary's bundle widens.
The predecessor's agent module was retired and its six files stayed on both workstations telling
every session to use tools that no longer exist. This is its successor's design, revised during
review on the operator's directions: the host is module-agnostic, the controller has no part, and a
real licence manager hands out the correct licence in every situation.
- ADR 0181 (reconstructed): the operator account is a node fact stated by the operator; the home is
derived unless stated; a resource may be placed under it owned by the account; a node with no
account refuses one. What the controller shipped on 2026-09-27 without a record.
- ADR 0182: inside a home the module owns the directory and the files it places, writes into the
tool's own files for its few keys, never declares a credential's content, and holds everything
else as found; a predecessor's leftovers are the operator's to remove once.
- ADR 0183: claude-licence-manager holds the mesh seat anthropic-licence-manager and owns the
Anthropic licences, grants (encrypted with a key the vault made for it), bindings per touchpoint,
usage and audit; one rotation source under a lease; a token travels module to module sealed to
each node's module key on request/reply, never as an event; the agent module alone writes what
the agent reads; the host delivers package and state and knows nothing else. A bounded exception
to ADR 0113; dated mechanism notes on ADR 0050 and 0113.
- To-be 36 (claude-code): the mesh's part of the agent's configuration lives in the agent's
machine-wide managed directory, owned whole by the module and written by its code; nothing under
the home but the credentials file of a subscription licence; the API-key licence through the
key-helper; the console as a node-scoped provision (to-be 34 amended); MCP servers as settings
with an mcp_configure tool; one agent directory per machine shared by every session.
- To-be 39 (claude-licence-manager): store, the two licence kinds, keeping a grant alive, the
hand-over, who gets which licence with the predecessor's fallbacks, adoption with the identity
guard, the seat's verbs.
Numbers taken across main and every open branch at the time of the merge; to-be 14, 29 and 34
carry dated notes; the glossary gains "operator account".
The runtime work of design 37 broken down the way design 28 broke down the
bus: what exists measured (the host needs no change — a process and an
archive are what the runtime and a bundle are; the runtime does the job for
one module and must do it for a list), the order the dependencies allow, and
eight packages each ending at a proof on the live mesh — the lab skipped by
the operator's decision, ADR 0149 cited. WP1 the runtime serves many modules;
WP2 the controller composes one per node (a node principal, bundle archives,
the runtime's process, the gate); WP3 the runtime is a module and the console
its serving mode; WP4 the packet filter moves first; WP5 the shell on a
server; WP6 the service manager on a workstation; WP7–8 named and not broken
down.
Main carried two records numbered 0175 and cycle.py refused it: the one that
landed last (the found front end is uninstalled) takes 0180, the next free
across main and the open changes, with a dated note; design 08's citation
follows it; the index is regenerated.
Every configurable thing on a node is a module, the home included, and a
module is whatever it declares (0173, extending 0040). A node varies a module
only through a setting rendered into the file or a kept region, never an edit
(0174, extending 0011; issue 168 first). One tool runtime per node serves every
module's tools on the host side, never in a container; the console is its
serving mode, renamed node-tools (0175, extending 0150; 0047/0150/0152 carry
dated notes). The login shell is a node seat held by one shell module with
`execute` as its contract (0176). A unit may be user-scoped and the service
manager is a node seat held by systemd (0177).
To-be 37 is handed off in-progress to mesh-host, mesh-controller, mesh-tools
and mesh-catalog, with the build in order: the account on every node, the
runtime, zsh, systemd, then the graphical stack. To-be 29 keeps ~/.ssh and
points at 37; 33 §6 and 34 are amended; the glossary gains node tools, bundle,
kept region, installed/holding, and retires flavor.
The predecessor is retired on every node and what it still owned on the two
workstations — some thirty modules of dotfiles, user units and /etc files — is
owned by nothing. To-be 29 covers one directory under the home; the operator
wants the whole machine, system folders and home alike, as modules: one
default configuration each, varied per node by settings or a kept region,
never an edit; roles the machine has once as node-scoped seats with tool
contracts; the graphical stack gated by a capability so the same catalogue
serves the servers.
Four documents: the intended behaviour in the mesh's words; the predecessor's
desktop measured (34 modules, one with 88 files, 4 flavors and ~90 theme
variables) against what the records already give and what is missing (the
account is empty on every node, no user-scoped units, settings leak, tools run
in a container per module per node); the direction the operator set for where
tools run — one executor per node, host-side, module-agnostic, the console
renamed and moved out of its container, superseding 0047/0150 for tools; and
the candidate seats of the environment with first verbs, the shell first.
The controller merged §1, §2 and the composed ssh config on 2026-09-27 while hq still
called the design proposed. Record what is on main, what is held on a branch, and what
has no code — and that the account fact shipped without a decision record, which is the
next thing to write. Also drop the real account and node names the public repository must
not carry, and correct ADR numbers that drifted in a renumbering.
