Merge pull request 'ADR 0147: a module anchors the mesh's authority, and issue 146: the foundation cannot be raised' (#184) from decision/0147-a-module-anchors-the-meshs-authority into main

Raising a first node hits them in order: the bundle's bus image named for a
registry that is gone; the certificate made by openssl in an image that has
none; enrolment dialling TLS at a bus that speaks first, then refusing its own
token for the empty bus. Each was right until the bus changed and nothing has
raised a foundation since.

The fourth is not a patch: the installer carries the bus's first user list and
the controller composes the rest through the bus being a module, and at genesis
there is no module — so the first node cannot be let onto the bus it just
raised.

02-DECISIONS/0145-a-module-checks-what-the-mesh-claims-is-reachable.md

@@ -0,0 +1,120 @@
+---
+topic: what runs on it
+status: superseded
+date: 2026-09-29
+deciders: jochen
+reconstructed: false
+extends: 02-DECISIONS/0144-anything-on-a-machine-may-call-anything-on-it.md
+superseded-by: 02-DECISIONS/0146-connectivity-is-checked-by-name-per-hosting-form.md
+---
+
+# 145. A module checks what the mesh claims is reachable, and it checks itself
+
+## Context
+
+The mesh asserts three things are callable ([ADR 0144](0144-anything-on-a-machine-may-call-anything-on-it.md)):
+what runs on the same machine, another machine's service exposed to the private network, and another
+machine's service exposed publicly. It has never checked any of them.
+
+[Issue 145](../04-ISSUES/145-a-machine-reads-healthy-while-its-modules-cannot-reach-each-other/00-report.md):
+the first of the three was broken for eleven hours and the mesh answered *all heard from, every module
+current with its source* throughout. Every check it makes is about the relationship between the mesh and
+a machine — applied, current, containers running — and none about whether anything can reach anything.
+
+**A first answer was drafted and withdrawn.** [ADR 0143](0143-a-consumer-verifies-the-grant-it-is-given.md)
+put the check inside the host, verifying each grant from the consumer's network position. It was
+superseded because the difference it worked so hard to reproduce — whether a caller sat in a container —
+was the bug itself. What survives from it is the part that was right: a check run from the wrong place
+proves nothing, and the mesh's own reports are not evidence about the network.
+
+**The mesh already has the shape for this and it is a module.** A module can declare a container that
+runs on a cadence ([ADR 0053](0053-a-step-that-runs-on-a-schedule.md), and three modules already use
+`*/5 * * * *`), can be given the mesh's roster as a rendered fact — every machine's name, address and
+this node's own identity, the same mechanism the resolver and the operator's ssh configuration use — and
+can emit what it found on the bus. Nothing new is needed to build this except the module.
+
+**What it must not check is the trap.** The obvious probe target is ssh: present on every machine, never
+closed by design. Dialling it would have passed throughout the outage, because ssh is admitted
+unconditionally and the thing that broke was a service exposed to the private network. A checker whose
+probe is unconditionally open measures the one path that cannot fail, which is the failure this whole
+sequence keeps producing — a check that reads as verification and verifies nothing.
+
+## Considered Options
+
+1. **The host verifies each grant** ([ADR 0143](0143-a-consumer-verifies-the-grant-it-is-given.md)).
+   Superseded. It needed the host to act from another network position, which is machinery that exists
+   only while local calls are filtered wrongly.
+2. **The control plane dials every node.** Rejected: it sits on one machine and reaches the others by a
+   path no ordinary caller uses. It would have passed throughout the outage.
+3. **Probe an existing service.** Rejected for the target problem above: the services guaranteed on every
+   machine are the ones that are never closed, so they cannot fail the way the mesh fails.
+4. **A module on every machine that serves its own probe and dials the others'.** Adopted.
+
+## Decision
+
+**A module runs on every machine, serves an endpoint of its own, and dials every other machine's.** The
