To-be 38: building the operator's machine as work packages; ADR 0175 collision renumbered to 0180

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.
Merge pull request 'Research 019: a warm twin of the running mesh' (#294 ) from jschoubben/research-019 into main
2026-10-02 17:20:14 +02:00 · 2026-10-02 14:59:44 +00:00 · 2026-10-02 16:59:36 +02:00 · 2026-10-02 14:58:48 +00:00 · 2026-10-02 16:53:15 +02:00 · 2026-10-02 16:34:57 +02:00
27 changed files with 938 additions and 677 deletions
@@ -9,11 +9,6 @@ another — and a mesh you cannot name precisely is a mesh two people describe d

 - **node** — a machine in the mesh. There are 0..n of them, and each runs the host agent. A node is
  just a machine that has joined; being one implies nothing about what it runs.
- **operator account** — the login name of the person who works on a node, stated on the node
-  record; empty for a machine nobody logs into. Everything the mesh places under a person's home is
-  resolved against this account's home and owned by it
-  ([ADR 0176](../02-DECISIONS/0176-the-operator-account-is-a-node-fact-and-a-home-is-a-placement-root.md)).
-  Not "the user" (ambiguous with a module's own account) and not a name a definition carries.
 - **control-node** — the one node that also holds the `mesh-controller` seat. There is exactly one
  per mesh. "control-node" is not a separate kind of machine — it is a node that additionally runs
  the controller (and, today, the foundation). Lose it and the other nodes keep running what they
@@ -100,3 +95,21 @@ another — and a mesh you cannot name precisely is a mesh two people describe d
 A new name for an existing thing lands here first, in the same change that introduces it in code. A
 record under `02-DECISIONS/` keeps whatever word it was written with — those are immutable — so a
 term retired here may still appear there, and the mapping above is how to read it.
+
+## The operator's machine
+
+- **node tools** — the one tool runtime per node, a host-side process the host supervises, that loads
+  every assigned module's tools bundle and serves every tool and held seat's verb on the subjects the
+  memberships issue; its serving mode on loopback is what was called **the console**
+  ([ADR 0175](../02-DECISIONS/0175-one-tool-runtime-per-node-serves-every-modules-tools-on-the-host-side.md)).
+  Replaces **"console"** as the module's name; *console* remains the word for the person's end of it.
+- **bundle** — the artifact a module's tools are built into, interpreted or compiled; never an image.
+- **kept region** — a marked block in a managed file the mesh writes *into*, where the operator's own
+  lines survive every push and are given back when the module goes
+  ([ADR 0174](../02-DECISIONS/0174-a-node-varies-a-module-through-settings-and-kept-regions-never-an-edit.md)).
+  One of the two ways a node varies a module; the other is a **setting**.
+- **installed / holding** — a module may be assigned (its package installed, its files placed) without
+  holding the seat its family declares; *holding* is being the one — the login shell, the display
+  session — on that node ([ADR 0176](../02-DECISIONS/0176-the-login-shell-is-a-node-seat-and-execute-is-its-contract.md)).
+- ~~flavor~~ — not used. What a flavor varied is a setting or a separate module.
+
@@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
 ---
-status: active
+status: graduated
 initiated: 2026-10-02
 touches:
  - 02-DECISIONS/0040-what-a-module-is.md
@@ -15,7 +15,13 @@ touches:
  - 03-DESIGN/00-as-is/10-module-catalogue.md
  - 04-ISSUES/160-a-machine-says-little-about-itself-and-only-when-asked/00-report.md
  - 04-ISSUES/168-a-setting-reaches-every-file-and-contribution/00-report.md
-became: []
+became:
+  - 03-DESIGN/01-to-be/37-the-operators-machine.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0173-the-operators-machine-is-the-meshs-and-a-module-is-what-it-declares.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0174-a-node-varies-a-module-through-settings-and-kept-regions-never-an-edit.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0175-one-tool-runtime-per-node-serves-every-modules-tools-on-the-host-side.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0176-the-login-shell-is-a-node-seat-and-execute-is-its-contract.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0177-a-unit-may-be-user-scoped-and-the-service-manager-is-a-node-seat.md
 ---

 # 018 — The operator's machine as modules
@@ -63,7 +69,7 @@ and the catalogue's shape ([as-is 10](../../03-DESIGN/00-as-is/10-module-catalog
 - [04 — The seats of the environment](04-the-seats-of-the-environment.md): the roles a machine
  has once, their candidate contracts, and what gates each.

-**What this must settle before it graduates.**
+**What it had to settle, and where each landed.** *(Graduated 2026-10-02.)*

 1. A module is one *managed thing*, software or not, and every module may serve tools — or ADR
   0040 already says this and only its examples are narrow.
@@ -0,0 +1,55 @@
+---
+status: active
+initiated: 2026-10-02
+touches: [lab, the lab module, the catalogue, assignments, settings, the controller's store]
+became: []
+---
+
+# 019 — A warm twin of the running mesh
+
+## What is being investigated
+
+Whether the lab can keep a **warm twin of the mesh as it actually runs**: the same machines, carrying
+the same catalogue, the same assignments and the same settings as the live mesh, raised once and kept
+ready, so that a change can be tested against the mesh as it is rather than against a scenario
+written to resemble it. A run against the twin would go through the lab module like any other run:
+a branch per repository, the twin restored from its snapshot, the change applied, the beds run.
+
+## Why
+
+The lab's beds raise meshes from declarations written for the bed. They prove the mechanism. They
+do not prove that a change works on the mesh that runs, with its accumulated assignments, its
+operator settings, its adopted machines and its modules in their real combinations. The gap showed
+on 2026-10-02:
+
+- a change to how a module's settings reach its files was correct in every bed, and would have put a
+  setting into the container runtime's configuration on every machine running that module. Only the
+  composed plan for a real machine showed it;
+- a firewall change composed cleanly and still left one machine's wired port unfiltered, because
+  of a link that machine had and no bed did;
+- a recovery step was needed on every machine at once, after a change that every bed had passed.
+
+The lab already has a warm mode, a snapshot of a raised scenario restored between attempts. What it
+does not have is a scenario that **is** the running mesh, kept current with it.
+
+## What it touches
+
+- **What a twin is made of.** The catalogue and the assignments are records; settings are records;
+  secrets are sealed to machines and cannot be copied. Which of these can be carried to the lab as
+  they are, which must be substituted, and how a twin says what it substituted.
+- **Data.** A twin with the real catalogue and no real data proves composition and delivery, not a
+  migration. Whether a twin carries data, a sample of it, or none.
+- **Keeping it current.** A twin raised once goes stale with the first merge. Whether it is
+  re-derived from the live records on each run, refreshed on a schedule, or rebuilt only when asked.
+- **Machines.** The live mesh has machines of different kinds: a server on the internet, machines
+  behind a home router, a laptop that sleeps. Which of their properties a twin must reproduce for a
+  test to mean anything (reachability, the private network, the found firewall).
+- **Cost.** The lab machine's memory and disk, and how long a twin takes to raise from cold.
+- **The lab module's tools.** A run against the twin rather than a named bed: one more tool, or an
+  argument to the run tool.
+
+## Starting point
+
+The lab module (ADR 0172) runs beds through the mesh, and the lab's warm mode already snapshots and
+restores a raised scenario. The beds that raise a machine shaped like one live machine from the
+catalogue are the nearest existing thing, and the first to compare against.
@@ -78,6 +78,8 @@ capability. The host hardcodes no firewall, supervisor, package manager or runti
 generic apply primitives and platform detection, so it runs where none of those exist — an Android
 phone has no ufw, systemd, pacman or Docker.

+> **The mechanism changed — 2026-10-02, by [ADR 0176](0176-the-login-shell-is-a-node-seat-and-execute-is-its-contract.md).** The shell example above — *bash, zsh and fish all join `shell`; one may be default* — is read as *installed is not holding*: the three may all be installed, and the `login-shell` seat is node-scoped and held by exactly one. The decision — what a module is, and the three relationships — stands; [ADR 0173](0173-the-operators-machine-is-the-meshs-and-a-module-is-what-it-declares.md) applies it to the operator's whole machine.
+
 ## Consequences

 - **Supersedes the earlier "grouped by domain" decision** (folded in consolidation; see the
@@ -9,6 +9,8 @@ extends: 0043-a-module-broker-account-is-scoped-by-emits-and-consumes.md

 # 47. A module runs its code as its own process, with its own account

+> **The mechanism changed — 2026-10-02, by [ADR 0175](0175-one-tool-runtime-per-node-serves-every-modules-tools-on-the-host-side.md).** A module's *tools* are no longer served by the module's own process under its own account: one tool runtime per node, on the host side, serves every assigned module's bundle. A tool is still served on its own subject and only the module that serves it answers; what moved is the process and the account.
+
 ## Context

 A module is one self-contained thing ([ADR 0040](0040-what-a-module-is.md)), and it gets a broker
@@ -9,6 +9,8 @@ extends: 02-DECISIONS/0047-a-module-runs-its-code-as-its-own-process-with-its-ow

 # 150. A module's own code runs as supervised processes under the module's one account

+> **The mechanism changed — 2026-10-02, by [ADR 0175](0175-one-tool-runtime-per-node-serves-every-modules-tools-on-the-host-side.md).** For a module's *tools*, read that record: one runtime per node, the node's one account, bundles loaded from the memberships. This record still governs a module's long-lived processes — a daemon, a provisioner, a scheduled ingest — and the account invariant for them.
+
 ## Context

 The repository answers "what runs a module's own code" two ways and reconciles them nowhere
@@ -111,6 +111,8 @@ operator owns; narrowing what it may call is a setting on its assignment, which
 [ADR 0046](0046-a-module-configuration-is-its-assignments-not-its-manifest.md) already provides for
 and nothing here builds.

+> **The mechanism changed — 2026-10-02, by [ADR 0175](0175-one-tool-runtime-per-node-serves-every-modules-tools-on-the-host-side.md).** The surface stays a module assigned per node, on loopback, with the machine's login as the authority. It is no longer a container: it is the node tools runtime's serving mode, host-side, and that runtime also serves every assigned module's tools. The module is renamed `node-tools`.
+
 ## Consequences

 - **The way a person drives the mesh is inside the mesh.** It is declared, delivered, replaced and
@@ -94,6 +94,13 @@ itself restarts, and the console says so rather than hiding the modules' tools w
 **A grant of `*` reaches a role's tools; `seat:<seat>.<verb>` grants one.** The console's `*` needed no
 change to reach the mesh's verbs, which is what a grant meaning *every tool* should mean.

+> **The mechanism changed — 2026-10-02, by [ADR 0175](0175-one-tool-runtime-per-node-serves-every-modules-tools-on-the-host-side.md).**
+> The seat gains a generic verb beside the named ones: `command`, which takes one command line as the
+> controller's binary takes it and answers what it printed. The named verbs stand and keep their
+> schemas; `command` is the whole binary, added because the operator decided any node may call any
+> tool and a verb per command was the only thing keeping `node account`, `node show` and the rest
+> behind a shell on the control node. Additive within the version, as §"additive" above allows.
+
 ## Consequences

