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Author SHA1 Message Date
jochen e3a5862c5a The operator's agent is a module: three records and to-be 36 for the claude-code successor
The predecessor's agent module was retired and its six files stayed on both workstations telling
every session to use tools that no longer exist. Before a successor module is written, the design
needs the decisions it rests on and nothing in the record stated them:

- ADR 0169 (reconstructed) records what the controller shipped on 2026-09-27 without a record: the
  operator account is a node fact stated by the operator, the home is derived unless stated, a
  resource may be placed under it owned by the account, and a node with no account refuses one.
- ADR 0170 generalises to-be 29 §3's found-vs-owned boundary to every directory under a home: the
  module owns the directory and the files it places, writes into the tool's own files for its few
  keys, never declares a credential's content, and holds everything else as found — a predecessor's
  leftovers included, which the operator removes once.
- ADR 0171 draws the licence line the operator asked to have drawn rather than assumed: the mesh
  binds and delivers (to-be 14 and 15 stand), the module alone writes the credential file, refresh
  stays central (ADR 0050), a switch is the binding changed through a controller seat verb asked
  for via the console, and the token-carrying shell helper is retired. The controller learns
  nothing about the agent; that is what "no part" means.

To-be 36 is the module's design: the ownership map per path, the fate of the six predecessor
files, what the three instruction documents say, the licence tools and skill, the console as a
node-scoped provision, the package gap stated honestly, and the order of the build. To-be 14, 29
and 34 carry dated notes; the glossary gains "operator account".
2026-10-02 16:37:48 +02:00
mesh-admin 5eadf36937 Merge pull request 'ADR 0175: the found front end is uninstalled once a machine is converged' (#292) from feat/the-found-front-end-is-uninstalled into main 2026-10-02 14:29:00 +00:00
jschoubben 8c9a2c7501 ADR 0175: the found front end is uninstalled once a machine is converged; design 08 note 2026-10-02 16:27:33 +02:00
mesh-admin 54213ba90c Merge pull request 'Research 018: the operator's machine as modules' (#291) from research/018-the-operators-machine into main 2026-10-02 14:27:27 +00:00
jochen 7fb59bde98 Research 018: the operator's machine as modules
The predecessor is retired on every node and what it still owned on the two
workstations — some thirty modules of dotfiles, user units and /etc files — is
owned by nothing. To-be 29 covers one directory under the home; the operator
wants the whole machine, system folders and home alike, as modules: one
default configuration each, varied per node by settings or a kept region,
never an edit; roles the machine has once as node-scoped seats with tool
contracts; the graphical stack gated by a capability so the same catalogue
serves the servers.

Four documents: the intended behaviour in the mesh's words; the predecessor's
desktop measured (34 modules, one with 88 files, 4 flavors and ~90 theme
variables) against what the records already give and what is missing (the
account is empty on every node, no user-scoped units, settings leak, tools run
in a container per module per node); the direction the operator set for where
tools run — one executor per node, host-side, module-agnostic, the console
renamed and moved out of its container, superseding 0047/0150 for tools; and
the candidate seats of the environment with first verbs, the shell first.
2026-10-02 15:19:25 +02:00
mesh-admin a4d24d7b65 Merge pull request 'ADR 0168: built and proven live' (#290) from decision/0168-built into main 2026-10-02 13:09:22 +00:00
jschoubben 116b2d1793 ADR 0168: built and proven live — the live row read on the home server and the control node, the five rule sets removed through ADR 0170's verb 2026-10-02 15:08:58 +02:00
mesh-admin 68a14493c9 Merge pull request 'ADR 0169 → 0170: the firewall seat's record renumbered after a collision on main; built note; cycle.py refuses two records sharing a number' (#289) from decision/0170-renumbered-and-built into main 2026-10-02 12:52:17 +00:00
jschoubben 98eb3aa76f ADR 0169 → 0170: the firewall seat's record renumbered after a collision on main; its built note; cycle.py refuses two records sharing a number
Another session's 0169 landed first. The collision check from issue 155
covered issue folders only; it covers decision records now, and would have
refused this.
2026-10-02 14:51:22 +02:00
mesh-admin 91bbe648a8 Merge pull request 'Issues 199 (resolved: a node-scoped seat's verb through the console) and 200 (the controller's answer to a long console call is refused by the bus)' (#288) from issues/199-200-console-seat-verbs-and-inbox into main 2026-10-02 12:25:37 +00:00
jschoubben 0e7b85f184 Issues 199 (resolved: a node-scoped seat's verb through the console) and 200 (the controller's answer to a long console call is refused by the bus) 2026-10-02 14:25:03 +02:00
mesh-admin dac49de6e7 Merge pull request 'ADR 0172: the lab is a module, and runs a bed when the mesh asks' (#287) from jschoubben/the-lab-is-a-module into main 2026-10-02 12:17:21 +00:00
jschoubben 0d9208dbbf ADR 0172: the lab is a module, and runs a bed when the mesh asks 2026-10-02 14:15:44 +02:00
mesh-admin bf0ee7cb25 Merge pull request 'ADR 0169: the firewall seat serves its verbs, and a foreign rule set is removed through one of them' (#285) from feat/the-firewall-seat-serves-its-verbs into main 2026-10-02 11:29:15 +00:00
jschoubben 4567e13071 ADR 0169: the firewall seat serves its verbs, and a foreign rule set is removed through one of them
Designs 33 and 08 revised. The first node-scoped seat with verbs: rules,
reload, remove; the nftables module holds it from a runtime with NET_ADMIN,
the first container to declare a capability.
2026-10-02 13:27:03 +02:00
mesh-admin aa5d9f1045 Merge pull request 'ADR 0169 (proposed): a machine joins through the tunnel, and the bus is never public' (#284) from jschoubben/a-machine-joins-through-the-tunnel into main 2026-10-02 11:17:42 +00:00
jschoubben 79642251a1 ADR 0169 accepted; design 08's join order starts with the tunnel 2026-10-02 13:17:32 +02:00
jschoubben 331cb94c6e ADR 0169 (proposed): a machine joins through the tunnel, and the bus is never public
The bus was public only so a new machine could enrol before it had a
tunnel. The machine now makes its tunnel key first, the token is issued
for it and makes it a peer of the hub, and enrolment happens over the
tunnel.
2026-10-02 13:13:15 +02:00
mesh-admin 78351560f7 Merge pull request 'Issue 198: the home network's DNS server ran outside the mesh, and its filter closed it' (#283) from jschoubben/the-lans-dns-is-the-mesh into main 2026-10-02 10:22:51 +00:00
mesh-admin 62cc2f89c7 Merge pull request 'Issue 197: a physical link that is down is not filtered when it comes up' (#280) from jschoubben/every-physical-link-faces-outside into main 2026-10-02 10:22:40 +00:00
jschoubben 426f741ad0 Issue 198: the home network's DNS server ran outside the mesh, and its filter closed it 2026-10-02 12:22:31 +02:00
jschoubben 9bed54d3be Issue 197 resolved: the wired port is guarded before it is plugged in 2026-10-02 12:22:15 +02:00
jschoubben 413daf8ad5 Issue 197: a physical link that is down is not filtered when it comes up 2026-10-02 12:22:15 +02:00
mesh-admin 5c993c09b7 Merge pull request 'Issues 143 and 144 resolved: the live row of ADR 0168 read on the home server and the control node' (#282) from issues/143-144-resolved into main 2026-10-02 10:11:37 +00:00
jschoubben 7c3be48db2 Issues 143 and 144 resolved: the live row of ADR 0168 read on the home server and the control node 2026-10-02 12:11:17 +02:00
mesh-admin b665d06701 Merge pull request 'ADR 0168: a converged machine is filtered by the mesh alone, and the host says what else refuses (group 7)' (#281) from feat/one-thing-filters-a-converged-machine into main 2026-10-02 10:03:48 +00:00
30 changed files with 1742 additions and 10 deletions
+16
View File
@@ -131,6 +131,22 @@ def main():
else:
seen[number] = name
# And decision records, which 155's fix left out: on 2026-10-02 two ADRs numbered 0169 landed
# on main from two sessions within the hour, and every check passed.
seen_records = {}
for path in sorted(glob.glob(os.path.join(ROOT, "02-DECISIONS", "[0-9]*.md"))):
name = os.path.basename(path)
number = name.split("-", 1)[0]
if not number.isdigit():
continue
if number in seen_records:
bad(os.path.join("02-DECISIONS", name),
"is numbered %s, and so is %s -- a record's number is how it is cited. Take the next "
"free number across main AND every open pull request; the branch that lands last "
"renumbers" % (number, seen_records[number]))
else:
seen_records[number] = name
for path in sorted(glob.glob(os.path.join(ROOT, "04-ISSUES", "*", "00-report.md"))):
front = frontmatter(path)
if front is None:
+5
View File
@@ -9,6 +9,11 @@ another — and a mesh you cannot name precisely is a mesh two people describe d
- **node** — a machine in the mesh. There are 0..n of them, and each runs the host agent. A node is
just a machine that has joined; being one implies nothing about what it runs.
