The operator's flow: clients publish what their credentials file holds, the
manager takes in a licence it does not own and rotates it from then on. The
token itself cannot be published (design 32 §10, ADR 0201), so a node reports
fingerprints and identity as state and hands the grant over only when the
manager asks; adopting is refreshing, newest login first; bindings with a
generation replace the rotated/switched events. Designs 36 and 39 and to-be 40
amended; a pointer note on ADR 0183.
ADR 0173 §2: a module is what it declares, and there are no kinds of module. The two records called
a resource under a home and a module placing one home-scoped; the wording is corrected in place,
marked and dated, the decisions unchanged. Design 36 and to-be 40 now say the module declares
/etc/claude-code and ~/.claude as directories, so the ownership check sees both, and declares no file
under either (mesh-catalog #244).
The dated note on ADR 0183 now rests on ADR 0193 and 0198 rather than on a bundle having no way to
call: the manager starts every exchange by the operator's direction, through mesh/ask. To-be 40's
WP4 no longer waits on a record — ADR 0198 is it — and the live proofs count the console's five
tools (ADR 0195).
Design 38's WP1-WP4b ran: the node's tool runtime is live on all four machines as the operator
account, tools are bundles given only their declared words, and a bundle has no bus credential.
So the wait on design 38 WP3 is over, the agent module calls nothing and the manager starts every
exchange (key, hand-over, waiting login, reconcile), and the manager's daemon now waits on WP4c's
record instead. Accounts are stated on all four, sudo -n works for each, the agent is installed on
all four; the plan's WP0 shrinks and WP2 gets a configuration-only live proof before any licence.
Designs 36 and 39 say what is built; this says in which order and what proves each step, in the
shape to-be 38 gave the operator's machine. Seven packages: the operator states the facts (accounts,
roles, licences); the console provides its endpoint; the licence manager and the agent module are
built and unit-tested in parallel; the manager goes live on the control node; the agent on one
workstation, with the switch and the predecessor's files removed as the proof of the whole; then the
rest of the nodes and the retirement of the two catalogue modules built on the old placement. The
live proofs wait for to-be 38's WP3, because both modules' tools run in the node's tool runtime
(ADR 0175) and a per-module tool container would rebuild what that record retires.
Evidence from both workstations and all four machines, read-only, and the
questions each must answer: seats and gating for the display stack, who starts
the session with which environment, contributions beyond shells, sway as a
sibling session; the container runtime with docker-compose on workstations
only, software outside the official repositories, secrets in the account's
environment, and three security findings.
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.
jochen