 - **The console answers the mesh's own questions.** Issue 147's first paragraph closes: what a node
@@ -0,0 +1,108 @@
+---
+topic: what runs on it
+status: accepted
+date: 2026-10-02
+deciders: jochen
+reconstructed: false
+extends: 02-DECISIONS/0040-what-a-module-is.md
+---
+
+# 173. The operator's machine is the mesh's, and a module is whatever it declares
+
+## Context
+
+[ADR 0040](0040-what-a-module-is.md) says a module is *one self-contained piece of software the
+mesh installs and manages*, and every example it gives is a service: a database, an analytics
+server, a forge. The catalogue followed the examples. Of the predecessor's 34 modules on one
+workstation, 28 are the operator's environment — a login manager, a window manager with 88 files
+and four flavors, a shell, a terminal, a launcher, an audio setup, scripts — and the migration
+scoped all 28 out as *the workstation's own environment*, to be managed by nobody
+([research 018](../01-RESEARCH/018-the-operators-machine-as-modules/02-what-exists-and-what-is-missing.md)).
+Since the predecessor retired, nobody is exactly who manages them: a fix is a hand edit that
+nothing records and nothing regenerates.
+
+[To-be 29](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/29-a-node-has-operator-accounts.md) reached under the home for
+one directory and drew a boundary inside it. The operator's statement is wider: *the mesh manages
+my entire machine, all four of them, as far as it makes sense* — system folders and the home
+alike, the servers and the workstations from the same catalogue. And the operator refused a
+distinction this effort first drew between modules that ship code and modules that ship only
+declarations: *a module can have some tools, a seat implementation, some containers, a unit, a
+binary, some config files — one of these, or all, or two.*
+
+## Considered Options
+
+1. **Keep 0040's reading and manage the environment outside the catalogue** — dotfiles in a
+   repository, a script that places them. Rejected: that is the predecessor's first two days, the
+   origin of every inherited shape [as-is 10](../03-DESIGN/00-as-is/10-module-catalogue.md)
+   documents, and it puts the one thing a person looks at outside the one mechanism that is
+   checked.
+2. **Add a second kind of module for configuration** — a "config module" with files and no
+   process. Rejected by the operator: a kind is a distinction the manifest already makes by what
+   it declares, and a second kind is a second set of rules to keep in step.
+3. **One definition: a module is one managed thing, described by what it declares.** Chosen.
+
+## Decision
+
+**1. Everything configurable on a node is declared by a module.** Services, and equally the login
+manager, the display server, the window manager, the shell, the terminal, the launcher, the
+notifier, the audio setup, the boot images, the package manager's configuration, the agent at the
+terminal, and a folder a person works in. The test is *can it be configured on a machine*; if it
+can, some module owns it. What no module declares is found and left alone, as adoption already
+says of a machine ([ADR 0100](0100-a-node-in-use-is-adopted-before-it-is-converged.md)).
+
+**2. A module is whatever it declares, and there are no kinds of module.** A package, files, a
+container, a unit, a binary, a seat claim, tools — any one, or all. 0040's *one self-contained piece
+of software* stands; its examples were services, and that was the whole of the bias. A downloads
+folder with a process that tidies it, backs it up and answers questions about it is a piece of
+software by 0040's own test, and so is a shell that is a package, three files and a seat.
+
+**3. The home has no boundary of its own.** A file under the operator's home is placed and owned
+the way [to-be 29](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/29-a-node-has-operator-accounts.md) §2 built it: by a
+module, resolved against the account's home, owned by the account. Which files are the mesh's is
+decided by what modules declare, not by a line drawn through a directory. A person's documents,
+projects and history are data under [ADR 0051](0051-shared-data-is-the-operators.md) and no module
+declares them.
+
+**4. One module ships one default configuration.** No flavors. What differed between the
+predecessor's four flavors of one desktop module is what [ADR 0174](0174-a-node-varies-a-module-through-settings-and-kept-regions-never-an-edit.md)
+is for.
+
+**5. Servers and workstations take the same catalogue.** A module declares what it needs; a
+machine reports what it has; assignment refuses by name
+([ADR 0161](0161-what-deserves-a-seat.md) §3). The shell, the prompt, git and the agent are universal.
+A display server needs a graphical session; a window manager needs the display server held. Nothing
+in a manifest says *workstation*.
+
+## Consequences
+
+- The catalogue grows by a family of modules that run no service. Each is still built,
+  registered, assigned, pushed and reported like every other, and `status` says whether a
+  machine has applied them.
+- The account fact becomes load-bearing for every node a person uses. Today it is empty on all
+  four node records of this mesh; stating it is the first step of the build.
+- A module that *installs* a thing is distinct from a module that *holds its role*: zsh, fish and
+  bash may all be installed, and one holds the login shell
+  ([ADR 0176](0176-the-login-shell-is-a-node-seat-and-execute-is-its-contract.md)).
+- The host's `package` shape drives the distribution's package manager only. A module whose
+  package is outside the distribution's repositories — the login manager in use is one — needs
+  either an official package or a shape the host does not have. Recorded as a gap, not decided.
+- The predecessor's hooks go. What they did becomes declared state the host applies, or a verb a
+  seat serves ([ADR 0177](0177-a-unit-may-be-user-scoped-and-the-service-manager-is-a-node-seat.md)).
+
+## How it is checked
+
+| Rule | Checked by |
+|---|---|
+| A manifest with no container, no unit and no binary registers and resolves like any other | the catalogue's registration tests, with a package-and-files manifest |
+| A file resource under the home resolves against the account and is owned by it | the controller's composition tests (to-be 29 §2, built) |
+| A home-scoped module is refused on a node with no account, naming the fact | the same tests |
+| A module needing a capability the machine lacks is refused by name | the resolver's tests (ADR 0161 §3) |
+
+## References
+
+- [Research 018](../01-RESEARCH/018-the-operators-machine-as-modules/00-overview.md), documents
+  01 and 02 — the behaviour wanted and the inventory measured.
+- [ADR 0040](0040-what-a-module-is.md), [ADR 0112](0112-a-module-definition-names-no-node-mesh-or-path.md),
+  [ADR 0051](0051-shared-data-is-the-operators.md), [ADR 0100](0100-a-node-in-use-is-adopted-before-it-is-converged.md)
+- [To-be 29](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/29-a-node-has-operator-accounts.md) — the account and the home
+  as a placement root, built; the records for them are proposed in an open change.
@@ -0,0 +1,92 @@
+---
+topic: building it
+status: accepted
+date: 2026-10-02
+deciders: jochen
+reconstructed: false
+extends: 02-DECISIONS/0011-managed-files-are-generated-never-edited.md
+---
+
+# 174. A node varies a module through settings and kept regions, never through an edit
+
+## Context
+
+[ADR 0011](0011-managed-files-are-generated-never-edited.md) says a managed file is derived and an
+edit to it is overwritten without warning. The predecessor said the same and then undid it twice:
+a `merge` strategy that adopted disk drift back into its database, so a local edit became the
+record; and a theming layer of about 90 environment variables substituted into templates at sync
+time, with tools to list and set them, so that *nearly every value was a variable* — a second
+configuration language laid over the first.
+
+The operator wants both the variation and the rule. One window-manager module with one default
+configuration, and each node tweaking it; and the file carrying the wanted value rather than a
+variable the file reads. Two mechanisms already exist for exactly this: a **setting**, declared by
+the module and set per mesh or per node, rendered at composition
+(`${setting:…}` is live in the resolver's manifest); and a **kept region**, a block in a file the
+mesh writes *into* where the operator's own lines survive every push
+([ADR 0102](0102-the-mesh-writes-into-a-shared-file-never-over-it.md), used by the ssh-client module
+for the operator's own `Host` blocks).
+
+What stands in the way is [issue 168](../04-ISSUES/168-a-setting-reaches-every-file-and-contribution/00-report.md):
+a setting today reaches every mergeable file and every contribution of its module. Ninety theme
+knobs on that mechanism would reach ninety files. The record that fixes it — a setting declared
+with its type, meaning, default and the file it lands in — is proposed in an open change alongside
+the container-runtime records.
+
+## Considered Options
+
+1. **Carry the predecessor's merge strategy.** A local edit is adopted into the node's layer.
+   Rejected: two writers and no arbiter, which is the option 0011 removed, and the reason a
+   `/model` choice was silently reverted on every node for weeks before anyone found the cause.
+2. **Carry the environment-variable theming.** Rejected by the operator: the value belongs in
+   the file; a variable the file reads is a second place for the same fact.
+3. **A per-node file override** — a whole file replaced for one node. Rejected: it is a flavor
+   under another name, and a module update then misses that node entirely.
+4. **Settings rendered into the file, and kept regions, and nothing else.** Chosen.
+
+## Decision
+
+**A node varies a module in exactly two ways.**
+
+- **A setting.** Declared by the module with a default, set for the mesh or for one node, rendered
+  into the file at composition. The value is in the file. Asked, the mesh lists every setting
+  with its effective value and where it came from.
+- **A kept region.** A marked block in a file the mesh writes into, in which the operator's own
+  lines are kept across every push and given back when the module goes (ADR 0102).
+
+**An edit outside a kept region is overwritten, as ADR 0011 says, and never adopted.** Nothing
+reads a managed file back into the record.
+
+**The predecessor's theme knobs become settings** of the modules whose files they render — the
+window manager's colours are the window manager's settings, the bar's are the bar's — each
+landing in the file that reads it and no other.
+
+**Issue 168 is fixed before any environment module declares a setting.** A setting must name the
+file it lands in; until that ships, the environment modules carry their defaults in their files
+and no settings.
+
+## Consequences
+
+- No flavors, no per-node file copies, no environment layer. A module's definition is one set of
+  files; a node's difference is data in its layer, visible by asking.
+- The settings record proposed alongside the container-runtime records is on the critical path
+  of every module with a knob, and this record depends on it shipping as proposed.
+- A kept region is the only place a person edits a managed file, and the file says where it is.
+  The operator's own prompt customisations, aliases and window rules live there.
+- What got harder: a change that is neither a setting the module declared nor the operator's own
+  lines has no home, and is refused by the mechanism rather than silently kept. That is the point.
+
+## How it is checked
+
+| Rule | Checked by |
+|---|---|
+| A setting reaches only the file its declaration names | the controller's settings tests, once the proposed record ships; issue 168 closes on it |
+| A kept region survives a push with its content and is given back on undeclare | the host's write-into tests (ADR 0102), with a region declared by an environment module |
+| An edit outside a region does not survive a push | the same tests, asserting the file equals the composed content outside the region |
+| Every effective value names its source | `mesh-controller.settings` and the module's own `show-config` tool |
+
+## References
+
+- [Research 018](../01-RESEARCH/018-the-operators-machine-as-modules/01-the-intended-behaviour.md) §"One default, varied by settings, never by edits"
+- [ADR 0011](0011-managed-files-are-generated-never-edited.md), [ADR 0102](0102-the-mesh-writes-into-a-shared-file-never-over-it.md),
+  [issue 168](../04-ISSUES/168-a-setting-reaches-every-file-and-contribution/00-report.md)
@@ -0,0 +1,122 @@
+---
+topic: what runs on it
+status: accepted
+date: 2026-10-02
+deciders: jochen
+reconstructed: false
+extends: 02-DECISIONS/0150-a-modules-own-code-runs-as-supervised-processes-under-one-account.md
+---
+
+# 175. One tool runtime per node serves every module's tools, on the host side
+
+## Context
+
+A module's tools are code the module wrote, one function behind each verb, served on the subjects
+the controller issues in the module's membership
+([ADR 0160](0160-the-mesh-issues-an-assignments-subjects-and-a-runtime-serves-what-it-is-issued.md)).
+What *runs* that code is [ADR 0150](0150-a-modules-own-code-runs-as-supervised-processes-under-one-account.md):
+a supervised process per module under the module's own account, and in the catalogue as built,
+that process is a container per module per node, built on the tool runtime's base image.
+
+Measured on the live mesh ([research 018](../01-RESEARCH/018-the-operators-machine-as-modules/03-one-tool-executor-per-node.md)):
+67 module tools, each served from its module's container; the packet-filter seat's three verbs
+served by a container with `NET_ADMIN` on every one of four machines, for a module that is
+otherwise a package, three files and a service; and the console, a container per node, calling
+everything and serving nothing. The operator's environment adds a dozen modules of the
+packet-filter shape, and the operator's judgement is plain: *I would never run MCP tools inside
+a container; that is a very bad design.* And: *I don't care about permissions or account per
+module, that just complicates things for no good reason. Just a node-level tool executor. If a
+command needs root, that's the module's concern.*
+
+The tool runtime itself was written for this. Its own description: *the per-node process that
+makes a module's tools actually serve — imports the assigned modules' compiled tool entrypoints,
+each of which registers its tools as it loads; on a node the host resolves the list and starts it
+like any other supervised workload.* What the catalogue did instead was build one image per module
+around it.
+
+## Considered Options
+
+1. **Keep a process per module.** Rejected: one container per module per node for software that
+   is not a container, and the account-per-module invariant it exists to protect is one the
+   operator declines to pay for.
+2. **The host executes tools itself.** Rejected: the host is a static Go binary that loads no
+   plugins; a module's tools are TypeScript on the SDK, and building a second SDK in Go for the
+   host's sake is the cost ADR 0039 refuses.
+3. **One tool runtime per node, a sibling of the host, loading every assigned module's bundle.**
+   Chosen. It is what the runtime was written to be.
+
+## Decision
+
+**1. One tool runtime per node, supervised by the host, on the host side — never a container.**
+The host starts it the way the launcher starts the host
+([ADR 0005](0005-the-node-host.md)): a process on the machine, restarted when it dies. It holds one
+bus credential, the node's. It is module-agnostic: it knows bundles and subjects, nothing of what
+any module does.
+
+**2. It serves every assigned module's tools and every held seat's verbs** on the subjects the
+memberships issue. ADR 0159 and ADR 0160 are unchanged in what they say about subjects, grants
+and memberships; what changes is that one process on the node subscribes to all of them instead of
+one process per module. A module that runs a long-lived service of its own — a daemon, a
+container — keeps it; this record is about tools.
+
+**3. A module brings its tools as a bundle**, the artifact kind the catalogue already has for
+interpreted code, built by the pipeline and delivered to the node by the host as it delivers any
+artifact. Never an image. The runtime loads each bundle as the membership names it, and a push
+that adds or replaces a bundle reaches a running runtime as a reload.
+
+**4. Root is the module's concern.** A tool that must change the packet filter or rebuild boot
+images escalates itself. The runtime does not run as root for everyone's sake; the caller does not
+know and need not.
+
+**5. Any node may call any tool on any node.** The runtime's credential may call everything, as
+the console's already may. A per-module calling grant is not kept.
+
+**6. The console is this runtime's serving mode, renamed.** [ADR 0152](0152-the-operators-surface-is-a-module-the-console.md)
+stands in substance — a module assigned per node, MCP on the machine's loopback, the machine's
+login is the authority — and changes in form: host-side, serving as well as calling, and named for
+what it is: **node tools**. The mesh's own verbs stay with the controller
+([ADR 0154](0154-the-meshs-own-verbs-are-the-controller-seats-tools.md)); a mesh-scoped seat's verbs
+run on the node that holds it ([ADR 0121](0121-a-system-seat-is-named-for-its-scope-and-modules-define-their-own.md)).
+
+**Where ADR 0047 and ADR 0150 say a module's tools are served by the module's own process under
+the module's own account, read this record.** Everything else they decided stands: a tool is served
+on its own subject, only the module that serves it answers, a module's long-lived processes are the
+machine's to supervise. The invariant 0150 kept — one account per module — no longer holds for
+tools, and the reason is stated above: every tool is callable from everywhere by decision 5, so the
+account no longer scopes anything a caller cannot already reach.
+
+## Consequences
+
+- The packet-filter module's container goes; its verbs run on the host side and escalate as they
+  need. [ADR 0170](0170-the-firewall-seat-serves-its-verbs.md) §3's container capability is moot
+  for it.
+- The tool runtime's base image stays the way a module's *service* may be built; it is no longer
+  the way tools reach a node.
+- The node tools runtime needs an interpreter on the machine. The module that is the runtime
+  declares it as a package.
+- The container-runtime seat proposed in an open change says its holder *runs as a supervised
+  process and serves the verbs locally to the host and on the bus*. A supervised process serving
+  verbs is what this runtime is; whether that holder keeps a process of its own or serves through
+  the runtime is for that record's build to say.
+- What got harder: one process carries every module's tool code on a node, so one module's
+  faulty bundle can take down the node's tools. The runtime loads each bundle guarded and names
+  the one that failed; the others serve.
+
+## How it is checked
+
+| Rule | Checked by |
+|---|---|
+| The runtime loads every bundle its memberships name and serves each tool on its subject | the runtime's tests against a real bus: two bundles, three tools, each answers |
+| A bundle that fails to load is named and the others serve | the same tests, with one bundle that throws on load |
+| The host supervises the runtime and restarts it | the host's tests over the launcher's shape |
+| A push that replaces a bundle reloads it without a restart | the runtime's tests: a bundle replaced on disk, the membership re-read, the new tool answers |
+| No module in the catalogue declares a container whose only purpose is tools | a catalogue check: a manifest with `tools` and an image artifact built on the tool runtime's base is refused once the runtime is live |
+| Live | `login-shell.execute@<node>` answers on every node from the node tools runtime; `docker ps` shows no per-module tool container |
+
+## References
+
+- [Research 018](../01-RESEARCH/018-the-operators-machine-as-modules/03-one-tool-executor-per-node.md)
+- [ADR 0150](0150-a-modules-own-code-runs-as-supervised-processes-under-one-account.md), [ADR 0047](0047-a-module-runs-its-code-as-its-own-process-with-its-own-account.md),
+  [ADR 0152](0152-the-operators-surface-is-a-module-the-console.md), [ADR 0159](0159-a-tool-call-names-the-machine-and-a-holder-serves-its-seats-verbs.md),
+  [ADR 0160](0160-the-mesh-issues-an-assignments-subjects-and-a-runtime-serves-what-it-is-issued.md), [ADR 0154](0154-the-meshs-own-verbs-are-the-controller-seats-tools.md)
+- [To-be 33](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/33-the-tools-the-mesh-answers.md), [to-be 34](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/34-the-console.md)
@@ -0,0 +1,81 @@
+---
+topic: what runs on it
+status: accepted
+date: 2026-10-02
+deciders: jochen
+reconstructed: false
+extends: 02-DECISIONS/0132-a-seat-carries-the-tools-its-holder-must-serve.md
+---
+
+# 176. The login shell is a node seat held by one shell module, and `execute` is its contract
+
+## Context
+
+[ADR 0040](0040-what-a-module-is.md) names the shell as its example of a *shared* seat: bash, zsh
+and fish all join `shell`, and one may be default. The operator's reading is sharper, and it
+matches [ADR 0126](0126-a-module-declares-its-own-seats.md) better: *installing* a shell is
+installing software, and several may be installed; *holding* the seat is being the login shell,
+which a node has exactly one of. A definition says which seats a module can hold; the assignment
+says which it does.
+
+A seat carries the tools its holder must serve ([ADR 0132](0132-a-seat-carries-the-tools-its-holder-must-serve.md)),
+and [to-be 33](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/33-the-tools-the-mesh-answers.md) leaves which verbs each
+seat serves as a decision per seat, taken slowly. This is the first seat of the operator's
+environment, and the one every node has.
+
+## Considered Options
+
+1. **A shared `shell` seat with a default**, as 0040's example reads. Rejected: *default* is a
+   second concept beside *holder* for the same fact, and the `user` shape already makes the
+   login shell declared state ([to-be 05](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/05-the-node-host.md)).
+2. **No seat; each shell module sets the login shell for itself.** Rejected: two assigned shell
+   modules would fight over `chsh`, and nothing would say which won.
+3. **An exclusive node-scoped seat, `login-shell`, declared by the shell modules, held by one
+   per node.** Chosen.
+
+## Decision
+
+**1. `login-shell` is a node-scoped seat declared by the shell modules.** zsh, fish and bash each
+declare that they can hold it; a node's assignment says which does; the controller refuses a
+second holder by name as for every seat. A shell module that is assigned without holding the seat
+is installed and nothing more.
+
+**2. Holding the seat sets the account's login shell.** The holder's declaration carries the
+`user` shape with the shell it provides, so the login shell is declared state the host applies and
+gives back when the holding moves — `chsh` stops being a hook.
+
+**3. The seat's contract is `execute`.** One verb, one argument, the command, run on the node the
+seat is scoped to as the operator account, answering with what it printed and how it exited.
+Every holder serves it; a holder may serve its own tools beside it
+([ADR 0170](0170-the-firewall-seat-serves-its-verbs.md) §2) — show the rendered configuration, list
+the plugins, set a prompt value.
+
+**4. Any node may call it on any node.** The grant is the node tools runtime's
+([ADR 0175](0175-one-tool-runtime-per-node-serves-every-modules-tools-on-the-host-side.md) §5):
+*run `uptime` on every node* is five calls to one verb.
+
+## Consequences
+
+- The first environment module is a shell: a package, files under the home owned by the account,
+  a seat declaration and claim, a `user` shape, and one tool. It proves the whole pattern on every
+  node, servers included, before anything graphical is written.
+- ADR 0040's shell example is read as *installed is not holding*; a dated note in that record says
+  so. Its decision is untouched.
+- `execute` is a shell on every machine, addressed over the bus. That is the point, and it is
+  the widest verb the mesh serves; it exists because the operator decided every node may call
+  every tool, and this record does not narrow that.
+
+## How it is checked
+
+| Rule | Checked by |
+|---|---|
+| Two shell modules assigned to one node, one holding: one `user` shape in the declaration, naming the holder's shell | the controller's composition tests |
+| A second claimant is refused by name | the catalogue's seat tests |
+| `execute` runs as the account and answers output and exit status | the module's tool tests over a fake runner, and live on every node |
+| The seat's verb appears with its scope and machine in the node tools listing | the runtime's tests (to-be 33 §4) |
+
+## References
+
+- [Research 018](../01-RESEARCH/018-the-operators-machine-as-modules/04-the-seats-of-the-environment.md)
+- [ADR 0040](0040-what-a-module-is.md), [ADR 0126](0126-a-module-declares-its-own-seats.md),
+  [ADR 0132](0132-a-seat-carries-the-tools-its-holder-must-serve.md), [ADR 0170](0170-the-firewall-seat-serves-its-verbs.md)
@@ -1,118 +0,0 @@
---
-topic: what runs on it
-status: accepted
-date: 2026-09-27
-deciders: jochen
-reconstructed: true
-extends: 02-DECISIONS/0112-a-module-definition-names-no-node-mesh-or-path.md
---
-
-# 176. The operator account is a node fact, and a home is a placement root
-
-*Reconstructed. The controller shipped this on 2026-09-27 and
-[to-be 29](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/29-a-node-has-operator-accounts.md) recorded it as built without a
-decision behind it. This record states what was decided, from the code and the design, and adds the
-two rules the code left implicit — what an empty account means for a module, and that the account is
-stated rather than discovered. Written 2026-10-02.*
-
-## Context
-
-[ADR 0112](0112-a-module-definition-names-no-node-mesh-or-path.md) took every host path out of a
-module definition and gave a module's *system* data a place: a directory the mesh resolves under the
-node's root, owned by the module. It said nothing about the other half of a filesystem — the files
-that belong under a person's home and are owned by that person. The predecessor wrote several of
-those: the ssh client configuration, the shell's configuration, an agent's instruction files. It knew
-whose home it was writing into because each of its node records carried a login name. The mesh took
-the machine facts over and dropped the human one.
-
-The loss was found the ordinary way: `ssh <node>` logged into the home-server under the workstation's
-own login name, because nothing in the mesh said the home-server's account was a different one
-([to-be 29](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/29-a-node-has-operator-accounts.md),
-[issue 172](../04-ISSUES/172-the-ssh-client-block-matches-one-spelling-of-a-machine/00-report.md)).
-
-What the controller does since 2026-09-27: a node record carries an operator account and, optionally,
-its home; the account and its home are machine facts a definition may name in a resource's path, owner
-and content; a roster file may say it lives under the home, and is then rendered per node, placed under
-that node's account's home, owned by the account, and left out on a node with no account. On
-2026-10-02 **all four nodes of the live mesh carry an empty account**: the fact exists and nobody has
-stated it, so no home-scoped resource can land anywhere yet.
-
-## Considered Options
-
-1. **The definition names the login.** `owner: <name>` in the module. Rejected: it is the installation
-   written into a definition, which ADR 0112 forbids and
-   [ADR 0155](0155-a-definition-names-no-installation-and-how-that-is-checked.md) checks for, and it is
-   wrong on the first machine whose login differs — which is exactly the machine that surfaced this.
-2. **The host discovers the account.** The first non-system user, or whoever ran the enrolment.
-   Rejected: a guess. A shared machine has several people on it, a server may have none, and a host
-   deciding whose files these are is a decision the mesh then cannot see, state or correct.
-3. **The account is a fact the operator states on the node record, and the home is derived from it
-   unless stated.** Chosen.
-
-## Decision
-
-**A node has an operator account: the login name of the person who works on it.** It is stated by the
-operator on the node record, the way a node's address or mode is held there, and it is empty for a
-machine nobody logs into. Empty is a real state, not a missing value. The mesh holds the fact because
-everything below derives from it, and because it is precisely the fact that was lost when the
-predecessor's records were not carried over.
-
-**The account's home is derived unless stated.** The superuser's home for the superuser, the
-distribution's conventional per-user home otherwise; a node whose account lives elsewhere states its
-home. One place computes the default, so a fact and the record cannot disagree about it.
-
-**A resource may be placed under the home, owned by the account.** This is ADR 0112's move one level
-over: as a module's system directory is resolved under the node's root, a file under a person's home is