- **operator account** — the login name of the person who works on a node, stated on the node
record; empty for a machine nobody logs into. Everything the mesh places under a person's home is
resolved against this account's home and owned by it
([ADR 0176](../02-DECISIONS/0176-the-operator-account-is-a-node-fact-and-a-home-is-a-placement-root.md)).
Not "the user" (ambiguous with a module's own account) and not a name a definition carries.
- **control-node** — the one node that also holds the `mesh-controller` seat. There is exactly one
per mesh. "control-node" is not a separate kind of machine — it is a node that additionally runs
the controller (and, today, the foundation). Lose it and the other nodes keep running what they
@@ -0,0 +1,80 @@
---
status: active
initiated: 2026-10-02
touches:
- 02-DECISIONS/0040-what-a-module-is.md
- 02-DECISIONS/0011-managed-files-are-generated-never-edited.md
- 02-DECISIONS/0132-a-seat-carries-the-tools-its-holder-must-serve.md
- 02-DECISIONS/0150-a-modules-own-code-runs-as-supervised-processes-under-one-account.md
- 02-DECISIONS/0152-the-operators-surface-is-a-module-the-console.md
- 02-DECISIONS/0161-what-deserves-a-seat.md
- 03-DESIGN/01-to-be/05-the-node-host.md
- 03-DESIGN/01-to-be/29-a-node-has-operator-accounts.md
- 03-DESIGN/01-to-be/33-the-tools-the-mesh-answers.md
- 03-DESIGN/01-to-be/34-the-console.md
- 03-DESIGN/00-as-is/10-module-catalogue.md
- 04-ISSUES/160-a-machine-says-little-about-itself-and-only-when-asked/00-report.md
- 04-ISSUES/168-a-setting-reaches-every-file-and-contribution/00-report.md
became: []
---
# 018 — The operator's machine as modules
**What.** The mesh owns the whole machine, not only the services on it. Everything a person
configures on a node — the login manager, the display server, the window manager, the shell, the
terminal, the launcher, the notifier, the audio setup, the boot images, the downloads folder, the
agent at the terminal — is a module: a package, the files it owns under `/etc` and under the
operator's home, the seat it holds, the tools it serves. One default configuration per module,
varied per node only through settings rendered into the file or a kept operator region, never
through an edit. The servers take the universal modules (shell, prompt, git, the agent); the
workstations take those and the graphical stack, which a capability the machine reports gates.
This effort writes that behaviour down, measures what the predecessor's desktop modules actually
contain, and settles what the mesh must gain before the first of them can be written.
**Why.** The predecessor is retired on every node. What it still owned on the two workstations —
about thirty modules' worth of dotfiles, user units and `/etc` files — is now owned by nothing:
no generator regenerates them, and a fix to one of them is a hand edit that nothing records. The
migration scoped these modules out as *the workstation's own environment*, and
[to-be 29](../../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/29-a-node-has-operator-accounts.md) names them as the last
thing the predecessor was keeping alive. To-be 29 covers one directory, `~/.ssh`, and draws a
boundary inside it. The operator wants no boundary: the machine is the mesh's, as far as it makes
sense to configure it. That is a wider scope than any design states, and it reaches three records
that were written for services: what a module is, where a module's tools run, and what a managed
file may be.
**What it touches.** The module definition ([ADR 0040](../../02-DECISIONS/0040-what-a-module-is.md)),
seats and their contracts ([ADR 0132](../../02-DECISIONS/0132-a-seat-carries-the-tools-its-holder-must-serve.md)),
where a module's tools run ([ADR 0150](../../02-DECISIONS/0150-a-modules-own-code-runs-as-supervised-processes-under-one-account.md),
[ADR 0152](../../02-DECISIONS/0152-the-operators-surface-is-a-module-the-console.md),
[to-be 33](../../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/33-the-tools-the-mesh-answers.md) §6), the host's vocabulary
([to-be 05](../../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/05-the-node-host.md)), managed files and settings
([ADR 0011](../../02-DECISIONS/0011-managed-files-are-generated-never-edited.md),
[issue 168](../../04-ISSUES/168-a-setting-reaches-every-file-and-contribution/00-report.md)),
and the catalogue's shape ([as-is 10](../../03-DESIGN/00-as-is/10-module-catalogue.md)).
**Documents.**
- [01 — The intended behaviour](01-the-intended-behaviour.md): the operator's wish, written as
how the mesh behaves, in the mesh's own words.
- [02 — What exists, and what is missing](02-what-exists-and-what-is-missing.md): the
predecessor's desktop modules measured; which records already say what is wanted; the gaps.
- [03 — One tool executor per node](03-one-tool-executor-per-node.md): where a module's tools
run. The direction the operator set, the evidence for it, and what it supersedes.
- [04 — The seats of the environment](04-the-seats-of-the-environment.md): the roles a machine
has once, their candidate contracts, and what gates each.
**What this must settle before it graduates.**
1. A module is one *managed thing*, software or not, and every module may serve tools — or ADR
0040 already says this and only its examples are narrow.
2. One tool executor per node, host-side, module-agnostic; which records it supersedes and
in what form the console continues.
3. Per-node variation is a setting rendered into the file or a kept region, never an edit —
ADR 0011 stands — and issue 168 is fixed before any environment module carries a setting.
4. User-scoped units on the host's `service` shape, and a service-manager seat whose holder
serves the tools about them.
5. The operator account stated on every node; today no node record carries one.
6. The seats of the environment and their verbs, one record per seat, slowly, because a
seat's tools bind every future holder.
7. Where the environment modules live: this catalogue, or one of their own as the media chain
has; and whether a third-party organisation's tooling belongs in a public catalogue at all.
@@ -0,0 +1,99 @@
# 01 — The intended behaviour
*Written 2026-10-02 from the operator's words, in the mesh's words. What is wanted, before what
exists. Where a sentence restates a record, the record is named; where it goes further, that is
said.*
## The machine is the mesh's
**Everything configurable on a node is declared by a module.** Not only the services the mesh
runs: the login manager, the display server, the window manager, the bar, the launcher, the
notifier, the compositor, the lock screen, the terminal emulator, the clipboard, the shell and its
prompt, the editor, the audio setup, the boot images, the package manager's configuration, the
agent a person runs at a terminal, and the folders a person works in — a downloads folder that is
tidied, backed up, distributed to other nodes and asked questions of. System folders and the
operator's home alike. The operator is the only person on every node, so the mesh manages the
person's machine, not a machine with a person on it.
This is [ADR 0040](../../02-DECISIONS/0040-what-a-module-is.md)'s definition applied without
the service bias its examples carry. A module is one managed thing, named once, described
completely by its manifest. It may have a package, files, a container, a unit, a binary, a seat it
holds, and tools it serves — any one of these, or all, or two. There is **no kind of module**: zsh
has a package, files, a seat claim and the tools that claim obliges it to serve; downloads has a
folder, a process and tools; nftables has a package, files, a service, a seat and tools. The
difference is what each declares, not what each is.
**The home has no boundary.** [To-be 29](../../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/29-a-node-has-operator-accounts.md)
owns one directory under the home and draws a line inside it between the mesh's and the person's.
Here the line is drawn only by what the modules declare: every file some module places is the
mesh's; what no module declares is found and left alone, exactly as the adoption rules already
say for a machine. The reach is bounded by sense, not by a rule — the mesh configures what can
be configured, and a person's documents, projects and history are data under
[ADR 0051](../../02-DECISIONS/0051-shared-data-is-the-operators.md), not configuration.