+probe is the module's own endpoint, declared reachable over the private network — so the thing being
+dialled is admitted by exactly the rule that governs every other internally-exposed service, and fails
+when that rule is wrong. A second endpoint, declared public, does the same for the public path where a
+machine has one.
+
+**It checks the three cases the mesh claims, by name:**
+
+- its **own machine**, by dialling its own machine's address — the case that broke, and the only one that
+  distinguishes a caller on the machine from a caller in one of its containers;
+- **each other machine over the private network**;
+- **each machine's public path**, where one is recorded.
+
+**It resolves before it dials, and says which failed.** A name that does not resolve and a port that does
+not answer are different faults with different owners, and a checker that reports one sentence for both
+sends a reader to the wrong place.
+
+**It runs where the callers run.** The module's own code in its own container, on the cadence the mesh
+already has, from the same position as every other module on that machine. It is not the host and not the
+control plane, and that is the whole point.
+
+**It says what it found and nothing else.** It emits results; it repairs nothing, opens nothing and holds
+no credential beyond its own. A checker that fixes things is a second control plane.
+
+**One failure is not a fault.** A machine rebooting is ordinary. A path is reported broken after it has
+failed on consecutive runs, and the count travels with the result so a reader can tell "briefly away"
+from "never worked" — the one thing [ADR 0143](0143-a-consumer-verifies-the-grant-it-is-given.md) got
+right and worth keeping.
+
+## Consequences
+
+- **The mesh gains the ability to be wrong out loud about the network.** Eleven hours becomes two runs.
+- **It is a module, so it is assigned, built, pushed and reported on like everything else** — no new host
+  capability, no new vocabulary, nothing in the control plane that has to know about checking.
+- **Its own endpoint is the instrument.** That is what makes it able to fail; it also means the checker
+  must be assigned to a machine before that machine can be checked, and a machine without it is
+  unchecked rather than healthy.
+- **It cannot check what it cannot be told.** The roster gives it machines; it does not give it every
+  module's endpoints, so this checks the paths the mesh claims and not every grant in the mesh. That is
+  the honest scope of a first one, and the difference is worth saying rather than growing quietly.
+- **What got harder:** one more module on every machine, and a module whose whole purpose is to fail
+  visibly when something else is wrong. Its own failures will be read as the mesh's, which is the cost of
+  an instrument.
+
+## How it is checked
+
+- **It catches the measured outage.** A bed closes the path from a container to a service exposed to the
+  private network on its own machine — issue 145's shape — and the checker reports its own machine
+  unreachable while every other path still reads reachable. This fails against a probe on a port that is
+  never closed, which is the wrong target this record exists to name.
+- **A machine rebooting is not a fault**: one failed run reports nothing, the count rises and falls.
+- **A name that does not resolve is reported as that**, not as a port that did not answer.
+- **It reports and does not act**: asserted by giving it a broken path and checking nothing on the machine
+  changed.
+- **A machine without the module reads unchecked**, never healthy — asserted on what the mesh says about
+  a machine it is not assigned to.
+
+## References
+
+- [ADR 0144](0144-anything-on-a-machine-may-call-anything-on-it.md) — the three things that must be callable
+- [ADR 0143](0143-a-consumer-verifies-the-grant-it-is-given.md) — superseded; what survives is that the
+  position matters
+- [ADR 0053](0053-a-step-that-runs-on-a-schedule.md) — the cadence
+- [ADR 0138](0138-an-assignment-binds-an-endpoint-and-says-how-far-it-reaches.md) — internal and public,
+  which the probe endpoints declare
+- [issue 145](../04-ISSUES/145-a-machine-reads-healthy-while-its-modules-cannot-reach-each-other/00-report.md)