-resolved against the account's home, and owned by the account rather than by root or a module's own
-account. A definition names the account and its home as machine facts, never as a path; a roster fact
-may say it is a home file and is then placed and owned the same way. The controller resolves both at
-composition, and the host chowns what it creates.
-
-**A node with no account cannot carry a home-scoped resource, and says so.** A roster fact that lives
-under the home is left out of that node's declaration rather than written to nowhere. A resource naming
-the account fact on such a node is refused at composition, naming the fact the machine does not have.
-A module that writes a person's files is thereby unassignable to a machine with no person on it, which
-is the right refusal.
-
-**One account per node is what this record decides.** Several people on one machine is left open, with
-the constraint that allowing it must not force the common case — one workstation, one person — to name
-anything.
-
-## Consequences
-
- **The operator states the account before any home-scoped module lands.** Today none is stated, so the
-  first assignment of such a module begins with four node records.
- The roster carries each node's account, so a composed ssh configuration logs in as the right person
-  on every machine — the gap that surfaced this, closed by the same fact.
- A family of modules becomes writable: everything the predecessor placed under a home — ssh client,
-  shell, the agent's instruction files — is now a module naming a fact rather than a path
-  ([to-be 29 §2](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/29-a-node-has-operator-accounts.md)).
- **What got harder:** a definition cannot say "my user's home" without the mesh knowing who the user
-  is, so a module of this family is refused on a freshly enrolled machine until a person is named on
-  it. That is a prompt, not an obstacle.
- **Not decided here:** several accounts per node; a service unit running as the account rather than
-  as root or a module; a one-off step run as the account. Each is a record of its own.
-
-## How it is checked
-
-| Rule | Checked by |
-|---|---|
-| A resource's path and owner resolve the account and its home | controller tests on machine-fact resolution: a file naming the account facts lands under the account's home, owned by the account |
-| The home is derived unless stated | a controller test: the superuser's home for the superuser, the conventional home otherwise, the stated home when one is stored |
-| A home roster fact is left out on a node with no account | a controller test on roster composition: the file is absent from that node's declaration and present on a node with an account |
-| A resource naming the account on a node with no account is refused by name | a controller test on machine-fact resolution: the refusal names `account` and lists the facts the machine does have |
-| No definition names a home path | ADR 0112's catalogue test on host paths, which a `/home` or `/root` literal fails |
-
-## References
-
- [to-be 29](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/29-a-node-has-operator-accounts.md) — the design this record
-  gives a foundation to, and its "what has shipped" section
- [ADR 0112](0112-a-module-definition-names-no-node-mesh-or-path.md) — the system-path placement
-  this mirrors; [ADR 0155](0155-a-definition-names-no-installation-and-how-that-is-checked.md) — why
-  a login name may not be in a definition
- [ADR 0120](0120-a-roster-fact-carries-its-format-as-a-template.md) — the roster fact a home file
-  may be
- [ADR 0177](0177-inside-a-home-the-mesh-owns-what-it-places-and-holds-the-rest-as-found.md) — what
-  the mesh may and may not do inside the home this record lets it reach
- mesh-controller `internal/inventory/nodes.go` (the account and its home on the node record),
-  `internal/catalogue/machine_into_files.go` and `roster.go` (resolution and the home fact)
@@ -0,0 +1,80 @@
+---
+topic: what runs on it
+status: accepted
+date: 2026-10-02
+deciders: jochen
+reconstructed: false
+extends: 02-DECISIONS/0121-a-system-seat-is-named-for-its-scope-and-modules-define-their-own.md
+---
+
+# 177. A unit may be user-scoped, and the service manager is a node seat whose holder answers for the units
+
+## Context
+
+The host's `service` shape puts a system unit into a state. It has no user scope.
+[To-be 29](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/29-a-node-has-operator-accounts.md) states the gap: *a
+workstation's per-user daemons have no form the mesh can send.* Four of the predecessor's
+environment modules ship user units — the desktop's reload watcher and bar watchdog, the audio
+module's masks, the power module's memory guard, the thermal daemon's profile switcher — and the
+predecessor needed a hook to enable them because *shipping a unit file does not run it*; one unit
+was deployed for months and ran on one machine only.
+
+[ADR 0040](0040-what-a-module-is.md) says the host hardcodes no supervisor, and a swappable
+machine mechanism is a module implementing a capability — which is what the nftables module is for
+the packet filter ([ADR 0170](0170-the-firewall-seat-serves-its-verbs.md)). The service manager is
+reported today as a capability, `service-manager`, and held by nobody. The operator's proposal: a
+systemd module that holds the seat and serves the tools about units, system and user.
+
+## Considered Options
+
+1. **Keep user units as a module concern** — each module runs `systemctl --user` in a hook.
+   Rejected: that is the hook that silently never ran, and an action over the link is refused.
+2. **The service-manager module applies units** on behalf of others, as a provision. Rejected by
+   the operator: provisioning is for resources a provider creates for a consumer; a unit is
+   declared state the host applies, as every resource is.
+3. **The host's `service` shape gains a user scope; a systemd module holds the service-manager
+   seat and serves the verbs about units.** Chosen.
+
+## Decision
+
+**1. The `service` shape gains `scope`: `system` (the default) or `user`.** A user-scoped unit
+is applied as the operator account through the account's own service manager: enabled, started,
+stopped, reloaded on its triggers, exactly as a system unit is, and refused on a node with no
+account, naming the fact. The host applies it; no module does.
+
+**2. `node-service-manager` is a seat of the mesh's own, node-scoped**, seeded by the controller
+under this record, as ADR 0121 requires of a `node-*` name. The `systemd` module claims it and is
+assigned to every machine whose profile reports `service-manager`.
+
+**3. The seat's verbs answer for every unit on the machine**, each taking an optional `scope`:
+`units`, `status`, `start`, `stop`, `restart`, `enable`, `disable`, `journal`. The host applies what
+is declared; the holder answers questions and operator acts about it, and says, for a mesh-held
+unit, that the host will restore what its declaration says.
+
+## Consequences
+
+- The host's vocabulary grows by one field on one shape, asserted by its count test
+  ([to-be 05](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/05-the-node-host.md)); an older host refuses a declaration
+  carrying it, so the host rolls before the first module that uses it.
+- The predecessor's four user-unit modules become declarable without a hook.
+- The seat's holder is the first system seat held by a module that runs nothing of its own: its
+  verbs are served by the node tools runtime ([ADR 0175](0175-one-tool-runtime-per-node-serves-every-modules-tools-on-the-host-side.md)).
+- What got harder: `journal` and `status` on a user unit need the account's manager reachable
+  from the runtime's process, which runs as the node's account; the holder's tool escalates or
+  switches user as it needs, which is ADR 0175 §4 applied.
+
+## How it is checked
+
+| Rule | Checked by |
+|---|---|
+| A `service` with `scope: user` is enabled and started under the account, and refused with no account | the host's tests with a fake service manager |
+| The seat declares its verbs; a claim serving fewer is refused by name | the catalogue's seat tests |
+| The verbs act on a named unit in the named scope and name the unit's holder when the mesh declares it | the module's tests over a fake runner |
+| Live | the desktop's reload watcher declared `scope: user` on a workstation; `node-service-manager.status@<node>` reports it active |
+
+## References
+
+- [Research 018](../01-RESEARCH/018-the-operators-machine-as-modules/04-the-seats-of-the-environment.md)
+- [ADR 0121](0121-a-system-seat-is-named-for-its-scope-and-modules-define-their-own.md), [ADR 0132](0132-a-seat-carries-the-tools-its-holder-must-serve.md),
+  [ADR 0040](0040-what-a-module-is.md), [ADR 0170](0170-the-firewall-seat-serves-its-verbs.md)
+- [To-be 05](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/05-the-node-host.md), [to-be 29](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/29-a-node-has-operator-accounts.md)
@@ -1,117 +0,0 @@
---
-topic: what runs on it
-status: accepted
-date: 2026-10-02
-deciders: jochen
-reconstructed: false
-extends: 02-DECISIONS/0118-undeclaring-gives-a-unit-back-the-state-it-was-found-in.md
---
-
-# 177. Inside a home, the mesh owns the directory and the files it places, writes into the tool's own files, and holds everything else as found
-
-## Context
-
-[ADR 0176](0176-the-operator-account-is-a-node-fact-and-a-home-is-a-placement-root.md) lets a module
-place files under a person's home. A home is unlike any directory the mesh has written into so far:
-it is shared with the person, and with every program the person runs. The agent's configuration
-directory on the laptop makes the point. On 2026-10-02 it holds thirty entries. The predecessor placed
-five of them (an instruction file, a conventions rule, a settings file it merged into, two skills); a
-sibling module placed a sixth (the node's identity rule). The agent itself writes the other
-twenty-four: its settings, its credentials, its history, the memory of every project it has worked in,
-its plugins, its session logs. Several of those are what [to-be 15](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/15-the-agent-session.md)
-calls memory *written by the session itself and declared by nobody*: a mechanism that regenerated the
-directory would erase a season of it, silently, while reporting success.
-
-The predecessor's own module recorded the hazard in the other direction. Its settings file was first
-shipped as *replace*, and every `/model` choice a person made inside a session was reverted to the
-template's value on the next synchronisation — on every node, indefinitely, with no indication why. It
-was changed to *merge*, and the comment explaining why is still in its manifest.
-
-**And the generator is gone while its output stayed.** The predecessor was retired from the laptop on
-2026-10-01. Its six files are still on both workstations, with their content telling every session to
-use tools that no longer exist. Nothing owns them; nothing will ever rewrite or remove them.
-
-[To-be 29 §3](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/29-a-node-has-operator-accounts.md) drew the line for one directory,
-`~/.ssh`: the mesh owns the directory and the files it places; it holds the person's private keys and
-personal drop-ins as found. That was argued from the lockout `~/.ssh` can cause. The argument here is
-the same shape with a different stake — the person's work rather than the person's way in — and it has
-to hold for every directory the family of home-scoped modules will touch, so it is a rule, not a
-section.
-
-## Considered Options
-
-1. **The module owns the directory whole**, regenerating it from the definition. Rejected: it destroys
-   the memory, history and local settings the agent writes for itself, which is the failure to-be 15
-   names and the predecessor's settings file demonstrated at small scale.
-2. **The module owns only the files it names, and nothing about the directory.** Rejected: *owning one
-   file beside foreign ones is not owning anything* (to-be 29). The directory must exist, with the right
-   owner and mode, before the tool first runs on a fresh machine; and a credentials file in a
-   world-readable directory is a credentials file in the wrong directory.
-3. **The module owns the directory and the files it places; a file the tool writes for itself is
-   written into, never over; everything else is held as found.** Chosen.
-
-## Decision
-
-**A home-scoped module owns the directory it declares: its existence, owner and mode.** The host creates
-it if absent, owned by the account, and never removes it while it holds anything
-([ADR 0030](0030-data-outlives-the-mesh-that-declared-it.md)). Inside it, every path the module touches
-is in exactly one of four classes, and **the class is visible in the definition from the shape
-declared**, not inferred from what happened to be on disk:
-
-| class | declared as | the host's rule |
-|---|---|---|
-| **owned** | a file with content, or a roster fact | written whole, regenerated, removed when undeclared; a file found there with no record of the mesh making it is kept once before it is written over ([ADR 0102](0102-the-mesh-writes-into-a-shared-file-never-over-it.md)) |
-| **written into** | a file written *into* a structured document | only the keys the definition names are set, every other key is kept, and each set key is given back when undeclared (ADR 0102). The key list is the module's and is short |
-| **written by the module's own process** | a secret the mesh delivers to the module, and a step that writes the file from it | the file's content is never a declared file's content, because a declaration travels in the clear on the bus and the host records it; the module's process writes it, owned by the account, atomically. [ADR 0178](0178-the-mesh-binds-and-delivers-a-licence-and-the-module-writes-the-tools-credential.md) says how for a credential |
-| **found** | nothing | never read, never rewritten, never removed. The person's memory, history, projects, local settings, their own rules and skills |
-
-**A file the tool writes for itself is written into, never over.** The agent's settings file and its
-own state file are the tool's; the mesh has one or two facts to state in each. Setting those keys and
-nothing else is what lets a person's `/model` choice survive a push, and what lets the mesh's keys be
-taken back cleanly when the module goes.
-
-**A predecessor's output is found.** A file placed by a generator that no longer exists is, to the
-mesh, a file it has no record of making. Where the successor module keeps the path, declaring it
-*adopts* it: the host keeps the original once and writes the mesh's. Where the successor does not keep
-the path, the mesh does not remove the file, because it removes nothing it did not make; **the operator
-removes it, once**, and the module's definition names those paths in its own documentation so the step
-is not forgotten. This is the first instance of the one-off setup step to-be 29 leaves open, and the
-rule chosen for it is that it is a person's act, listed, not a module's.
-
-**The rule is the family's.** An ssh client module, a shell module, an agent module each declare their
-directory and classify their paths this way. A module that cannot say which class a path is in has not
-finished its definition.
-
-## Consequences
-
- A person's work under their home survives every push and every unassign. The mesh's own files come
-  and go with the module; the mesh's keys in the tool's files come and go with it; the directory stays.
- **Stale files survive too.** Two workstations keep three predecessor files each until a person removes
-  them — a visible cost, accepted over a mesh that deletes under a person's home. A module author who
-  renames one of the mesh's own files has the ordinary path: the old resource id is undeclared and the
-  host removes what it made ([ADR 0118](0118-undeclaring-gives-a-unit-back-the-state-it-was-found-in.md)).
- A module's definition is longer by a classification, and a reviewer has one more question per path.
-  That is the point: *which parts are managed must be explicit rather than inferred* (to-be 15).
- **What got harder:** a module cannot seed a person's preference once and leave it. A seeded file
-  ([ADR 0087](0087-a-seeded-file-is-created-once.md)) is the shape for that, and it is available to
-  this family unchanged; what is refused is a seed the module later wants to change, because what grew
-  in it is the person's.
-
-## How it is checked
-
-| Rule | Checked by |
-|---|---|
-| The directory is created owned by the account and kept when the module goes | host tests of a directory resource with an owner (ADR 0051's and 0118's), and the family's lab check below |
-| An owned file found with no record is kept once, then written | host tests of ADR 0102's kept-original rule |
-| Only the declared keys of a written-into file change, and are given back | host tests of ADR 0102: declared keys set, the rest kept, restored when undeclared |
-| Nothing found is touched | the family's lab check: a machine with a seeded home holding a person's file beside a predecessor's; after apply the person's file is byte-identical, the predecessor's is kept as the original, the mesh's keys are set and the person's keys in the same file remain; after unassign the mesh's files are gone, the keys are restored, the person's files are untouched and the directory stands |
-| Every path a home-scoped module touches is classified | a catalogue review rule for this family: each path is a directory, a file, a file written into, a secret-and-step, or absent — the first module written to it is [to-be 36](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/36-the-operators-agent-on-a-machine.md) |
-
-## References
-
- [to-be 29 §3](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/29-a-node-has-operator-accounts.md) — the same boundary drawn for `~/.ssh`
- [to-be 15](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/15-the-agent-session.md) — a session's memory is declared by nobody
- [ADR 0102](0102-the-mesh-writes-into-a-shared-file-never-over-it.md), [ADR 0087](0087-a-seeded-file-is-created-once.md),
-  [ADR 0118](0118-undeclaring-gives-a-unit-back-the-state-it-was-found-in.md), [ADR 0030](0030-data-outlives-the-mesh-that-declared-it.md) — the mechanics each class rests on
- [ADR 0051](0051-shared-data-is-the-operators.md) — the third case the host had no word for: what it neither made nor configured
- the predecessor's `claude-code` module manifest, whose comment on `strategy: merge` records the reverted `/model` choice
@@ -1,142 +0,0 @@
---
-topic: what runs on it
-status: accepted
-date: 2026-10-02
-deciders: jochen
-reconstructed: false
-extends: 02-DECISIONS/0024-model-access-is-a-provision.md
---
-
-# 178. The mesh binds and delivers a licence; the module alone writes the tool's credential; a switch is the binding changed, asked for through the console
-
-## Context
-
-**The operator's stance, set on 2026-10-02:** the controller has no part in the agent module. The
-module owns the agent's directory under the operator's home and every related file, handles them
-itself, and carries a licence-switching function as the predecessor's did.
-
-**What the predecessor's switching actually was.** A registry of accounts held server-side; a tool,
-callable from a session, that decrypted the chosen account's token on the server, refreshed it if near
-expiry, and wrote the agent's credentials file on the target node — never returning the token. Beside
-it, a shell helper that ran the agent with a token read from a plaintext file in the operator's own
-configuration directory, one token per account, on every workstation; and an enrolment helper that
-logged in once in a throwaway home and registered what came out. So the central half did the
-refreshing and the writing; the node held nothing it could refresh with; and the convenience path kept
-every account's token readable on disk wherever it was wanted.
-
-**What the mesh has.** [To-be 14](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/14-model-access.md) is built as far as it goes:
-a licence is a named record with a vendor; a consumer is a module on a node and is put on one licence;
-the access token is sealed per holder and delivered to the holder's machine; for a refreshable grant
-the manager node alone holds the refresh token, encrypted, and refreshes centrally — the one stated
-carve-out of [ADR 0050](0050-model-access-is-vendor-agnostic.md). The controller has commands to add a
-licence, put a consumer on it, release it, accept a key, set a manager, set and refresh a grant. **None
-of them is a verb on the `mesh-controller` seat**, so none can be asked for through the console
-([ADR 0154](0154-the-meshs-own-verbs-are-the-controller-seats-tools.md) exposes eighteen commands and
-not these). The catalogue has the manager module and a consumer module that already writes an
-access-token-only credentials file at a path it is told; both are assigned to nothing.
-
-**Why refresh is central and must stay so.** A refreshable grant rotates its refresh token on use. Two
-machines each refreshing one account's grant race: the second refresh presents a token the first
-retired. The predecessor refreshed centrally for this reason, and ADR 0024 kept that half on purpose
-(*the hard half of this already — and it works*). ADR 0050 narrowed the consequence to one node.
-
-**The two designs are not in conflict, and the line has to be drawn in a record.** The controller
-resolving *whose* home a file lands in ([ADR 0176](0176-the-operator-account-is-a-node-fact-and-a-home-is-a-placement-root.md))
-and *which* licence a consumer holds (to-be 14) is what the controller does for every module. "No
-part" cannot mean that, or the module could not be assigned. It can mean — and this record says it
-means — that **the controller learns nothing about the agent**: no file shape, no path, no key, no
-word beyond the vendor adapter it already has.
-
-## Considered Options
-
-1. **The module keeps its own registry of accounts and tokens**, the stance read literally. Rejected: a
-   second secret store outside the vault ([ADR 0113](0113-the-vault-makes-every-secret.md)); a refresh
-   token on every workstation, widening ADR 0050's one-node carve-out to every machine a person sits
-   at; and two records of one licence, which drift.
-2. **The agent refreshes itself**: the mesh delivers a full grant once at a switch and the agent's own
-   refresh keeps it alive. Rejected: the refresh race above, between the agent and the manager and
-   between two machines on one account; and every node then holds a refresh token, which ADR 0050
-   decided no node does.
-3. **The mesh binds and delivers; the module writes; a switch is the binding changed, asked for through
-   the console.** Chosen.
-
-## Decision
-
-**The consumer is the module on the machine: the operator's interactive sessions on that node, under
-that account, hold one licence at a time.** That is to-be 15's `(node, module)` identity, with the
-agent module as the module. Two machines may hold different licences, the ordinary case. The mesh's own
-sessions on a machine are other modules and hold theirs in their own right.
-
-**The mesh delivers; the module writes.** The module requires `model-access`. The mesh resolves the
-licence the consumer is on, delivers the access token sealed to the machine as a secret in the module's
-own state, and delivers the non-secret facts — the licence's name, what it serves — beside it. **The
-module's own process writes the agent's credentials file** from the delivered secret: under the
-account's home, owned by the account, readable by nobody else, written atomically, and access-token-only
-— a refresh token found there is removed, because a node never holds one (ADR 0050). The file's content
-is never a declared file's content ([ADR 0177](0177-inside-a-home-the-mesh-owns-what-it-places-and-holds-the-rest-as-found.md)).
-The step runs when the delivered secret changes and on a schedule as a backstop, so a refreshed token
-reaches the file without anyone asking.
-
-**The controller learns nothing about the agent.** Where the file is, what shape it has, what the
-agent calls its keys, how it is told about the console — all of that is the module's definition and
-code. The controller contributes the facts it contributes to every module: the account, the home, the
-licence, the delivery.
-
-**A switch is the binding changed.** Putting the consumer on another licence is the mesh's existing
-act — *use this licence, for this consumer* — and it becomes a verb on the `mesh-controller` seat the
-way the other verbs did (ADR 0154): the command it already has, served on the bus, listed by the
-console. The module serves two tools of its own: one that reports which licence the machine holds and
-when its token expires, and one that invokes the seat's verb for a named licence and then waits until
-the credentials file carries the new licence's token, answering with the licence's name — **never the
-token, in any answer, log or event**. A skill in the agent's directory wraps the second so a person
-asks in a sentence. Switching remains a reaction, not a declaration (ADR 0024): a person asks for it,
-and nothing in the declaration language grows a conditional.
-
-**Enrolling an account is the mesh's act on the manager node.** A new licence is added by name, its
-grant obtained by a login in a throwaway home on the manager node and adopted sealed to that node's
-key, as the manager module already does. No token is pasted into a prompt, printed, or passed as an
-argument (to-be 14's rule for keys).
-
-**The shell helper that read tokens from a file is retired, not replaced.** A second concurrent
-session on the same machine under a different licence would need a second consumer identity — the
-unbuilt half of to-be 14's gap — and is not provided here. Stated so it is not rediscovered as a bug.
-
-**A licence the mesh no longer grants is withdrawn** at the binding (ADR 0024). The credentials file
-the module wrote is the module's own output: unassigning the module leaves it, like the agent's other
-files, and the access token in it expires within hours. Releasing the consumer from the licence is the
-act that ends its access.
-
-## Consequences
-
- The agent on a workstation authenticates with a token the mesh delivered and refreshes centrally,
-  and no workstation holds a refresh token or any other account's token.
- **The manager must run.** The refresh path exists in the catalogue and is assigned to nothing; it is
-  a prerequisite of this record, on the control node, and the first thing the build proves.
- **The controller gains a verb, not knowledge.** The licence commands become seat verbs, each
-  running the command it names, as ADR 0154 did for the others; nothing in them is about the agent.
- A switch is a round trip — binding, composition, push, apply — rather than the predecessor's direct
-  write: seconds to a minute, and reported when done rather than assumed.
- **What got harder:** running two sessions on one machine under two accounts at once, which the
-  retired helper allowed by keeping tokens readable. The price of not keeping them so.
-
-## How it is checked
-
-| Rule | Checked by |
-|---|---|
-| The module's definition declares no secret in a file's content, and requires `model-access` | a catalogue test on the module's definition |
-| The credentials file is access-token-only, owned by the account, atomic | the consumer module's existing unit tests on the strip and the write, carried into this module; a live check that the file names no refresh token |
-| A switch through the console changes the licence and the token, and no answer carries a token | a live check: the bound facts name the new licence, the file's fingerprint changes, the tool's answer and the module's log contain neither token |
-| The controller's licence verbs run the commands they name and carry no agent vocabulary | the seat verb's test, as for the eighteen before it |
-| The refresh path is live before the module is | the manager assigned on the control node and a refresh observed in the licence's record, before the module's first assignment |
-| No workstation holds a refresh token | the live check above, on every machine the module is assigned to |
-
-## References
-
- [ADR 0024](0024-model-access-is-a-provision.md), [ADR 0050](0050-model-access-is-vendor-agnostic.md),
-  [ADR 0055](0055-model-access-is-answered-by-a-licence-or-a-node.md) — what a licence is, who refreshes, what answers
- [to-be 14](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/14-model-access.md), [to-be 15](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/15-the-agent-session.md) — the consumer identity and the gap this leaves where it is
- [ADR 0154](0154-the-meshs-own-verbs-are-the-controller-seats-tools.md), [ADR 0152](0152-the-operators-surface-is-a-module-the-console.md) — how a verb reaches a person
- [ADR 0113](0113-the-vault-makes-every-secret.md) — why there is no second registry
- [ADR 0177](0177-inside-a-home-the-mesh-owns-what-it-places-and-holds-the-rest-as-found.md) — the class the credentials file is in
- the predecessor's `claude-code` module: its switch tool, its shell helpers and the rules of its skill
- mesh-catalog `modules/anthropic-manager`, `modules/anthropic-consumer` — the refresh and the write, as built
@@ -7,7 +7,9 @@ reconstructed: false
 extends: 02-DECISIONS/0168-a-converged-machine-is-filtered-by-the-mesh-alone.md
 ---