**A module names no node and no path.** The operator account is a node fact and the home is
derived from it ([to-be 29](../../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/29-a-node-has-operator-accounts.md) §1–2,
shipped in the controller; its record is proposed in an open change). A module places a file
*under the home, owned by the account*, and the same manifest lands on a server and a laptop.
## One default, varied by settings, never by edits
**One module, one default configuration.** The window manager module ships the configuration
that is right for every node. There are no flavors: the predecessor's one desktop module carried
four, one per class of machine, and what differed between them is what settings are for.
**A node varies a module in exactly two ways.** A **setting**, declared by the module with its
type, meaning and default (proposed alongside the container-runtime records), set for the mesh
or for one node, and rendered into the file at composition — the value is in the file, not in an
environment variable the file reads. Or a **kept region**: a block in a file the mesh writes
*into*, where the operator's own lines survive every push
([ADR 0102](../../02-DECISIONS/0102-the-mesh-writes-into-a-shared-file-never-over-it.md)). An
edit to a managed file outside such a region is not a third way; it is overwritten, as
[ADR 0011](../../02-DECISIONS/0011-managed-files-are-generated-never-edited.md) says, and the
predecessor's habit of adopting disk drift back into its database is not carried over.
The predecessor's theming — some ninety environment variables substituted into templates at sync
time, with tools to list and set them — is the same idea with the wrong rendering. The knobs
become declared settings; the file carries the value.
## Roles a machine has once are seats, and seats carry tools
**A role a machine fills at most once is a node-scoped seat**, declared by a module
([ADR 0121](../../02-DECISIONS/0121-a-system-seat-is-named-for-its-scope-and-modules-define-their-own.md),
[ADR 0126](../../02-DECISIONS/0126-a-module-declares-its-own-seats.md)): the login shell, the
display session, the display server, the terminal emulator, the launcher, the notifier, the
compositor, the lock screen, the service manager, the boot loader. Several modules may be able to
hold one — zsh, fish and bash can all hold the login shell — and the assignment on each node says
which does. Installing a shell is installing software; holding the seat is being *the* shell.
**A seat's contract is its tools** ([ADR 0132](../../02-DECISIONS/0132-a-seat-carries-the-tools-its-holder-must-serve.md)).
Every holder of the login-shell seat serves `execute`, which takes one string, the command, and
runs it on the node the seat is scoped to. Every holder of the boot seat serves "rebuild the boot
images", so *"rebuild your boot images"* is a verb addressed to a machine, not a one-off step in
a hook. Every holder of the service-manager seat answers for the units on the machine, system and
user scope. A module may serve its own tools beside the seat's
([ADR 0170](../../02-DECISIONS/0170-the-firewall-seat-serves-its-verbs.md) §2): show the rendered
configuration, set a theme value, report status.
**Any tool may be called from any node.** The operator's statement, and the grant model it
implies: the executor on each node may call everything, as the console already may. A verb that
needs root on the machine is the module's concern — the tool escalates, the executor and the
caller do not know.
## Servers and workstations differ by capability, not by catalogue
The same catalogue serves every node. A module declares what it needs — a graphical session, a
display server, a container runtime — and the machine reports what it has, as the profile already
reports eight capabilities today ([issue 160](../../04-ISSUES/160-a-machine-says-little-about-itself-and-only-when-asked/00-report.md)).
Assignment refuses the wrong placement by name
([ADR 0161](../../02-DECISIONS/0161-what-deserves-a-seat.md) §3). So every node takes the shell,
the prompt, git and the agent; only a node with a graphical session can take the display server,
and only a node holding the display server can take a window manager. Nothing in a module says
"workstation".
## What the operator would say to the mesh
*Set the login shell on the build node to fish. Rebuild the laptop's boot images. Show me the
window manager's effective configuration on the desktop and where each value comes from. Give
the downloads folder on the laptop to the home server. Run `uptime` on every node.* Each of these
is a seat verb or a module tool, addressed to a node, answered by whatever holds the role there.
@@ -0,0 +1,91 @@
# 02 — What exists, and what is missing
*Measured 2026-10-02 on one installation: two workstations, two servers, all four converged to
the mesh; the predecessor retired on the last workstation the day before. Numbers are from the
machines and the repositories, not from memory.*
## 1. What the predecessor's desktop looks like
The predecessor's catalogue on the laptop held **34 modules**, of which **28** are the operator's
environment rather than services. By what they declare:
| shape | count | examples |
|---|---|---|
| package only | 9 | browser, mail client, process monitor, media player, file manager, chat |
| package + `/etc` files + system service | 5 | login manager, display server, power and thermal daemons, package manager configuration |
| package + files under the home | 6 | shell and prompt, the agent at the terminal, scripts, the sync client, a music player |
| files under the home + user units + hooks | 2 | the desktop environment, audio |
| third-party organisation tooling | 6 | out of scope here |
**The desktop module alone** declares **88 files**, **4 flavors** (the window-manager stack, and
one per class of machine), **2 user units** with a hook to enable them, 8 files under `/etc`, a
wallpaper shipped as an asset, and reads **about 90 environment variables** as theme knobs,
substituted into its templates at sync time and set through a theming tool. Its hook exists
because *shipping a unit file does not run it*: one unit had been deployed for months and ran on
one machine only, because somebody had enabled it there by hand.
**The shell module** ships `~/.zshrc`, the prompt configuration, an `~/.ssh/config` that the
predecessor generated from its registry, and a `LOGIN_SHELL` variable applied with `chsh` by a
hook. Two flavors: the prompt theme, and autocompletion.
**Other modules write into the desktop module's files.** The chat client places i3 and notifier
snippets into `config.d` directories the desktop module owns, and its launch flags, window
placement and notification colours are each a variable with a default.
**One-off steps live in hooks** across the set: enable user units, `chsh`, create a swap file,
`mkinitcpio`, enable a vendor VPN service the package ships disabled. Every one is state the
host could declare or a verb a seat could serve; none is today.
## 2. What the migration did with them
The migration's module to-do scoped the whole set out as *desktop / workstation ricing — the
workstation's own environment* and *node/OS tooling — managed on the node, never catalogue*. The
last workstation's runbook then split the same set three ways: **A**, system scope, which the
host's vocabulary can express today (the login manager, the display server, the power daemons,
the package manager, the container runtime); **B**, under a home or a user unit, waiting on
to-be 29; **C**, package only, the operator's call. The migration log closes the workstation with
*the operator's desktop awaiting its design*.
Two things followed from scoping them out. Nothing regenerates those files now, so a fix is a hand
edit — the login manager's session script was fixed this way on the day of writing, and recorded
in a repository nothing deploys from. And the one piece of this family written as a mesh module,
the ssh client, was closed on hold in the catalogue until the controller carried the account fact.
## 3. What the records already give
| wanted | record | state |
|---|---|---|
| one module per managed thing; every module may have tools | [ADR 0040](../../02-DECISIONS/0040-what-a-module-is.md) | accepted; examples are services, and the shell is named as a *shared* seat |
| a module declares its own node-scoped seat | [ADR 0121](../../02-DECISIONS/0121-a-system-seat-is-named-for-its-scope-and-modules-define-their-own.md), [ADR 0126](../../02-DECISIONS/0126-a-module-declares-its-own-seats.md) | accepted |
| a seat's contract is its tools; a holder may add its own | [ADR 0132](../../02-DECISIONS/0132-a-seat-carries-the-tools-its-holder-must-serve.md), [ADR 0170](../../02-DECISIONS/0170-the-firewall-seat-serves-its-verbs.md) | accepted; one node seat serves verbs live |
| a capability the machine reports gates a holder | [ADR 0161](../../02-DECISIONS/0161-what-deserves-a-seat.md) §3 | accepted; the profile already reports `graphical-session` |
| the account as a node fact; a file under the home owned by it | [to-be 29](../../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/29-a-node-has-operator-accounts.md) §1–2 | built in the controller; its record proposed in an open change |
| inside a home: owned, written into, written by the module, found | proposed in the same change | proposed |
| a setting declared with type, meaning, default and cost | proposed with the container-runtime records | proposed |
| a managed file is derived; an edit is overwritten | [ADR 0011](../../02-DECISIONS/0011-managed-files-are-generated-never-edited.md) | accepted |
| the mesh writes into a shared file, never over it | [ADR 0102](../../02-DECISIONS/0102-the-mesh-writes-into-a-shared-file-never-over-it.md) | accepted |
| a module names no path; the host resolves the home | [ADR 0112](../../02-DECISIONS/0112-a-module-definition-names-no-node-mesh-or-path.md) | accepted |
| the `user` shape: a login shell is declared state | [to-be 05](../../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/05-the-node-host.md) | designed; used by no module |
## 4. What is missing
1. **The account is recorded nowhere.** The node record has the column; on all four nodes it
is empty. Every home-scoped module is unassignable until the operator states it.
