Issue 136: a module may name a program the machine does not have, and everything reports success

Merge pull request 'Issue 135: a container's mesh names are not compared' (#165 ) from issue/135-a-containers-mesh-names into main
Issue 135: a container's mesh names are not compared, so a moved address is never noticed
2026-09-28 20:50:35 +02:00 · 2026-09-28 15:19:37 +00:00 · 2026-09-28 17:19:35 +02:00 · 2026-09-28 15:12:15 +00:00 · 2026-09-28 17:12:12 +02:00 · 2026-09-28 14:50:44 +00:00
24 changed files with 1572 additions and 65 deletions
@@ -40,7 +40,7 @@ another — and a mesh you cannot name precisely is a mesh two people describe d
 - **the deprecated broker** — the lavinmq module. It was the mesh's bus and is not any more. It
  keeps running as an **ordinary provider** of the `amqp` provision, for modules that need a
  message broker of their own the way something needs a database
-  ([ADR 0127](../02-DECISIONS/0127-amqp-is-a-provision-not-the-bus.md)) — no seat, not foundation,
+  ([ADR 0127](../02-DECISIONS/0127-amqp-is-a-provision-not-the-bus.md) (superseded by [ADR 0131](../02-DECISIONS/0131-everything-on-the-mesh-speaks-to-the-broker-seat.md))) — no seat, not foundation,
  never raised at genesis, and a mesh that never installs it is complete.

  Say *the deprecated broker*, not "the compatibility broker" (it serves the mesh's own modules,
@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 ---
 topic: what runs on it
-status: proposed
+status: accepted
 date: 2026-09-25
 deciders: jochen
 reconstructed: false
@@ -1,6 +1,7 @@
 ---
 topic: the mesh
-status: accepted
+status: superseded
+superseded-by: 0131-everything-on-the-mesh-speaks-to-the-broker-seat.md
 date: 2026-09-26
 deciders: jochen
 reconstructed: false
@@ -4,11 +4,18 @@ status: accepted
 date: 2026-09-26
 deciders: jochen
 reconstructed: false
-extends: 02-DECISIONS/0127-amqp-is-a-provision-not-the-bus.md
+extends: 02-DECISIONS/0131-everything-on-the-mesh-speaks-to-the-broker-seat.md
 ---

 # 128. The mesh bus is required, not ambient

+
+> **Pointer repointed, 2026-09-27.** This record was written extending
+> [ADR 0127](0127-amqp-is-a-provision-not-the-bus.md) (superseded by [ADR 0131](0131-everything-on-the-mesh-speaks-to-the-broker-seat.md)), which
+> [ADR 0131](0131-everything-on-the-mesh-speaks-to-the-broker-seat.md) has since superseded — AMQP is
+> not a provision at all. Nothing decided here changes; the frontmatter now rests on the live record,
+> and the citations below are read with that in mind.
+
 ## Context

 [Design 29](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/32-what-a-module-declares.md) opened by saying the bus is
@@ -72,7 +79,7 @@ process in the path and nothing waiting on a bus account to create bus accounts.
 whose provider is the mesh itself.

 **A module may also provide a NATS server of its own, and that is a different interface.** Exactly
-as the AMQP broker provides `amqp` ([ADR 0127](0127-amqp-is-a-provision-not-the-bus.md)), a module
+as the AMQP broker provides `amqp` ([ADR 0127](0127-amqp-is-a-provision-not-the-bus.md) (superseded by [ADR 0131](0131-everything-on-the-mesh-speaks-to-the-broker-seat.md))), a module
 may run its own NATS and offer it as a backing service. That interface is **`nats`**; the mesh's
 own bus is **`mesh-bus`**; the two are never the same name, because a manifest that said `nats`
 could mean either and the difference is the whole architecture. The rule from 0119 decides which
@@ -109,7 +116,7 @@ is legitimate: a private bus is a backing service, never a channel to another mo

 - [ADR 0125](0125-the-bus-is-the-only-broker.md) — superseded by 0119; its bootstrap argument is
  narrowed here to the case it supports.
- [ADR 0127](0127-amqp-is-a-provision-not-the-bus.md) — a broker as a backing service; this
+- [ADR 0127](0127-amqp-is-a-provision-not-the-bus.md) (superseded by [ADR 0131](0131-everything-on-the-mesh-speaks-to-the-broker-seat.md)) — a broker as a backing service; this
  applies the same shape to the mesh's own bus and separates the two names.
 - [ADR 0043](0043-a-module-broker-account-is-scoped-by-emits-and-consumes.md) — authority from
  declarations, which this leaves untouched.
@@ -4,14 +4,21 @@ status: accepted
 date: 2026-09-27
 deciders: jochen
 reconstructed: false
-extends: 02-DECISIONS/0127-amqp-is-a-provision-not-the-bus.md
+extends: 02-DECISIONS/0131-everything-on-the-mesh-speaks-to-the-broker-seat.md
 ---

 # 130. The predecessor is ending, and its broker goes with it

+
+> **Pointer repointed, 2026-09-27.** This record was written extending
+> [ADR 0127](0127-amqp-is-a-provision-not-the-bus.md) (superseded by [ADR 0131](0131-everything-on-the-mesh-speaks-to-the-broker-seat.md)), which
+> [ADR 0131](0131-everything-on-the-mesh-speaks-to-the-broker-seat.md) has since superseded — AMQP is
+> not a provision at all. Nothing decided here changes; the frontmatter now rests on the live record,
+> and the citations below are read with that in mind.
+
 ## Context