-# 175. The found front end is uninstalled once a machine is converged
+# 180. The found front end is uninstalled once a machine is converged
+
+> **Renumbered 2026-10-02.** Written and merged as 0175 while another record already held that number on main (one tool runtime per node, merged minutes earlier); `cycle.py` refused main. The branch that lands last renumbers: 0178 and 0179 are claimed by open changes, so this is 0180. Nothing cited it by number.

 ## Context

@@ -182,7 +182,7 @@ python3 00-META/checks/index.py            fail if stale
 - **0169** — [A machine joins through the tunnel, and the bus is never public](0169-a-machine-joins-through-the-tunnel-and-the-bus-is-never-public.md)
 - **0170** — [The firewall seat serves its verbs, and a foreign rule set is removed through one of them](0170-the-firewall-seat-serves-its-verbs.md)
 - **0172** — [The lab is a module, and runs a bed when the mesh asks](0172-the-lab-is-a-module-and-runs-a-bed-when-the-mesh-asks.md)
- **0175** — [The found front end is uninstalled once a machine is converged](0175-the-found-front-end-is-uninstalled-once-a-machine-is-converged.md)
+- **0180** — [The found front end is uninstalled once a machine is converged](0180-the-found-front-end-is-uninstalled-once-a-machine-is-converged.md)

 ### Its tiers, from the bottom up

@@ -273,9 +273,10 @@ python3 00-META/checks/index.py            fail if stale
 - **0150** — [A module's own code runs as supervised processes under the module's one account](0150-a-modules-own-code-runs-as-supervised-processes-under-one-account.md)
 - **0152** — [The operator's surface is a module the mesh assigns: the console](0152-the-operators-surface-is-a-module-the-console.md)
 - **0155** — [A definition names no installation: how that is checked, and the three ways a value that did gets out](0155-a-definition-names-no-installation-and-how-that-is-checked.md)
- **0176** — [The operator account is a node fact, and a home is a placement root](0176-the-operator-account-is-a-node-fact-and-a-home-is-a-placement-root.md)
- **0177** — [Inside a home, the mesh owns the directory and the files it places, writes into the tool's own files, and holds everything else as found](0177-inside-a-home-the-mesh-owns-what-it-places-and-holds-the-rest-as-found.md)
- **0178** — [The mesh binds and delivers a licence; the module alone writes the tool's credential; a switch is the binding changed, asked for through the console](0178-the-mesh-binds-and-delivers-a-licence-and-the-module-writes-the-tools-credential.md)
+- **0173** — [The operator's machine is the mesh's, and a module is whatever it declares](0173-the-operators-machine-is-the-meshs-and-a-module-is-what-it-declares.md)
+- **0175** — [One tool runtime per node serves every module's tools, on the host side](0175-one-tool-runtime-per-node-serves-every-modules-tools-on-the-host-side.md)
+- **0176** — [The login shell is a node seat held by one shell module, and `execute` is its contract](0176-the-login-shell-is-a-node-seat-and-execute-is-its-contract.md)
+- **0177** — [A unit may be user-scoped, and the service manager is a node seat whose holder answers for the units](0177-a-unit-may-be-user-scoped-and-the-service-manager-is-a-node-seat.md)

 ### How it is built

@@ -297,6 +298,7 @@ python3 00-META/checks/index.py            fail if stale
 - **0107** — [Persistent data is a directory bind, never a named volume](0107-persistent-data-is-a-directory-bind-never-a-named-volume.md)
 - **0111** — [A build source is on the mesh's git seat, or it is an external repository](0111-a-build-source-is-on-the-git-seat-or-external.md)
 - **0149** — [The live mesh is the test bed](0149-the-live-mesh-is-the-test-bed.md)
+- **0174** — [A node varies a module through settings and kept regions, never through an edit](0174-a-node-varies-a-module-through-settings-and-kept-regions-never-an-edit.md)

 ### How it is checked

@@ -9,7 +9,7 @@ code:
  - mesh-host internal/apply (the service that reflects a rule set)
 updated: 2026-10-02
 decisions:
-  - 02-DECISIONS/0175-the-found-front-end-is-uninstalled-once-a-machine-is-converged.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0180-the-found-front-end-is-uninstalled-once-a-machine-is-converged.md
  - 02-DECISIONS/0170-the-firewall-seat-serves-its-verbs.md
  - 02-DECISIONS/0169-a-machine-joins-through-the-tunnel-and-the-bus-is-never-public.md
  - 02-DECISIONS/0168-a-converged-machine-is-filtered-by-the-mesh-alone.md
@@ -773,7 +773,7 @@ the host reports as *other* is reached through the packet filter seat's `remove`
 by name on the bus; the seat also serves `rules` and `reload`, and its holder's runtime declares the
 `NET_ADMIN` capability on the machine's network. See design 33.

-*2026-10-02, [ADR 0175](../../02-DECISIONS/0175-the-found-front-end-is-uninstalled-once-a-machine-is-converged.md):*
+*2026-10-02, [ADR 0180](../../02-DECISIONS/0180-the-found-front-end-is-uninstalled-once-a-machine-is-converged.md):*
 once a machine is converged, the front end it was found with is uninstalled, not merely disabled — the
 packet filter's holder declares its package absent after the mesh's filter is loaded, and a return to
 adopted then enables nothing. The rollback path ADR 0100 kept on disk is given up on purpose.
@@ -4,10 +4,9 @@ status: in-progress
 code:
  - mesh-controller internal/licences
  - mesh-controller cmd/mesh-controller/licence.go
-updated: 2026-10-02
+updated: 2026-09-05
 decisions:
  - 02-DECISIONS/0024-model-access-is-a-provision.md
-  - 02-DECISIONS/0178-the-mesh-binds-and-delivers-a-licence-and-the-module-writes-the-tools-credential.md
  - 02-DECISIONS/0009-modules-and-the-graph.md
  - 02-DECISIONS/0054-model-usage-is-recorded-at-two-grains.md
  - 02-DECISIONS/0055-model-access-is-answered-by-a-licence-or-a-node.md
@@ -97,13 +96,6 @@ So `(node, module)` tells them apart, and asking for a licence per session neede
 identity. Checked rather than argued: two sessions on one machine hold different licences, each is
 given its own key, and releasing one leaves the other.

-*2026-10-02:* the operator's own interactive agent on a workstation is a consumer the same way —
-`(node, claude-code)`, one licence at a time per machine, delivered by the mesh and written by the
-module, switched through the console
-([ADR 0178](../../02-DECISIONS/0178-the-mesh-binds-and-delivers-a-licence-and-the-module-writes-the-tools-credential.md),
-[36 — The operator's agent on a machine](36-the-operators-agent-on-a-machine.md)). The licence commands
-become verbs on the controller's seat for it; none was one before.
-
 **What is still open is the rest of the gap, and it is the harder half.** A *worker* is not one
 per machine — many can run on one, from one module — so `(node, module)` cannot name them apart
 and this reasoning does not extend to them. That belongs with
@@ -7,8 +7,6 @@ code:
  - mesh-controller cmd/mesh-controller
 updated: 2026-10-02
 decisions:
-  - 02-DECISIONS/0176-the-operator-account-is-a-node-fact-and-a-home-is-a-placement-root.md
-  - 02-DECISIONS/0177-inside-a-home-the-mesh-owns-what-it-places-and-holds-the-rest-as-found.md
  - 02-DECISIONS/0112-a-module-definition-names-no-node-mesh-or-path.md
  - 02-DECISIONS/0120-a-roster-fact-carries-its-format-as-a-template.md
  - 02-DECISIONS/0051-shared-data-is-the-operators.md
@@ -173,14 +171,6 @@ fact, the home as a placement root, and what the mesh may and may not do under a
 decision this document names but no record states. They are the next records to write, before the
 family of §2 modules is built.

-*2026-10-02:* two of them are written. [ADR 0176](../../02-DECISIONS/0176-the-operator-account-is-a-node-fact-and-a-home-is-a-placement-root.md)
-records the account as a node fact and the home as a placement root, reconstructed from what shipped;
-[ADR 0177](../../02-DECISIONS/0177-inside-a-home-the-mesh-owns-what-it-places-and-holds-the-rest-as-found.md)
-generalises §3's boundary to every directory under a home. The first member of the §2 family is
-designed in [36 — The operator's agent on a machine](36-the-operators-agent-on-a-machine.md). Still
-unwritten: user-scope units, several accounts per node, and the CA. On the same day every node of the
-live mesh still carried an empty account.
-
 ## Why now, and why not yet

 **Why it matters:** when HAL retires, the generators that keep `~/.ssh`, shell config and the
@@ -215,6 +205,10 @@ keeping the predecessor running, so the model questions above are no longer defe
 record, the home as a placement root, user-scoped services and the one-off steps a hook used to run
 each need a decision before the modules that replace the generators can be written.

+## The family beyond `~/.ssh` — 2026-10-02
+
+The modules §2 calls *a family* — the shell, the terminal, the desktop, everything under a home that is not `~/.ssh` — are designed in [37 — The operator's machine](37-the-operators-machine.md), under [ADR 0173](../../02-DECISIONS/0173-the-operators-machine-is-the-meshs-and-a-module-is-what-it-declares.md) to [0177](../../02-DECISIONS/0177-a-unit-may-be-user-scoped-and-the-service-manager-is-a-node-seat.md). This document keeps `~/.ssh`, the CA and the roster files. Two things it listed as not built are decided there: user-scoped services (ADR 0177) and the one-off steps a hook used to run (declared state, or a seat's verb).
+
 ## References

 - The gap was found generating `~/.ssh/config` from the *HAL* registry (`hal/terminal`'s
@@ -122,6 +122,8 @@ module-specific names that changes the day the forge is replaced.
 asked of the module, through a `tools` verb every runtime answers) and lists a role's tools when the
 records carry them.