2. **User-scoped units.** The host's `service` shape has no user scope. To-be 29 says it
plainly: *a workstation's per-user daemons have no form the mesh can send.* The desktop
module's two units, the audio masks, the power module's memory guard and the thermal
daemon's profile switcher all need it.
3. **One-off steps.** `mkinitcpio`, `chsh`, creating a swap file. Each is either declared
state the host lacks a shape for, or a verb a seat should serve. An action in a declaration
is refused over the link, and rightly.
4. **Settings leak** ([issue 168](../../04-ISSUES/168-a-setting-reaches-every-file-and-contribution/00-report.md)):
a setting reaches every mergeable file and every contribution of its module. Ninety theme
knobs on that mechanism would reach ninety files. The proposed settings record says a setting
names the file it lands in; that has to ship first.
5. **Where tools run.** Every module that serves a tool today does so from its own container
per node. See [03](03-one-tool-executor-per-node.md).
6. **A seat's verbs are undecided for every seat but three.** To-be 33 leaves which verbs each
seat serves as *a decision per seat, slowly*. The environment adds a dozen seats.
7. **Catalogue placement.** The media chain left this catalogue for its own; whether the
environment does the same, and whether a third-party organisation's tooling belongs in a
public catalogue, are unasked.
@@ -0,0 +1,88 @@
# 03 — One tool executor per node
*The direction the operator set on 2026-10-02, the evidence it rests on, and what it supersedes.
A direction, not yet a decision: the record is written when this effort graduates.*
## Where tools are served today
[To-be 33](../../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/33-the-tools-the-mesh-answers.md) names three families — a
role's tools on the seat, a module's own tools on the module, the mesh's own verbs on the
controller seat — and [ADR 0160](../../02-DECISIONS/0160-the-mesh-issues-an-assignments-subjects-and-a-runtime-serves-what-it-is-issued.md)
says a runtime serves the subjects its membership issues. What *runs* that runtime is
[ADR 0150](../../02-DECISIONS/0150-a-modules-own-code-runs-as-supervised-processes-under-one-account.md):
one supervised process per module, under the module's own account, carrying that module's
compiled tools. Measured on the live mesh:
| who answers | how it runs | count |
|---|---|---|
| the mesh's own verbs | the controller binary, on its node | 17 verbs |
| the store seat | the store's own runtime | 2 verbs |
| the packet-filter seat | **a container per node**, built on the tool-runtime base image, with the network namespace and `NET_ADMIN`, on all four nodes | 3 verbs and 1 own tool |
| every module's own tools | the module's container, one per node it runs on | 67 tools across the catalogue |
| the console | a container per node, loopback MCP, `invokes: *` | serves none, calls all |
| the host | — | serves nothing; answers no question about the machine |
**The packet-filter holder is the case to look at.** The module is a package, three files and a
system service. To serve three verbs it also declares a built image and a container on every
node whose only job is to answer them. Scaled to the environment — a shell, a prompt, a launcher,
a notifier, a compositor, a login manager, a service manager, a boot loader, a downloads folder —
that is one container per module per node for software that is itself not a container, and the
operator's judgement is that tools should not run inside a container at all.
## The direction
**One tool executor per node, on the host side.** A process the host supervises, the way the
launcher supervises the host ([ADR 0005](../../02-DECISIONS/0005-the-node-host.md)): not a
container, one bus credential for the node, module-agnostic. It loads the tool code of every
module assigned to the node and serves each module's tools and each held seat's verbs on the
subjects the membership issues — nothing changes in what [ADR 0159](../../02-DECISIONS/0159-a-tool-call-names-the-machine-and-a-holder-serves-its-seats-verbs.md)
and [ADR 0160](../../02-DECISIONS/0160-the-mesh-issues-an-assignments-subjects-and-a-runtime-serves-what-it-is-issued.md)
say about subjects, grants and memberships; what changes is that one process subscribes for the
node instead of one per module.
- **A module brings its tools as a built artifact**, a bundle the pipeline produces, never an
image. The executor knows bundles and subjects; it knows nothing of zsh or nftables.
- **A tool is code the module wrote**, one function behind an MCP verb. `execute` on the shell
seat is a function with a string argument. The executor does not declare, template or
interpret tools; it runs them.
- **Root is the module's concern.** A tool that must change the packet filter or rebuild boot
images escalates itself. The executor does not run as root for everyone, and the caller does
not know.
- **Any node may call any tool on any node.** The executor's credential may call everything,
as the console's already does; per-module grants on the calling side are not kept.
- **The mesh's own verbs stay with the controller** ([ADR 0154](../../02-DECISIONS/0154-the-meshs-own-verbs-are-the-controller-seats-tools.md)),
and a mesh-scoped seat's verbs run on the node that holds it
([ADR 0121](../../02-DECISIONS/0121-a-system-seat-is-named-for-its-scope-and-modules-define-their-own.md)).
No hub is added; the controller's node is already one.
**The console is the executor, renamed.** It already runs on every node with a credential that
may call everything, and it already serves the mesh's tools to whoever is on the machine over
MCP on loopback ([ADR 0152](../../02-DECISIONS/0152-the-operators-surface-is-a-module-the-console.md)).
It moves out of its container into the host's process tree, gains the serving half, and takes a
name that says what it is — *the node's tool runtime* or simply *node tools*; "console" names
the operator's half only.
## What it supersedes, and what it keeps
| record | effect |
|---|---|
| [ADR 0047](../../02-DECISIONS/0047-a-module-runs-its-code-as-its-own-process-with-its-own-account.md), [ADR 0150](../../02-DECISIONS/0150-a-modules-own-code-runs-as-supervised-processes-under-one-account.md) | superseded *for tools*: one process per node runs every module's tool code, under one account. A module's long-running service — a daemon, a container — is untouched; the executor runs tools, not services. The record must say why one account for every module's tools is acceptable: every tool may be called from every node anyway, and root is taken by the tool, not granted to the process |
| [ADR 0152](../../02-DECISIONS/0152-the-operators-surface-is-a-module-the-console.md) | kept in substance — a module, assigned per node, loopback MCP, the machine's login is the authority — changed in form: host-side, not a container; serves as well as calls; renamed |
| [to-be 33](../../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/33-the-tools-the-mesh-answers.md) §6, [to-be 34](../../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/34-the-console.md) | amended the same way |
| [ADR 0170](../../02-DECISIONS/0170-the-firewall-seat-serves-its-verbs.md) §3, *a container may ask for a capability* | moot for that holder: the verbs run on the host side and escalate as they need |
| the container-runtime seat, proposed in an open change: *the holder runs as a supervised process and serves the verbs locally to the host and on the bus* | consistent — a supervised process serving verbs is what the executor is; the open question is whether that holder keeps its own process or serves through the executor like everyone else |
| the tool-runtime base image | no longer the way tools reach a node; may remain the way a module's *service* is built |
## What stays open
- **The executor's language.** The host is a static Go binary and loads no plugins, so the
executor is a sibling process, and its language decides the language of every tool bundle.
One decision, taken once.
- **How a bundle reaches the node.** An artifact of the module's build, delivered as the host
delivers everything else; whether it is a file resource in the declaration or a thing the
executor fetches by digest.
- **Reload.** A push that adds or upgrades a module's bundle reaches a running executor as a
reload, not a restart, or every tool on the node blinks on every push.
- **The host's own questions.** [Issue 160](../../04-ISSUES/160-a-machine-says-little-about-itself-and-only-when-asked/00-report.md)
wants a machine to say more about itself. With an executor on every node, "what is this
machine made of" is a seat verb like any other, served there.