-[ADR 0127](0127-amqp-is-a-provision-not-the-bus.md) settled that the old broker is an ordinary
+[ADR 0127](0127-amqp-is-a-provision-not-the-bus.md) (superseded by [ADR 0131](0131-everything-on-the-mesh-speaks-to-the-broker-seat.md)) settled that the old broker is an ordinary
 provider of the `amqp` provision rather than a compatibility module with an end date. It rejected
 giving it a retirement condition, and said why: *"its clients are not only the predecessor's, so the
 retirement condition describes a day that will not come."*
@@ -0,0 +1,94 @@
+---
+topic: the mesh
+status: accepted
+date: 2026-09-27
+deciders: jochen
+reconstructed: false
+supersedes: 0127-amqp-is-a-provision-not-the-bus.md
+---
+
+# 131. Everything on the mesh speaks to the broker seat, and AMQP is not a provision
+
+## Context
+
+[ADR 0127](0127-amqp-is-a-provision-not-the-bus.md) settled the old broker as an ordinary provider
+of an ordinary provision, `amqp`, kept for whatever wanted a message broker of its own. The day the
+bus moved was the day that framing was tested, and it failed in a way that took the control plane
+down for an evening.
+
+Three things came out of the wreckage. **The protocol had leaked into the seat's contract**: for a
+module to hold `mesh-broker`, it had to provide what the seat delivers, and what it delivered was
+`amqp` — so the module that will carry the bus on NATS could not hold the seat that names the bus,
+while the module the mesh was leaving could. **A consumer of `amqp` is not asking for AMQP.** The two
+modules requiring it wanted the mesh's messaging — to emit an event, to hear a topic — and named the
+wire protocol only because that was the word available. **And AMQP and NATS are not interchangeable
+at the wire.** A provision named after a protocol can only ever be answered by that protocol, so once
+the bus is NATS an `amqp` provision has one possible provider, and it is the thing being retired.
+
+The operator's position, stated during the outage: modules depend on the broker *seat*, not on a
+protocol; AMQP is obsolete as anything the mesh's core knows about; a module that depends on `amqp`
+is wrong; and everything should reach the mesh's bus and be able to emit events and consume topics
+through it.
+
+## Decision
+
+**A module that needs messaging uses the mesh's bus, and the mesh's bus is whatever holds
+`mesh-broker`.** Emitting an event and consuming a topic go through the sdk, which is handed the
+bus by the mesh with the module's own credential. No manifest names a wire protocol to get it.
+
+**`amqp` is neither a provision nor a requirement.** Registration refuses a manifest that provides
+it or requires it. The `mesh-broker` seat delivers `mesh-bus`, and its holder is the module that
+provides `mesh-bus` — today the nats module, and only it.
+
+**The old broker's module and the two modules that required it leave the catalogue.** They are
+removed, not converted: one was a proof that a grant worked end to end, the other forwards mail off a
+queue, and both are re-done against the bus if wanted, as new modules under this record.
+
+**The controller's AMQP transport is deleted once every node reports on the new bus**, and the
+switch that selects a transport goes with it — one bus, so nothing to select.
+
+The predecessor's own broker is outside the mesh and not this record's concern
+([ADR 0130](0130-the-predecessor-is-ending-and-its-broker-goes-with-it.md)): what the predecessor's
+tooling loses when it stops is accepted there.
+
+## Options considered
+
+1. **Keep 0127: AMQP stays an ordinary provision with the old broker as its provider.** Rejected. It
+   is what put the protocol into the seat's contract, it is why the seat could be left with no valid
+   holder mid-change, and it keeps two transports in the control plane indefinitely for the benefit of
+   two modules that did not want AMQP in the first place.
+2. **Bridge it: the old broker's module also provides `mesh-bus`, so both can hold the seat during the
+   change.** Rejected. It makes the retiring broker a legitimate mesh bus for exactly as long as
+   nobody removes the line, which in practice is forever, and it leaves `amqp` as a thing the core
+   still knows the name of.
+3. **The seat is the dependency; the protocol is nobody's business but the holder's.** Adopted.
+
+## Consequences
+
+- **The change of holder is a handover, and it needs a command.** Nothing today moves a seat from
+  one assignment to another as one act, and a seat the control plane dereferences cannot be empty
+  in between — that emptiness is the outage this record comes from. The command takes a seat and the
+  assignment taking it over. Designed and built before the cutover, under
+  [28 — Building the bus](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/28-building-the-bus.md).
+- **The seat's row moves to `mesh-bus` before the new holder registers, and that is safe.** The
+  control plane composes its own bus address through the seat *by name*
+  (`${seat:mesh-broker:…}`), and the overview derives holders by name; only registration and the
+  provision-to-seat resolution read what a seat delivers. So the row can change under the current
+  holder without unseating it, the new holder can then register its claim, and the handover happens
+  when both are running. Verified in the code during the outage, not assumed.
+- **Registration gains two refusals**: a manifest providing `amqp`, and one requiring it.
+- **The `rollout check` stops saying the old broker stays.** It said so under 0127; it now lists
+  unassigning it as the last step of the move.
+- **What got harder**: a third party that genuinely wants an AMQP broker on a mesh node runs one as
+  any application module, with no provision and no seat, and nothing on the mesh routes to it. That
+  is the cost of the mesh not knowing the word.
+
+## How this is checked
+
+| Rule | Checked by |
+|---|---|
+| No manifest provides or requires `amqp` | a registration test refusing each, naming this record; and a whole-catalogue test asserting no registered manifest names it |
+| `mesh-broker` delivers `mesh-bus`, and only a `mesh-bus` provider may hold it | the existing registration test for a delivering seat, with the row's value read from the store (mesh-controller#89) |
+| The seat's row can change without unseating the holder | a test composing the control plane's own address and the overview under a row that the current holder does not satisfy |
+| The rollout does not leave the old broker running | `rollout check` output, asserted in its test |
+| The AMQP transport is gone | the package does not compile with it referenced; the switch variable is refused as unknown at start |
@@ -0,0 +1,150 @@
+---
+topic: the mesh
+status: accepted
+date: 2026-09-28
+deciders: jochen
+reconstructed: false
+extends: 02-DECISIONS/0129-a-seat-carries-the-protocol-of-its-role.md
+---
+
+# 132. A seat carries the tools its holder must serve
+
+## Context
+
+[ADR 0129](0129-a-seat-carries-the-protocol-of-its-role.md) gave a seat the protocol of its role in
+three parts: the work it accepts, the events it emits, and the verbs it **serves** — request and
+reply, awaited. The bus already derives authority from all three: a holder subscribes
+`mesh.seat.<seat>.tool.<verb>`, and a module that uses the seat may publish it and nothing else.
+
+**The serving third has never been used.** The mesh defines 14 seats, 8 mesh-scoped and 6
+node-scoped. Exactly one carries a protocol at all — the build machine, which accepts `build` and
+emits `built`. Not one seat declares a single verb it serves. The mechanism is built, enforced, and
+empty.
+
+Meanwhile every tool on the mesh is addressed to a module. Of 72 modules in the catalogue, 45 serve
+tools, about 203 of them, each on `mesh.mod.<module>.tool.<name>`. So a caller binds to the module
+that happens to hold a role rather than to the role, and replacing that module breaks every caller —
+which is the thing seats exist to prevent everywhere else.
+
+**Nothing can say what tools exist.** Measured on 2026-09-28, with the bus carrying the whole mesh: a
+workstation client holding an operator credential connected, the bus accepted the account, and
+`mesh call gitea.gitea_list_repos` answered with real repositories. The same client's `mesh tools`
+found nothing, because it asks `mesh-catalog.catalog_tools` and no module serves that: the catalogue
+serves `catalog_modules`, `catalog_module`, `catalog_provides`, `catalog_dependents` and
+`catalog_stale`. An agent can therefore call any tool it already knows the name of and discover none.
+MCP's `tools/list` is that same question, so the MCP surface is a working transport over an empty
+catalogue.
+
+**And there is nowhere for a tool's definition to live.** A manifest has a `tools` field: 0 of the 45
+modules that serve tools fill it. That is not neglect, it is the arrangement failing — the field was
+the bus grant's source for what a module may subscribe, and because nothing filled it every module
+that served a tool was refused its own subscription on the new bus, live, until the grant was changed
+to the module's own namespace. Today a tool's name, description and argument schema exist only in the
+module's code.
+
+Two facts about the machinery matter for what follows. A seat's protocol is not in the store: the seat
+rows lack the ADR 0129 columns, so the protocol comes from compiled defaults and is merged in when a
+row is read. And `seatSubject` is flat — `mesh.seat.<seat>.<kind>.<verb>` with no node in it — so a
+node-scoped seat's tool call would reach every node's holder at once, and the holders' queue group
+would hand it to whichever answered first.
+
+## Decision
+
+**A seat's protocol carries its tools in full**: the verb, what it does, and the schema of its
+arguments and of its answer. The seat is the definition of the role's interface; the holder is an
+implementation of it.
+
+**Serving the seat's tools is a condition of holding the seat.** A module that does not serve every
+verb the seat declares may not occupy it. This is checked where the other conditions of holding are
+checked — registration and handover — and refused by naming the verbs that are missing.
+
+**A role's tools are addressed to the role.** `mesh.seat.<seat>.tool.<verb>` mesh-wide. A node-scoped
+seat carries the node in the address, because one subject reaching six machines' holders is not an
+address, and the queue group that made it look like one would silently pick a winner.
+
+**A module keeps its own tools, and both exist.** `gitea_list_repos` stays, because gitea can run
+without holding the `git` seat — a second forge, an instance kept for one purpose. The module's name
+answers *this gitea*; the seat's verb answers *whoever is the forge*. Which of the two a caller wants
+is a decision in the running session, not one the mesh makes for it.
+
+**What answers "what tools exist" follows where the definition lives.** A seat's tools are read from
+the mesh's own records. A module's own tools are answered by the module, from the code that defines
+them. Discovery is therefore a read for the durable half and a question to the running mesh for the
+free half.
+
+**A seat's tools are an interface, and change like one.** Additive within a version; a change that
+would break a caller takes the version token the subject already has room for (design 29 §8), and the
+two run side by side until nothing is bound to the old one.
+
+**The mesh's own verbs are the `mesh-controller` seat's tools.** `status`, `push`, `build`, `assign`
+and the rest are a role's interface, not a container's, and the audit point [ADR 0095](0095-the-control-plane-is-the-way-to-ask-a-module.md)
+asks for is the seat's holder.
+
+## Options considered
+
+1. **The manifest declares each module's tools.** Rejected. The list is then written twice — in the
+   manifest and in the code — and a schema in a manifest goes stale silently, which is the worst kind
+   of wrong for something an agent reads to decide what to call. It is also the arrangement that has
+   already failed once: the field exists, 0 of 45 modules fill it, and the grant that depended on it
+   refused every tool subscription on the mesh.
+2. **Every runtime answers an introspection call, and something aggregates them.** Rejected as the
+   shape for a role's tools, kept for a module's own. An aggregator needs permission to publish into
+   every module's namespace, which is a widening the mesh otherwise gives only to the control plane;
+   and the answer is only as available as the modules are, so a mesh whose catalogue cannot say what a
+   role answers while its holder is down cannot plan against it.
+3. **The control plane answers everything.** Rejected. It puts a tool surface on the control plane for
+   tools it does not implement, and makes discovery depend on the one component that must stay
+   answerable while it is itself being replaced. The mesh's own verbs are its to answer, and it answers
+   them as the holder of a seat.
+4. **Seats only; no module tools.** Rejected. Most modules hold no seat, and inventing a seat per
+   module to give its tools a home would dilute what a seat is: one holder of a role the mesh needs
+   exactly one of.
+
+## Consequences
+
+**One capability can have two names, deliberately.** A forge that holds the `git` seat answers both
+`mesh.seat.git.tool.list_repos` and `mesh.mod.gitea.tool.gitea_list_repos`. This is the one place the
+mesh accepts two names for one thing, because they are answers to different questions and the second
+one survives the module not holding the seat. The glossary rule stands everywhere else.
+
+**A seat becomes a contract to implement.** Adding a verb to a seat is a change every holder must
+make, and a claim that was valid becomes invalid until it does. That is the point, and it is also the
+reason a seat's tools should be few and durable while a module's own stay free.
+
+**Three prerequisites, none of them in place.** The seat's protocol must be in the store rather than in
+compiled defaults, or discovery reads a binary rather than the mesh. The protocol must become richer
+than a list of verbs, because a verb without a schema is not something an agent can call. And a
+node-scoped seat needs the node in its subject before any of its tools can exist.
+
+**Discovery becomes cheap for the half that matters.** What roles the mesh has and what each answers is
+a query, with no fan-out and nothing to be up. An agent's authority can then be role-shaped — *the
+forge's tools* — rather than a list of module-specific names that changes when a module is replaced.
+
+**The MCP surface belongs inside the mesh.** Once the tools are the mesh's own records, the thing that
+serves them to an agent is a module the mesh assigns to the machine where the agent sits, with a
+credential the mesh minted and authority derived from what it may call — not a program started by hand
+with a credential printed to a terminal.
+
+## How this is checked
+
+- **Holding is refused without the verbs.** The condition sits with the other conditions of holding a
+  seat, so registration and a handover both refuse a module that does not serve what the seat declares,
+  and the refusal names the missing verbs. A test per condition, as the other seat conditions have.
+- **The grant is derived from the seat, and already is.** A holder's subscription and a user's publish
+  come from the seat's protocol, so a verb nobody declared is a subject nobody may use, and a verb the
+  seat declares reaches exactly its holder. The golden composition of the bus's user list is the test
+  that keeps it honest.
+- **Discovery is a read, and is tested as one.** What the mesh answers for a seat's tools equals what
+  the seat's records declare — no call to a module in the path, so the test needs no running module.
+- **A node-scoped seat's subject carries its node**, checked by the same test that checks the subject
+  table: two nodes holding one node-scoped seat derive two addresses.
+
+## References
+
+- [ADR 0129](0129-a-seat-carries-the-protocol-of-its-role.md) — the protocol this widens
+- [ADR 0121](0121-a-system-seat-is-named-for-its-scope-and-modules-define-their-own.md) — the role, its work and its events
+- [ADR 0095](0095-the-control-plane-is-the-way-to-ask-a-module.md) — a tool call passes one process where an audit belongs
+- [ADR 0126](0126-a-module-declares-its-own-seats.md) — an event is addressed to its emitter, for the same reason a role's verb is addressed to its role
+- [`03-DESIGN/01-to-be/26-the-seats.md`](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/26-the-seats.md) — how a seat is held and handed over
+- mesh-controller #116, #117, #118 — the grants as they now stand: a module serves its own namespace, the control plane may ask any tool
+- Measured 2026-09-28 on the live mesh: an operator credential calling a module's tool over the bus answers; `tools/list` finds nothing
@@ -0,0 +1,159 @@
+---
+topic: what runs on it
+status: superseded
+date: 2026-09-28
+deciders: jochen
+reconstructed: false
+extends: 02-DECISIONS/0052-a-step-that-runs-once-before-a-container.md
+superseded-by: 02-DECISIONS/0135-a-module-version-prepares-its-state-before-it-runs.md
+---
+
+# 133. A module owns its migrations, and the mesh owns when they run
+
+## Context
+
+On 2026-09-28 the mesh replaced its own control plane, through its own upgrade path, with a build
+carrying a migration. Nothing applied it. For the next three quarters of an hour every build the mesh
+made was refused by the store with one line — *column "built_contexts" does not exist* — which reached
+only whoever happened to be waiting on that build's reply. The images were built and published, so the
+registry filled with artifacts the mesh has no record of, and the overview went on reporting that every
+module was current ([issue 133](../04-ISSUES/133-the-control-planes-schema-is-migrated-at-birth-and-never-again/00-report.md)).
+
+The schema had been created once, at genesis, by an action in the foundation bundle. Nothing ran it
+again, through many updates of the control plane since.
+
+**The mechanism to do this right already existed and one module used it wrong.**
+[ADR 0052](0052-a-step-that-runs-once-before-a-container.md) makes a run-once container a step the host
+runs to completion before whatever the declaration places after it, and names migrating a schema as the
+case it exists for. Three facts about how it is used today:
+
+- The control plane's manifest had no step at all. The immediate fix was to write one by hand, and that
+  hand-written step repeats three environment variables and three volume mounts from the server
+  resource it precedes — six chances to drift from the thing it prepares.
+- Two other modules hand-write the same shape for the same reason: gitea's admin bootstrap and
+  mosquitto's dynsec seed, each repeating its sibling's image, environment and mounts. One of them
+  ends in `|| true`, which is a lock implemented as a shrug.
+- The catalogue module takes the other road: it migrates its own schema in its own code when it starts.
+  That failure mode is a crash loop rather than a stop — the catalogue restarted 338 times this
+  morning on an unrelated start-time failure, and nothing anywhere said the mesh's graph had a gap.
+
+**What the mesh already has, and what HAL needed stages for.** Ordering a provider before its consumer
+is `providersFirst`, which topologically orders a node's modules. Ordering within a module is
+declaration order, and a run-once container gates everything after it. Remembering that a step has
+already run is the digest of its declaration, recorded only after it exits 0
+([ADR 0018](0018-a-picture-is-read-from-what-runs.md)) — and the image is part of that digest, so a new
+build re-runs it. Three of the four things a stage system provides are therefore already here. The
+fourth — that a module has a schema at all — is the only thing missing.
+
+**Nothing in the catalogue ships a migrations directory.** Of 72 modules, none has one; the modules that
+migrate do it in their own code. So this is not a decision about where SQL files live. It is a decision
+about who runs them and when.
+
+**Two facts bound what is safely expressible.** A node converges toward its own declaration without
+waiting on any other node. And of the five modules that run on more than one machine today — dnsmasq,
+fail2ban, networking, networkmanager, sshd — not one wants a store; every module with a database is on
+exactly one machine.
+
+## Decision
+
+**A container may declare steps to run before it.** The same container, run to completion, with
+different arguments, in order, before it starts. The mesh derives the run-once resources from that
+declaration, so the image, the environment, the volumes, the network and the credentials come from the
+one place they are already described and cannot drift from it.
+
+**A module's migrations are the first user of this, and the module owns them entirely.** The SQL, the
+order, the idempotence, the lock, and which dialect it speaks. The mesh never learns that postgres and
+mssql differ, because it runs the module's own image with the module's own arguments against the
+module's own binding and requires exit 0. A module needing both stores runs one step that does both.
+
+**The mesh owns the moment, and the gate is the guarantee.** Whether a version may serve when its
+schema is not there yet is a deployment question, and the mesh is the only thing that can answer it,
+because the mesh is what starts the container. A step that fails stops the container it precedes, so
+a failed migration is a version that does not serve rather than a version serving against a store it
+does not match.
+
+**Per node, and there is no level.** The step runs wherever the module runs. A step that ran "once,
+somewhere" would leave every other machine with no gate at all, and additive migrations protect old
+code against a new schema, never new code against an old one. The cost is an obligation a migration
+runner already carries: a version table and a lock.
+
+**"Once, mesh-wide" is what holding a seat means.** A step that is not idempotent — seeding an
+account, sending a notice, taking a backup — belongs to a module that holds a seat, where the mesh
+already guarantees one holder, on record, handed over deliberately. That is the answer to the level
+question rather than a field that has to invent an election and keep it somewhere.
+
+**Migrations are forward-only and additive.** The step runs before the *new* container starts, so the
+old one is still running against the new schema for the length of the apply.
+
+**Declared, never inferred.** The control plane cannot see inside an image, so a module that ships
+migrations and declares no step is not refusable at registration; it breaks on its first upgrade. This
+record says so rather than implying a check that cannot exist.
+
+## Options considered
+
+1. **Each module migrates itself when it starts** — what the catalogue does today. Rejected: it turns a
+   schema failure into a crash loop instead of a stop, it is invisible in the declaration so nothing can
+   say the module even has a schema, and two machines running the module both migrate at start with
+   nothing sequencing them.
+2. **The mesh applies migrations itself**, with a driver and a version table per store — HAL's shape.
+   Rejected: the mesh would have to know one store type from another, hold another module's store
+   credentials, and reach a machine to use them, which [ADR 0005](0005-the-node-host.md) forbids. It is
+   also the reason that shape needs levels: something central has to decide where the once happens.
+3. **A hook lifecycle** — pre-build, post-build, pre-deploy, post-deploy. Rejected: there is no deploy
+   event here to hook. A declaration is a desired state applied in order and reconciled forever, so
+   "pre-deploy" is exactly "a step before this container", pre- and post-build are what a Dockerfile and
+   the artifact list already are, and "post-deploy" has no moment to name.
+4. **A hook level** — once per module, or once per module-node assignment. Rejected as a field, kept as
+   a property: see the decision. A once-per-module step needs cross-node ordering underneath it to be
+   safe, and a node converging without waiting on its neighbours is worth losing on purpose rather than
+   by accident.
+5. **Every module hand-writes its own run-once step** — the immediate fix for the control plane.
+   Rejected as the general answer: it duplicates the resource it precedes, in three places already, and
+   a hand-written step is one the next module forgets. Forgetting it is the fault this record exists
+   for.
+6. **Record a schema level per module in the store.** Rejected: gating makes the invariant true by
+   construction, so a level is a second account of the same fact and the first one to go stale.
+
+## Consequences
+
+**Three hand-written steps collapse into one line each**, and the control plane's own migrate step stops
+repeating its server's environment and mounts.
+
+**The catalogue's self-migration becomes the exception to remove.** One shape, and the mesh's own
+control plane is not an exception to it either.
+
+**A module on two machines with one shared store must lock.** Today none is, so this is an obligation
+stated before it is needed rather than discovered by two concurrent migrations.
+
+**There is still no readiness-gated step.** Only an action carries `verify`; a container has no health
+notion, so "run this once the service answers" remains unexpressible and seeding through a running
+service's API has no home. That is its own decision about a container's readiness, and this record does
+not make it.
+
+**Genesis keeps its own action.** At birth there is no control plane to derive anything from, which is
+what [ADR 0067](0067-genesis-is-a-pivot.md) already says about that moment.
+
+## How this is checked
+
+- **The composition carries the step.** A test on a node's composed declaration: every container that
+  declares steps before it is preceded by them, and the derived step's image, environment, volumes and
+  network equal the container's — so the two cannot drift, which is the failure the hand-written kind
+  has.
+- **A failed step stops what follows.** The host already refuses to go on past a run-once step that did
+  not exit 0; the test for that is extended to a derived one, so the gate is checked rather than
+  assumed.
+- **The mesh's own schema is covered by the same mechanism as everything else.** The control plane
+  declares its step in its own manifest, so the case that failed on 2026-09-28 is the case the test
+  covers.
+- **A module claiming a seat for a once-only step is checked where seats are checked** — the conditions
+  of holding, not a new mechanism.
+
+## References
+
+- [ADR 0052](0052-a-step-that-runs-once-before-a-container.md) — the step this extends
+- [ADR 0018](0018-a-picture-is-read-from-what-runs.md) — a digest is the record that something happened
+- [ADR 0005](0005-the-node-host.md) — the control plane decides and never touches a machine
+- [ADR 0067](0067-genesis-is-a-pivot.md) — why genesis does it differently, once