02-DECISIONS/0146-connectivity-is-checked-by-name-per-hosting-form.md

@@ -0,0 +1,125 @@
+---
+topic: what runs on it
+status: accepted
+date: 2026-09-29
+deciders: jochen
+reconstructed: false
+extends: 02-DECISIONS/0145-a-module-checks-what-the-mesh-claims-is-reachable.md
+supersedes: 02-DECISIONS/0145-a-module-checks-what-the-mesh-claims-is-reachable.md
+---
+
+# 146. Connectivity is checked by name, per hosting form, with a valid certificate
+
+## Context
+
+[ADR 0145](0145-a-module-checks-what-the-mesh-claims-is-reachable.md) decided that a module checks what
+the mesh claims is reachable, from where the callers are, because the mesh reported four machines healthy
+for eleven hours while a module could not reach its database
+([issue 145](../04-ISSUES/145-a-machine-reads-healthy-while-its-modules-cannot-reach-each-other/00-report.md)).
+That decision stands. What it got wrong is everything about *what* is dialled.
+
+It dialled a raw port on each machine's address. Three things are wrong with that:
+
+- **A raw port is not how anything in this mesh is reached.** A real caller resolves a name, the proxy
+  answers it, and the proxy reaches the service. A check that dials a port tests the last hop of a path
+  with four hops in it, and the three it skips — resolution, the proxy, the certificate — are where most
+  of the mesh's connectivity actually lives.
+- **It tested one hosting form.** A module is software that delivers services, and it may deliver them
+  from a container, from a unit the mesh writes for its own code, or from a unit a package ships. Those
+  are three different paths to the same machine, and the outage that produced this was two of them
+  disagreeing. A probe served one way measures one way.
+- **It said nothing about certificates.** An internal name that resolves, routes and answers over TLS
+  that nothing can verify is not a working path; it is a working path for whoever holds the proxy's
+  trust and nobody else.
+
+## Decision
+
+**Each hosting form gets its own endpoint, its own route and therefore its own name.** On every machine:
+
+| name | what serves it |
+|---|---|
+| `connect-docker.<node>.internal` | a container |
+| `connect-process.<node>.internal` | the mesh's own code, in a unit the mesh writes |
+| `connect-unit.<node>.internal` | a unit a package ships |
+
+and the same set under each machine's public domain where it has one — `connect-docker.<domain>` and its
+siblings. The names are the instrument: a failure reads as *`connect-docker.g14.internal` did not answer*,
+which says which machine and which hosting form without anybody interpreting anything.
+
+**Every machine checks every machine, by name, over TLS, verifying the certificate.** Not a port, not an
+address: resolve the name, connect, complete the handshake, check the certificate against the authority
+that should have issued it — the mesh's own for an internal name, a public one for a public name. That is
+the whole path a real caller takes, and each step failing is reported as itself.
+
+**No name is written anywhere.** The machines come from the roster the mesh already renders as a fact, and
+the labels are the module's. A machine that joins appears in every other machine's roster on the next
+push, and they begin checking it without an edit.
+
+**And the module arrives on a machine because the machine exists, not because somebody assigned it.** A
+machine that joins and does not have it is worse than unchecked: every other machine is already dialling
+its names, so it reads as broken everywhere until someone notices. This is the part the mesh cannot
+currently express — see below — and it is the part that makes the rest safe.
+
+**What survives from 0145**, unchanged: it reports and repairs nothing; one failure is not a fault and a
+path is broken after consecutive runs with the count travelling with the result; findings are said on the
+bus, because a finding in a file on the machine is what this exists to end; and the bus is the one path
+that cannot report its own failure, so an emit that does not land is written locally and nowhere else.
+
+## What this needs that the mesh does not have
+
+Named here rather than assumed, because each is a decision of its own and this record is not the place to
+make them:
+
+1. **A module that every machine has.** `ScopeNode` means *at most one holder per node* — an exclusivity
+   rule, not an obligation — and nothing assigns a module at enrolment. Today the resolver, the packet
+   filter, ssh and intrusion prevention are each assigned per machine by hand, which is the same gap
+   wearing different clothes.
+2. **A container running a module's own bundle.** A `process` runs the mesh's own compiled code with no
+   image; a `container` needs an image of the module's own, which means a Dockerfile — the thing the
+   `bundle` artifact exists to abolish. Nothing in the catalogue runs a bundle in a container, so
+   `connect-docker` has no shape yet.
+3. **A unit a package ships, for `connect-unit`.** The `service` resource puts an existing unit into a
+   state and deliberately installs none, so this form needs a package that serves a port — and naming a
+   program the machine may not have is
+   [issue 136](../04-ISSUES/136-a-module-may-name-a-program-the-machine-does-not-have/00-report.md).
+4. **A machine's public domain in the roster fact.** The fact carries each machine's name, mesh name,
+   address and operator account. The public names cannot be composed without the domain.
+5. **Something that installs the mesh's own root on a machine.** This is
+   [issue 129](../04-ISSUES/129-nothing-makes-a-machine-trust-the-meshs-authority/00-report.md), open
+   since before any of this. Until it is closed, every internal name will fail certificate verification
+   from every machine — correctly, because nothing can verify it. That is the checker working, and it is
+   worth saying in advance so the first run is not read as the checker being broken.
+
+## Consequences
+
+- **A failure names the machine and the hosting form.** That is the whole gain over a port: eleven hours
+  became two runs under 0145, and under this it also becomes one line that says where to look.
+- **The checker surfaces issue 129 immediately**, and will report every internal name unverifiable until
+  it is fixed. A reader must be told that before the first run rather than after.
+- **Five things must be built before this is what it says it is**, and until they are, what exists is a
+  port dial from one position — useful, and not this.
+- **What got harder:** a module with three hosting forms of the same trivial service is a strange thing to
+  read. It is justified only because those three forms are how the mesh actually runs software, and a
+  checker that tested one of them would keep the class of outage it exists to catch.
+
+## How it is checked
+
+- **A name per hosting form answers from every machine**, asserted by name and not by port.
+- **A certificate that does not verify is reported as that**, distinctly from a name that does not resolve
+  and a port that does not answer — three faults, three owners.
+- **A machine that joins is checked by every other machine without an edit**, asserted by adding one to a
+  bed and looking at what the others dial on their next run.
+- **A machine that joins has the module**, which is gap 1 above and is the assertion that cannot be
+  written yet.
+- **The measured outage is still caught**: the path from a container to a service on its own machine is
+  closed and `connect-docker.<that node>.internal` fails from that machine while the others still pass.
+
+## References
+
+- [ADR 0145](0145-a-module-checks-what-the-mesh-claims-is-reachable.md) — superseded; its core stands
+- [ADR 0138](0138-an-assignment-binds-an-endpoint-and-says-how-far-it-reaches.md) — the two reaches these
+  names come from
+- [ADR 0066](0066-public-routing-is-name-agnostic.md) — a label plus a domain, which is why no name is written
+- [issue 129](../04-ISSUES/129-nothing-makes-a-machine-trust-the-meshs-authority/00-report.md) — what the
+  internal names will fail on until it is closed
+- [issue 145](../04-ISSUES/145-a-machine-reads-healthy-while-its-modules-cannot-reach-each-other/00-report.md)