@@ -0,0 +1,65 @@
# 04 — The seats of the environment
*Candidates, not decisions. To-be 33 says which verbs a seat serves is a decision per seat,
taken slowly, because a seat's tools bind every future holder. This document lists the roles the
operator's machine has once, who could hold each, what gates it, and a first verb or two — so
each record has a starting point.*
## The rule for what is a seat here
A role the machine fills **at most once** is a node-scoped seat, declared by the module family
that fills it ([ADR 0126](../../02-DECISIONS/0126-a-module-declares-its-own-seats.md)). A thing
several of which coexist without contention — editors, browsers, media players — is not a seat;
each is a module with its own tools, and nothing is singular about it. A seat is held by one
assignment per node; other modules of the same family may be installed beside it without
holding it ([ADR 0040](../../02-DECISIONS/0040-what-a-module-is.md) §1, read with the sharper
distinction: *installed* is not *holding*).
## Candidate seats
| seat | holders | gated by | first verbs |
|---|---|---|---|
| **login shell** | zsh, fish, bash | nothing: universal | `execute(command)`; `show-config`; the holding itself sets the account's login shell through the host's `user` shape |
| **service manager** | systemd | the `service-manager` capability the profile reports | units: list, status, start, stop, restart, enable, journal; **user scope** on each |
| **boot** | grub, systemd-boot | a machine that boots itself (not a container host) | `rebuild-images`; `entries` |
| **package manager** | pacman, apt | the `package-manager` capability | search, installed, upgrade, orphans; today a capability the host uses, not a seat anyone holds |
| **display server** | xorg, wayland compositors that are their own server | the `graphical-session` capability | `displays`; `layout` |
| **display session** | i3, sway | the display server seat held on the node; i3 needs x11, sway needs wayland | `reload`; `workspaces`; `windows`; `move` |
| **terminal emulator** | xterm, alacritty, foot | display session | `open`; `font` |
| **launcher** | rofi, dmenu | display session | `show`; `theme` |
| **notifier** | dunst, mako | display session | `send`; `history`; `rule` |
| **compositor** | picom | display server (x11 only) | `restart`; `effects` |
| **lock screen** | i3lock, swaylock | display session | `lock` |
| **bar** | i3status-rust, waybar | display session | `reload`; `blocks` |
| **login manager** | lemurs, greetd | graphical session | `sessions`; `default-session` |
| **audio** | pipewire, pulseaudio | the machine reports a sound device | `sinks`, `sources`, `default`, `volume`, `mute` |
| **clipboard** | greenclip, cliphist | display session | `history`; `clear` |
Not seats, modules with their own tools: the editor, the browser, the mail client, the file
manager, the media player, the chat client, the agent at the terminal, the downloads folder, the
scripts folder, the sync client, the power and thermal daemons that are specific to one machine's
hardware.
## What the table implies
**Capabilities come first.** `graphical-session`, `service-manager` and `package-manager` are
reported today. *A display server is held* is not a capability but a seat being held, and a
module that needs it declares a dependency on the seat, not on a capability: *i3 needs the
display server seat held by xorg*. Whether a held seat can gate another's assignment is a
question for the controller's resolver, and the first environment module after the shell will
ask it.
**The service manager comes early.** Four of the predecessor's modules ship user units, and the
executor itself is a unit. User scope on the host's `service` shape is a host change whichever
module holds the seat; the seat's holder answers the questions about units, it does not apply
them — the host does, as it does for every declared resource.
**The shell comes first.** Universal, no capability, one verb that is immediately useful on
every node, and the `user` shape already makes the login shell declared state. It is the module
that proves the pattern: a package, files under the home owned by the account, a seat claim,
tools served by the executor, settings for the few things that vary per node, and a kept region
for the operator's own lines.
**The login manager is the first system-scope one**, because it needs nothing new: a package,
two files under `/etc`, a service — the same shape the ssh daemon module has today — and the
session script it owns is the file that was hand-fixed the day this effort opened.
@@ -113,6 +113,22 @@ That is a difference a take shows, not a fault, and is decided when it bites.
| `node show` lists filters with owners; `status` names a converged machine something else filters and is not well; the preview lists filters and fates | controller tests over a fixture report |
| Live | the home server's record names the predecessor's chain in the runtime's user chain as *other*; `status` names the machine; after the operator removes the chain, the next report drops it and `status` is well |
## Built and proven live, 2026-10-02
> **Progressive insight — 2026-10-02.** The decision stands; these are the facts of its building.
Built in mesh-host 67 (every refusing table and legacy chain classified with an owner, reported with
every apply; the found firewall retired on every converged apply, *found inactive* kept apart from
*disabled by the mesh*, a skipped step said) and mesh-controller 211 (kept per node, shown on `node
show`, named by `status` and not well, previewed with fates). The live row was read at 10:10Z: the home
server's record named the predecessor's chain in the legacy filter's user chain as *other*, beside two
chains a retired front end left in the IPv6 legacy filter; the control node's record named the same two
leftovers; the laptop and the workstation read *the mesh alone*; `status` named both machines. The five
rule sets were removed at 12:46Z through the packet filter seat's `remove` verb
([ADR 0170](0170-the-firewall-seat-serves-its-verbs.md)), and the next report read *the mesh alone* on
all four machines. The control node's record still says the mesh retired its front end, which issue 143
records as a hand's work: the host trusts its record, and from this build on the distinction is kept.
## References
- [ADR 0100](0100-a-node-in-use-is-adopted-before-it-is-converged.md), [ADR 0103](0103-what-an-adopted-node-holds-and-what-its-guard-refuses.md), [ADR 0140](0140-the-filter-constrains-what-arrives-from-outside.md), [ADR 0102](0102-the-mesh-writes-into-a-shared-file-never-over-it.md), [ADR 0163](0163-taking-a-module-over-is-a-comparison.md)
@@ -0,0 +1,89 @@
---
topic: the mesh
status: accepted
date: 2026-10-02
deciders: jochen
reconstructed: false
extends: 02-DECISIONS/0004-a-node-and-how-it-joins.md
---
# 169. A machine joins through the tunnel, and the bus is never public
## Context
The bus is the one channel every machine depends on: enrolment, every declaration, every tool. The
`nats` module declares it reachable from the mesh only. The controller still opens it to the whole
internet on the machine that runs it, as a *foundation* port that no module declares and nothing may
close ([issue 051](../04-ISSUES/051-the-mesh-cannot-update-what-it-depends-on/00-report.md)).
The reason is joining. [ADR 0004](0004-a-node-and-how-it-joins.md) has a new machine enrol over the bus
**before** it has a tunnel. [ADR 0007](0007-connectivity.md) states it as a requirement: the node
running the broker must be reachable from wherever nodes are, at a stable address.
So the bus listens on the internet permanently, for an event that happens a few times a year. A
sweep of every machine on 2026-10-02 found no client using the public path. Every connection arrives
over the tunnel or from the machine itself. The join token does not use it either: it carries the
controller's configured broker address, a mesh name with the old broker's port.
ADR 0004 already says what a joining machine needs: *an identity, an address, and one peer to reach*.
The tunnel can be that peer, if the hub knows the new machine's key before the machine first knocks.
WireGuard answers nothing to a key it does not know, which is why the tunnel's own port is safe to
leave open where the bus's is not.
## Considered Options
1. **Keep the bus public.** It is authenticated and encrypted, but every exposure of it, and of the
server behind it, is exposure of the one thing everything depends on.
2. **Open the bus publicly only while a join token is live.** Small, and the hub is open only during a
join window. But the window is real, the rule is about time rather than about who may reach the
bus, and the opening and closing are pushes that can fail between them.
3. **The controller makes the new machine's tunnel key and puts it in the token.** One step for the
operator, but the private half leaves a machine it does not belong to. ADR 0004 refuses that for
every key a node holds.
4. **The machine makes its key first, and the token is issued for it.** The machine prints the public
half of its tunnel key. The operator issues the token for that key. The controller gives the
machine its address and adds it as a peer on the hub. The token carries the hub's tunnel endpoint
and key, the machine's address, and the bus's address on the private network. The machine brings
up its tunnel and enrols over it.
## Decision
**Option 4.**
- **A machine makes its own tunnel key before it has a token**, and prints the public half. The private
half never leaves it, as ADR 0004 says of every key a node holds.
- **A token is issued for a tunnel key.** Issuing it assigns the machine's address on the private
network, records the key, and makes the machine a peer of the hub. The hub is sent that before the
token is shown, so the tunnel answers the moment the machine first uses it.