+- [issue 133](../04-ISSUES/133-the-control-planes-schema-is-migrated-at-birth-and-never-again/00-report.md) — the failure that produced this record
+- [`03-DESIGN/01-to-be/32-what-a-module-declares.md`](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/32-what-a-module-declares.md) §6 — the lifecycle this sits in
+- Measured 2026-09-28: three hand-written run-once steps repeating their sibling's resource; 0 of 72 modules with a migrations directory; 5 modules on more than one machine, none of them wanting a store
@@ -0,0 +1,126 @@
+---
+topic: the mesh
+status: accepted
+date: 2026-09-28
+deciders: jochen
+reconstructed: false
+---
+
+# 134. The mesh says what it applied
+
+## Context
+
+The pipeline is observable on the bus from a merge to an artifact, and modules already plug into it:
+the forge emits `pull.merged`, the build machine's seat emits `built`, the catalogue emits `registered`,
+`upgraded` and `rebuild-needed`, providers emit `postgres.database.provisioned` and its siblings. Things
+consume them today — the catalogue consumes `built`, each provider consumes its own provisioning events,
+model-usage consumes `*.usage.*`, the audit logger consumes `**`. Nothing had to be invented for any of
+that; subscribing *is* plugging in.
+
+**It goes dark at the moment it touches a machine.** A host applies a declaration and reports to the
+control plane on the control branch, which only the control plane may read — correctly, because a report
+carries what a machine is and enrolment travels the same way. So nothing on the mesh says *this machine
+now runs version Y of module Z*, or that it refused to, or why.
+
+What that cost on 2026-09-28, in one morning:
+
+- A build result the store refused was visible only to whoever was waiting on that build's reply. For
+  three quarters of an hour the mesh built things and recorded none of them, while the overview said
+  every module was current ([issue 133](../04-ISSUES/133-the-control-planes-schema-is-migrated-at-birth-and-never-again/00-report.md)).
+- A module crash-looping at start — 338 restarts — was found by reading a container's logs by hand.
+  Nothing on the bus said the mesh's graph had stopped learning.
+- A run-once step that fails now stops an upgrade by design ([ADR 0133](0133-a-module-owns-its-migrations-and-the-mesh-owns-when-they-run.md)),
+  and the same silence would cover it: the version simply would not appear.
+
+**And the one thing the control plane does emit is refused by its own account.** Answering a catalogue
+that asks to catch up, it publishes each recorded build under `mesh.mod.control-plane.event.…` — a
+module namespace for a module that does not exist. Its own permissions refuse it, so a catalogue that
+restarts gets nothing and keeps its gap. The control plane has facts to state and nowhere to state
+them.
+
+## Decision
+
+**The mesh emits the deploy half of the pipeline as facts on the bus.** What a machine now runs, and
+what it refused to run and why. Both are facts about the mesh doing its work, in the same form as every
+other fact on the bus, so anything that wants them subscribes the way the catalogue subscribes to
+`built`.
+
+**The control plane states them, as the holder of the `mesh-controller` seat.** Its facts live under the
+seat's own namespace, which is where a role's events belong
+([ADR 0121](0121-a-system-seat-is-named-for-its-scope-and-modules-define-their-own.md),
+[ADR 0129](0129-a-seat-carries-the-protocol-of-its-role.md)) and which survives the control plane being
+replaced. That is also what gives the catch-up replay a subject it may publish instead of an invented
+module namespace.
+
+**Emitted when what a machine runs changes, not on every convergence pass.** A host reconciles
+continuously and reports each time; a fact per pass would be a fact per minute per machine that says
+nothing. The report carries the declaration it applied and what changed, so the control plane has what
+it needs to speak only when there is something to say.
+
+**A refusal is a fact with a subject in it** — which machine, which resource, and the reason as the host
+gave it. A refusal that names only the machine is the silence this record is about, one level up.
+
+**Reports stay where they are.** A node's report remains control traffic that only the control plane
+reads. The deploy facts are derived from it, which makes them second-hand on purpose: one emitter, one
+ordering, and no widening of the narrowest account in the mesh.
+
+## Options considered
+
+1. **Leave it as it is, and let whatever cares ask the control plane.** Rejected: asking for a fact that
+   already arrives is the shape the mesh removed everywhere else, and nothing can react at the moment a
+   machine changes — which is exactly when a graph, an audit or an operator wants to know.
+2. **Each node emits its own facts.** Rejected: it widens every host's account to an event namespace, and
+   a host's authority is deliberately the narrowest in the mesh. Its report already reaches the one thing
+   that can speak for it.
+3. **Widen who may read the control branch.** Rejected: that branch carries what machines say *to* the
+   control plane, enrolment included. Widening its readers widens that too, for an unrelated reason.
+4. **A registry of deploy hooks** — something registers interest and is called. Rejected: an event is
+   already the mechanism; there is nothing to register, and a callback is an address the mesh spent
+   [issue 102](../04-ISSUES/102-an-address-recorded-at-genesis-or-build-does-not-follow-the-nodes-ports/00-report.md)
+   learning not to keep.
+5. **Put the facts on the node's own declaration stream.** Rejected: that stream is last-per-subject by
+   design, so a machine away for an hour gets exactly the current declaration and nothing older. A
+   history of what happened cannot live in a stream built to forget.
+
+## Consequences
+
+**The audit logger gets the deploy half for nothing**, because it consumes everything.
+
+**A failure becomes visible where the mesh is watched** rather than where someone happened to be
+looking. That answers the open question [issue 133](../04-ISSUES/133-the-control-planes-schema-is-migrated-at-birth-and-never-again/00-report.md)
+left about a record the store refused.
+
+**The catch-up replay stops being a burst of events.** With the control plane able to state its own
+facts, replaying history as if it were happening now is a choice rather than the only option — and the
+better shape is the question the catalogue is actually asking, answered once
+([design 33](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/33-the-tools-the-mesh-answers.md)).
+
+**The facts are second-hand.** The control plane says what a machine reported, so a machine that cannot
+reach the bus produces no fact at all. Absence is not health, and what a machine was last heard from
+stays the place that says so.
+
+**The events stream carries more.** Bounded by emitting on change rather than on every pass, and each
+fact is small; the stream's own limits remain what keeps it finite.
+
+## How this is checked
+
+- **The control plane's grant names exactly the subjects it emits**, derived from its seat like every
+  other principal's, and the composed user list is compared against a golden file — so a fact it cannot
+  publish fails a test rather than a catalogue's replay.
+- **A convergence that changed nothing emits nothing.** A test with two identical reports and one
+  expected fact, because the failure this guards against is a fact per minute per machine.
+- **A refusal names its resource.** A test where a host reports a failed resource and the emitted fact
+  carries which one and why, not merely that something went wrong.
+- **What the mesh emits is what something consumes.** The subject a module declares it consumes derives
+  to the subject the control plane publishes — the same agreement test that already keeps the
+  controller's own subscriptions honest.
+
+## References
+
+- [ADR 0041](0041-events-are-a-relationship.md) — an event is a relationship, not a call
+- [ADR 0126](0126-a-module-declares-its-own-seats.md) — an event is addressed to its emitter, because the emitter's identity is the meaning
+- [ADR 0121](0121-a-system-seat-is-named-for-its-scope-and-modules-define-their-own.md), [ADR 0129](0129-a-seat-carries-the-protocol-of-its-role.md) — a role's events belong to the role
+- [ADR 0083](0083-one-push-leaves-the-mesh-consistent.md) — a report is held for the store rather than lost
+- [ADR 0133](0133-a-module-owns-its-migrations-and-the-mesh-owns-when-they-run.md) — the gate whose failure this makes visible
+- [`03-DESIGN/01-to-be/32-what-a-module-declares.md`](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/32-what-a-module-declares.md) §6 — the lifecycle, which ends today at a report nobody else may read
+- Measured 2026-09-28: 45 minutes of builds recorded nowhere with the overview reporting health; a module at 338 restarts found by hand; the control plane's only emitted event refused by its own permissions
@@ -0,0 +1,153 @@
+---
+topic: what runs on it
+status: accepted
+date: 2026-09-28
+deciders: jochen
+reconstructed: false
+supersedes: 0133-a-module-owns-its-migrations-and-the-mesh-owns-when-they-run.md
+---
+
+# 135. A module version prepares its state before it runs
+
+## Context
+
+[ADR 0133](0133-a-module-owns-its-migrations-and-the-mesh-owns-when-they-run.md) settled who runs a
+module's migrations and when, and it said so in the wrong vocabulary. It put the declaration on a
+*container* — "a container may declare steps to run before it" — and derived the scope of the work from
+the *machine*. Both are wrong at the level a module author works at, and the second is wrong on the
+facts.
+
+**A container is one resource kind the host applies.** A module has code, state and a version; whether
+its artifact is an image, a bundle or something later is the mesh's business. The module-facing
+vocabulary for a module's own code already exists and has nothing to do with a container runtime: a
+module declares **entrypoints** — this file is my tools, this file is my provisioner — and the mesh runs
+them. A manifest that says "run this container with these arguments, and here are the volumes and
+environment again" has an author writing down the machine's business twice.
+
+**And the scope is not the machine's to decide, because the mesh already decided what a state is.** A
+consumer is a module *on a machine* (migration 0015, from
+[issue 022](../04-ISSUES/022-one-credential-per-node-per-provision-not-per-module/00-report.md)):
+the mesh derives a login per consumer and the provider creates a database owned by exactly that login
+([ADR 0048](0048-a-provider-creates-the-credential-the-mesh-minted.md)). So a module on three machines is three
+consumers, three credentials and three databases. There is no shared state for two machines to race over,
+and ADR 0133's central caveat — that a module's migrations must take a lock because two machines might
+migrate at once — describes a situation the mesh does not currently produce.
+
+That correction makes the whole "level" question HAL answered with stages disappear: the scope of
+preparation is the scope of the state, and the mesh knows it.
+
+What the earlier record got right and this one keeps: the module owns the work, the mesh owns the moment,
+the gate is the guarantee, migrations stay forward-only, and none of it can be inferred from inside an
+artifact. What produced it also stands — the control plane was replaced with a build carrying a migration,
+nothing applied it, and for three quarters of an hour every build was refused by the store with one line
+that reached only whoever was waiting on a reply
+([issue 133](../04-ISSUES/133-the-control-planes-schema-is-migrated-at-birth-and-never-again/00-report.md)).
+
+## Decision
+
+**A module version declares an entrypoint that prepares its state.** One name in the manifest, in the
+same vocabulary as the entrypoints it already declares for its tools and its provisioner. No container,
+no command line, no environment, no mounts — those are how a machine runs the module's code, and the
+module already said that once.
+
+**The mesh runs it as it runs that module's own code, to completion, in the module's own context.** Every
+binding, credential and setting the module's code would receive, because it *is* the module's code. How a
+machine does that is the host's business and stays there: for an image artifact it is the step
+[ADR 0052](0052-a-step-that-runs-once-before-a-container.md) already defines, and a later kind of artifact
+changes the host, not the manifest.
+
+**Preparation gates the version.** A version whose preparation did not succeed does not run — anywhere.
+Since the rollout already sends machines one at a time and stops at the first that does not take a
+version, a preparation that fails stops the rollout there, leaving every other machine on the version
+that works.
+
+**Preparation is scoped to the state, and the mesh derives that scope.** State the mesh provisions is per
+consumer — a module on a machine — so preparation happens once per consumer. State the module keeps on
+the machine is per machine, which is the same answer. A module that holds an exclusive seat has one of
+itself, so its preparation happens once by definition. No level, no election, no cross-node ordering, and
+no lock obligation invented for a race the mesh does not create.
+
+**Once per version per state.** A version bump attempts preparation once against each state it has; the
+module's own runner decides there is nothing to do, which is what a runner with a version table does
+anyway. A retry after a partial failure runs it again, so the work is the module's to make safe against
+that — the one obligation no design can remove.
+
+**Forward-only and additive.** Preparation runs while the previous version is still serving, so a
+migration that removes or renames what the old code reads breaks the mesh in the window between the two.
+
+**Declared, never inferred.** The control plane cannot see inside an artifact, so a module that ships
+migrations and declares no entrypoint is not refusable at registration. It breaks on its first upgrade,
+and this record says so rather than implying a check that cannot exist.
+
+## Options considered
+
+1. **A container declares steps before it** — [ADR 0133](0133-a-module-owns-its-migrations-and-the-mesh-owns-when-they-run.md).
+   Superseded, not because the mechanism is wrong but because the *declaration* is in the wrong place: it
+   makes every module author restate the machine's arrangement, and it ties a module's own lifecycle to
+   one resource kind. The host-side mechanism it named is retained and is now an implementation detail.
+2. **Each module prepares itself when it starts** — what the catalogue does today. Rejected: a schema
+   failure becomes a crash loop rather than a stop, nothing in the declaration says the module has a
+   state to prepare, and the version serves the moment it starts rather than after the state is right.
+3. **The mesh applies migrations itself**, with a driver and a version table per store type. Rejected:
+   the mesh would have to know one store from another, hold another module's credentials and reach a
+   machine with them, which [ADR 0005](0005-the-node-host.md) forbids. It is also what forces a stage
+   system: something central has to decide where the work happens.
+4. **A hook lifecycle** — pre-build, post-build, pre-deploy, post-deploy. Rejected: a declaration is a
+   desired state reconciled forever, so there is no deploy moment to hook. "Pre-deploy" is exactly this
+   record; pre- and post-build are what a recipe and the artifact list already are; "post-deploy" names
+   nothing that happens.
+5. **A declared level** — once per module, or once per assignment. Rejected: the mesh already knows what a
+   state is, so asking an author to choose is asking them to restate a fact the mesh holds, with a chance
+   of contradicting it.
+6. **Record a preparation level per module in the store.** Rejected for the reason ADR 0133 gave and this
+   record keeps: gating makes the invariant true by construction, and a level is a second account of the
+   same fact.
+
+## Consequences
+
+**An author's whole contract is one line, once.** Write the migration in the module's code, name the
+entrypoint that runs it, and every later version rolls out as: build, prepare, run — with nothing
+per-version to remember and nothing about the machine to restate. That is the property this exists for.
+
+**Three hand-written steps in the catalogue collapse**, and the control plane's own migrate step stops
+repeating its server's environment and mounts.
+
+**The catalogue's self-preparation becomes the exception to remove.** One shape, and the mesh's own
+control plane is not an exception either.
+
+**A module scaled across machines with one shared state is not expressible**, and this record does not
+make it so. The mesh gives each consumer its own state; a deliberately shared one is a different
+provision model, and the place the "once, mesh-wide" question would genuinely return. Named here so it is
+a decision when it happens rather than a surprise.
+
+**There is still no readiness-gated step.** Only an action carries `verify`; nothing declares that a
+service answers, so preparation that must happen *after* something is serving — seeding through its own
+API — remains unexpressible.
+
+**Genesis keeps its own action.** At birth there is no control plane to derive anything, which is what
+[ADR 0067](0067-genesis-is-a-pivot.md) says about that moment.
+
+## How this is checked
+
+- **The composition carries the preparation, in the module's own context.** A test on a node's composed
+  declaration: a version declaring a preparation entrypoint is preceded by it, and what it is given
+  equals what the module's own code is given — asserted equal rather than written twice, which is the
+  drift the superseded shape invited.
+- **A preparation that fails stops the version.** The host does not go past a step that did not complete,
+  and the rollout stops at the first machine that did not take a version. Both are existing behaviours
+  with existing tests; the test for preparation asserts the two together — the machine does not run it,
+  and the machines after it are left alone.
+- **Once per version per state.** A test that a second convergence of the same version prepares nothing,
+  and that a new version prepares again.
+- **The mesh's own control plane declares one.** The case that failed on 2026-09-28 is the case the tests
+  cover, rather than a case a comment says is covered.
+
+## References
+
+- [ADR 0133](0133-a-module-owns-its-migrations-and-the-mesh-owns-when-they-run.md) — what this supersedes, and why
+- [ADR 0052](0052-a-step-that-runs-once-before-a-container.md) — the host-side step that implements it for an image artifact
+- [ADR 0048](0048-a-provider-creates-the-credential-the-mesh-minted.md), [issue 022](../04-ISSUES/022-one-credential-per-node-per-provision-not-per-module/00-report.md) — a consumer is a module on a machine, which is what makes the scope derivable
+- [ADR 0018](0018-a-picture-is-read-from-what-runs.md) — a digest is the record that something happened
+- [ADR 0005](0005-the-node-host.md) — the control plane decides and never touches a machine
+- [ADR 0134](0134-the-mesh-says-what-it-applied.md) — what makes a failed preparation visible
+- [issue 133](../04-ISSUES/133-the-control-planes-schema-is-migrated-at-birth-and-never-again/00-report.md) — the failure that produced both records
@@ -0,0 +1,106 @@
+---
+topic: what runs on it
+status: accepted
+date: 2026-09-28
+deciders: jochen
+reconstructed: false
+extends: 02-DECISIONS/0052-a-step-that-runs-once-before-a-container.md
+---
+
+# 136. A step gates its module, not the machine
+
+## Context
+
+[ADR 0052](0052-a-step-that-runs-once-before-a-container.md) made a run-once container a step the host
+runs to completion, and gave it the same reach a failed action has: it stops everything the declaration
+places after it. When the only steps on the mesh were a broker's seed and a forge's admin account, that
+reach was invisible — the thing after the step was the container the step existed for, in the same
+module.
+
+[ADR 0135](0135-a-module-version-prepares-its-state-before-it-runs.md) made a step something the mesh
+derives for **any** module that prepares its state, and that turns the reach into a fault. A module
+whose database is briefly unreachable now stops every module declared after it on that machine, for as
+long as it is unreachable.
+
+**The host already rejected this for every other shape, and says why in its own loop.** From
+[issue 011](../04-ISSUES/011-one-broken-module-blocks-every-other/00-report.md):
+
+> It used to stop at the first one, and that made one broken resource hold the whole machine hostage: a
+> module declaring a package that does not exist meant every module ordered after it was never applied,
+> for ever, and the mesh reported "failed" without saying that the rest had not been tried. A machine
+> with one bad module and nine good ones ran none of the nine.
+
+Everything is attempted and every failure reported — except an action and a run-once step, kept as the
+deliberate exceptions. So the mesh has two rules about the same question and the wider one is now
+reachable by any module that declares a schema.
+
+**And it deadlocks a case the catalogue already named.** The catalogue migrates its own schema when it
+starts rather than in a step, and says why in its code: *a schema step that had to reach the provider
+over the overlay would block the very apply that brings the overlay up*. With a machine-wide gate that
+is exactly right — the step fails, the apply stops, the overlay module after it is never applied, and
+the next reconcile is blocked the same way. The module that most obviously wants a step could not have
+one.
+
+## Decision
+
+**A step gates its own module.** A run-once container that does not complete stops the rest of *that
+module's* resources and nothing else. Every other module on the machine is attempted, as every other
+shape already is.
+
+**An action still gates the machine.** Genesis is a row of actions, each making the next possible, and
+they belong to no module — there is nothing narrower for their reach to be.
+
+**What was not attempted is reported, not inferred from silence.** A skipped resource appears in the
+machine's account of the apply as skipped, with the reason, because "not attempted" and "nothing to do"
+are different answers and only one of them is somebody's to fix.
+
+**A module is the part of a resource's identity before the first dot**, which is how the mesh composes
+them. What the mesh declares in its own right — a guard, an opening, the adoption's own resources —
+belongs to no module, and its gate is therefore the machine's.
+
+## Options considered
+
+1. **Leave the reach as it is.** Rejected: it reintroduces, through a mechanism now derived for every
+   module, exactly the fault issue 011 removed. A mesh where one module's unreachable database stops a
+   machine converging is worse than one where that module alone is behind.
+2. **Make preparation not a gate at all** — run it and carry on. Rejected: then a version serves against
+   a state nobody shaped, which is the whole of what ADR 0135 exists to prevent.
+3. **Order every module's step before everything else on the machine**, so a gate stops nothing that
+   matters. Rejected: it inverts the order a module needs — its files and directories are declared before
+   its step because the step reads them — and it would still stop later modules.
+4. **Let a module declare how far its step reaches.** Rejected: the answer is the same for every module,
+   and a field would let one be wrong about it.
+
+## Consequences
+
+**The catalogue can move to a step.** The reason it migrates at start — that a step blocks the apply
+that would make its provider reachable — stops being true: the step fails, that module waits, the
+overlay comes up, and the next reconcile prepares it. One shape for the whole mesh, which is what
+ADR 0135 asked for and could not have had.
+
+**A module can sit behind while the machine is otherwise current.** That is the honest state and it is
+what the report now says. It also means a preparation that never succeeds is a module that never
+upgrades, quietly, until somebody reads the report — which is an argument for
+[ADR 0134](0134-the-mesh-says-what-it-applied.md) rather than against this.
+
+**A module's resources must be ordered within the module for the gate to mean anything.** They already
+are: the mesh composes a module's resources in the order its manifest declares them, and its own
+workload comes after the files it reads.
+
+## How this is checked
+
+- **A failed step stops its module and nothing else.** A test with two modules: the one whose step
+  failed does not start its workload, the other starts, and the error still says the failure gated
+  something. It fails against the previous behaviour, which is how it was written.
+- **An action still stops the machine.** The existing test for a failed action is unchanged, and a step
+  with no module in its identity — which is what genesis carries — takes the same path.
+- **The report names what was skipped.** Asserted in the same test, because a gate nobody can see is
+  indistinguishable from a module that had nothing to do.
+
+## References
+
+- [ADR 0052](0052-a-step-that-runs-once-before-a-container.md) — the step this narrows
+- [ADR 0135](0135-a-module-version-prepares-its-state-before-it-runs.md) — what made the reach reachable
+- [issue 011](../04-ISSUES/011-one-broken-module-blocks-every-other/00-report.md) — the same fault, removed once already
+- [ADR 0134](0134-the-mesh-says-what-it-applied.md) — how a module left behind becomes visible
+- mesh-host `internal/apply` — the loop whose own comment argued this case for every other shape
@@ -135,10 +135,13 @@ python3 00-META/checks/index.py            fail if stale
 - **0116** — [The bus is built in five steps, and the protocol moves with it](0116-the-bus-is-built-in-five-steps.md)
 - **0119** — [A taken tunnel's predecessor is retired once the take is proven](0119-a-taken-tunnels-predecessor-is-retired.md)
 - **0125** — [The bus is the only broker](0125-the-bus-is-the-only-broker.md)  *(superseded)*
- **0127** — [AMQP is a provision, not the bus](0127-amqp-is-a-provision-not-the-bus.md)
+- **0127** — [AMQP is a provision, not the bus](0127-amqp-is-a-provision-not-the-bus.md)  *(superseded)*
 - **0128** — [The mesh bus is required, not ambient](0128-the-mesh-bus-is-required-not-ambient.md)
 - **0129** — [A seat carries the protocol of its role](0129-a-seat-carries-the-protocol-of-its-role.md)
 - **0130** — [The predecessor is ending, and its broker goes with it](0130-the-predecessor-is-ending-and-its-broker-goes-with-it.md)
+- **0131** — [Everything on the mesh speaks to the broker seat, and AMQP is not a provision](0131-everything-on-the-mesh-speaks-to-the-broker-seat.md)
+- **0132** — [A seat carries the tools its holder must serve](0132-a-seat-carries-the-tools-its-holder-must-serve.md)
+- **0134** — [The mesh says what it applied](0134-the-mesh-says-what-it-applied.md)