02-DECISIONS/0147-a-module-anchors-the-meshs-authority.md

@@ -0,0 +1,139 @@
+---
+topic: what runs on it
+status: accepted
+date: 2026-09-29
+deciders: jochen
+reconstructed: false
+extends: 02-DECISIONS/0098-a-fact-a-provider-makes-at-first-start-is-fetched-from-it.md
+---
+
+# 147. A module anchors the mesh's authority on a machine, and takes it away again
+
+## Context
+
+The mesh runs its own certificate authority and every internal name is served with a certificate
+from it. No machine trusts it. On an enrolled, adopted workstation — on the private network,
+resolving through the mesh's resolver — every internal HTTPS name fails verification with
+*unable to get local issuer certificate*
+([issue 129](../04-ISSUES/129-nothing-makes-a-machine-trust-the-meshs-authority/00-report.md)).
+The certificates are genuine; nothing on the machine has ever been told what issued them.
+
+The authority's only consumer today is a proxy, which fetches the root into a directory of its own
+and hands it to one program ([ADR 0098](0098-a-fact-a-provider-makes-at-first-start-is-fetched-from-it.md)).
+That is enough for the proxy and for nothing else: a browser, `git` over HTTPS, `curl`, a package
+manager and every module that calls another module by an internal name read the machine's trust
+store, which holds the predecessor's authority and a developer tool's local root, and nothing of
+the mesh's.
+
+The predecessor wrote its root into every machine it set up. Removing it was deliberate — an
+honest failure beats a name that verifies for the wrong reason — and it leaves the mesh with no
+answer at all until this one lands. It is also what keeps the predecessor alive on the machines
+that still speak TLS to a mesh name.
+
+**What makes this a decision rather than a patch** is where the knowledge goes. Two mechanisms in
+the mesh already write things onto a machine because it is on the private network: `/etc/hosts`
+and the registry's plaintext trust ([ADR 0082](0082-the-registry-is-reached-by-name-and-trusted-by-the-overlay.md)).
+Following that precedent, the controller would inject an anchor into every such machine's
+declaration, and issue 129 proposed exactly that. It would work. It would also put *where this
+operating system keeps trust anchors* and *which command refreshes its bundles* into the control
+plane, for a fact the control plane does not have (the root does not exist until the authority has
+run) and a machine that may have no reason to verify a mesh name at all.
+
+## Considered Options
+
+1. **The controller injects the anchor into every machine on the private network**, the
+   `/etc/hosts` and insecure-registry shape. Rejected: being on the network is what makes the
+   registry reachable, and that is why network presence is the right trigger *there* — the trust
+   and the reachability are the same fact. Trusting an authority is not the same fact as being
+   able to reach it, and the anchor's path and the bundle refresh are a property of the machine's
+   operating system, which is the host's half of the mesh, not the controller's.
+2. **A new host primitive — a `trust-anchor` resource type.** Rejected for now, not on principle.
+   The host's vocabulary should grow when a shape cannot be said with what exists, and this one
+   can: a file and a service already express it, as the packet filter proves
+   ([ADR 0140](0140-the-filter-constrains-what-arrives-from-outside.md), whose module writes a
+   unit file and a service and nothing else). The primitive becomes right the moment a second
+   operating system is in play, because the anchor directory and the refresh command are exactly
+   the difference `internal/system` exists to hold. Until then it would be a vocabulary word with
+   one speaker.
+3. **A module that requires the authority, fetches its root, installs it as an anchor and
+   refreshes the machine's bundles — and removes both when it is no longer assigned.** Adopted.
+
+## Decision
+
+**A machine trusts the mesh's authority because a module put its root there, and stops trusting it
+when that module is taken away.**
+
+1. **The module requires `internal-acme-ca`** and reads the provider's bound address and the path
+   it serves its root at. It requires nothing else and provides nothing: it is a consumer of the
+   authority like any other.
+2. **It fetches the root over the mesh's own network, without prior trust**, because there is no
+   prior trust to have — this is the module that establishes it — and the network is what
+   authenticates the fetch ([ADR 0098](0098-a-fact-a-provider-makes-at-first-start-is-fetched-from-it.md),
+   the same reasoning that lets the proxy fetch it). What it accepts is checked: a body that is