- **The token carries the one peer.** It adds the hub's tunnel endpoint and public key and the
machine's own address. **Where** becomes the bus's address on the private network, which needs no
name resolution.
- **The machine joins through the tunnel.** It brings the tunnel up from the token alone, then enrols
over it exactly as before. The enrolment checks that the key it is offered is the one the token was
issued for.
- **The bus is never public.** It is no longer a foundation port. Its reach is what the `nats` module
declares: the mesh. The tunnel's port stays open, as the one way in.
This changes three things earlier records say. ADR 0004's *where* is the bus's private address, and the
token carries the peer. ADR 0007's requirement that the broker be reachable from wherever nodes are
becomes: **the hub's tunnel is**. Issue 051's broker port stops being a foundation port.
## Consequences
- Joining is two commands on the new machine, with the token issued between them. A token issued for
the wrong key gives a tunnel that never answers, and the machine says so rather than timing out at
the bus.
- An unused token leaves a peer on the hub until it expires. Expiry removes it, the same way it voids
the secret.
- A machine already in the mesh is unaffected: it reaches the bus over its tunnel today.
- The genesis machine, the first one, raises the bus on itself and needs no tunnel to reach it.
## How this is checked
| Rule | Checked by |
|---|---|
| A token is refused without a tunnel key, and carries the hub's peer and the machine's address | a controller test |
| Issuing a token makes the machine a peer of the hub before the token is shown | a controller test over the hub's composed tunnel |
| An expired, unused token's peer is gone from the hub | a controller test |
| Enrolment refuses a tunnel key other than the one the token was issued for | a controller test |
| No machine's filter opens the bus to anywhere | a controller test over the composed filter, and the live sweep from outside the mesh |
| A new machine joins from outside the hub's network with the bus closed to it | the lab, then by hand |
@@ -0,0 +1,103 @@
---
topic: the mesh
status: accepted
date: 2026-10-02
deciders: jochen
reconstructed: false
extends: 02-DECISIONS/0168-a-converged-machine-is-filtered-by-the-mesh-alone.md
---
# 170. The firewall seat serves its verbs, and a foreign rule set is removed through one of them
## Context
[ADR 0168](0168-a-converged-machine-is-filtered-by-the-mesh-alone.md) made the mesh say truthfully
what filters a converged machine, and left the removal of what it did not write to the operator's
hand. The first time that hand was needed — two machines, five rule sets a predecessor and a
retired front end had left — there was no mesh way to lend it: the packet filter is a seat
([ADR 0121](0121-a-system-seat-is-named-for-its-scope-and-modules-define-their-own.md)), a seat's
holder serves its verbs ([ADR 0154](0154-the-meshs-own-verbs-are-the-controller-seats-tools.md),
[ADR 0159](0159-a-tool-call-names-the-machine-and-a-holder-serves-its-seats-verbs.md)), and the
firewall seat declared none. The only remaining path was a shell on the machine, which is the path
the mesh exists to replace, and which the operator's own tooling rightly refused to an agent.
A seat's verbs are the contract every holder implements, whatever filter it speaks. What a person
asks a machine's packet filter is the same whether nftables, a front end or a legacy filter answers:
what are the rules, reload the mesh's own, remove this thing the mesh did not write. What differs by
filter is the holder's own business and may be its own tools beside the seat's.
## Decision
**1. The `node-packet-filter` seat serves three verbs**, and a module that claims it serves all
three or is refused the claim, as with every seat:
- `rules` — the packet filter as the machine enforces it now: the nftables ruleset, and the legacy
filter's listings where that tool exists; narrowed to one table or chain when asked. Read-only.
- `reload` — load the mesh's own filter again from the file the mesh writes, and answer with the
mesh's table as loaded. The holder's own act on the holder's own rules.
- `remove` — remove one rule set the mesh did not write, named exactly as the host reports it under
ADR 0168 (`chain HAL-MESH-ONLY (iptables-legacy)`, `table ip6 filter, chain DOCKER-USER`), and
answer with what was done. It refuses the mesh's own tables, the container runtime's own chains,
a built-in chain other than the runtime's user chain, and any chain of a found firewall that is
in force. The runtime's user chain is emptied back to its one return; another chain loses the
jumps into it, is flushed and deleted; a table of the machine's own is deleted whole. Each is an
operator's act, by name, on one thing the mesh reported — never a flush, never a rule the mesh
itself marked.
**2. A holder may serve its own tools beside the seat's.** The nftables module keeps its reading of
the mesh's table as its own tool, and a holder speaking a filter with specifics of its own may add
tools for them; the seat's three are what every holder owes.
**3. A container may ask for a capability.** Serving `remove` and `reload` needs the machine's
network namespace and the right to change its packet filter; a holder's runtime declares
`capabilities: ["NET_ADMIN"]` on its container and runs on the machine's network. The host grants
exactly the capabilities declared, names them in the container's spec so a change recreates it, and
refuses a name that is not a capability's. A privileged container stays undeclarable.
**4. ADR 0168's "by hand" is read as "by the operator, through the seat".** Removing what the mesh
reports as *other* is still the operator's act and is still never the mesh's own doing; the verb is
how the act reaches the machine, recorded on the bus like every other, instead of a shell.
## Consequences
- The seat's row gains the three verbs; a mesh that already runs widens its row at the next
controller start. The nftables module claims them and gains a runtime — a tool server with the
packet filter's tools in its image, on the machine's network, with `NET_ADMIN`.
- The host's container vocabulary grows by `capabilities`; an older host refuses a declaration that
carries it, so the host rolls before the module.
- The two machines of this mesh that ADR 0168 found not filtered by the mesh alone are cleaned
through `remove`, and read *the mesh alone* afterwards; `status` returns to well without a hand on
either machine.
## How this is checked
| Rule | Checked by |
|---|---|
| The seat declares the three verbs; a claim that serves fewer is refused by name | the catalogue's seat tests |
| `remove` refuses the mesh's tables, the runtime's chains, a built-in chain and an active front end's chains, and removes a user chain with its jumps, empties the user chain, deletes an own table | the module's tests over a fake command runner, with the shapes the host reported live |
| A container's capabilities reach the runtime and its spec; an unknown name is refused | host tests |
| Live | `node-packet-filter.remove@<node>` on the home server and the control node; `node show` reads *the mesh alone* on both; `status` is well |
## Built and proven live, 2026-10-02
> **Progressive insight — 2026-10-02.** The decision stands; these are the facts of its building.
> Written as 0169 for three hours and renumbered to 0170: another record took 0169 on main first,
> and the check that refuses a shared number covered issues only (now records too).
Built in mesh-host 68 (`capabilities` on a container), mesh-controller 212 (the seat's three verbs)
and 213 (the filter file a module names under `filtering.into` counts as declared for a mount — the
module's first build was refused without it), mesh-catalog 216 (the nftables module's runtime and
verbs) and mesh-tools 27 (the console lists a node-scoped seat's verbs with their scope and carries the
machine; before it, the verbs were live on four machines and unreachable from the console —
[issue 199](../04-ISSUES/199-a-node-scoped-seats-verb-could-not-be-called-through-the-console/00-report.md)).
Each machine's holder was issued its bus account with `mesh-controller.issue`, the broker node pushed
first. At 12:46Z the five rule sets ADR 0168 had named were removed through
`node-packet-filter.remove`, three on the home server and two on the control node, each answering
with the commands it ran; the next report read *the mesh alone* on all four machines and `status`
listed nothing under `filtered`. The live row is read. What it cost on the way is
[issue 200](../04-ISSUES/200-the-controllers-answer-to-the-console-is-refused-by-the-bus/00-report.md).