 ### Its tiers, from the bottom up

@@ -202,7 +205,7 @@ python3 00-META/checks/index.py            fail if stale
 - **0091** — [A mount is declared, and there are three things it can be](0091-a-mount-is-declared-three-ways.md)
 - **0099** — [A step that runs once names what it reads, and runs again when it changed](0099-a-step-that-runs-once-names-what-it-reads.md)
 - **0110** — [A seat is held by one assignment, from a closed set, and it may deliver a provision](0110-a-seat-is-a-module-assignment-from-a-closed-set.md)
- **0112** — [A module definition names no node, no mesh and no path: everything it needs is a requirement the mesh resolves](0112-a-module-definition-names-no-node-mesh-or-path.md)  *(proposed)*
+- **0112** — [A module definition names no node, no mesh and no path: everything it needs is a requirement the mesh resolves](0112-a-module-definition-names-no-node-mesh-or-path.md)
 - **0113** — [The vault makes every shared secret, a provider makes resources and data, and the mesh carries both](0113-the-vault-makes-every-secret.md)  *(proposed)*
 - **0114** — [A credential two parties hold rotates over two credentials; one a single party holds rotates in place, staged; and retiring a credential never removes what it reached](0114-a-shared-credential-rotates-over-two-credentials.md)  *(proposed)*
 - **0115** — [One assignment of a module per node: the module's name is the assignment's identity](0115-one-assignment-of-a-module-per-node.md)  *(proposed)*
@@ -211,6 +214,9 @@ python3 00-META/checks/index.py            fail if stale
 - **0120** — [A roster fact carries its format as a template: the mesh owns the data, the module owns the format](0120-a-roster-fact-carries-its-format-as-a-template.md)
 - **0121** — [A system seat is named for its scope, and a module may define its own](0121-a-system-seat-is-named-for-its-scope-and-modules-define-their-own.md)
 - **0122** — [A seat is data the controller owns, and a rename is a database update](0122-a-seat-is-data-a-rename-is-a-database-update.md)
+- **0133** — [A module owns its migrations, and the mesh owns when they run](0133-a-module-owns-its-migrations-and-the-mesh-owns-when-they-run.md)  *(superseded)*
+- **0135** — [A module version prepares its state before it runs](0135-a-module-version-prepares-its-state-before-it-runs.md)
+- **0136** — [A step gates its module, not the machine](0136-a-step-gates-its-module-not-the-machine.md)

 ### How it is built

@@ -10,7 +10,7 @@ code:
 updated: 2026-09-27
 decisions:
  - 02-DECISIONS/0106-the-bus-is-nats.md
-  - 02-DECISIONS/0127-amqp-is-a-provision-not-the-bus.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0131-everything-on-the-mesh-speaks-to-the-broker-seat.md
  - 02-DECISIONS/0116-the-bus-is-built-in-five-steps.md
  - 02-DECISIONS/0074-the-wire-is-specified-not-the-types.md
  - 02-DECISIONS/0079-the-foundation-seats-are-named-after-their-servers.md
@@ -303,7 +303,7 @@ the private network. It is raised at genesis like the store, adopted as a module
 phase.

 **The deprecated broker is an ordinary module, not a compatibility layer.** Revision, second review
-([ADR 0127](../../02-DECISIONS/0127-amqp-is-a-provision-not-the-bus.md)): earlier text here, and
+([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): AMQP is not a provision, and everything speaks to the `mesh-broker` seat)): earlier text here, and
 ADR 0106 before it, called it `lavinmq-compat` — one purpose, the predecessor's clients, and a
 retirement condition of no client connected for a period the operator sets. It is none of those.
 A module may legitimately need an AMQP broker as a **backing service**, the way it needs a
@@ -534,7 +534,7 @@ find what changed and why.
 **Still open:**

 - ~~Whether EVENTS should be one stream or one per emitting module.~~ **Closed**
-  ([ADR 0127](../../02-DECISIONS/0127-amqp-is-a-provision-not-the-bus.md) (superseding [ADR 0125](../../02-DECISIONS/0125-the-bus-is-the-only-broker.md))): one stream, and not as a
+  ([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): AMQP is not a provision, and everything speaks to the `mesh-broker` seat) (superseding [ADR 0125](../../02-DECISIONS/0125-the-bus-is-the-only-broker.md))): one stream, and not as a
  preference — the streams the bus is made of are composed as configuration before any module
  runs, because a provisioner is itself a module that needs a bus account to start. Bootstrapping
  decides it.
@@ -4,12 +4,15 @@ status: implemented
 code:
  - mesh-controller internal/catalogue/seats.go
  - mesh-controller internal/catalogue/resolve.go
+  - mesh-controller internal/inventory/seats.go
+  - mesh-controller internal/inventory/migrations/0039-a-seat-is-held-by-one-assignment-on-record.sql
  - mesh-controller cmd/mesh-controller/seats.go
  - mesh-controller cmd/mesh-controller/source.go
  - mesh-controller internal/inventory/migrations/0032-a-source-may-live-on-a-seat.sql
  - mesh-catalog modules/gitea/module.json
 updated: 2026-09-27
 decisions:
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0131-everything-on-the-mesh-speaks-to-the-broker-seat.md
  - 02-DECISIONS/0126-a-module-declares-its-own-seats.md
  - 02-DECISIONS/0128-the-mesh-bus-is-required-not-ambient.md
  - 02-DECISIONS/0111-a-build-source-is-on-the-git-seat-or-external.md
@@ -42,6 +45,31 @@ is refused. A seat makes a role singular, never a module.
 **The seat points at the assignment.** Everything the mesh knows about the holder is what it knows
 about that assignment: the node, the node's settings for the module, and what the module serves.

+**Which assignment holds a seat is a fact on record, and changes as one act.** Revision, 2026-09-27
+([ADR 0131](../../02-DECISIONS/0131-everything-on-the-mesh-speaks-to-the-broker-seat.md)). Until
+then the holder was derived — the module that is assigned and claims the seat holds it, and a second
+eligible assignment was refused. That has no way to pass a seat from one holder to the next without a
+moment in which nobody holds it, and the controller finds its own bus through one of these seats: that
+moment took the control plane down for an evening. So the holder is now one row the controller keeps,
+written by a handover — `seat <name> --to <node>/<module>` — that names the seat and the assignment
+taking it over and replaces the previous holder in the same write. Between two handovers the seat has
+exactly one holder, and it is never none.
+
+Three consequences follow. **A seat with no row is held as it always was**: the sole eligible
+assignment holds it, and two eligible ones are refused — so a mesh that has never handed a seat over
+behaves exactly as before, and the row appears the first time somebody does. **With a row, any other
+assignment whose module could hold the seat is eligible and silent**: neither refused nor holding.
+That is what lets the next holder run beside the current one until the handover, which the bus's move
+needs ([28](28-building-the-bus.md), task 5.3). **And a holding is the assignment's**: unassigning the
+holder takes the row with it, so a seat never points at something that is not running anywhere, and
+the seat falls back to derivation rather than to nothing.
+
+The handover refuses what would make the new holder wrong before anything is written: the seat must
+exist, the assignment must exist, and the module must be able to hold the seat — claim it at its scope
+and provide what it delivers, judged against the store's row and not against anything compiled into a
+binary. It does not check that the module is running yet; `push` confirms that afterwards, and a
+handover that could only be recorded after the new holder was up could not be the switch.
+
 **The set is closed.** A seat the mesh does not define is refused wherever it is named, and so is one
 named at the wrong scope. Adding a seat is a decision, recorded, for the reason every addition to the
 host's vocabulary is one: the set is what a person reads to learn what a mesh can have, and an entry
@@ -207,7 +235,9 @@ checked as their tables say:
 | `mesh-*` is the mesh's, and a module may not declare one | 0118: a registration test refusing a manifest that declares any `mesh-*` seat, naming the prefix. |
 | Two modules cannot declare the same seat | 0118: a registration test; the second is refused and the first untouched. |
 | A holder satisfies the seat's protocol | 0118: a claim whose module does not serve what the seat declares is refused at assignment. |
-| A seat is held by one assignment, and only by one whose module can hold it | 0118: resolution tests for a second holder and for a seat the definition does not name. |
+| A seat is held by one assignment, and only by one whose module can hold it | 0118: resolution tests for a second holder and for a seat the definition does not name. 0131: `CanHold` is the one judgement, shared by registration and the handover, and its test follows the store's row. |
+| A holder on record settles the seat; another eligible assignment is silent, not refused | 0131: resolution tests with a recorded holder on the same machine, on another machine, and under a seat's former name; without a record, the old rule's tests still pass unchanged. |
+| A handover replaces the holder as one write, needs an assignment to point at, and goes with it | 0131: store tests — a second handover leaves one row; a handover to a module not assigned where named is refused; unassigning the holder removes the row. |
 | A requirement naming a seat is answered by its holder; a foundation seat cannot be named | 0118: resolution tests with a second provider on the consumer's node, with the seat unheld, and naming `mesh-store`. |
 | Several providers and none local is a person's choice | 0118: an assignment test listing candidates with the seat's holder first and recording the pin. |
 | `secret` is reserved | 0118: the parser and resolution refusals for another provider and a pin. |
@@ -5,11 +5,11 @@ code:
  - mesh-catalog modules/nats
  - mesh-controller internal/catalogue
  - mesh-lab scenarios
-updated: 2026-09-27
+updated: 2026-09-28
 decisions:
  - 02-DECISIONS/0116-the-bus-is-built-in-five-steps.md
  - 02-DECISIONS/0106-the-bus-is-nats.md
-  - 02-DECISIONS/0127-amqp-is-a-provision-not-the-bus.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0131-everything-on-the-mesh-speaks-to-the-broker-seat.md
  - 02-DECISIONS/0126-a-module-declares-its-own-seats.md
  - 02-DECISIONS/0074-the-wire-is-specified-not-the-types.md
  - 02-DECISIONS/0079-the-foundation-seats-are-named-after-their-servers.md
@@ -535,7 +535,7 @@ it, and the beds that need a mesh living on NATS can finally run.
      The outcome carries the module name, because only the manifest says what was built and one
      message now has three readers. A failed build names none: it produced no module version, and
      the catalogue would otherwise place something that was never made.
- [~] 4.3 an installation completes over the bus, with the same outcome as the path it replaces —
+- [x] 4.3 an installation completes over the bus, with the same outcome as the path it replaces —
      **the installer can raise it**: a foundation template that stands up the server, writes the
      server's own settings and the mesh's first user list beside them, and starts a controller
      reaching the new bus. What remains is running it, which is 4.1's bed.
@@ -655,55 +655,72 @@ healthy while reacting to nothing.
 - [ ] 5.1 the cutover bed: a mesh on AMQP with a predecessor stand-in on the deprecated broker
      moves its bus in one rollout, every node reporting on NATS afterwards, the stand-in's own
      client still connected throughout
- [~] 5.2 the rollout: accounts composed, then the controller, every host and every runtime
+- [x] 5.2 the rollout: accounts composed, then the controller, every host and every runtime
      together; every node confirmed heard before AMQP stops.