+   not a certificate fails, and the failure is the module's, not a later handshake's.
+3. **It installs the root where this machine's TLS clients look, and refreshes the extracted
+   bundles** — the command that does the refresh is an ordinary part of the unit that places the
+   anchor, not a new thing the mesh can be asked to do.
+4. **Removal is symmetric and is the same unit's business.** Undeclared, the host stops the unit;
+   stopping it removes the anchor and refreshes the bundles again. A machine that leaves the mesh
+   stops trusting the mesh, without anybody remembering to go and look.
+5. **It is an ordinary assignment.** No machine is given it automatically. A machine that verifies
+   a mesh name is assigned it, and a machine that does not is not — which is the same statement
+   the mesh already makes about every other module, and is why this is not the controller's
+   business.
+
+**One operating system, said out loud.** The anchor directory and the refresh command in the
+module today are Arch's. On a machine that is not Arch the unit fails, visibly, rather than
+writing a file nothing reads. That is the accurate failure, and it is the signal that option 2
+above has become right.
+
+## How this is checked
+
+- **The verification that could not succeed before.** On a machine holding the module, a plain
+  client fetches an internal HTTPS name with no `-k` and no bundle argument and verifies. On a
+  machine without it, the same fetch fails with *unable to get local issuer certificate*. Both
+  halves, because only the pair distinguishes "the anchor works" from "something else already
+  trusted it".
+- **The removal half, in the same bed:** unassign the module, refetch, and the failure returns.
+  Checking only the arrival is how a trust store fills up with authorities nobody can account for.
+- **What is deliberately not checked here:** that the authority issues, that a name resolves, that
+  the proxy serves. Those have their own beds, and this module's bed passing for those reasons is
+  the failure mode this record is most exposed to — which is why the negative half is not optional.
+
+**What this bed is dialled at, and why it is the authority itself.** The authority serves its own
+API with a certificate it issued, so the handshake under test needs nothing else in the mesh to be
+right. A trust bed that reached for a routed name through the proxy would be passing or failing for
+the proxy's reasons and the resolver's.
+
+**Written, and not yet run** *(2026-09-29)*. The bed is `trust-anchor` in the lab, and it cannot
+execute: raising a foundation fails before any module is reached, in both bundles that exist
+([issue 146](../04-ISSUES/146-the-foundation-cannot-be-raised-on-the-bus-the-mesh-runs-on/00-report.md)).
+So what stands behind this record today is the rendering — the script the machine would run names
+the authority it was bound to, checked in the control plane's own test suite — and **not** a machine
+that verified anything. That is a weaker thing than the paragraph above describes, and it stays
+written this way until the bed runs.
+
+## Consequences
+
+The predecessor's authority can be retired from a machine once this module is assigned to it,
+which is the first time that has been true. `git` over HTTPS to the mesh's forge starts working,
+so the ssh-only clone URL stops being a rule. A module on any machine can call another module's
+internal name and verify it.
+
+What got harder: one more module to assign to a machine that needs it, and the machine's trust
+store now changes when an assignment changes — which is the point, and is also a thing an operator
+can be surprised by. The fetch without prior trust is the same exposure ADR 0098 accepted, now on
+every machine that holds the module rather than only where a proxy runs: anything that can stand
+in the middle of the mesh's own network at the moment of the fetch can be believed. The mesh
+already treats that network as the thing it authenticates.
+
+## References
+
+- [issue 129](../04-ISSUES/129-nothing-makes-a-machine-trust-the-meshs-authority/00-report.md) —
+  the symptom and the evidence.
+- [ADR 0098](0098-a-fact-a-provider-makes-at-first-start-is-fetched-from-it.md) — a fact made at
+  first start is fetched from its provider; this extends it from one program to the machine.
+- [ADR 0082](0082-the-registry-is-reached-by-name-and-trusted-by-the-overlay.md) — the precedent
+  this deliberately does not follow, and why it is right where it is.
+- [ADR 0005](0005-the-node-host.md) — the host is where one operating system's difference lives.
+- [`03-DESIGN/01-to-be/08-connectivity.md`](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/08-connectivity.md).