## References
- [ADR 0168](0168-a-converged-machine-is-filtered-by-the-mesh-alone.md), [ADR 0154](0154-the-meshs-own-verbs-are-the-controller-seats-tools.md), [ADR 0159](0159-a-tool-call-names-the-machine-and-a-holder-serves-its-seats-verbs.md), [ADR 0121](0121-a-system-seat-is-named-for-its-scope-and-modules-define-their-own.md)
- [Design 33 — The tools the mesh answers](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/33-the-tools-the-mesh-answers.md), [Design 08 — Connectivity](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/08-connectivity.md)
@@ -0,0 +1,59 @@
---
topic: the mesh
status: accepted
date: 2026-10-02
deciders: jochen
reconstructed: false
extends: 02-DECISIONS/0016-the-lab.md
---
# 172. The lab is a module, and runs a bed when the mesh asks
## Context
The lab raises virtual machines and runs the mesh on them, end to end, before a change reaches a real
machine ([ADR 0016](0016-the-lab.md)). It runs on one machine of the mesh, the one with the
virtualisation it needs. Until now the only way to start a bed there was to sign in to that machine and
run the lab's command line by hand, with a dozen environment variables pointing at sibling checkouts.
Nothing in the mesh could ask for it. An agent working through the mesh's own tools could build,
merge and push a change, and could not prove it in the lab first. The operator's direction on
2026-10-02: work on another machine goes through a mesh tool, not a shell on it.
## Considered Options
1. **Keep the lab a command line on one machine.** Every run is a person, or an agent with a shell on
that machine, outside the mesh.
2. **The lab is a module.** Assigned to the machine that can run it, serving tools that run a bed
against named branches and say how it went.
## Decision
**Option 2.**
- **A `lab` module, assigned where the lab can run**, serves five tools: whether this machine can run
beds, run beds against a branch per repository, a run's state, its log, and stopping it.
- **A run is the lab's own suite**, against fresh checkouts of the named branches from the mesh's forge,
side by side as the lab expects them. It builds what the beds place from those checkouts, as the suite
already does. It answers at once with an id, like a build: a bed takes minutes, and a call does not.
- **Only branches on the forge are run**, never code handed to the tool. What a run tested is what the
forge holds at the commit it names.
- **The lab is reached over the mesh only.** Its tools travel the bus, and the module opens no port.
- **No grant beyond the mesh's own.** Running a bed is root on the lab's machine, but anyone who can call
the mesh's tools can already do worse. The operator's judgement on 2026-10-02.
## Consequences
- An agent proves a change in the lab through the mesh, the same way it builds and pushes one.
- The lab's machine carries a module whose runtime holds the virtualisation's and the container
runtime's sockets, and a toolchain to build the mesh with.
- A run's checkouts are its own, so two runs never build from each other's tree. Old ones are removed
when their run ends.
## How this is checked
| Rule | Checked by |
|---|---|
| A run checks out exactly the named branches, and reports the commits it tested | the module's tests over a forge fixture, and each run's answer |
| A run answers at once, and its state and log follow it to the end | by hand, the first run |
| The module opens no port | the composed filter of the lab's machine |
@@ -0,0 +1,66 @@
---
topic: the mesh
status: accepted
date: 2026-10-02
deciders: jochen
reconstructed: false
extends: 02-DECISIONS/0168-a-converged-machine-is-filtered-by-the-mesh-alone.md
---
# 175. The found front end is uninstalled once a machine is converged
## Context
[ADR 0100](0100-a-node-in-use-is-adopted-before-it-is-converged.md) retires the firewall a machine
was found with by disabling it, never flushing it, and keeps its configuration on disk so that
returning the node to adopted can enable it again. [ADR 0168](0168-a-converged-machine-is-filtered-by-the-mesh-alone.md)
made the host keep it retired and say so. Both machines of this mesh that had a front end have been
converged for days; neither is going back. What remained of the front end on each — its package,
its unit enabled for boot on one, its empty chains still wired into the kernel's hooks, a chain of
its container integration still dropping traffic on the IPv6 path until the day before this record
— was not a rollback path. It was software nobody runs, left where a reader finds it and asks
whether the machine has two firewalls.
The operator asked on 2026-10-02 that it be disabled and uninstalled. Disabled it already was. For
uninstalled, the host had no word: a package could be declared present and not absent.
## Decision
**1. A package may be declared absent.** `absent: true` on a package resource has the host remove
the package when it is installed and leave alone a machine that never had it, through the machine's
own package manager, dependencies untouched. A declaration that stops saying a package is absent
installs nothing: there is nothing to undo.
**2. The module that holds the packet filter seat declares the front end it replaced absent**, after
its own filter is loaded, so the mesh's table is in force before the front end's package goes. On a
converged machine the front end is therefore gone, not merely off; on an adopted machine nothing of
this runs, because the filter module is assigned by the flip and not before.
**3. Returning such a machine to adopted enables nothing.** A machine with no firewall needs no
openings ([ADR 0100](0100-a-node-in-use-is-adopted-before-it-is-converged.md)); the host records the
front end as *removed*, says so once, and asks nothing of a command that is not there. What
ADR 0100 kept on disk for a return is kept only as far as the package manager keeps a changed
configuration file; the rollback path it described is given up on purpose.
## Consequences
- The host's vocabulary grows by `absent` on a package; an older host refuses a declaration
carrying it, so the host rolls before the module.
- The nftables module's declaration gains one resource; on the two machines of this mesh that were
found with ufw, the next push removes it.
- `node show` reads *found firewall: ufw, removed* on those machines from then on.
- ADR 0100's sentence about a return to adopted restoring the found firewall holds only while the
front end is installed, which after this record it is not on a converged machine.
## How this is checked
| Rule | Checked by |
|---|---|
| An absent package is removed when present, left when not, and read back | host tests over a fake package manager |
| An uninstalled front end is recorded as removed and nothing is asked of it | a host test with ufw missing on a converged apply |
| Live | the two machines report ufw gone: `pacman -Q ufw` has no answer, `node show` says removed, `status` is well |
## References
- [ADR 0100](0100-a-node-in-use-is-adopted-before-it-is-converged.md), [ADR 0168](0168-a-converged-machine-is-filtered-by-the-mesh-alone.md), [ADR 0170](0170-the-firewall-seat-serves-its-verbs.md)
- [Design 08 — Connectivity](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/08-connectivity.md)
@@ -0,0 +1,118 @@
---
topic: what runs on it
status: accepted
date: 2026-09-27
deciders: jochen
reconstructed: true
extends: 02-DECISIONS/0112-a-module-definition-names-no-node-mesh-or-path.md
---
# 176. The operator account is a node fact, and a home is a placement root
*Reconstructed. The controller shipped this on 2026-09-27 and
[to-be 29](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/29-a-node-has-operator-accounts.md) recorded it as built without a
decision behind it. This record states what was decided, from the code and the design, and adds the
two rules the code left implicit — what an empty account means for a module, and that the account is
stated rather than discovered. Written 2026-10-02.*
## Context
[ADR 0112](0112-a-module-definition-names-no-node-mesh-or-path.md) took every host path out of a
module definition and gave a module's *system* data a place: a directory the mesh resolves under the
node's root, owned by the module. It said nothing about the other half of a filesystem — the files
that belong under a person's home and are owned by that person. The predecessor wrote several of
those: the ssh client configuration, the shell's configuration, an agent's instruction files. It knew
whose home it was writing into because each of its node records carried a login name. The mesh took
the machine facts over and dropped the human one.
The loss was found the ordinary way: `ssh <node>` logged into the home-server under the workstation's
own login name, because nothing in the mesh said the home-server's account was a different one
([to-be 29](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/29-a-node-has-operator-accounts.md),
[issue 172](../04-ISSUES/172-the-ssh-client-block-matches-one-spelling-of-a-machine/00-report.md)).
What the controller does since 2026-09-27: a node record carries an operator account and, optionally,
its home; the account and its home are machine facts a definition may name in a resource's path, owner
and content; a roster file may say it lives under the home, and is then rendered per node, placed under
that node's account's home, owned by the account, and left out on a node with no account. On
2026-10-02 **all four nodes of the live mesh carry an empty account**: the fact exists and nobody has
stated it, so no home-scoped resource can land anywhere yet.
## Considered Options
1. **The definition names the login.** `owner: <name>` in the module. Rejected: it is the installation
written into a definition, which ADR 0112 forbids and
[ADR 0155](0155-a-definition-names-no-installation-and-how-that-is-checked.md) checks for, and it is
wrong on the first machine whose login differs — which is exactly the machine that surfaced this.
2. **The host discovers the account.** The first non-system user, or whoever ran the enrolment.
Rejected: a guess. A shared machine has several people on it, a server may have none, and a host
deciding whose files these are is a decision the mesh then cannot see, state or correct.