-      **The readiness half is in and is the half worth having.** The move takes every node at once, so
-      there is nothing to inspect afterwards and no half to roll back — either the mesh was ready or it
-      was not. `rollout check` answers that from records, with one dial: is a bus answering, does a
-      machine hold the seat, has it been sent the composed user list, does every machine and every
-      module that speaks have a credential. Each missing thing names its own next step, because "not
-      ready" that cannot be acted on is not an answer at the point where the next step is irreversible.
-
-      **A machine with no credential is what must stop it.** It keeps running, cannot come back, and
-      afterwards there is no bus to tell it anything over.
-
-      The move itself is deliberately not written yet, and the command says so rather than pretending:
-      it waits on the check having been run against a real mesh. Writing the irreversible half before
-      the question it depends on has ever been asked of something real is how the plan's own rule about
-      beds gets broken by another route.
-
-      > **What this costs if it goes wrong, measured rather than assumed.** On the installation this is
-      > for, the old broker is also what a whole automation layer outside the mesh connects to — so it
-      > stays, as an ordinary provider of `amqp` ([ADR 0127](../../02-DECISIONS/0127-amqp-is-a-provision-not-the-bus.md)),
-      > and this step is not its retirement. Nothing in a served request's path goes over the mesh's own
-      > bus: modules serve from their own containers. What a failed move costs is the mesh's ability to
-      > *change* anything — pushes, tool calls, new provisioning — until it is finished or undone. That
-      > is worth knowing before rather than after, and it is why the operator's "as long as my services
-      > keep running" is a reasonable position rather than a gamble.
- [ ] 5.3 the mesh's own accounts removed from the deprecated broker, and then the broker itself:
-      after the rollout nothing of the mesh speaks to it, and an account nothing uses is one nobody
-      rotates. **It finishes now** ([ADR 0130](../../02-DECISIONS/0130-the-predecessor-is-ending-and-its-broker-goes-with-it.md)):
-      the predecessor is deprecated rather than kept, so once its remnants have stopped the module is
-      unassigned and the port is free. No retirement machinery — a provision with no consumers has its
-      provider unassigned, which is ADR 0127 being paid off rather than revised.
+      **Done 2026-09-28, 02:25.** Every machine reports on the new bus, the seat is held by the
+      module that provides it, the old broker is unassigned and forgotten, and every credential was
+      minted afresh at the end because two had been printed on the way. What it took, in the order
+      it was found, each fixed on the trunk before the next step: the control plane's `serve` and
+      `push` never selected the new transport (task 4.3, open until then); a machine's user was
+      granted neither the asking nor the delivery of its own consumer; the account had no JetStream
+      of its own; the control plane's client verified the bus's certificate by name instead of
+      pinning it; the seat table's rows carried no protocol, so no role's work queue was raised; the
+      build machine decided its bus from a variable its container never received; and a rotation
+      put new hashes on the bus before three machines had received their new memberships — which
+      is why there is now `rollout hand <node>` and a host adopts a delivered membership at start.
+      The bootstrap loop — a bus that can only be raised by a declaration that can only arrive
+      over that bus — was broken once, by hand: the mesh's own composed configuration started the
+      server, and the controller binary was run on the node directly until the managed container
+      could be rebuilt over the bus it was on.

+- [x] 5.3 **the seat changes hands as one act.** A command takes a seat and the assignment taking it
+      over, and the seat is never empty in between — the emptiness is the outage of 2026-09-27, when
+      the control plane, which finds its own bus through this seat, lost the address and looped.
+      **Built 2026-09-27** (`seat_holding`, migration 0039; design 26 says how it is checked), and used
+      live the next night to hand `mesh-broker` from the old broker's assignment to the new one's. This
+      is what 5.2 uses to move `mesh-broker` from the old
+      broker's assignment to the new one's, and it is built first ([ADR 0131](../../02-DECISIONS/0131-everything-on-the-mesh-speaks-to-the-broker-seat.md)).
+- [x] 5.4 **the old broker and everything that named AMQP leave the mesh** ([ADR 0131](../../02-DECISIONS/0131-everything-on-the-mesh-speaks-to-the-broker-seat.md),
+      superseding [ADR 0127](../../02-DECISIONS/0127-amqp-is-a-provision-not-the-bus.md)): the two modules that
+      required `amqp` are removed, the broker's module is unassigned and removed (**done 2026-09-28**; the predecessor's own tooling, which rode the same adopted broker, went dark with it, as [ADR 0130](../../02-DECISIONS/0130-the-predecessor-is-ending-and-its-broker-goes-with-it.md) accepted), registration refuses
+      a manifest that provides or requires `amqp`, and a whole-catalogue check asserts none does. Not
+      a retirement condition — a decision, taken, with the operator's "I don't care if the predecessor
+      breaks" on record ([ADR 0130](../../02-DECISIONS/0130-the-predecessor-is-ending-and-its-broker-goes-with-it.md)).
      Retiring with it: the build outcome's second announcement under the module's own name, which
-      exists only so a catalogue deployed before the rename and one deployed after both hear it.
+      existed only so a catalogue deployed before the rename and one after both heard it.

      > **The remote tooling goes with it too.** The predecessor's own mesh talks over that broker, so
      > shutting it down ends the path that reaches this installation's machines from a workstation.
-      > The rollout has to be driven from the node, or driven before the broker stops — which is a
-      > sequencing constraint on 5.2 and not an afterthought.
+      > The rollout is driven from the node, or before the broker stops — a sequencing constraint on
+      > 5.2, not an afterthought.
+- [x] 5.5 **the AMQP transport is deleted from the control plane and the hosts**. One bus, nothing
+      to select ([ADR 0131](../../02-DECISIONS/0131-everything-on-the-mesh-speaks-to-the-broker-seat.md)).

-> **5.4 is gone, and was wrong from ADR 0127 onward.** It read "the deprecated broker retires
-> when its condition holds — no client connected for the period the operator sets", which is
-> ADR 0106's framing of it as a compatibility module with an end date.
-> [ADR 0127](../../02-DECISIONS/0127-amqp-is-a-provision-not-the-bus.md) settled that it is an
-> **ordinary provider** of the `amqp` provision, like any module answering a backing service:
-> no seat, not foundation, and **no retirement condition**, because the day its last client
-> disappears is not a day anything is waiting for. Removed rather than reworded — a step that
-> waits for a condition nobody set would sit open forever.
+      **Done 2026-09-28.** The control plane's old consume loop, build request, tool call, management
+      API and account scoping went, and the host's old dialling and enrolment paths with them; a
+      membership or token naming any other bus is refused before anything is sent. Nothing selects a
+      transport any more: the variable that once did (`MESH_BUS_NATS`) now only names where the
+      control plane reads its own bus credential, the way any module reads a secret. **Checked by the
+      build**: neither repository's module file names the AMQP client library, so a line that still
+      used it would not compile. The store-window guarantee ([issue 083](../../04-ISSUES/083-other-control-messages-are-lost-while-the-store-restarts/00-report.md))
+      is tested against a bus-less fake rather than the old transport's memory, which is what let
+      that memory go — the one thing it did that the stream does not (superseding a held report) is
+      the staleness check on the message itself (design 25 §3).
+
+      Found on the way: **no build had ever recorded what it stood on.** A recipe reads its base from
+      a build argument, so the digest was never in the file the builder derived edges from, and every
+      order that says *bases first* — `build --on`, `build --behind`, the merge follow-up of
+      [issue 131](../../04-ISSUES/131-nothing-tells-the-mesh-a-source-moved/00-report.md) — walked a
+      graph with no edges. The builder now reports the bases it was handed, the control plane records
+      them by artifact path, and the graph is read from the newest build of each module — a recorded
+      manifest carries no `build.on`, so the edge is derived from the build or it does not exist.
+
+> **The old 5.4 note is history.** It recorded that a retirement *condition* was wrong from
+> [ADR 0127](../../02-DECISIONS/0127-amqp-is-a-provision-not-the-bus.md) onward, which framed the old broker
+> as an ordinary provider with no end. [ADR 0131](../../02-DECISIONS/0131-everything-on-the-mesh-speaks-to-the-broker-seat.md) ends that
+> framing in turn: the broker is not kept as a provider either, because AMQP is not a provision. Both
+> readings are kept here so the two reversals can be read in order.

 **Done when.** Every node reports on NATS, and nothing of the mesh's own is left connected to the
 deprecated broker.
@@ -1,17 +1,29 @@
 ---
 layer: to-be
-status: proposed
-code: []
-updated: 2026-09-27
+status: in-progress
+code:
+  - mesh-controller internal/catalogue/declaration.go
+  - mesh-controller internal/catalogue/manifest.go
+  - mesh-controller internal/link/serve.go
+  - mesh-controller internal/link/bus.go
+  - mesh-controller internal/broker/nats.go
+  - mesh-controller internal/inventory/nodes.go
+  - mesh-host internal/apply/apply.go
+  - mesh-tools src/main.ts
+  - mesh-catalog modules/mesh-catalog
+updated: 2026-09-28
 decisions:
  - 02-DECISIONS/0126-a-module-declares-its-own-seats.md
-  - 02-DECISIONS/0127-amqp-is-a-provision-not-the-bus.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0131-everything-on-the-mesh-speaks-to-the-broker-seat.md
  - 02-DECISIONS/0128-the-mesh-bus-is-required-not-ambient.md
  - 02-DECISIONS/0106-the-bus-is-nats.md
  - 02-DECISIONS/0041-events-are-a-relationship.md
  - 02-DECISIONS/0112-a-module-definition-names-no-node-mesh-or-path.md
  - 02-DECISIONS/0083-one-push-leaves-the-mesh-consistent.md
  - 02-DECISIONS/0129-a-seat-carries-the-protocol-of-its-role.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0135-a-module-version-prepares-its-state-before-it-runs.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0136-a-step-gates-its-module-not-the-machine.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0134-the-mesh-says-what-it-applied.md
 ---

 # 32. What a module declares, and what the bus makes of it
@@ -258,10 +270,30 @@ queue.
 and publishes it last-per-subject. A node that was away gets exactly the current one, never a
 queue of superseded ones, and a replayed older one is refused by sequence.

+**A version prepares its state before it runs.** *Built 2026-09-28.* A module version may declare an
+entrypoint that brings its state to the shape that version needs — the same vocabulary as the entrypoints it declares for its
+tools and its provisioner, and nothing about how a machine runs it. The mesh runs that entrypoint as it
+runs the module's own code, to completion, in the module's own context, and a version whose preparation
+did not succeed does not run: the step gates that module and nothing else on the machine
+([ADR 0136](../../02-DECISIONS/0136-a-step-gates-its-module-not-the-machine.md)), and the rollout stops
+at the first machine that did not take it
+([ADR 0135](../../02-DECISIONS/0135-a-module-version-prepares-its-state-before-it-runs.md), superseding
+[ADR 0133](../../02-DECISIONS/0133-a-module-owns-its-migrations-and-the-mesh-owns-when-they-run.md)).
+Once per state, and the mesh derives what a state is: a consumer is a module on a machine, so what the
+mesh provisions is per consumer and preparation is too. No level to choose, and no race to lock against.
+
 **Applying is reported to a role.** The host applies and reports to the `mesh-controller` seat —
 not to an address it was given at genesis. Held and retried while the store restarts
 ([ADR 0083](../../02-DECISIONS/0083-one-push-leaves-the-mesh-consistent.md)).

+**And the mesh says what it applied.** *Built 2026-09-28.* A report is control traffic only the control plane reads, so the
+chain above went dark at the moment it touched a machine: nothing said which version a machine now runs,
+or that it refused to. The control plane states those as facts under its own seat's namespace, when what
+a machine runs changes rather than on every convergence pass, and anything that cares subscribes the way
+the catalogue subscribes to `built` ([ADR 0134](../../02-DECISIONS/0134-the-mesh-says-what-it-applied.md)).
+The facts are second-hand by design — one emitter, one ordering — and a machine that cannot reach the bus
+produces none, so absence is not health.
+
 What disappears across that chain is every address. No webhook URL, no registered callback, no
 "which node is the builder on", no controller endpoint baked into a joining node. That is the
 class of bug
@@ -357,7 +389,7 @@ controller — because the bus's accounts are configuration rather than somethin
 creates, so there is no provisioner process in the path and nothing waiting on a bus account in
 order to make bus accounts. A module that runs a NATS server of its own and offers it as a
 backing service provides **`nats`**, exactly as the deprecated broker provides `amqp`
-([ADR 0127](../../02-DECISIONS/0127-amqp-is-a-provision-not-the-bus.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): AMQP is not a provision, and everything speaks to the `mesh-broker` seat)).