02-DECISIONS/README.md

@@ -225,6 +225,9 @@ python3 00-META/checks/index.py            fail if stale
 - **0141** — [The host delivers its own successor, and versions live side by side](0141-the-host-delivers-its-own-successor.md)
 - **0143** — [A consumer verifies the grant it is given](0143-a-consumer-verifies-the-grant-it-is-given.md)  *(superseded)*
 - **0144** — [Anything on a machine may call anything on it, and that is the whole of "local"](0144-anything-on-a-machine-may-call-anything-on-it.md)
+- **0145** — [A module checks what the mesh claims is reachable, and it checks itself](0145-a-module-checks-what-the-mesh-claims-is-reachable.md)  *(superseded)*
+- **0146** — [Connectivity is checked by name, per hosting form, with a valid certificate](0146-connectivity-is-checked-by-name-per-hosting-form.md)
+- **0147** — [A module anchors the mesh's authority on a machine, and takes it away again](0147-a-module-anchors-the-meshs-authority.md)
 
 ### How it is built
 

03-DESIGN/01-to-be/08-connectivity.md

@@ -7,8 +7,9 @@ code:
   - mesh-controller internal/identity/authority.go
   - mesh-host internal/identity/serving.go
   - mesh-host internal/apply (the service that reflects a rule set)
-updated: 2026-09-28
+updated: 2026-09-29
 decisions:
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0147-a-module-anchors-the-meshs-authority.md
   - 02-DECISIONS/0138-an-assignment-binds-an-endpoint-and-says-how-far-it-reaches.md
   - 02-DECISIONS/0140-the-filter-constrains-what-arrives-from-outside.md
   - 02-DECISIONS/0104-a-provision-may-be-answered-by-an-adapter-to-the-predecessor.md
@@ -710,6 +711,22 @@ step, so when the authority moves the root is fetched again and the proxy is rec
 *How it is checked:* the route-forwarding bed installs the authority, the proxy and a consumer
 from the catalogue and asserts the routed name is served.
 
+**And a machine trusts that authority because a module put its root in its trust store**
+([ADR 0147](../../02-DECISIONS/0147-a-module-anchors-the-meshs-authority.md)). The proxy's fetch
+answers for the proxy and for nothing else: a browser, `git` over HTTPS, a package manager and
+every module calling another by an internal name read the machine's own trust store, and the mesh
+had never written anything there. A module requiring the authority does the whole of it — fetch
+the root over the mesh network, place it where this machine's TLS clients look, refresh the
+extracted bundles — and stopping it, which is what being unassigned does, takes the anchor away
+and refreshes them again. Not the controller's business, because being on the private network is
+what makes the authority *reachable* and is not the same fact as having a reason to *verify* a
+mesh name; and because where anchors live and which command refreshes them is one operating
+system's difference, which is the host's half of the mesh
+([ADR 0005](../../02-DECISIONS/0005-the-node-host.md)).
+*How it is checked:* on a machine holding the module a plain client verifies an internal HTTPS
+name with no bundle argument, and on one without it the same fetch fails to find an issuer — both
+halves, because only the pair tells the anchor apart from something that already trusted it.
+
 ### What was built
 
 *2026-08-31.*

04-ISSUES/129-nothing-makes-a-machine-trust-the-meshs-authority/00-report.md

@@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
 ---
-status: open
+status: located
 opened: 2026-09-26
-located-in: [mesh-controller, mesh-catalog step-ca]
+located-in: [mesh-catalog ca-trust]
 ---
 
 # 129 — nothing makes a machine trust the mesh's own certificate authority

04-ISSUES/129-nothing-makes-a-machine-trust-the-meshs-authority/01-diagnosis.md

@@ -0,0 +1,32 @@
+# Diagnosis
+
+*2026-09-29.*
+
+## What was ruled out
+
+**That something already carries the root and it is only misplaced.** It does not. The authority
+serves its root at a path beside its ACME directory, and the one thing that fetches it — the route
+proxy — puts it in a directory of its own and hands it to one program. Nothing has ever written
+into a machine's trust store. Measured on three converged machines: the anchors present are the
+predecessor's authority and a developer tool's local root, and on the machines where the
+predecessor's was deliberately removed, every internal name fails verification.
+
+**That the private network could carry it, the way it carries the registry's trust.** That is what
+the report proposed, and it was rejected on consideration rather than on difficulty
+([ADR 0147](../../02-DECISIONS/0147-a-module-anchors-the-meshs-authority.md), option 1): being on
+the network is what makes the registry *reachable* and is therefore the right trigger there, while
+trusting an authority is a separate fact from being able to reach it. The anchor's directory and
+the command that refreshes the extracted bundles are also one operating system's difference, which
+is the host's half of the mesh and not the controller's.
+
+**That it needs a new host resource type.** It does not, today. A file and a service say the whole
+of it, which the packet filter already proves. The primitive becomes the right answer when a second
+operating system is in play, and not before.
+
+## Where it belongs
+
+A module in the catalogue: it requires `internal-acme-ca`, fetches the root over the mesh's own
+network, installs it as a trust anchor, refreshes the machine's bundles, and — because being
+unassigned stops its unit, and stopping the unit is what undoes it — takes both away again.
+
+The owner is therefore `mesh-catalog`, module `ca-trust`, and nothing in the control plane.

04-ISSUES/145-a-machine-reads-healthy-while-its-modules-cannot-reach-each-other/00-report.md

@@ -90,9 +90,17 @@ same machine, another machine's service exposed to the private network, and anot
 exposed publicly. The filter had the second and third and expressed the first as a list of addresses that
 no container could match.
 