Not every host path names this machine. A system file the mesh owns is at that path on every machine
of the kind — the path is the fact. The operator's shared data is already answered as an access. A
path inside a container is the software's contract. What is left, and what a node's default layout
would replace, is 514: a module's own data, and what the mesh writes for that module.
Documents the reservation model as the records already have it — a root per node, one directory per
assignment, a placement for adopted data — and the three things nothing states: where the root comes
from, what sits beneath it, and the order the 514 are retired in.
Stops there deliberately. Changing where a definition looks without moving the data does not fail: the
mesh creates the directory, the container starts, the service comes up empty. Retiring these is a data
migration with a verification step, module by module, and belongs with whoever can see the machine.
A path inside a container is not a fact about the machine — /run/secrets and the directory a server
keeps its data in are the software's own contract, true in any mesh that runs it. Only the host side
of a mount names where it landed.
The first sweep matched path-shaped strings, so it counted both halves of every mount and every
in-container location a value mentioned: 798. Counted by role — directory and file resources, the
host side of mounts, accesses, and the targets of binds, grants, receives and secrets — it is 698
across 70 definitions.
The five modules this report first named were what a first look found. A sweep of all 71: 49 public
domains across 26, the node's own name 58 times across 19, a routable IP 12 times in one, 798
absolute paths across 70 (issue 119's number, grown), and no email addresses at all.
The sharpest case is not a domain: a mail module states the node's public IPv4 as the address it
trusts a real-IP header from, so a node that moves or gains a second address stops attributing mail
correctly, silently. Two upstream resolvers are excluded deliberately — naming a public DNS service
is a policy default, true of any mesh, not a fact about this one.
The object store derives each consumer's bucket from the login the mesh minted, and never reads the
one a definition named. The consumer still has to tell its own software which bucket to use, and has
no way to be told: bound values come from the provider's serves, which is a literal block identical
for every consumer, and a provisioner returns nothing. So all three consumers wrote the answer down
by hand and one of them wrote the predecessor's bucket — a key scoped to one bucket and software
asking for another, which reads like a credential fault and is not one.
Records the general shape: any interface where the provider names the resource forces the consumer to
reproduce the provider's rule, kept in agreement by hand and checked by nothing.
Three wordings disagree, and the confusion is the damage: the glossary defines artifact as an OCI
image while the build vocabulary already names four kinds in use, two of which are not images; the
image registry's seat is named after its job while ADR 0079 names foundation seats after their servers
and ADR 0109 names package seats after their ecosystem; and prose that says 'the module's image' reads
as though a module were an image.
Records the question the naming hides: ADR 0075 keeps two provisions because packages and images are
two protocols, and already allows the forge to provide the artifact store. The second implementation
rests on a bootstrap argument, and the forge has the same upstream-server shape the store and broker
have, which ADR 0078 raises as plumbing and adopts in place.
Step 4 claimed the forge cannot exist as a container before the builder has built its image. The
forge's server is an upstream public image pinned by digest; only its runtime sidecar is built. The
store and the broker have the same shape, and ADR 0078 raises both at genesis as plumbing and adopts
them in place — so the forge can be raised the same way and serve git, packages and OCI before
anything is built.
What survives: a grant is minted by the provider's runtime sidecar, which is built, so the question
is whether raise-service, grant, build-sidecar simply works. Sequencing inside the mesh, not images.
The wrong version came from taking a record's bootstrap argument at face value instead of comparing it
to how the store and broker are raised — one command away in the manifests.
Two things were treated as one. The mesh's own artifact store holds the store seat and is internal by
design — reached by name over the overlay, no accounts, ADR 0082. Serving a registry publicly is a
service the mesh can host: a module with its own name, accounts and storage, like anything else it
runs for somebody. The conversion this report was written beside gave the seat holder a second public
door over the same filesystem, which is neither.
Keeps the original issue whole — no garbage collection, and the settings a routine needs are not
enabled — drops the two-door complication, and sharpens one thing: deletion on the only door is
deletion on a door with no accounts, which the predecessor kept behind its authenticated one.
Asked whether merging the three reviewed changes would set a precedent. It would not: five modules
already carry a name belonging to this one mesh — a workflow module stating its host, protocol and
absolute webhook URL, and two carrying a full clone URL for a repository on the mesh's own forge.
That changes what the issue is for. There is no version of this catalogue today that does not name
the mesh it was written in, so refusing three changes buys nothing and a mechanism is the only thing
that removes any of them. The three were merged on that reading, each PR saying so.
Three open module changes independently wrote one mesh's names into the catalogue — two literal
public URLs, because the software generates absolute URLs behind a proxy, and one bucket renamed to
match what exists here. None was careless: the mesh composes <label>.<public-domain> for the proxy
and never hands it back to the module that asked for the route, and no interpolation yields a public
name, so writing the answer down is the only expressible option.