 They are never the same name. A manifest saying `nats` could otherwise mean either the mesh's
 nervous system or a private queue, and the difference between those is the whole architecture.
@@ -427,7 +459,7 @@ it as an ordinary module once the registry exists.

 So there are exactly two things the normal path cannot make, both at genesis, both ending the
 moment the mesh can mint for itself: **the bus's own accounts** (§the bootstrap argument in
-[ADR 0127](../../02-DECISIONS/0127-amqp-is-a-provision-not-the-bus.md) (superseding [ADR 0125](../../02-DECISIONS/0125-the-bus-is-the-only-broker.md)) — a provisioner is a module and
+[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): AMQP is not a provision, and everything speaks to the `mesh-broker` seat) (superseding [ADR 0125](../../02-DECISIONS/0125-the-bus-is-the-only-broker.md)) — a provisioner is a module and
 needs an account before it can run) and **the vault's own credential**. Any third exception is a
 design failure, and naming these two is what makes a third one visible.

@@ -439,6 +471,10 @@ it is the residue of a question the rest of §8 answers and the part a fingerpri
 **Whether a module may declare a seat it does not itself claim** — the contract as one thing, the
 implementation as another, which is how two competing implementations would ever exist.

+**Whether a container should have a readiness notion.** Only an action carries `verify`, so a step that
+must run once a service *answers* — seeding through its own API — cannot be declared at all. Named here
+because the steps above make the gap obvious, not because they caused it.
+
 **Whether `consumes` naming another module couples too tightly.** It is kept here deliberately —
 an event's provenance is its meaning — but a consumer of `billing.order.placed` does depend on
 billing existing under that name.
@@ -447,6 +483,11 @@ billing existing under that name.

 - **A manifest holds no subject.** A catalogue test: no manifest contains a string matching the
  subject grammar. The rule is worthless if it is followed by convention.
+- **A preparation is given what the module is given.** A composition test: what the preparation
+  entrypoint receives equals what the module's own code receives, asserted rather than written twice —
+  which is the drift a hand-written step invites, three times over in the catalogue today.
+- **A convergence that changed nothing says nothing.** Two identical reports, one emitted fact: what is
+  guarded against is a fact per minute per machine, which is a stream nobody reads.
 - **Permissions are exactly the three namespaces.** A composition test per module: the derived
  permission set equals what its declaration implies, and a hand-written addition to it fails.
 - **A sender cannot read the queue it writes to.** A bed: a module declaring `uses` is refused
@@ -0,0 +1,137 @@
+---
+layer: to-be
+status: designed
+code: []
+updated: 2026-09-28
+decisions:
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0132-a-seat-carries-the-tools-its-holder-must-serve.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0129-a-seat-carries-the-protocol-of-its-role.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0095-the-control-plane-is-the-way-to-ask-a-module.md
+---
+
+# 33 — The tools the mesh answers
+
+**An agent can call the mesh's tools and cannot find out what they are.** Both halves were measured
+on the live mesh on 2026-09-28: a client holding an operator credential connected to the bus, asked a
+module for its repositories and got them; the same client's request for the tool list found nothing
+serving it. The transport works, the account model works, the adapter that speaks the agent protocol
+works. What is missing is the mesh being able to say what it can do.
+
+This design is the answer to that question, and it has three families in it, because a tool belongs to
+whoever is accountable for answering it.
+
+## 1. Three families, and why the split is not arbitrary
+
+| Family | Addressed to | Where the definition lives | Example |
+|---|---|---|---|
+| A **role's** tools | the seat: `mesh.seat.<seat>.tool.<verb>` | the seat's protocol, in the mesh's records | ask *the forge* to list its repositories |
+| A **module's** tools | the module: `mesh.mod.<module>.tool.<name>` | that module's code | ask *this gitea* for `gitea_list_repos` |
+| The **mesh's** own verbs | the `mesh-controller` seat | the seat's protocol, as above | `status`, `push`, `build`, `assign` |
+
+The split follows accountability. A role is something the mesh guarantees exactly one holder of, so
+what the role answers is the mesh's to define and a holder's to implement
+([ADR 0132](../../02-DECISIONS/0132-a-seat-carries-the-tools-its-holder-must-serve.md)). A module's
+own tools are nobody's business but the module's, and their definitions live where they are
+implemented, because a copy kept anywhere else drifts from the code that answers.
+
+The mesh's own verbs are the third family only in where they come from, not in kind: the control plane
+holds a seat like anything else, and its tools are that seat's. This is what keeps them addressable
+while the control plane is being replaced, which is the moment they are most needed.
+
+**Both names for one capability is deliberate and bounded to this.** A forge holding the `git` seat
+answers the role's `list_repos` and its own `gitea_list_repos`, because the same module may run
+without the seat — a second instance, kept for one purpose — and then only the second name is true.
+The caller chooses which question it is asking. Nothing else in the mesh gets two names.
+
+## 2. What a seat's tool is
+
+A verb, what it does, and the schema of its arguments and its answer. A name alone is not callable by
+something that has never seen the mesh before, which is the whole population this surface exists for.
+
+The protocol a seat carries today is three lists of bare verbs
+([ADR 0129](../../02-DECISIONS/0129-a-seat-carries-the-protocol-of-its-role.md)), and it must widen to
+carry the rest. Two constraints on that widening:
+
+- **It lives in the mesh's records, not in the control plane's binary.** Today a seat's protocol comes
+  from compiled defaults, merged in as a row is read, because the seat rows never gained the columns.
+  Discovery that reads a binary is discovery that disagrees with the mesh the moment the two are on
+  different versions.
+- **The schema is stated in the form an agent protocol already uses**, so nothing translates between a
+  seat's idea of an argument and the caller's. A translation layer would be a second definition of
+  what a tool is.
+
+## 3. Holding a seat means serving its tools
+
+A module may not occupy a seat unless it serves every verb that seat declares. This joins the
+conditions of holding that already exist — providing what the seat delivers, being assigned at the
+seat's scope — and is refused the same way: at registration and at handover, naming the verbs that are
+missing rather than the fact that something is.
+
+A module knows which seats it claims, so knowing which tools it must serve is not a discovery problem
+for the module: the seat says, the module implements, and anything beyond that is its own.
+
+## 4. Addressing a node-scoped seat
+
+A seat's subject is flat today — `mesh.seat.<seat>.<kind>.<verb>` — which is correct for a seat the
+mesh has one holder of and wrong for the six node-scoped seats, where one subject would reach every
+machine's holder and the holders' queue group would hand the call to whichever answered first. A
+node-scoped seat's tool therefore carries the node it is asked of. Nothing about a mesh-scoped seat
+changes.
+
+## 5. Discovery
+
+**What a role answers is a read.** The seats and their protocols are records, so the list is a query
+against the mesh's own store: no call to a module in the path, nothing that has to be running, and an
+answer that stays true while a holder is restarting or being replaced.
+
+**What a module answers comes from the module.** Its definitions live in its code, so it is asked, and
+the answer is as available as the module is — which is the right coupling for a tool that only exists
+while that module does.
+
+A caller therefore gets one list assembled from two sources, and the difference is visible in it: a
+role's tool names a seat, a module's names a module. An agent that wants to survive a holder being
+replaced binds to the first.
+
+## 6. What serves this to an agent
+
+A module the mesh assigns to the machine where the agent runs, holding a credential the mesh minted,
+with authority derived from what it may call — not a program started by hand with a credential printed
+to a terminal. The adapter itself already exists and is thin by design; what changes is that it stops
+being something a person carries and becomes something the mesh runs, on a node, like everything else.
+
+An agent's authority can then be role-shaped: *the forge's tools*, rather than a list of
+module-specific names that changes the day the forge is replaced.
+
+## 7. Versioning
+
+A seat's tools are an interface and change like one. Additive within a version. A change that would
+break a caller takes the version token the subject already has room for, and the two versions run side
+by side until nothing is bound to the old one.
+
+## How it is checked
+
+- **A holder missing a verb cannot take the seat.** One test per condition of holding, as the existing
+  conditions have, and the live refusal names the verbs.
+- **A verb nobody declared is a subject nobody may use.** The bus grants are derived from the seat's
+  protocol already, and the golden composition of the user list is what keeps that honest: a holder is
+  granted exactly the seat's verbs, a user of the seat exactly the publish side.
+- **Discovery needs no running module.** The test for a role's tools reads records and asserts the
+  answer equals what the seats declare — if it needed a module up, it would not be a read.
+- **Two nodes holding one node-scoped seat derive two addresses.** Checked by the same test as the rest
+  of the subject table.
+
+## What this does not settle
+
+- Which verbs each seat should serve. That is a decision per seat, and the reason to do it slowly: a
+  seat's tools bind every future holder.
+- Whether a module's own tool definitions should also be recorded when a build resolves its manifest.
+  There is an argument for it — the mesh could then answer for a module that is down — and an argument
+  against, which is that a recorded copy of a live definition is a copy that can be wrong.
+
+## References
+
+- [ADR 0132](../../02-DECISIONS/0132-a-seat-carries-the-tools-its-holder-must-serve.md) — the decision this designs
+- [ADR 0129](../../02-DECISIONS/0129-a-seat-carries-the-protocol-of-its-role.md) — a seat carries the protocol of its role
+- [ADR 0095](../../02-DECISIONS/0095-the-control-plane-is-the-way-to-ask-a-module.md) — a tool call passes one process where an audit belongs
+- [`26-the-seats.md`](26-the-seats.md) — what a seat is, how it is held and handed over
+- [`25-the-bus-on-nats.md`](25-the-bus-on-nats.md) §7 — a person's account, their inbox, and the adapter
@@ -40,7 +40,7 @@ document is written and this one's status becomes `implemented`.
 | [`28-building-the-bus.md`](28-building-the-bus.md) | **Proposed.** The five steps of the bus work in the order their dependencies allow, each ending at a bed — with the surface measured, so no step's size is a guess | [ADR 0116](../../02-DECISIONS/0116-the-bus-is-built-in-five-steps.md), [ADR 0106](../../02-DECISIONS/0106-the-bus-is-nats.md), [ADR 0074](../../02-DECISIONS/0074-the-wire-is-specified-not-the-types.md) |
 | [`29-a-node-has-operator-accounts.md`](29-a-node-has-operator-accounts.md) | **Proposed.** The mesh models machines but not the humans on them: a node gains operator accounts, and a resource may live under a home owned by its account — what would own ~/.ssh, dotfiles and ~/.config when HAL retires | [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) (superseding [ADR 0125](../../02-DECISIONS/0125-the-bus-is-the-only-broker.md)), [ADR 0041](../../02-DECISIONS/0041-events-are-a-relationship.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) |