-**The question this issue is actually about is still open.** Nothing in the mesh would have said a grant
-had stopped working, and nothing does now. That is not answered by a configuration fix, and it should not
-be answered by a mechanism adopted as a remedy for one.
+**And then the question this issue is actually about was answered on its own terms.**
+[ADR 0145](../../02-DECISIONS/0145-a-module-checks-what-the-mesh-claims-is-reachable.md): a module on
+every machine serves an endpoint of its own and dials every other machine's, from the position the
+callers are in. Its probe is its own endpoint declared reachable over the private network, so it is
+admitted by exactly the rule that governs every internally-exposed service and fails when that rule is
+wrong — where a probe on a service every machine has would have passed for all eleven hours, because the
+services every machine has are the ones never closed.
+
+Adopted on its merits rather than as the remedy for a configuration error, which is what 0143 was and
+why it went. The module is written and merged; it is not yet assigned, so every machine currently reads
+unchecked.
 
 ## Open questions
 

04-ISSUES/146-the-foundation-cannot-be-raised-on-the-bus-the-mesh-runs-on/00-report.md

@@ -0,0 +1,73 @@
+---
+status: located
+opened: 2026-09-29
+located-in: [mesh-host examples + internal/link, mesh-controller internal/broker]
+---
+
+# 146 — the foundation cannot be raised on the bus the mesh runs on
+
+## What was observed
+
+Raising a first node in the lab, to check a module against a real mesh, fails before any module is
+reached. Two separate faults, in the two bundles that exist:
+
+**The older bundle raises a control plane that cannot start.** It brings up the previous broker,
+and the control plane it then starts says, once every few seconds, for ever:
+
+```
+mesh-controller: this control plane has no MESH_BUS_NATS, so it cannot reach the mesh's bus
+```
+
+That is the control plane being right. The mesh moved to one bus
+([ADR 0131](../../02-DECISIONS/0131-everything-on-the-mesh-speaks-to-the-broker-seat.md)) and the
+bundle did not. Every bed that raises a foundation raises this one, so every bed is in this state.
+
+**The newer bundle, written for the new bus, stops one step earlier.** Its certificate step asks a
+container to make the broker's certificate:
+
+```
+docker run --rm --entrypoint sh -v <the broker's tls volume>:/tls <the bus image> \
+  -c "test -f /tls/tls.crt || (openssl req -x509 ... )"
+...
+failed bus-certificate: running the action: docker exited 127
+```
+
+127 is *command not found*. The bus's image has a shell and no `openssl`; the previous broker's
+image had both, which is why the step worked when it was written against that one. Substituting the
+store's image — the only other image the bundle carries — does not help: it has no `openssl`
+either. So the step as written cannot succeed with anything the bundle names, and the fault is not
+one image's: **the bundle asks for a certificate to be made by a tool it never says must be there.**
+
+Measured 2026-09-29 on a fresh lab machine, both bundles, from bare.
+
+## Why this is here and not a note in the knowledge base
+
+The mesh's own foundation is the one thing it cannot raise. Nothing reports that: the bundles are
+files in a repository, nothing applies them but a person raising a node, and the last thing that
+did was the hand-driven cut-over
+([ADR 0131](../../02-DECISIONS/0131-everything-on-the-mesh-speaks-to-the-broker-seat.md), whose
+work was done on the machines rather than from a bundle). So the state where the mesh cannot make
+another one of itself is reachable, and was reached, without anything saying so.
+
+It is also load-bearing for everything else: a lab bed proves a claim by raising a mesh, so while
+this holds, **no bed can run**, and every "checked in the lab" written from now on is a promise
+against a suite nobody can execute.
+
+## What would have prevented it
+
+- **Something raising the foundation on a schedule, from the bundle, as it is written** — the
+  bundle is the mesh's own installer and nothing installs from it. A bed that raises a first node
+  is exactly that check, and it is the bed that cannot run.
+- **A step naming what it needs.** The certificate step names an image and assumes a program inside
+  it. An action that said which tool it requires would have failed at the declaration rather than
+  at 127 on a machine.
+
+## Evidence to carry into diagnosis
+
+- `mesh-host examples/foundation-first-node.lock` — the previous broker, no `MESH_BUS_NATS`.
+- `mesh-host examples/foundation-first-node-nats.lock` — the new bus; `bus-certificate` and its
+  `verify` both run `openssl` in the bus's image.
+- The bus image the bundle pins has `sh` and no `openssl`; the store's image likewise.
+- The lab rewrites a bundle's registry-prefixed third-party references to upstream ones for a
+  machine with an uplink (`test/integration/harness.ts`); the new bundle's bus reference needed
+  that rule added, which is done and is not this issue.