+*Amended 2026-10-02 by [ADR 0175](../../02-DECISIONS/0175-one-tool-runtime-per-node-serves-every-modules-tools-on-the-host-side.md):* the module that serves this to an agent is the node tools runtime — one per node, host-side, serving every assigned module's tools as well as answering the person on loopback. The console is its serving mode, renamed. See [37 — The operator's machine](37-the-operators-machine.md) §3.
+
 ## 7. Versioning

 A seat's tools are an interface and change like one. Additive within a version. A change that would
@@ -2,7 +2,7 @@
 layer: to-be
 status: implemented
 code: [mesh-catalog, mesh-tools, mesh-controller]
-updated: 2026-10-01
+updated: 2026-10-02
 decisions:
  - 02-DECISIONS/0160-the-mesh-issues-an-assignments-subjects-and-a-runtime-serves-what-it-is-issued.md
  - 02-DECISIONS/0159-a-tool-call-names-the-machine-and-a-holder-serves-its-seats-verbs.md
@@ -20,6 +20,8 @@ An agent reaches them over MCP on the machine's loopback; a person reaches the s
 installed by hand, nothing is configured with an address, and the mesh knows the surface exists because
 it put it there ([ADR 0152](../../02-DECISIONS/0152-the-operators-surface-is-a-module-the-console.md)).

+> **Amended 2026-10-02 by [ADR 0175](../../02-DECISIONS/0175-one-tool-runtime-per-node-serves-every-modules-tools-on-the-host-side.md).** What this document describes stays true in substance and changes in form: the console becomes the serving mode of the node tools runtime, a host-side process the host supervises rather than a container, which also serves every assigned module's tools from their bundles. The module is renamed `node-tools`. [37 — The operator's machine](37-the-operators-machine.md) §3 is where it now lives.
+
 ## 1. What it is

 A module, `mesh-console`, in the catalogue. Its image is the tool runtime's own — the client that
@@ -28,14 +30,6 @@ module's credential and listens on loopback. It has no state, no provision, no s
 the bus, which it gets the way every module does: a credential the mesh minted for `<node>.mesh-console`,
 sealed to the machine, delivered as the module's own secret.

-*2026-10-02:* it gains one provision, at node scope — the MCP endpoint on loopback, serving the port
-the machine gave it — so that a module whose software must be told where the console is requires that
-and is coupled to an endpoint rather than to a module's name
-([ADR 0027](../../02-DECISIONS/0027-a-provision-names-what-the-consumer-is-coupled-to.md)). The first
-consumer is the operator's agent, [36 — The operator's agent on a machine](36-the-operators-agent-on-a-machine.md) §6;
-a machine without the console refuses such a module by name. Nothing else above changes: no seat, no
-state, no tools of its own.
-
 Its manifest says three things nothing else in the catalogue says together:

 - `invokes: ["*"]` — it calls every tool on the mesh, and the bus grants exactly that publish side;
@@ -1,257 +0,0 @@
---
-layer: to-be
-status: designed
-code: []
-updated: 2026-10-02
-decisions:
-  - 02-DECISIONS/0176-the-operator-account-is-a-node-fact-and-a-home-is-a-placement-root.md
-  - 02-DECISIONS/0177-inside-a-home-the-mesh-owns-what-it-places-and-holds-the-rest-as-found.md
-  - 02-DECISIONS/0178-the-mesh-binds-and-delivers-a-licence-and-the-module-writes-the-tools-credential.md
-  - 02-DECISIONS/0102-the-mesh-writes-into-a-shared-file-never-over-it.md
-  - 02-DECISIONS/0118-undeclaring-gives-a-unit-back-the-state-it-was-found-in.md
-  - 02-DECISIONS/0112-a-module-definition-names-no-node-mesh-or-path.md
-  - 02-DECISIONS/0155-a-definition-names-no-installation-and-how-that-is-checked.md
-  - 02-DECISIONS/0152-the-operators-surface-is-a-module-the-console.md
-  - 02-DECISIONS/0050-model-access-is-vendor-agnostic.md
-  - 02-DECISIONS/0109-a-package-registry-seat-is-one-per-ecosystem.md
---
-
-# 36 — The operator's agent on a machine: the `claude-code` module
-
-**The agent a person runs at a terminal, put on the machine by the mesh, instructed by the mesh,
-pointed at the console, and authenticated with a licence the mesh delivers.** It is the first member of
-the family [to-be 29 §2](29-a-node-has-operator-accounts.md) names — the modules that place files under
-an operator's home — and the smallest, so it is where the pattern is proven before the shell, the
-terminal and the desktop follow.
-
-What it replaces: the predecessor's module of the same name, which installed the agent's package and
-placed five files under the operator's home, and a sibling that placed a sixth. The predecessor is
-retired; those six files are still on both workstations telling every session to use tools that no
-longer exist. That is the symptom this design answers, and it answers it by making the files a module's
-again rather than by editing them.
-
-## 1. What it is
-
-A module, `claude-code`, universal tier: assigned to every node a person logs into, which is every node
-with an operator account ([ADR 0176](../../02-DECISIONS/0176-the-operator-account-is-a-node-fact-and-a-home-is-a-placement-root.md)).
-It declares the agent's package, owns the agent's configuration directory under the account's home, and
-requires two things: `model-access`, for the licence
-([ADR 0178](../../02-DECISIONS/0178-the-mesh-binds-and-delivers-a-licence-and-the-module-writes-the-tools-credential.md)),
-and the console on the same machine, for the tools
-([ADR 0152](../../02-DECISIONS/0152-the-operators-surface-is-a-module-the-console.md)). It names no
-node, no path and no login: the account and its home are machine facts, the node's name is a machine
-fact, the node's role is a setting on the assignment, and the console's address is what the console
-serves.
-
-**The controller has no part in it beyond what it has in every module.** It resolves the account, the
-home, the licence and the console's port, and delivers them. It holds nothing about the agent: no file
-shape, no key name, no path. The one controller change this design asks for is not about the agent at
-all — the licence commands become verbs on the controller's seat, as the other commands did
-([ADR 0154](../../02-DECISIONS/0154-the-meshs-own-verbs-are-the-controller-seats-tools.md)).
-
-## 2. What it owns under the home, and what it leaves alone
-
-Every path the module touches is in one of the four classes
-[ADR 0177](../../02-DECISIONS/0177-inside-a-home-the-mesh-owns-what-it-places-and-holds-the-rest-as-found.md)
-draws, and the class is visible from the shape the definition declares. The agent's directory is
-`~/.claude`; its own state file is `~/.claude.json` beside it.
-
-| path | class | declared as |
-|---|---|---|
-| `~/.claude/` | owned directory | a directory, owner the account, readable by the account alone |
-| `~/.claude/CLAUDE.md` | owned | a file: how a session on this mesh works (§4) |
-| `~/.claude/rules/00-mesh.md` | owned | a file: this node's identity (§4) |
-| `~/.claude/rules/conventions.md` | owned | a file: the rules of the repositories (§4) |
-| `~/.claude/skills/mesh-licence/SKILL.md` | owned | a file: the licence skill (§5) |
-| `~/.claude/settings.json` | written into | the agent's settings; the mesh's key is `attribution`, and only that (below) |
-| `~/.claude.json` | written into | the agent's own state; the mesh's key is the console's entry under the servers the agent speaks to (§3) |
-| `~/.claude/.credentials.json` | written by the module's process | a delivered secret and a step (§5) |
-| everything else | found | nothing — the person's memory, history, projects, local settings, plugins, their own rules and skills |
-
-**Which keys of the settings file are the mesh's.** A key is the mesh's when it encodes a rule of the
-mesh, and the person's when it is a preference. `attribution` — the trailers the agent adds to commits
-and pull requests — encodes the repositories' convention and is the mesh's. The model, the spinner, the
-drafts, the automation mode and everything else are the person's, and the predecessor's experience with
-the model key is the evidence: a mesh that sets a preference reverts a person's choice on every push. A
-preference the operator wants on every machine belongs to the family's dotfiles module, not here.
-
-**The agent's own state file is written into for one key.** The agent is told about the console as one
-entry among the servers it speaks to, in the file where it keeps that list. Everything else in that
-file — the account it is logged in as, its caches, its history of projects — is the agent's, and
-ADR 0102's rule is exactly what keeps it: the mesh sets one key and gives it back on undeclare.
-
-## 3. The predecessor's six files
-
-They were placed by a generator that no longer exists; to the mesh they are found. ADR 0177 says what
-happens to each kind, and this is the list:
-
-| file | fate |
-|---|---|
-| `CLAUDE.md`, `rules/conventions.md` | **adopted.** The module declares the same paths; the host keeps the found original once and writes the mesh's content ([ADR 0102](../../02-DECISIONS/0102-the-mesh-writes-into-a-shared-file-never-over-it.md)) |
-| `settings.json` | **written into.** The values the predecessor merged and the person changed since — the model among them — stay; the mesh sets its one key |
-| `rules/00-hal-mesh.md` | **removed by the operator, once.** Its successor is `rules/00-mesh.md`; the old name carries the predecessor's and stays otherwise |
-| `skills/hal-switch-license/SKILL.md` | **removed by the operator, once.** Its successor is `skills/mesh-licence/SKILL.md` |
-| `skills/cleanup/SKILL.md` | **removed by the operator, once.** A repository hygiene skill naming the predecessor's forge and repository; not the mesh's |
-
-The module's documentation names the three removals, so a person assigning it on a workstation that
-carried the predecessor knows the step. On a fresh machine there is nothing to remove.
-
-**The console's entry changes name.** The agent on both workstations today reaches the console under
-an entry named after this installation. A definition names no installation
-([ADR 0155](../../02-DECISIONS/0155-a-definition-names-no-installation-and-how-that-is-checked.md)), so
-the module writes the entry as `mesh`, and every tool an agent sees is prefixed accordingly. The
-hand-made entry is the person's to remove; until they do, the agent sees the mesh's tools twice.
-
-## 4. What the three documents say
-
-**Prose, not a paste** — the files are the module's; this is what they are for.
-
-**`CLAUDE.md` — how a session on this mesh works.** The console is the only path to the mesh, and its
-tools are the vocabulary: the record is asked through the records module's tools, symptom first — the
-literal error text before a hypothesis — and that is the *search before you dig* rule rewritten for a
-knowledge base that is now the record itself ([ADR 0153](../../02-DECISIONS/0153-the-record-is-read-by-a-module-and-the-console-lists-it.md));
-the mesh is asked and changed through the controller seat's verbs — status, plan, assign, push,
-settings, and licence once it exists; the forge through the forge module's tools. The hard rules are the
-same rules in new words: a file the mesh manages is changed through the verb that owns it or through
-the catalogue, never on disk, and `plan` says what the mesh would write; a store's database is never
-written by hand; main is never pushed; the mesh creates no symlinks and nobody else does either; a
-package is declared, not installed by hand. It uses the glossary's words — controller, foundation,
-node, seat, console — and none of the predecessor's.
-
-**`rules/00-mesh.md` — who this node is.** Two facts and one pointer: the node's name, from the
-machine; the node's role, from the assignment's settings on this node; and that the other nodes are
-asked of the controller's `nodes` verb rather than listed here. The predecessor's rule carried a table
-of every node with its public domain and role; a table is a copy that drifts, and the live answer is
-one tool call away. No address, no public domain.
-
-**`rules/conventions.md` — the rules of the repositories.** Concise commit messages in the imperative,
-focused on why; a branch, a pull request and a human approval for every merge; test before pushing,
-because nodes update unattended; follow the playbooks in the record; shared logic in the SDK; the
-module repository's rules on manifests. Nothing that names a tool of the predecessor's.
-
-**Where the module gets the name and the role.** The name is a machine fact the controller already
-offers a definition. The role is a value a person chooses per node — *the laptop*, *the home-server* —
-and is an operator value on the assignment's node layer, refused by name when unset
-([ADR 0155](../../02-DECISIONS/0155-a-definition-names-no-installation-and-how-that-is-checked.md)).
-So assigning the module to a node is two acts: the assignment, and the node's role in its settings.
-
-## 5. The licence
-
-[ADR 0178](../../02-DECISIONS/0178-the-mesh-binds-and-delivers-a-licence-and-the-module-writes-the-tools-credential.md)
-decides it; this is the shape.
-
-**The consumer** is `(node, claude-code)`: the operator's interactive sessions on that machine, under
-that account, on one licence at a time. The module requires `model-access` and is put on a licence like
-the consumer module already in the catalogue.
-
-**Delivery and the write.** The mesh delivers the access token sealed to the machine, as a secret in
-the module's own state directory, and the bound facts beside it. A step in the module's own process —
-the consumer module's existing write, carried over — reads the secret and writes
-`~/.claude/.credentials.json`: owned by the account, readable by the account alone, atomically,
-access-token-only. The step names the secret file as what it reads and runs again when it changes
-([ADR 0099](../../02-DECISIONS/0099-a-step-that-runs-once-names-what-it-reads.md)), and on a schedule as
-a backstop, so a refreshed token reaches the file unasked. It runs in the module's own context and
-never as the person.
-
-**Refresh** is the manager module's on the control node, as [ADR 0050](../../02-DECISIONS/0050-model-access-is-vendor-agnostic.md)
-built it. It is assigned to nothing today and is the first prerequisite of the build.
-
-**The two tools** the module serves, listed by the console under the module's name:
-
-| tool | answers |
-|---|---|
-| `licence_status` | which licence this machine's agent holds, from the bound facts; when its access token expires; whether the file on disk matches what was delivered — by fingerprint, never by value |
-| `licence_switch` | asks the controller seat's `licence` verb to put this consumer on the named licence, waits until the credentials file carries the new licence's token, and answers with the licence's name and expiry. Refuses with the mesh's own words when the licence does not exist or the consumer cannot be put on it |
-
-Neither tool, nor the module's log, nor any event it emits, ever carries a token. The module declares
-that it invokes the controller seat's `licence` verb, and nothing else.
-
-**The skill** — `skills/mesh-licence/SKILL.md` — wraps `licence_switch` so a person asks in a sentence,
-and carries the predecessor's rules unchanged in substance: never ask for or print a token; never edit
-the credentials file by hand; the tool writes the file and the record together; with no licence named,
-ask rather than guess.
-
-**Enrolling an account** happens on the manager node: a licence added by name, its grant obtained by a
-login in a throwaway home and adopted sealed to that node's key, as the manager module does. **The
-shell helper** that ran the agent with a token from a plaintext file is retired and not replaced
-([ADR 0178](../../02-DECISIONS/0178-the-mesh-binds-and-delivers-a-licence-and-the-module-writes-the-tools-credential.md)
-says why).
-
-## 6. The console
-
-The agent reaches the mesh through the console on the machine's loopback
-([to-be 34](34-the-console.md)). The module must tell the agent the console's address, and the port is
-the console's to say: today the console's manifest declares it and the host assigns it, and nothing but
-the console knows what was assigned. So **the console provides a node-scoped provision** — the MCP
-endpoint on loopback — serving its port, and the module requires it. A requirement names what the
-consumer is coupled to ([ADR 0027](../../02-DECISIONS/0027-a-provision-names-what-the-consumer-is-coupled-to.md)):
-the agent is coupled to an MCP endpoint on its own machine, not to a module name. Co-location resolves
-it, and a machine without the console refuses the agent module by name — which is right, because an
-agent without the console is the predecessor's situation again.
-
-This is a change to the console's definition, not to the controller. [To-be 34 §1](34-the-console.md)
-says the console has *no provision*; this is the one it gains, at node scope, and the design is amended
-in the same change.
-
-## 7. Scope, settings and the order of assignment
-
-**Every node with an operator account.** None has one today; the operator states them first. A node
-with no account refuses the module, naming the fact.
-
-**Per node:** the role, in the module's settings on the node layer. **Per mesh:** nothing.
-
-**Order:** the manager on the control node and a refresh observed; the licences the operator uses,
-enrolled; the console's provision and the module in the catalogue; one workstation assigned, the three
-predecessor files removed there, and a new session read to confirm it sees the mesh's instructions and
-the console's tools; then the rest.
-
-## 8. The package
-
-The module declares the agent's package. The distribution every node of the live mesh runs does not
-carry it in its repositories: the two workstations have it from a build the predecessor's helper made
-from the community repository, and nothing updates it since the predecessor retired. On those two the
-declaration is satisfied — the package is present. **On a fresh machine the host's package manager
-refuses it, in its own words, and the module is not applied there.** That is correct and is a gap.
-
-The answer the mesh already has a shape for is a package repository for this ecosystem as a seat
-([ADR 0109](../../02-DECISIONS/0109-a-package-registry-seat-is-one-per-ecosystem.md)), fed by the
-builder with a package it builds from the vendor's release, and trusted by every node's package manager.
-Then `package: claude-code` is answered the way every package is, and updates arrive the way every
-update does. It is not built, and it is not this module's to build: it is a seat and a provider module
-of its own, needed by every package the distribution does not carry.
-
-Rejected as the answer: the vendor's own installer, which puts a self-updating binary under the
-person's home. It is a hand-installed package the mesh cannot see, reproduce or roll back, and it
-updates itself outside the mesh — the arrangement the manifest rule *never install a package by hand*
-exists to end.
-
-## How it is checked
-
-| Check | Defends |
-|---|---|
-| the module's definition names no node, path or login, and declares no secret in a file's content | ADR 0112, ADR 0155, ADR 0178 |
-| on a lab machine with an account, a seeded home holding a person's rule file, the predecessor's three leftovers and a settings file with the person's model: after assign, the mesh's files are present and owned by the account, the person's file and model are byte-identical, the leftovers are untouched, the console's entry is set; after unassign, the mesh's files are gone, the two keys are given back, the directory and everything else stand | ADR 0177 |
-| on a lab machine with no account, the assignment is refused naming the fact | ADR 0176 |
-| the credentials file is owned by the account, readable by it alone, and names no refresh token; a switch through the console changes the licence named in the bound facts and the file's fingerprint; neither the tool's answer nor the module's log holds a token | ADR 0178, ADR 0050 |
-| the console's provision resolves by co-location and a machine without the console refuses the module by name | ADR 0027, ADR 0152 |
-| a new session on the assigned workstation lists the console's tools under the `mesh` prefix and answers "which node am I" from the identity rule | the exit of the build |
-| the package is reported present on the workstations and refused in the package manager's words on a machine without it | §8, honestly |
-
-## What this does not settle
-
- **Several operator accounts on one node.** ADR 0176 decides one; the module follows.
- **A parallel session under another licence on the same machine.** The retired helper allowed it by
-  keeping tokens readable; a clean form needs a second consumer identity (to-be 14's open half).
- **The package repository seat.** §8 names it and leaves it to its own design.
- **The rest of the family** — shell, terminal, desktop, user-scoped services — each a module of the
-  same shape, each proving nothing new about ownership and something new about its own tool.
-
-## References
-
- [ADR 0176](../../02-DECISIONS/0176-the-operator-account-is-a-node-fact-and-a-home-is-a-placement-root.md),
-  [ADR 0177](../../02-DECISIONS/0177-inside-a-home-the-mesh-owns-what-it-places-and-holds-the-rest-as-found.md),
-  [ADR 0178](../../02-DECISIONS/0178-the-mesh-binds-and-delivers-a-licence-and-the-module-writes-the-tools-credential.md) — the three decisions this rests on
- [to-be 29](29-a-node-has-operator-accounts.md) — the family; [to-be 14](14-model-access.md),
-  [to-be 15](15-the-agent-session.md) — the licence and the consumer; [to-be 34](34-the-console.md) — the console
- the predecessor's `claude-code` module and its sibling's identity rule — what is replaced, read from the workstations on 2026-10-02
- mesh-catalog `modules/anthropic-consumer` — the write this module carries over; `modules/anthropic-manager` — the refresh it depends on
@@ -0,0 +1,142 @@
+---
+layer: to-be
+status: in-progress
+code: [mesh-host, mesh-controller, mesh-tools, mesh-catalog]
+updated: 2026-10-02
+decisions:
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0173-the-operators-machine-is-the-meshs-and-a-module-is-what-it-declares.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0174-a-node-varies-a-module-through-settings-and-kept-regions-never-an-edit.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0175-one-tool-runtime-per-node-serves-every-modules-tools-on-the-host-side.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0176-the-login-shell-is-a-node-seat-and-execute-is-its-contract.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0177-a-unit-may-be-user-scoped-and-the-service-manager-is-a-node-seat.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0040-what-a-module-is.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0112-a-module-definition-names-no-node-mesh-or-path.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0126-a-module-declares-its-own-seats.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0132-a-seat-carries-the-tools-its-holder-must-serve.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0161-what-deserves-a-seat.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0102-the-mesh-writes-into-a-shared-file-never-over-it.md
+---
+
+# 37 — The operator's machine
+
+**Every configurable thing on a node is a module, the home included, and the same catalogue serves
+a server and a laptop.** One default configuration per module, varied per node by a setting or a
+kept region; roles a machine has once as node-scoped seats with tool contracts; one tool runtime
+per node serving every module's tools on the host side
+([ADR 0173](../../02-DECISIONS/0173-the-operators-machine-is-the-meshs-and-a-module-is-what-it-declares.md)
+to [0177](../../02-DECISIONS/0177-a-unit-may-be-user-scoped-and-the-service-manager-is-a-node-seat.md)).