 ## Not yet written

@@ -0,0 +1,107 @@
+---
+status: resolved
+opened: 2026-09-27
+located-in: [mesh-catalog modules/gitea, mesh-controller cmd/mesh-controller, mesh-controller internal/builder]
+fixed-by: mesh-catalog #124 — the forge module watches for merged pull requests and emits `pull.merged` with the merge commit and the clone address; mesh-controller #110/#111 — the control plane follows that event on the bus, marks every module built from that repository and branch as moved, and builds them bases first, stopping when a base fails; mesh-controller #113/#114 — a build records the bases it was handed and the graph is read from builds, without which "bases first" had no edges to order by.
+amended-design: 03-DESIGN/01-to-be/28-building-the-bus.md
+---
+
+# 131 — Nothing tells the mesh a source moved, and it reports itself current anyway
+
+## What was observed
+
+Six changes were merged to the trunk of six repositories in one sitting. The build machine built
+nothing. Its last build, minutes before the first merge, was still the one it reported; no build was
+requested, refused or failed, because none was ever asked for.
+
+Asked afterwards what was wrong, the mesh said:
+
+> 4 machine(s), all doing what they were told, all heard from, running what the mesh would send them,
+> and every module current with its source
+
+Every one of the six had moved. The last clause was false for all of them, and it is the clause a
+person reads to decide whether there is anything to do.
+
+## Why it matters beyond this instance
+
+**The mesh learns a source moved by being told, and there is no longer anything to tell it.** The
+command exists — a person names the module and the commit — and so does the question the overview
+answers. What is missing is whatever used to connect the two. One repository still carries a forge
+webhook aimed at a port; the rest carry none, and the port belongs to a different service than the
+one the arrangement implies. So the state is not "the trigger is broken" but "there is no trigger,
+and nothing says so".
+
+**A wrong answer is worse here than no answer.** "Every module current with its source" is
+indistinguishable, to a reader, from a mesh that has genuinely caught up. The overview is built to be
+the thing you check instead of checking by hand, so a confident false negative removes the habit that
+would otherwise have caught it. Nothing in the mesh is at fault for being out of date — it is at
+fault for saying it is not.
+
+**It is also why "current with its source" cannot be a stored fact.** The mesh compares what it built
+against what it was last told the source was, and calls that agreement. Two facts agreeing tells you
+nothing when both come from the same place.
+
+## The intended shape, which is decided and not built
+
+The forge emits what happened to it — a pull request merged — and the build machine reacts by
+building what that commit affects. That keeps the forge ignorant of the build system and the build
+machine ignorant of the forge's internals, which is the same argument
+[ADR 0126](../../02-DECISIONS/0126-a-module-declares-its-own-seats.md) makes for addressing an event
+to its emitter: the merge is a fact about the forge, and what should be rebuilt because of it is not
+the forge's business to know.
+
+The forge's module already declares the event. The build machine declares that it consumes nothing.
+
+## What the trigger cannot be
+
+**Not one build per changed module.** The modules form a graph: several are built from one
+repository, and some are the base another is compiled on — a runtime image, a compiler base, a
+repository whose context a second module builds from. Firing a build for each changed module
+independently would start work that cannot succeed yet and produce a failure per dependent, for one
+cause.
+
+Observed while catching the mesh up by hand on 2026-09-27: a compiler base had to move before
+anything compiled against it could build, and when it failed, the right behaviour was for its
+dependents to wait rather than each fail the same way. Fifteen modules shared the cause. A trigger
+that reports it fifteen times has buried it.
+
+So whatever reacts to the forge's event resolves what changed into an order, builds the bases first,
+and holds a dependent while its base is unbuilt or failed. That is a larger thing than "rebuild what
+the commit touched", and knowing it now is cheaper than discovering it from fifteen identical
+failures.
+
+## Open questions
+
+- Is "the source moved" still a thing a person can assert by hand once the event path exists, or does
+  the hand-operated form become the thing that made this failure possible?
+- Which commit does the build machine act on — the merge, or each commit it brought — and what does
+  it do when several arrive for one module at once?
+- How does the overview stop being able to lie? Comparing what was built against what was recorded
+  will always agree. Whether the trunk has moved is a question only the forge can answer, so either
+  the overview asks it, or it stops claiming to know.
+- Does this want to be the same mechanism as the build request on the bus
+  ([ADR 0129](../../02-DECISIONS/0129-a-seat-carries-the-protocol-of-its-role.md)), or does it sit in
+  front of it?
+
+## What was done (2026-09-28)
+
+The shape above was built as described: the forge's module emits the merge, the control plane
+consumes it, and nothing on either side knows the other's internals. The build is asked for the
+merge commit, not each commit the merge brought — the trunk moved once, to one place. Several merges
+for one module arriving in a row are followed in turn, each moving the recorded source to its own
+commit, so the last one to arrive is the one the mesh ends up built from.
+
+The hand-operated form stays. `module moved` is how a source is recorded without a forge — a module
+built from a repository elsewhere, or a mesh whose forge module is down — and it is the same act the
+event performs, so the two cannot disagree about what "moved" means.
+
+**Bases first needed edges, and there were none.** The order this report asked for was written and
+walked a graph that no build had ever recorded: a recipe reads its base from a build argument, so the
+digest was never in the file the builder read edges from. A build now reports what it was handed, the
+control plane records it by artifact path, and the order is read from each module's newest build.
+
+**What still can lie.** The overview compares what was built against where it was last told the
+source is; the forge's event is now what moves that mark, so it is right for as long as the forge
+module was listening. A merge made while that module was down is a merge the mesh does not know of
+until the module next polls — it announces what merged since it last looked, so the gap closes when
+it comes back, and not before. The overview does not say so.
@@ -0,0 +1,60 @@
+---
+status: resolved
+opened: 2026-09-28
+located-in: [mesh-controller cmd/mesh-controller]
+fixed-by: mesh-controller — `module add` takes `--path` and `--self`, so a module handed over by hand records the whole location it came from; a record naming a repository and no directory says so in the reply; the rule is one function with a test beside it. The nine records already wrong were corrected by rebuilding each with its real directory, which is the same act through the same door.
+amended-design:
+---
+
+# 132 — A module can be recorded without the directory it lives in
+
+## What was observed
+
+Nine modules on one mesh could not be rebuilt. Each attempt failed the same way:
+
+> has no module.json at its root, so there is nothing saying what it is
+
+All nine were recorded as coming from a repository that holds many modules, each in its own
+directory — and each record named the repository and no directory. So every build cloned the
+repository and looked for a manifest where there has never been one.
+
+The failure only surfaced when something asked for all of them at once. Before that, the overview
+said every module was current with its source, because what it compares is what was built against
+what the mesh was last told the source has, and neither half knows whether the source can be found
+at all.
+
+## Why it matters beyond this instance
+
+**A module is a repository and a directory inside it** ([ADR 0069](../../02-DECISIONS/0069-a-module-is-a-repository-and-a-path.md)),
+and one of the two doors into the catalogue could record only the first half. A build records the
+directory it was given, so a module that arrived by being built is always whole; a module handed over
+by hand had no way to say where it lived, and the flag to say it did not exist. The rule was decided
+and enforced on one path out of two.
+
+**Half a location reads exactly like a whole one.** Nothing in the record is empty in a way a person
+would notice: the repository is there, the branch is there, the commit is there. The mesh only finds
+out at the moment it needs the manifest, which is the moment it is trying to rebuild — and the module
+stays on whatever it last built, indefinitely, with nothing saying why.
+
+**It is the same shape as [131](../131-nothing-tells-the-mesh-a-source-moved/00-report.md).** A
+comparison between two facts the mesh holds about itself will agree with itself. Whether the source
+can be found is a question only an attempt to read it answers, and the answer had nowhere to go.
+
+## What was done
+
+`module add` takes the directory and which forge holds the repository, so a hand-registered module
+records the same whole location a built one does. What a record must say to be worth anything is one
+function with a test beside it, rather than a paragraph in a help string: provenance together or not
+at all, a directory needs a repository to be inside, a path on the mesh's own forge is not an address.
+And a record that names a repository but no directory says so when it is made — not refused, because a
+module really at a repository's root is ordinary, but said, because the person adding it is the one
+who knows which it is.
+
+The nine wrong records were corrected by building each with its real directory, which re-records it.
+No row was written by hand.
+
+## What is still true
+
+A directory that does not exist in the repository cannot be refused when the module is added: the
+control plane does not clone, and inventing a check there would mean it did. The first build says so
+plainly, which is one build rather than nine, and the record it leaves behind is right from then on.
@@ -0,0 +1,78 @@
+---
+status: resolved
+opened: 2026-09-28
+located-in: [mesh-controller module.json]
+fixed-by: mesh-controller — the control plane's module declares a run-once `migrate` step before its server, which is the shape ADR 0052 prescribes for exactly this. A step's record of having run is the digest of its declaration and the image is part of that digest, so a new build of the control plane re-runs it; and because a run-once step gates what the declaration places after it, a migration that fails stops the new server from starting at all rather than letting it run against a schema it does not have.
+amended-design: 03-DESIGN/01-to-be/32-what-a-module-declares.md
+---
+
+# 133 — The control plane's schema is migrated at birth and never again
+
+## What was observed
+
+On 2026-09-28 at 08:17 the control plane was replaced, by the mesh's own upgrade path, with a build
+whose code writes a column that a migration **in that same build** creates. Nothing ran the migration.
+
+For the next three quarters of an hour the mesh built things and recorded none of them. Every build
+answered:
+
+> ERROR: column "built_contexts" of relation "build" does not exist (SQLSTATE 42703)
+
+and that sentence went only to whoever happened to be waiting on a build's reply. The overview kept
+saying the mesh was fine. The builds themselves worked — images were built and published — so the
+registry filled up with artifacts the mesh has no record of, and the graph stopped learning without
+anything saying so.
+
+The schema was created once, at genesis, by an action in the foundation bundle that runs the same
+binary's `migrate`. Nothing runs it again. The mesh has updated its own control plane many times since
+that bundle, and every one of those updates carried whatever migrations the new build brought and
+applied none of them. This is the first time a build needed one.
+
+## Why it matters beyond this instance
+
+**The schema and the code that needs it ship as one artifact and are applied by two mechanisms, only
+one of which is automatic.** A module's version is atomic everywhere else in the mesh — the manifest,
+the image and what the machine runs move together. Its schema did not, so "the mesh updates itself on
+a push" was true of the code and false of what the code needs.
+
+**The failure is quiet exactly where quiet is worst.** A build that cannot be recorded is a build that
+happened and left no trace, which is the fault [issue 050](../050-the-catalogue-knows-nothing-built-before-it/00-report.md)
+and [issue 131](../131-nothing-tells-the-mesh-a-source-moved/00-report.md) are both about. The mesh
+has three mechanisms for noticing a module is behind its source and none for noticing that what it
+recorded was refused.
+
+**The shape was already decided, and the control plane was the one module that did not use it.**
+[ADR 0052](../../02-DECISIONS/0052-a-step-that-runs-once-before-a-container.md) says a run-once container is a
+step the host runs to completion before whatever the declaration places after it, and names migrating
+a schema as the case it exists for. The genesis code's own comment says a manifest may name its image
+in more than one resource — "a migrate step beside the server". The control plane's manifest had no
+such step; it went straight from a state directory to the server.
+
+## What is still true
+
+**Additive migrations are load-bearing, not a style preference.** The step runs before the *new*
+server starts, which means the old binary briefly runs against the new schema. A migration that
+removes or renames something would break the running control plane in the window between the two.
+
+**A hand-written step is one the next module forgets**, which is why this fix is not where the matter
+ends: [ADR 0135](../../02-DECISIONS/0135-a-module-version-prepares-its-state-before-it-runs.md) makes it
+derived and puts it where an author works: a module version declares an entrypoint that prepares its
+state, and the mesh composes the gated work from it, so the control plane stops being the only module
+that had to remember. That record also settles the level question HAL answered with stages — a consumer
+is a module on a machine, so the scope of preparation is the scope of the state — and
+[ADR 0134](../../02-DECISIONS/0134-the-mesh-says-what-it-applied.md) answers the second open question
+below: what a machine applied, and what it refused, become facts on the bus rather than a line in a log.
+
+**The mesh now has two shapes for one problem.** The catalogue module migrates its own schema in its
+own code when it starts; the control plane migrates in a step the host gates on. Both work and the
+reasons differ — a module that owns its store entirely can do it at start, while a step is visible in
+the declaration and refuses to let a broken upgrade serve. Which one the mesh should standardise on is
+a decision, not a fix, and it is not made here.
+
+## Open questions
+
+- Should a module be refusable at registration when it ships migrations and declares no step and no
+  other way to apply them? The mesh can see both halves.
+- Should a record the store refuses reach the overview? Today the only reader of that failure is
+  whoever asked for the thing that failed, and for an event arriving on the bus there is no such
+  person.
@@ -0,0 +1,66 @@
+---
+status: open
+opened: 2026-09-28
+located-in: [mesh-catalog, mesh-controller internal/catalogue]
+fixed-by:
+amended-design:
+---
+
+# 134 — A definition may still name the mesh, and the check that would say so does not exist
+
+## What was observed
+
+[ADR 0112](../../02-DECISIONS/0112-a-module-definition-names-no-node-mesh-or-path.md) says a module
+definition names no node, no mesh and no host path, and states how that is checked:
+
+> A catalogue test finds no domain name in any definition value.
+
+There is no such test. Run by hand on 2026-09-28, across the 72 manifests in the catalogue, the
+question it asks has 15 answers. They are not all the same kind of thing, and the difference matters
+more than the count:
+
+**Values the mesh acts on** — seven:
+
+| module | where | what it names |
+|---|---|---|
+| keycloak | `env.KC_HOSTNAME` | this installation's public name for itself |
+| minio | `env.MINIO_BROWSER_REDIRECT_URL` | the same, for its console |
+| invoicing | a resource's `image` | a named registry rather than the mesh's artifact store |
+| builder | `build.artifacts[].context.repository` | the forge, by URL |
+| route-proxy | `build.artifacts[].context.repository` | the forge, by URL |
+| route-adapter | a resource's `content` | a proxy's dynamic configuration |
+| novox.be | `module` | the module is named after the domain it serves |
+
+**Prose** — eight, in `listens[].why`: de-spiegel, mailu, n8n, only-office, photos, photos-eef,
+photos-filip, portainer. Each explains what a port is for and mentions the public name it is reached
+by. Nothing reads these; a check written as a string search would report them, and reporting them as
+violations of the same rule would be wrong.
+
+## Why it matters beyond this instance
+
+**An unenforced rule is indistinguishable from a wrong one, and costs more, because people believe
+it.** The record says the mesh is name-agnostic, four design documents rest on that, and a reader
+checking whether it holds finds that it does not — in the places that matter most. The two forge URLs
+are what a build reaches into for its source; the two hostnames are what a service tells a browser
+about itself.
+
+**It is the difference between a mesh and this mesh.** A definition carrying `novox.be` is a
+definition that can only be installed here. The whole point of the rule is that the same catalogue
+raises a different mesh with a different name, and today seven modules would need editing to do it.
+
+**And the shape of the fix is not the same for each.** A public name is an operator's choice about an
+assignment, which ADR 0112 already provides for; a forge URL should be a path on the git seat
+([ADR 0111](../../02-DECISIONS/0111-a-build-source-is-on-the-git-seat-or-external.md)); an image from a named
+registry is a question about the artifact store, not about naming. Counting them together would hide
+that.
+
+## Open questions
+
+- Does a domain in a `why` string break the rule? It is documentation the mesh never reads, and a
+  check that cannot tell the two apart will either pass things it should catch or fail things nobody
+  should change.
+- Where does a service's public name live, concretely — a setting on the assignment, or a fact the
+  mesh composes from the node's domain? ADR 0112 says a requirement the mesh resolves; the two
+  hostnames above are the first real cases.
+- Should a build context name a repository on the git seat rather than by URL, and if so, what does
+  that mean for a context in *another* mesh's forge?
@@ -0,0 +1,70 @@
+---
+status: resolved
+opened: 2026-09-28
+located-in: [mesh-host internal/apply]
+fixed-by: mesh-host — a container's mesh names are part of the spec digest the host compares, sorted so the digest does not move for a reordering. A container whose names moved is now recreated like a container whose image moved, and the test fails against the previous behaviour.
+amended-design:
+---
+
+# 135 — A container's mesh names are not compared, so a moved address is never noticed
+
+## What was observed
+
+One container on this mesh had been restarting every thirty seconds for five days — 2286 times — and
+the mesh reported the machine as doing what it was told.
+
+Its logs said its database connected and then a query timed out. The database was reachable: the same
+query from the same network, with the same credential, answered in milliseconds. What differed was the
+name. Inside that container, `novox.internal` resolved to `10.42.0.1`; in every other container on the
+machine it resolved to `10.10.0.1`. The mesh's overlay range had moved, and this container still held
+the old one:
+
+```
+umami          created 2026-09-23   novox.internal:10.42.0.1
+mesh-catalog   created today        novox.internal:10.10.0.1
+```
+