Files it rather than blocking the three, because the fix is a mechanism and the instances are live
needs. The cost is stated: a second mesh installing the identity provider gets the first mesh's
hostname, and nothing distinguishes a literal domain from a version number.
Both halves are on their main branches, so the seats stop being an intention. Writes the as-is
document from the controller's code and the catalogue's manifests: the closed set of fourteen, the
three refusals a claim meets, the holder being an assignment and nothing else, and the one place a
seat changes resolution — which of several providers answers, never whether a requirement may go
unanswered.
Two things the as-is layer exists for are stated rather than smoothed over: a seat cannot answer
before it is held, which is the standing condition issue 121 records; and capacity is not
implemented at all, so the design's bench has no counterpart in the code.
Asked first whether the seats change fixed this in passing, since it landed the same day and
touches both manifests the report names. It did not: the seat's holder is consulted only where
several nodes provide the thing, and with none providing it resolution refuses outright. Genesis
has no exemption — the unchecked first pass exists to learn what each node offers, and a
declaration is never built from it.
Records the part that did change: the three tests left failing on purpose were deleted by the
controller's seats PR and replaced with passing seat-based ones, so the gap is invisible again.
Adds the resolver to located-in, since that is where the refusal is.
The seats half of to-be 27's review is settled, so the two records it rests on are accepted and
the vocabulary catches up: the glossary's *seat* becomes a named role from a closed set, held by
an assignment and possibly delivering a provision, and 23 — Choosing a provider gains the seat
step in resolution, with ambiguity still refused rather than guessed. Both were held back when
0110 was proposed, because a document may not rest on a record that is not accepted.
26 — The seats moves to in-progress rather than designed: it names the files that implement it,
and naming a file claims implementation, which is only defensible once those files are on the
owning repositories' main branches. It becomes implemented when mesh-controller #63 and
mesh-catalog #69 land.
0112, 0113 and 0114 stay proposed; to-be 27 stays proposed with them.
Renumbered from 117, which is taken on main by 'a module's own code is a container in one record
and a process in another' — two reports claimed the same number and git would not have said so.
Scrubbed the node's name and a real registry path; this repository is public.
Keeps 118: the other claimant to this number is on main as issue 119, where ADR 0112 points.
Scrubbed the service's public name — this repository is public — and completed the report's
frontmatter with the fixed-by and amended-design keys every other report carries.
The operator's wish written as intended behaviour for the NATS bus:
every loop compares against what is, repairs by the ordinary path, never
destroys, and raises a condition for what it cannot fix. What is done
before NATS is limited to what survives the move.
The harness compares against its own memory, so a backend that loses
what was provisioned (the cache's ACL users on a server restart) is
never provisioned again, silently.
The fact-check found mailu, whose user is its mailbox, so 0114 rotates
over two credentials rather than two logins, the adapter choosing what a
credential is. Also: minio keeps non-empty buckets; five backends take
their admin credential only at first init, so single-party rotation is
staged; postgres ownership moves to a non-login role; the harness keys by
consumer; rotation state lives with the vault. Consistency fixes across
0110-0113, 26 and 27; issue 103 resolved by mesh-host PR #22.
Graduates research 016. Retiring a login is separated from removing a
consumer, which closes a data-loss path in five providers; single-party
secrets rotate in place; the number of parties decides, not the provider.
Overlap as drafted in 0113 would have deleted consumer data: seven of
eight providers name the resource after the login and five drop it on
remove. Rotation is now undecided in 0113 and to-be 27, pending the
survey. Also: a requirement naming a seat resolves to its holder, a
person chooses among remaining candidates at assignment, the controller's
secrets are requirements of its definition, genesis seals to the
control-node key, and moving the vault or broker is break-glass.
Decided with the author. A credential is never changed in place: each consumer has two logins, both
derived by the mesh, and uses one at a time. An applier adds the new login beside the old through the
adapter's existing create, and confirms both work; only then are readers released to the new one and
restarted by derivation; only when every reader has confirmed is the old login retired through the
existing remove.
It closes the three cases review found in applier-first rotation: an offline reader keeps working on
the old login until it returns; a bus account's owner keeps its bus until it has moved; a provisioner
restarted mid-rotation is still delivered both values. Nobody is ever without a credential that works,
which replaces to-be 13's all-or-nothing rule with a stronger one.
No consumer module changes. The alternation is the provider loop's. A provider's adapter gains one duty,
giving both logins the same rights over the consumer's data — in postgres, membership of one role that
owns it. The mesh derives two logins per consumer, both within ADR 0049's limit, which 0113 now names
among what it amends. Every rule has a check: overlap, offline reader, bus account, restarted
provisioner, equal rights, login length, and confirmation only once the old login is gone.
jochen