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
First pass of a design review, done by reading documents against code
and against a raised mesh rather than against each other. Every error
below was invisible to a proofread.
**Statuses were stale, and nothing checked them.** Ten to-be documents
said `designed` while naming working, lab-proven code — several with a
*What was built* or *Raised, and observed* section. Added a
`status-vs-code` check: naming a file is a claim that the file
implements this, so a document that points at one has stopped being
merely designed. It failed on all ten before it passed, per the rule
this folder sets for its own checks.
**The bundle carries three images, not two.** 07 reasoned about which
substrate services go in and overlooked that the control plane is in
there too — it is what the substrate exists to start, and there is
nothing to fetch it with yet. Counted, not deduced.
**The bootstrap uses four shapes, not six.** It listed `file` and
`directory`, which substrate-first-node.lock never asks for. The claim
that mattered — nothing is blocked on the host — was true either way,
which is why the wrong count survived.
**The eight capabilities were documented nowhere.** Implemented in
internal/profile/detectors.go and enumerated in no document, including
the one about the host that detects them. A vocabulary modules write
against, readable only by reading the code. Now written down, with the
seat/graphical-session distinction that is wrong in both directions if
collapsed.
**MinIO swept out of the to-be layer** per 0028.
The gate now fails on one thing left deliberately: ADR 0024 is
`proposed` while two documents rest on it and the feature it decides is
built and lab-proven. Accepting a decision is not mine to do.
Decided after measuring what renumbering actually costs: 96 references in code
comments across two repositories, none of which would have failed to compile.
They would have pointed at the wrong reasoning, which is worse than a broken
link because nothing reports it.
So a number identifies a record and never changes. It cannot also be a
position -- a position moves when the set changes, and an identity that moves
is not one.
The reading order moves into an index generated from each record's `topic:`.
Six topics, in the order somebody learns the system.
The index is WRITTEN rather than only generated on demand, which reverses what
this repository previously said. The reason it said otherwise is that a
hand-written index drifts -- but a reader looking at the folder on a forge sees
the folder, not a command, and the drift objection is answered by checking
rather than by refusing to write one. That is §5's own rule: a rule states how
it is checked.
Two checks, both confirmed to bite. index.py fails when the written order no
longer matches the records. records.py fails when a record has no topic or one
nobody defined -- the quiet failure being a record that vanishes from the order
rather than appearing in the wrong place.
Two corrections and one new decision, all from Jochen catching things.
Pushed, not polled. I described updates as landing "on the next reconcile",
which reads as polling and is not the design. A declaration arrives as a
message on a link that is already open; the host applies it then. Polling over
an existing connection would be slower to land AND constant traffic to learn
nothing.
The timer is for drift and nothing else, and it cannot be replaced by an event
for a definitional reason: drift is change the mesh did not make -- somebody
edited a managed file, a distribution upgrade replaced a config -- so nothing
will ever publish a message about it. Only looking finds it.
Separated the heartbeat from the reconcile timer, which I had been conflating.
They point in opposite directions and answer different questions: the timer
looks at the machine and asks whether it still matches; the heartbeat reports
upward and is what makes silence mean something. A node with nothing to do
sends nothing, and without a heartbeat that is indistinguishable from a node
that stopped.
0059 -- a host that cannot start is rolled back by the service manager. I had
left this open on the grounds that recovery meant the host judging its own
health. That objection does not survive being asked properly: a keepalive is
something else judging the host. The watchdog must be local, because nothing
dials a node and a host that cannot start cannot report -- so it is the service
manager, which is already there.
The failure it prevents is sharper than "the node is down": a host that will
not start looks exactly like a machine somebody switched off, which is the one
condition this design has deliberately decided not to alarm on. So a bad
release reaches every node, each goes quiet, and the mesh reports a fleet of
sleeping laptops.
Confirmed means started and completed one reconcile -- deliberately not "the
link is up", or a laptop on a train would roll itself back. The rollback is a
script shipped by the package, not a host subcommand, because a binary that
will not start cannot be its own recovery. It rolls back once: a second failure
means the machine is the problem, not the binary.
Also refined the records checker, which produced a false positive: a proposed
record may extend another proposed one, because decisions are drafted in chains
and the alternative is marking things accepted to satisfy a check. An accepted
document resting on a proposed record still fails, and that was verified.
0057, 0058 and 0059 are all proposed.
Nothing in this repository was verified by anything but reading, which is how
a superseded decision stayed live in the constitution and in the to-be README
at the same time. Both were found by a person looking, and nothing stopped a
third.
Five checks: links resolve; `decisions:`/`extends:` name records that exist and
are accepted; a governing document citing a superseded record must name its
replacement in the same paragraph; supersession is symmetric; filename number
matches heading number.
Each was made to fail before it was made to pass. The live-citation check was
verified against a reconstruction of the actual incident -- the to-be README
citing ADR 0017 as live guidance -- and reports it with file and line.
It found one thing nobody had noticed: ADR 0018 never declared that it
superseded 0011, though 0011 has named 0018 as its superseder since August.
Fixed.
Deliberately not checked, and said so in the README: 02-DECISIONS and
01-RESEARCH may cite superseded records freely, because a decision record
discusses history and research records what was observed. 00-as-is may rest on
one, per 0056. Flagging those would put noise on correct documents, and a check
that cries wolf gets suppressed -- which costs more than not having it.
Two bugs found by running it: the frontmatter reader iterated an inline list as
characters, and the as-is exemption was missing entirely.
jschoubben