+This is the design [to-be 29](29-a-node-has-operator-accounts.md) §2 called *a family* and
+[research 018](../../01-RESEARCH/018-the-operators-machine-as-modules/00-overview.md) measured.
+
+## 1. What a module of the environment looks like
+
+Worked on the first one, a shell. The `zsh` module declares:
+
+- a **package**, `zsh`;
+- **files under the home**, owned by the account: the shell's rc file with the module's default
+  configuration, carrying a kept region for the operator's own lines, and `${setting:…}`
+  placeholders for the few values a node varies; the account and its home are machine facts the
+  controller resolves ([ADR 0112](../../02-DECISIONS/0112-a-module-definition-names-no-node-mesh-or-path.md),
+  to-be 29 §2);
+- a **seat declaration**, `login-shell`, node-scoped, with its one verb; and a **claim** on it;
+- a **`user` shape** naming the shell, applied only where the module holds the seat;
+- a **tools bundle**, the artifact kind for interpreted code, with `execute` and the module's own
+  `show-config`.
+
+No container, no unit, no service. It is assigned to every node with an operator account. The
+`fish` and `bash` modules are the same with another package and other files; one of the three
+holds the seat on each node.
+
+The second shape is **system scope**: the login manager declares a package, two files under
+`/etc`, and a service, which is exactly what the ssh daemon module declares today. The third
+shape is **graphical**: the window manager declares a package, files under the home, a
+user-scoped unit or two, a claim on the display-session seat, a dependency on the display server
+being held, and a bundle with its tools. Nothing in any of them says which machine it is for.
+
+## 2. Variation
+
+A node differs from the default in two ways and no other
+([ADR 0174](../../02-DECISIONS/0174-a-node-varies-a-module-through-settings-and-kept-regions-never-an-edit.md)):
+a **setting** the module declared, set in the node's layer and rendered into the file; or lines in
+a **kept region** the file marks. The predecessor's ninety theme variables become the settings of
+the modules whose files read them. Until the settings record proposed alongside the
+container-runtime records ships — a setting names the file it lands in — environment modules carry
+defaults in their files and declare no setting; that is the order, not a preference.
+
+## 3. The node tools runtime
+
+One per node, started and restarted by the host as a sibling process, never a container
+([ADR 0175](../../02-DECISIONS/0175-one-tool-runtime-per-node-serves-every-modules-tools-on-the-host-side.md)).
+It is the tool runtime that exists, in the role it was written for: it reads the memberships of
+every module assigned to the node, loads each module's tools bundle, and serves every tool and
+every held seat's verb on the subjects issued. It holds the node's one bus credential and may call
+every tool on the mesh. Its serving mode on the machine's loopback is what the console was
+([to-be 34](34-the-console.md)); the module is renamed **node-tools** and declares the interpreter
+it needs as a package.
+
+A bundle reaches the node as any artifact does. A push that adds or replaces one is a reload. A
+bundle that fails to load is named in the node's report and the others serve. A tool that needs
+root escalates itself.
+
+## 4. The seats of the environment
+
+Decided now: **`login-shell`** (module-declared; zsh, fish, bash; verb `execute`) and
+**`node-service-manager`** (the mesh's own; systemd; verbs over units in both scopes). The rest
+are candidates from [research 018](../../01-RESEARCH/018-the-operators-machine-as-modules/04-the-seats-of-the-environment.md),
+one record each when its first holder is written: display server, display session, terminal
+emulator, launcher, notifier, compositor, lock screen, bar, login manager, audio, clipboard, boot.
+Editors, browsers, media players, the agent, the downloads and scripts folders are modules with
+tools and no seat.
+
+A module that needs a role filled depends on **the seat being held** on the node, not on a
+capability: the window manager needs the display server seat held, by xorg or by a compositor
+that is its own server. Whether a held seat can gate an assignment is the first question the
+resolver is asked by the second graphical module; the display server itself is gated by the
+`graphical-session` capability the profile already reports.
+
+## 5. What the host gains, and what it does not
+
+- `service` gains `scope: user`, applied as the account
+  ([ADR 0177](../../02-DECISIONS/0177-a-unit-may-be-user-scoped-and-the-service-manager-is-a-node-seat.md)).
+- The host starts and supervises the node tools runtime as it would any host-side process, and
+  delivers bundles as artifacts.
+- Nothing else. No hooks, no actions: `chsh` is the `user` shape, enabling a unit is the `service`
+  shape, rebuilding boot images is a verb of the boot seat when that seat is written.
+- A gap, recorded: the `package` shape drives the distribution's package manager and nothing
+  outside its repositories. The login manager in use is such a package; it waits on an official
+  package or a decision the host does not yet have.
+
+## 6. The order of the build
+
+1. **The operator account on every node** — `mesh-controller node` with the login name; empty on
+   all four today. Nothing home-scoped composes before it.
+2. **The node tools runtime** — mesh-host supervises it; mesh-tools serves bundles from memberships
+   and reloads; mesh-controller composes the bundle into the declaration and the memberships to one
+   runtime per node; the catalogue renames the console. Proven when the packet-filter verbs answer
+   from it and its container is gone.
+3. **`zsh`**, the first environment module: seat, `user` shape, home files, `execute`. Proven on a
+   server first, then every node.
+4. **`systemd`** and user scope: the host's field, the seat seeded, the module. Proven by the
+   desktop's reload watcher declared `scope: user` on a workstation.
+5. **The login manager**, system scope, once its package is installable; then the display server,
+   the window manager, and the rest of the graphical stack, each seat its own record.
+6. **Settings** for the theme knobs, after the settings record ships and issue 168 closes.
+
+## How it is checked
+
+| Claim | Checked by |
+|---|---|
+| A module with a package, home files, a seat and a bundle resolves and composes on a node with an account, and is refused on one without | the controller's composition tests |
+| One runtime per node serves every assigned module's tools; a per-module tool container no longer exists | the runtime's tests; `docker ps` on a converged machine |
+| A user-scoped unit is applied as the account | the host's tests |
+| A node's difference from a module's default is visible as a setting with a source or a kept region | `mesh-controller.settings`; the host's write-into tests |
+| The same manifests assign to a server and a workstation; the graphical ones are refused on the server by name | the resolver's tests and the live mesh |
+
+## References
+
+- [Research 018](../../01-RESEARCH/018-the-operators-machine-as-modules/00-overview.md)
+- [To-be 29](29-a-node-has-operator-accounts.md) — the account and the home; this design is the
+  family its §2 names, beyond `~/.ssh`.
+- [To-be 33](33-the-tools-the-mesh-answers.md), [to-be 34](34-the-console.md) — the tools and
+  the console, amended by ADR 0175.
+- [To-be 05](05-the-node-host.md) — the host's vocabulary, widened by ADR 0177.
@@ -0,0 +1,193 @@
+---
+layer: to-be
+status: in-progress
+code: [mesh-tools, mesh-controller, mesh-host, mesh-catalog]
+updated: 2026-10-02
+decisions:
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0175-one-tool-runtime-per-node-serves-every-modules-tools-on-the-host-side.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0173-the-operators-machine-is-the-meshs-and-a-module-is-what-it-declares.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0174-a-node-varies-a-module-through-settings-and-kept-regions-never-an-edit.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0176-the-login-shell-is-a-node-seat-and-execute-is-its-contract.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0177-a-unit-may-be-user-scoped-and-the-service-manager-is-a-node-seat.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0160-the-mesh-issues-an-assignments-subjects-and-a-runtime-serves-what-it-is-issued.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0149-the-live-mesh-is-the-test-bed.md
+---
+
+# 38. Building the operator's machine
+
+**The work of [design 37](37-the-operators-machine.md), broken into packages small enough that each
+ends at something a person can see run, in the order their dependencies allow.** Design 37 is the
+authority on *what* is built; this document holds only the packages, their order, their sizes and
+their proofs, and is wrong the moment it disagrees with 37 rather than the other way round. It is
+the shape [design 28](28-building-the-bus.md) gave the bus work, applied here.
+
+## How this is built, and where it is run
+
+**On the live mesh, by the operator's decision.** Every package is written with unit tests and
+committed on one branch per repository; its proof runs on the four machines, not in the lab.
+[ADR 0149](../../02-DECISIONS/0149-the-live-mesh-is-the-test-bed.md) already says the live mesh is
+the test bed; the operator's words on 2026-10-02 were *skip the lab, it is not too bad if something
+is broken*. The cost accepted: a package that breaks the runtime breaks every tool on a node until
+the next push, and the controller's own verbs stay reachable through the controller seat whatever
+happens to a node's runtime — which is the one thing that must hold, and does by construction
+([ADR 0154](../../02-DECISIONS/0154-the-meshs-own-verbs-are-the-controller-seats-tools.md)).
+
+Each package names what proves it. A package that cannot name its proof is divided until it can.
+
+## What exists already, measured
+
+Counted 2026-10-02 in the four repositories, non-test source. The point of the count is the same
+as design 28's: nothing here is new ground; every package reshapes something standing.
+
+| Piece | Today | Size | Becomes |
+|---|---|---|---|
+| the tool runtime | TypeScript: loads `MESH_TOOL_MODULES`, serves one module's tools and its claimed seats' verbs; `serve` is the console | ~1 700 lines over six files | loads every assigned module's bundle; `serve` is node tools |
+| the host's `process` shape | Go: fetch a bundle by digest, unpack under the mesh's daemons directory, write the unit, run it | 343 lines | **unchanged** — the runtime is one such process |
+| the host's `archive` shape | Go: fetch and unpack an artifact at a path | 185 lines | **unchanged** — a module's tools bundle is one such archive |
+| the controller's bus principals | Go: one principal per module per node, grants from what it declares | 132 lines | gains one principal per node for the runtime |
+| the controller's memberships | Go: one per assignment, the subjects a runtime serves | 143 lines | **unchanged** in shape; the runtime reads several |
+| the controller's declaration composer | Go, one file | 2 053 lines | gains the runtime's process, the bundles' archives, two env words |
+| the catalogue | 35 manifests build a per-module tool container on the runtime's base image | — | none do; the runtime is a module of its own |
+
+**Two measurements decide the shape.** The host needs no change: a `process` and an `archive` are
+what the runtime and a bundle are, and both are applied today. And the runtime already does
+nine-tenths of the job — the loop over entrypoints, the seat verbs, the membership subscription —
+for one module; the work is to let it do the same for a list.
+
+## The order the work allows
+
+```
+WP1  the runtime serves many modules            (mesh-tools)        ──┐
+WP2  the controller composes one runtime a node (mesh-controller)   ──┤ independent, test-proven
+                                                                      │
+WP3  the runtime is a module; the console is its serving mode (mesh-tools, mesh-catalog)
+                                                                      │
+WP4  the first holder moves: the packet filter  (mesh-catalog)      ── the live proof
+                                                                      │
+WP5  the shell, on a server                      (mesh-catalog)      ── the first environment module live
+WP6  the service manager, on a workstation       (mesh-host #72, mesh-catalog)
+                                                                      │
+WP7  the login manager, the display server, the window manager …     ── one record per seat, after this document
+WP8  settings for the theme knobs                                    ── after issue 168 closes
+```
+
+WP1 and WP2 touch different repositories and meet only at the membership's shape, which neither
+changes; they are built in parallel. WP3 needs both. WP4 is the first time anything on a machine
+changes, and it is the proof of the whole. WP5 and WP6 are the first environment modules; the
+packages after them are design 37 §4's candidates and are not broken down here, because each
+begins with a decision record this document cannot anticipate.
+
+## WP1 — The runtime serves many modules
+
+*mesh-tools. About a day.*
+
+**What changes.** `serve` takes a list of modules to serve, each with its entrypoints, rather than
+one module and one credential. The runtime reads one membership per module from the subjects
+[ADR 0160](../../02-DECISIONS/0160-the-mesh-issues-an-assignments-subjects-and-a-runtime-serves-what-it-is-issued.md)
+derives for each, and serves each module's tools on that module's subjects and each held seat's
+verbs on the seat's. The filter that drops a registration under any name but the one module goes;
+what remains is the rule that a registration under a seat's name is served only where some module
+the runtime serves claims that seat. A bundle that throws on import is named in the log and in
+what `tools` answers, and the others serve. The runtime reads `MESH_OPERATOR_ACCOUNT` and
+`MESH_OPERATOR_HOME` and hands them to every tool's environment.
+
+**What does not change.** The SDK. The broker client. The MCP surface. A module's tool code.
+
+**Proof.** The runtime's test against a real bus: three bundles, one of which throws on import;
+five tools and two seat verbs answer on their subjects; `tools` names the failed bundle; a
+membership republished mid-run re-subscribes without a restart.
+
+## WP2 — The controller composes one runtime per node
+
+*mesh-controller. Two to three days; the largest package.*
+
+**What changes**, in four pieces, each its own commit:
+
+1. **A node principal.** Beside one principal per module per node, one per node of kind
+   `node-tools`: its serving grants are the union of every assigned module's tool subjects and every
+   held seat's verbs on that node, its invoking grant is `*`, and it consumes nothing. The
+   per-module memberships are composed as today; nothing else on the bus learns a new shape.
+2. **Bundle delivery.** For every assigned module whose build produced a `bundle`, the node's
+   declaration gains an `archive` placed under a directory the controller derives, so the host
+   fetches and unpacks it as it does any artifact. The bundle's digest is what the build recorded.
+3. **The runtime's process.** One `process` per node running the runtime from its own bundle
+   (WP3), `MESH_TOOL_MODULES` composed from the unpacked entrypoints, `MESH_OPERATOR_ACCOUNT` and
+   `MESH_OPERATOR_HOME` from the account fact, `restart-on` naming every bundle so a push that
+   changes one restarts it. A node with no account composes the runtime without the two words.
+4. **The gate.** A manifest declaring `tools` and a container built on the runtime's base image is
+   refused at registration once the runtime module is registered, naming this record. It is the
+   mechanism that keeps the old pattern from returning by habit.
+
+**Proof.** Composition tests: a node with three assigned modules, one holding a seat, yields one
+process, three archives, one node principal whose grants are the union, and the same three
+memberships as before. The gate's test: the packet-filter manifest as it is today is refused once
+the runtime is registered.
+
+## WP3 — The runtime is a module, and the console is its serving mode
+
+*mesh-tools and mesh-catalog. A day.*
+
+**What changes.** mesh-tools gains a `bundle` artifact of itself beside its images, and its manifest
+becomes the `node-tools` module: a package for the interpreter, the loopback listener the console
+declared, `invokes: *`, and nothing else — the process is the controller's to compose (WP2). In the
+catalogue, `mesh-console` is retired as a module and `node-tools` assigned where it was. The
+runtime's `serve` keeps answering MCP on loopback; the person's end of it keeps the name *console*
+([glossary](../../00-META/glossary.md)).
+
+**Proof.** On every node: the console's container is gone, `node-tools` runs as a unit the host
+wrote, `tools/list` on loopback answers as before, and the controller's verbs answer through it.
+This is the first live step, and it is reversible by re-assigning `mesh-console`.
+
+## WP4 — The first holder moves: the packet filter
+
+*mesh-catalog. Half a day. The live proof of ADR 0175.*
+
+**What changes.** The nftables module drops its container, its `NET_ADMIN` and its runtime
+artifact; its tools bundle stays and its claim stays. Its `remove` and `reload` escalate inside the
+tool where they need root, which they have, since the runtime runs as the node's account.
+
+**Proof.** `node-packet-filter.rules@<node>`, `reload` and `remove` answer from the runtime on all
+four machines; `docker ps` shows no `mesh-nftables`; `status` is well. Then the fail2ban holder
+proposed in an open change follows the same way when it lands.
+
+## WP5 — The shell, on a server first
+
+*mesh-catalog #224, already written. Half a day to assign and prove.*
+
+**Order.** Assign `zsh` to one server; push; `login-shell.execute@<server> command="uptime"`
+answers; the account's login shell reads zsh; its `~/.zshrc` carries the mesh's block with the
+operator's lines around it. Then the other three nodes. The two things the manifest cannot say
+— the `user` shape applying only where the seat is held, and a second shell module installed
+beside the holder — are the first follow-up record after this document.
+
+## WP6 — The service manager, on a workstation
+
+*mesh-host #72 merged first; mesh-catalog #224. Half a day.*
+
+**Order.** Merge the host's user-scope change and let it roll. Assign `systemd` everywhere;
+`node-service-manager.units@<node> scope=user` answers on a workstation. Then the first user-scoped
+unit the mesh sends: the window manager's reload watcher, declared `scope: user` by the window
+manager module when WP7 writes it — until then, the host's change is proven by its tests and by
+the verb answering.
+
+## What is deliberately not here
+
+- **The graphical stack's seats** (WP7). Each begins with a record naming its holders and verbs,
+  and the first graphical module asks the resolver a question this document cannot answer for it:
+  whether a held seat gates another's assignment.
+- **Settings for the theme knobs** (WP8). Blocked on the settings record proposed in an open change
+  and on [issue 168](../../04-ISSUES/168-a-setting-reaches-every-file-and-contribution/00-report.md).
+- **Reload without restart.** WP2 restarts the runtime on a bundle change; a reload that keeps the
+  other modules' tools up during one module's change is a refinement for after WP4 proves the
+  simple form.
+- **Lingering.** A user-scoped unit answers only while the account's manager runs; declaring
+  lingering for the account is a field on the `user` shape, decided when a server first needs a
+  user unit.
+
+## How this list is kept true
+
+Each package's proof is run on the live mesh when the package is finished and its line here gains
+the date and the commit, the way [ADR 0170](../../02-DECISIONS/0170-the-firewall-seat-serves-its-verbs.md)
+carries *built and proven live*. A package whose proof fails is not reworded; the failure is
+recorded under it and the package stays open. When WP6 is proven, design 37's status moves to
+`implemented` for what it covers and this document's to the same.
@@ -41,6 +41,8 @@ document is written and this one's status becomes `implemented`.
 | [`29-a-node-has-operator-accounts.md`](29-a-node-has-operator-accounts.md) | **In progress.** A node has an operator account and a resource may live under its home — built in the controller; the ssh-client module, the SSH CA, the `~/.ssh` boundary and user-scoped services are not. The account fact still wants its decision record | [ADR 0112](../../02-DECISIONS/0112-a-module-definition-names-no-node-mesh-or-path.md), [ADR 0051](../../02-DECISIONS/0051-shared-data-is-the-operators.md) |