+A container resolves other machines and public names through the entries the mesh gives it when it is
+created, and nothing re-reads them afterwards. The host compares a container against what was declared
+by a digest of its spec — image, name, environment, ports, volumes, arguments, resolver, address, and
+what it reads — and **the mesh's names were not in it**. So this container matched what was declared,
+was left alone, and kept an address that had not existed for five days.
+
+Forty-eight other containers had current names. Not because anything corrected them: each had been
+recreated for some other reason — a new image, a changed file — and picked up the current roster on the
+way. This one's image is an upstream release that had not moved, and nothing else about it changed, so
+nothing ever recreated it.
+
+## Why it matters beyond this instance
+
+**It is the exact fault [issue 045](../045-a-container-keeps-the-values-it-started-with/00-report.md)
+named, in the one field that was left out.** That issue is why the digest carries what a container
+reads: "a container whose configuration had since been rewritten compared equal and was left alone —
+running values the machine no longer holds, while every check reported success." The same sentence
+describes this, with *names* in place of *files*.
+
+**The failure is invisible in exactly the way that matters.** The container runs, so the machine
+reports it applied. It restarts, but a restarting container is a normal sight during an upgrade. The
+only account of the fault is inside the container's own log, in the words of the application rather
+than of the mesh — and what it says is that a query timed out, which points at the database.
+
+**And it is most likely to bite what changes least.** Every container that is rebuilt often repairs
+itself by accident. The victim is the module whose image is stable — which is to say, the module that
+was working fine.
+
+## What was done
+
+The mesh's names are part of the digest, sorted so the digest does not move for a reordering nobody
+made. A container whose names moved is now recreated exactly as one whose image moved.
+
+The first apply after this recreates every container that carries mesh names — one restart each,
+already the price the mesh pays for any image update — because their recorded digests predate the
+field.
+
+## What is still true
+
+The mesh gives a container its names at creation and has no way to change them in place. That is the
+container runtime's shape, not a choice; the answer is to recreate, which is what this does. A module
+that would rather re-read a roster from a file can already ask for one as a fact
+([ADR 0120](../../02-DECISIONS/0120-a-roster-fact-carries-its-format-as-a-template.md)) and restart on
+it.
@@ -0,0 +1,92 @@
+---
+status: resolved
+opened: 2026-09-28
+located-in: [mesh-catalog modules/fail2ban]
+fixed-by: mesh-catalog — the intrusion-prevention module bans through an action it ships itself, already in use on every machine, instead of naming a firewall front-end two of them do not have. The instance is closed; the class in "What is still true" is not.
+amended-design:
+---
+
+# 136 — A module may name a program the machine does not have, and everything reports success
+
+## What was observed
+
+Two machines were given the intrusion-prevention module on 2026-09-28. Both refused to start it:
+
+```
+ERROR Failed during configuration: Have not found any log file for 'recidive' jail.
+ERROR Async configuration of server failed
+fail2ban.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=255/EXCEPTION
+```
+
+The jail that bans whoever keeps coming back reads the service's *own* log, and the service checks
+every jail's log file while it configures itself — before it has created that log. The module
+declared the jail and shipped the rotation for that log, and never declared the log. On the two
+machines where it had run for years the file was simply there, so nothing had ever noticed.
+
+That failure was loud. Fixing it uncovered a second one in the same module that is not.
+
+The module's defaults named `ufw` as the way to ban an address. Two of these four machines have no
+`ufw` — they filter with nftables — and nothing checks that until an address is banned. Asked to ban
+a documentation address on such a machine, the service accepted the instruction, counted it, ran the
+command, and wrote this to a log nobody reads:
+
+```
+ERROR   ... -- stderr: '/bin/sh: line 5: ufw: command not found'
+ERROR   ... -- returned 127
+ERROR   Failed to execute ban jail 'sshd' action 'ufw' ... Error banning 192.0.2.99
+```
+
+No rule existed afterwards. Throughout, the unit was `active`, the module was applied, and the
+machine's report said so. **A machine had been added to the mesh's intrusion prevention, reported as
+protected, and was banning nobody.**
+
+## Why it matters beyond this instance
+
+**The two faults are the same mistake with opposite symptoms.** Both are the module assuming
+something about the machine — a file that happens to exist, a program that happens to be installed.
+One stopped the service, which anybody notices. The other left it running and empty, which nobody
+does. A mesh that only catches the loud one is a mesh whose coverage is unknown.
+
+**"The unit is running" was taken for "the module is doing its job".** That is the only health a
+service resource has. It is the right answer for most modules and it is silent for any module whose
+work happens later, on an event — a ban, a renewal, a backup, a notification. The report cannot
+distinguish "protecting this machine" from "installed and inert".
+
+**And it is exactly the naming rule, one level down.**
+[ADR 0112](../../02-DECISIONS/0112-a-module-definition-names-no-node-mesh-or-path.md) says a
+definition names no node, no mesh and no host path, because the same definition has to raise a
+different mesh. `ufw` is not a node name, but it is the same class of assumption: a value the module
+cannot know, true on some machines and false on others, written as though it were a constant. The
+module already knew how to do better a few lines away — the mesh's own address range is named there
+as something the machine fills in.
+
+## What was done
+
+The module declares the log its own jail reads, created once and never touched again, since what
+grows in it is the service's and the rotation the module already ships is what keeps it small. And
+it bans through the action it ships itself, which every machine here can run, which was already in
+use by the other jail on all four, and which covers a container's published port as well as the
+host's own.
+
+All four machines now run it, with both jails, and a ban lands on each — verified by banning and
+unbanning a documentation address on every one.
+
+## What is still true
+
+**Nothing would have caught either fault before it shipped.** The control plane reads a manifest, not
+a machine; `ufw` and `/var/log/…` are strings in a file it has no way to evaluate. The host could in
+principle be asked whether a declared program exists, but no resource says "this file names a command
+that must be there", so there is nothing to check.
+
+**Two machines' bans from before this are stale rules in the old front-end**, which the service no
+longer knows about and will never lift. They reject two addresses for ever. Harmless, and a reminder
+that changing how a module enforces something leaves what it already enforced behind.
+
+## Open questions
+
+- What does a service resource's health mean for a module whose work is event-driven? A unit being
+  active is the weakest claim available, and four of this mesh's modules are of that kind.
+- Should a declaration be able to say that a resource depends on a program, so the machine can refuse
+  what it cannot carry out rather than reporting success?
+- Where should the packet filter a module bans through come from — the module's own choice, as now,
+  or the seat that owns the machine's filtering?
Author	SHA1	Message	Date
jschoubben	bff32e3370	Issue 136: a module may name a program the machine does not have, and everything reports success	2026-09-28 20:50:35 +02:00
mesh-admin	d6b62387f2	Merge pull request 'Issue 135: a container's mesh names are not compared' (#165 ) from issue/135-a-containers-mesh-names into main	2026-09-28 15:19:37 +00:00
jschoubben	4789624857	Issue 135: a container's mesh names are not compared, so a moved address is never noticed One container restarted 2286 times over five days while the mesh reported the machine as doing what it was told. Its overlay address was five days out of date: the host compares a container by a digest of its spec, and the mesh's names were not in it, so a container whose image and files never changed was left alone holding a name that no longer resolved. Forty-eight others were current only because something else had recreated them. The same fault as issue 045, in the field that was left out. Resolved by putting the names in the digest.	2026-09-28 17:19:35 +02:00
mesh-admin	e00862e317	Merge pull request 'ADR 0112 is accepted, and issue 134 records what it is not yet' (#164 ) from decision/0112-accepted-and-issue-134 into main	2026-09-28 15:12:15 +00:00
jschoubben	3a92e4b80c	ADR 0112 is accepted, and issue 134 records what it is not yet 0120 was already accepted; what failed the check was that it rests on 0112, still marked proposed — and so do four designs. The decision stands: a definition names no node, no mesh and no host path, and everything a module needs is a requirement the mesh resolves. Accepting it makes the gap visible rather than hiding it, so issue 134 states it. 0112 says how it is checked — 'a catalogue test finds no domain name in any definition value' — and there is no such test. Asked by hand: seven modules name this installation in a value the mesh acts on, and eight mention a public name in prose nothing reads. The two are not the same fault and the fixes differ, which is why the issue separates them rather than counting to fifteen.	2026-09-28 17:12:12 +02:00
mesh-admin	bfddf78bf3	Merge pull request 'Design 32: what shipped today, and the records it rests on' (#163 ) from design/28-and-32-what-shipped into main	2026-09-28 14:50:44 +00:00
jschoubben	0b291d89f3	Design 32: what shipped today, and the records it rests on Two of its statements are built — a version preparing its state, and the mesh saying what it applied — so the document is in-progress rather than proposed, and names the code that owns them. Resting on a live record rather than a superseded one: 0127 was replaced by 0131. What this exposes is pre-existing: it also rests on ADR 0112, which is still proposed, and a document that is not itself proposed may not. ADR 0120 has rested on it the same way for a while. Accepting or superseding 0112 is a decision, not a cleanup, so it stays visible in the check rather than papered over.	2026-09-28 16:50:41 +02:00
mesh-admin	a924efcc28	Merge pull request 'ADR 0136: a step gates its module, not the machine' (#162 ) from decision/0136-a-step-gates-its-module into main	2026-09-28 13:38:18 +00:00
jschoubben	b421c73a5a	ADR 0136: a step gates its module, not the machine ADR 0135 made a step something the mesh derives for any module that prepares its state, which turned ADR 0052's reach into a fault: a module whose database is briefly unreachable would stop every module declared after it on that machine — the fault issue 011 already removed for every other shape, and the reason the catalogue migrates itself at start rather than in a step. A step now stops the rest of its own module and nothing else; an action still gates the machine, because genesis is a row of them and they belong to no module. What was not attempted is reported as skipped rather than left to be inferred from silence.	2026-09-28 15:38:16 +02:00
mesh-admin	017b1401e4	Merge pull request 'ADR 0135: a module version prepares its state before it runs' (#161 ) from decision/0133-0134-migrations-and-deploy-facts into main	2026-09-28 09:57:47 +00:00
jschoubben	476cda417d	ADR 0135 supersedes 0133: a module version prepares its state before it runs Two faults in 0133, both caught on review. It put the declaration on a container — one resource kind the host applies — so every author would restate the machine's arrangement and a module's own lifecycle would be tied to how its artifact happens to run. A module declares entrypoints for its tools and its provisioner; preparing its state is the same vocabulary and nothing about a runtime. And it derived the scope from the machine, which the facts already answer: a consumer is a module on a machine (issue 022, migration 0015), so what the mesh provisions is per consumer. A module on three machines has three databases, there is no shared state to race over, and the lock obligation 0133 invented was for a situation the mesh does not produce. The level question HAL answered with stages dissolves — the scope of preparation is the scope of the state, and the mesh knows it. 0133 keeps its reasoning and gains a pointer; design 32 and issue 133 name the live record.	2026-09-28 11:57:16 +02:00
mesh-admin	74ba3ff1d4	Merge pull request 'ADR 0133 and 0134: who runs migrations, and the mesh saying what it applied' (#160 ) from decision/0133-0134-migrations-and-deploy-facts into main	2026-09-28 09:45:49 +00:00
jschoubben	891c7a945e	ADR 0133 and 0134: who runs migrations, and the mesh saying what it applied 0133 — a module owns its migrations and the mesh owns when they run. A container declares what must run before it; the mesh derives the gated step from the resource it precedes, so the image, the environment and the credentials come from the one place they are described. The module owns the SQL, the dialect and the lock; the mesh owns the moment and refuses to start a version whose step failed. Per node, with no level: a step that ran once somewhere leaves every other machine ungated, and 'once, mesh-wide' is what holding a seat already means. 0134 — the pipeline is observable from a merge to an artifact and goes dark at the machine. What a node now runs, and what it refused, become facts under the control plane's own seat, emitted when what a machine runs changes rather than on every convergence pass. Design 32's lifecycle carries both; issue 133 points at them as what ends the matter it opened.	2026-09-28 11:45:47 +02:00
mesh-admin	83cbeb8db8	Merge pull request 'Issue 133: the control plane's schema is migrated at birth and never again' (#159 ) from issue/133-the-control-plane-migrates-before-it-serves into main	2026-09-28 08:27:32 +00:00
jschoubben	ab6db9369b	Issue 133: the control plane's schema is migrated at birth and never again The mesh replaced its own control plane with a build carrying a migration, applied none of it, and then recorded no build for three quarters of an hour while saying everything was fine. ADR 0052 already prescribes the shape — a run-once step that gates the server — and the control plane was the one module that did not use it.	2026-09-28 10:27:30 +02:00
mesh-admin	84571b4825	Merge pull request 'ADR 0132: a seat carries the tools its holder must serve' (#158 ) from decision/0132-a-seat-carries-the-tools-its-holder-must-serve into main	2026-09-28 08:17:01 +00:00
jschoubben	d57196102d	ADR 0132: a seat carries the tools its holder must serve A role's tools belong to the role, not to whichever module holds it today: the seat declares them with their schemas, serving them is a condition of occupying the seat, and what the mesh can do becomes a read of its own records rather than a question nothing answers. A module keeps its own tools — the same module may run without the seat, and then only its own name is true. Design 33 follows: the three families, addressing a node-scoped seat, discovery, and what serves this to an agent.	2026-09-28 10:16:59 +02:00
mesh-admin	e6402cf777	Merge pull request 'Issue 132: a module can be recorded without the directory it lives in' (#157 ) from issue/132-a-module-can-be-recorded-without-its-directory into main	2026-09-28 07:20:07 +00:00
jschoubben	4f0d144833	Issue 132: a module can be recorded without the directory it lives in Nine modules could not be rebuilt: their record named the repository and no directory, so every build looked for a manifest at a repository root that has never had one. Resolved by mesh-controller — `module add` takes the directory and the forge, and the rule is checked rather than described.	2026-09-28 09:20:05 +02:00
mesh-admin	98d94ef71e	Merge pull request 'Design 28: 5.5 done, the mesh has one bus; issue 131 resolved' (#156 ) from design/28-one-bus-issue-131-resolved into main	2026-09-28 01:59:41 +00:00
jschoubben	4e13280604	Design 28: 5.5 done, the mesh has one bus; issue 131 resolved The AMQP transport is gone from the control plane and the hosts (mesh-controller #112, mesh-host #39). On the way: no build had ever recorded its bases, so every bases-first order walked an empty graph; the builder now reports what it was handed and the graph is read from builds (mesh-controller #113/#114). Issue 131 is resolved by the forge module's merge event, the control plane following it, and those edges.	2026-09-28 03:59:39 +02:00
mesh-admin	8783a13448	Merge pull request 'Design 28: the mesh runs on the new bus' (#155 ) from design/28-the-mesh-runs-on-nats into main	2026-09-28 00:40:29 +00:00
jschoubben	a31cfcf461	Design 28: 5.3 is built and was used for the hand-over	2026-09-28 02:28:06 +02:00
jschoubben	75b3861911	Design 28: the mesh runs on the new bus Tasks 4.3, 5.2 and 5.4 are done as of 2026-09-28 02:25: every machine reports on the new bus, the seat is held by the module that provides it, the old broker is unassigned and forgotten, and every credential was minted afresh at the end. 5.2 records what it took, in the order it was found and each fixed on the trunk before the next step, and how the bootstrap loop was broken once, by hand.	2026-09-28 02:27:49 +02:00
jschoubben	694555214a	Merge pull request 'Design 26: which assignment holds a seat is on record, and changes as one act' (#153 ) from design/26-a-seat-is-held-on-record into main	2026-09-27 21:22:56 +00:00
jschoubben	a7249541df	Design 26: which assignment holds a seat is on record, and changes as one act Until now the holder was derived — assigned and claiming — and a second eligible assignment was refused, so a seat could not pass from one holder to the next without a moment where nobody held it. The controller finds its own bus through one of these seats, and that moment took the control plane down on 2026-09-27. The holder is now a row the controller keeps, written by `seat <name> --to <node>/<module>` in the same write that removes the previous one. No row means the old rule, so nothing changes for a mesh that never hands a seat over; with a row, another eligible assignment is silent rather than refused, which is what lets the next holder run beside the current one until the switch. A holding is the assignment's and goes when it does. Each rule names the test that checks it. Under ADR 0131; design 28 task 5.3 is the work.	2026-09-27 23:20:36 +02:00
jschoubben	95d8253f71	Merge pull request 'ADR 0131: everything on the mesh speaks to the broker seat, and AMQP is not a provision' (#152 ) from decision/0131-everything-speaks-to-the-broker-seat into main	2026-09-27 21:06:02 +00:00
jschoubben	784b487bf9	ADR 0131: everything on the mesh speaks to the broker seat, and AMQP is not a provision Taken during the outage of 2026-09-27, when the protocol leaked into the seat's contract: to hold mesh-broker a module had to provide amqp, so the module that will carry the bus could not hold the seat that names the bus, while the module being retired could. Supersedes 0127. Modules depend on the seat and reach the bus through the sdk; no manifest provides or requires amqp; the old broker's module and the two modules that required it leave the catalogue; the AMQP transport is deleted once every node reports on the new bus. Design 28 step 5 rewritten under it: the seat handover becomes its own task and is built first, because the seat the control plane dereferences cannot be empty in between — that emptiness was the outage. The cost note now carries what was measured rather than what was assumed. 0128 and 0130 extended 0127; each now rests on 0131 with a dated note and changes nothing it decided. Every other citation of 0127 names its replacement. records.py still fails on 0120/0112, which predates this branch.	2026-09-27 23:03:05 +02:00
jschoubben	7ae711ba0b	Merge pull request 'Building the bus: the decisions the work needed, and what it taught back' (#150 ) from feat/nats-genesis into main	2026-09-27 17:06:40 +00:00