04-ISSUES/146-the-foundation-cannot-be-raised-on-the-bus-the-mesh-runs-on/01-diagnosis.md

@@ -0,0 +1,96 @@
+# Diagnosis
+
+*2026-09-29, by raising a first node in the lab over and over and writing down each thing it hit.*
+
+Not one fault. **Four, stacked**, each hidden behind the one before it, and every one of them the
+same shape: a step that was right while the mesh ran on the previous broker and was never asked a
+question again after the bus changed. Nothing had raised a foundation since, so nothing said so.
+
+## 1 — the bundle's bus image is named for a registry that is gone *(fixed)*
+
+The newer bundle pins `<a lab registry>/nats@…`, which resolves nowhere outside the lab that
+raised that registry. The lab already rewrites the store's and the previous broker's references to
+upstream ones for a machine with an uplink; the bus had no such rule because no bed had ever tried
+to raise this bundle. Added (`mesh-lab test/integration/harness.ts`). The digest is the bundle's
+own — what the registry served was a copy, so the same digest resolves upstream, and this is a
+prefix being removed rather than a reference being replaced.
+
+## 2 — the bus's certificate was made by a tool the bus does not have *(fixed)*
+
+```
+failed bus-certificate … docker exited 127
+```
+
+The step ran `openssl` inside the broker's image. The previous broker's image carried it; the bus's
+does not — it is Alpine with a shell and no `openssl` — and neither does any other image the bundle
+names, so there was nothing to substitute. **The program that needs the certificate now makes it**:
+`mesh-controller broker certificate --into <dir>`, with `--check` as the step's verify. The
+controller is already on the machine at that point (the schema step ran it) and needs nothing from
+the image it writes into. Self-signed, as before and on purpose — a host pins this server's exact
+certificate ([ADR 0004](../../02-DECISIONS/0004-a-node-and-how-it-joins.md)) and at that moment
+there is no authority to ask. Idempotent, because a second certificate is one every host that
+pinned the first no longer believes. It runs `--user 0:0`: the volume is root's, and the control
+plane's image runs as nobody, which is right for the long-lived server and wrong for a one-shot
+writing into a fresh volume.
+
+## 3 — enrolment dialled TLS at a bus that speaks first *(fixed)*
+
+```
+mesh-host: cannot reach the broker at …:5671: tls: first record does not look like a TLS handshake
+```
+
+Enrolment opened a raw TLS connection to check the pinned certificate before saying anything. NATS
+speaks its own protocol and upgrades afterwards, so the handshake met a plaintext greeting. The pin
+was never the problem: the same pinned configuration is handed to the client that presents the
+token, and the verification runs inside *that* handshake — so what
+[ADR 0004](../../02-DECISIONS/0004-a-node-and-how-it-joins.md) requires still holds, and holds
+better, because the one-time secret is sent only after the certificate has been checked. The raw
+dial is gone from the enrolment path and kept only as what its tests always proved: that a wrong
+certificate is refused before a byte of application data is sent.
+
+**Then, immediately behind it:**
+
+```
+mesh-host: this token is for the "" bus, and the mesh's bus is nats
+```
+
+The enrolment left the transport empty and meant *whatever the mesh runs today*, which was true
+while two buses existed and became a refusal the moment one did. The host knows which bus the mesh
+runs; it says so now.
+
+## 4 — a first node cannot be let onto its own bus *(open, and this is the real one)*
+
+```
+mesh-host: cannot reach the bus at …:5671 as anchor: nats: Authorization Violation
+```
+
+The bus's user list is a file beside its configuration. The installer carries the first one — the
+controller's own account at a bootstrap password — and **the controller composes every user after
+that** (design 25 §6; the controller's own test asserts the carried list matches what it would
+derive). On the running mesh that composition reaches the bus because the bus is a *module*, with
+the list delivered to it the way anything is delivered to a module.
+
+At genesis there is no module. The foundation's bus is raised by the installer, the control plane is
+given no way to write beside its configuration — it mounts the certificate and nothing else — and so
+the account a joining node needs cannot come into existence. **The first node cannot join the mesh
+it just raised.**
+
+That is not a line to fix in a bundle. It is the open half of the mesh delivering its own components
+([ADR 0142](../../02-DECISIONS/0142-the-mesh-delivers-its-own-components-as-binaries.md)) and of the
+bus becoming a module: either the installer's bus is raised as the module the mesh will go on
+managing, or genesis carries a user list that includes the first node's enrolment and the controller
+takes over from there. Both are decisions, not patches, and both belong to the genesis step that was
+deliberately left until last.
+
+## Where it belongs
+
+`mesh-host` (the bundle and the enrolment path) and `mesh-controller` (the certificate command, and
+the composition that cannot reach the bus at genesis). Three of the four are fixed on branches; the
+fourth is the genesis work.
+
+## What it cost, for the next person
+
+Every lab bed still names `foundation-first-node.lock` in its own instructions, and that bundle
+raises the previous broker with a control plane that refuses to start without `MESH_BUS_NATS`. Until
+the fourth fault is answered and the two bundles become one, a bed runs with `MESH_LAB_BUNDLE`
+pointing at the NATS bundle by hand, and stops at the enrolment.