 | [`32-what-a-module-declares.md`](32-what-a-module-declares.md) | **Proposed.** What a module declares and what the bus derives from it: three namespaces, subjects from local names, queues never declared, the five relationships, and the build-publish-deploy lifecycle on one bus | [ADR 0126](../../02-DECISIONS/0126-a-module-declares-its-own-seats.md), [ADR 0127](../../02-DECISIONS/0127-amqp-is-a-provision-not-the-bus.md), superseded by [ADR 0131](../../02-DECISIONS/0131-everything-on-the-mesh-speaks-to-the-broker-seat.md) (superseding [ADR 0125](../../02-DECISIONS/0125-the-bus-is-the-only-broker.md)), [ADR 0041](../../02-DECISIONS/0041-events-are-a-relationship.md) |
+| [`37-the-operators-machine.md`](37-the-operators-machine.md) | **In progress.** Every configurable thing on a node is a module, the home included; one default per module varied by settings or kept regions; roles a machine has once as seats with tool contracts; one tool runtime per node on the host side | [ADR 0173](../../02-DECISIONS/0173-the-operators-machine-is-the-meshs-and-a-module-is-what-it-declares.md), [0174](../../02-DECISIONS/0174-a-node-varies-a-module-through-settings-and-kept-regions-never-an-edit.md), [0175](../../02-DECISIONS/0175-one-tool-runtime-per-node-serves-every-modules-tools-on-the-host-side.md), [0176](../../02-DECISIONS/0176-the-login-shell-is-a-node-seat-and-execute-is-its-contract.md), [0177](../../02-DECISIONS/0177-a-unit-may-be-user-scoped-and-the-service-manager-is-a-node-seat.md) |
+| [`38-building-the-operators-machine.md`](38-building-the-operators-machine.md) | **In progress.** The work of design 37 as packages: the runtime serves many modules, the controller composes one per node, the console becomes its serving mode, the packet filter moves first, then the shell and the service manager — tested on the live mesh by the operator's decision | [ADR 0175](../../02-DECISIONS/0175-one-tool-runtime-per-node-serves-every-modules-tools-on-the-host-side.md), [0160](../../02-DECISIONS/0160-the-mesh-issues-an-assignments-subjects-and-a-runtime-serves-what-it-is-issued.md), [0149](../../02-DECISIONS/0149-the-live-mesh-is-the-test-bed.md) |

 ## Not yet written
Author	SHA1	Message	Date
jochen	179fd7f83f	To-be 38: building the operator's machine as work packages; ADR 0175 collision renumbered to 0180 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.	2026-10-02 17:20:14 +02:00
mesh-admin	e1203e5a43	Merge pull request 'Research 019: a warm twin of the running mesh' (#294 ) from jschoubben/research-019 into main	2026-10-02 14:59:44 +00:00
jschoubben	4ce967619a	Research 019: a warm twin of the running mesh in the lab	2026-10-02 16:59:36 +02:00
mesh-admin	6df2cfecd6	Merge pull request 'Research 018 graduates: ADRs 0173–0177 and to-be 37, the operator's machine' (#293 ) from feat/the-operators-machine into main	2026-10-02 14:58:48 +00:00
jochen	73047501f6	ADR 0154: the controller seat gains a generic command verb (dated note, by ADR 0175)	2026-10-02 16:53:15 +02:00
jochen	bf39baf104	Research 018 graduates: ADRs 0173–0177 and to-be 37, the operator's machine 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.	2026-10-02 16:34:57 +02:00