3. **The account is a fact the operator states on the node record, and the home is derived from it
unless stated.** Chosen.
## Decision
**A node has an operator account: the login name of the person who works on it.** It is stated by the
operator on the node record, the way a node's address or mode is held there, and it is empty for a
machine nobody logs into. Empty is a real state, not a missing value. The mesh holds the fact because
everything below derives from it, and because it is precisely the fact that was lost when the
predecessor's records were not carried over.
**The account's home is derived unless stated.** The superuser's home for the superuser, the
distribution's conventional per-user home otherwise; a node whose account lives elsewhere states its
home. One place computes the default, so a fact and the record cannot disagree about it.
**A resource may be placed under the home, owned by the account.** This is ADR 0112's move one level
over: as a module's system directory is resolved under the node's root, a file under a person's home is
resolved against the account's home, and owned by the account rather than by root or a module's own
account. A definition names the account and its home as machine facts, never as a path; a roster fact
may say it is a home file and is then placed and owned the same way. The controller resolves both at
composition, and the host chowns what it creates.
**A node with no account cannot carry a home-scoped resource, and says so.** A roster fact that lives
under the home is left out of that node's declaration rather than written to nowhere. A resource naming
the account fact on such a node is refused at composition, naming the fact the machine does not have.
A module that writes a person's files is thereby unassignable to a machine with no person on it, which
is the right refusal.
**One account per node is what this record decides.** Several people on one machine is left open, with
the constraint that allowing it must not force the common case — one workstation, one person — to name
anything.
## Consequences
- **The operator states the account before any home-scoped module lands.** Today none is stated, so the
first assignment of such a module begins with four node records.
- The roster carries each node's account, so a composed ssh configuration logs in as the right person
on every machine — the gap that surfaced this, closed by the same fact.
- A family of modules becomes writable: everything the predecessor placed under a home — ssh client,
shell, the agent's instruction files — is now a module naming a fact rather than a path
([to-be 29 §2](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/29-a-node-has-operator-accounts.md)).
- **What got harder:** a definition cannot say "my user's home" without the mesh knowing who the user
is, so a module of this family is refused on a freshly enrolled machine until a person is named on
it. That is a prompt, not an obstacle.
- **Not decided here:** several accounts per node; a service unit running as the account rather than
as root or a module; a one-off step run as the account. Each is a record of its own.
## How it is checked
| Rule | Checked by |
|---|---|
| A resource's path and owner resolve the account and its home | controller tests on machine-fact resolution: a file naming the account facts lands under the account's home, owned by the account |
| The home is derived unless stated | a controller test: the superuser's home for the superuser, the conventional home otherwise, the stated home when one is stored |
| A home roster fact is left out on a node with no account | a controller test on roster composition: the file is absent from that node's declaration and present on a node with an account |
| A resource naming the account on a node with no account is refused by name | a controller test on machine-fact resolution: the refusal names `account` and lists the facts the machine does have |
| No definition names a home path | ADR 0112's catalogue test on host paths, which a `/home` or `/root` literal fails |
## References
- [to-be 29](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/29-a-node-has-operator-accounts.md) — the design this record
gives a foundation to, and its "what has shipped" section
- [ADR 0112](0112-a-module-definition-names-no-node-mesh-or-path.md) — the system-path placement
this mirrors; [ADR 0155](0155-a-definition-names-no-installation-and-how-that-is-checked.md) — why
a login name may not be in a definition
- [ADR 0120](0120-a-roster-fact-carries-its-format-as-a-template.md) — the roster fact a home file
may be
- [ADR 0177](0177-inside-a-home-the-mesh-owns-what-it-places-and-holds-the-rest-as-found.md) — what
the mesh may and may not do inside the home this record lets it reach
- mesh-controller `internal/inventory/nodes.go` (the account and its home on the node record),
`internal/catalogue/machine_into_files.go` and `roster.go` (resolution and the home fact)
@@ -0,0 +1,117 @@
---
topic: what runs on it
status: accepted
date: 2026-10-02
deciders: jochen
reconstructed: false
extends: 02-DECISIONS/0118-undeclaring-gives-a-unit-back-the-state-it-was-found-in.md
---
# 177. Inside a home, the mesh owns the directory and the files it places, writes into the tool's own files, and holds everything else as found
## Context
[ADR 0176](0176-the-operator-account-is-a-node-fact-and-a-home-is-a-placement-root.md) lets a module
place files under a person's home. A home is unlike any directory the mesh has written into so far:
it is shared with the person, and with every program the person runs. The agent's configuration
directory on the laptop makes the point. On 2026-10-02 it holds thirty entries. The predecessor placed
five of them (an instruction file, a conventions rule, a settings file it merged into, two skills); a
sibling module placed a sixth (the node's identity rule). The agent itself writes the other
twenty-four: its settings, its credentials, its history, the memory of every project it has worked in,
its plugins, its session logs. Several of those are what [to-be 15](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/15-the-agent-session.md)
calls memory *written by the session itself and declared by nobody*: a mechanism that regenerated the
directory would erase a season of it, silently, while reporting success.
The predecessor's own module recorded the hazard in the other direction. Its settings file was first
shipped as *replace*, and every `/model` choice a person made inside a session was reverted to the
template's value on the next synchronisation — on every node, indefinitely, with no indication why. It
was changed to *merge*, and the comment explaining why is still in its manifest.
**And the generator is gone while its output stayed.** The predecessor was retired from the laptop on
2026-10-01. Its six files are still on both workstations, with their content telling every session to
use tools that no longer exist. Nothing owns them; nothing will ever rewrite or remove them.
[To-be 29 §3](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/29-a-node-has-operator-accounts.md) drew the line for one directory,
`~/.ssh`: the mesh owns the directory and the files it places; it holds the person's private keys and
personal drop-ins as found. That was argued from the lockout `~/.ssh` can cause. The argument here is
the same shape with a different stake — the person's work rather than the person's way in — and it has
to hold for every directory the family of home-scoped modules will touch, so it is a rule, not a
section.
## Considered Options
1. **The module owns the directory whole**, regenerating it from the definition. Rejected: it destroys
the memory, history and local settings the agent writes for itself, which is the failure to-be 15
names and the predecessor's settings file demonstrated at small scale.
2. **The module owns only the files it names, and nothing about the directory.** Rejected: *owning one
file beside foreign ones is not owning anything* (to-be 29). The directory must exist, with the right
owner and mode, before the tool first runs on a fresh machine; and a credentials file in a
world-readable directory is a credentials file in the wrong directory.
3. **The module owns the directory and the files it places; a file the tool writes for itself is
written into, never over; everything else is held as found.** Chosen.
## Decision
**A home-scoped module owns the directory it declares: its existence, owner and mode.** The host creates
it if absent, owned by the account, and never removes it while it holds anything
([ADR 0030](0030-data-outlives-the-mesh-that-declared-it.md)). Inside it, every path the module touches
is in exactly one of four classes, and **the class is visible in the definition from the shape
declared**, not inferred from what happened to be on disk:
| class | declared as | the host's rule |
|---|---|---|
| **owned** | a file with content, or a roster fact | written whole, regenerated, removed when undeclared; a file found there with no record of the mesh making it is kept once before it is written over ([ADR 0102](0102-the-mesh-writes-into-a-shared-file-never-over-it.md)) |
| **written into** | a file written *into* a structured document | only the keys the definition names are set, every other key is kept, and each set key is given back when undeclared (ADR 0102). The key list is the module's and is short |
| **written by the module's own process** | a secret the mesh delivers to the module, and a step that writes the file from it | the file's content is never a declared file's content, because a declaration travels in the clear on the bus and the host records it; the module's process writes it, owned by the account, atomically. [ADR 0178](0178-the-mesh-binds-and-delivers-a-licence-and-the-module-writes-the-tools-credential.md) says how for a credential |
| **found** | nothing | never read, never rewritten, never removed. The person's memory, history, projects, local settings, their own rules and skills |
**A file the tool writes for itself is written into, never over.** The agent's settings file and its
own state file are the tool's; the mesh has one or two facts to state in each. Setting those keys and
nothing else is what lets a person's `/model` choice survive a push, and what lets the mesh's keys be
taken back cleanly when the module goes.
**A predecessor's output is found.** A file placed by a generator that no longer exists is, to the
mesh, a file it has no record of making. Where the successor module keeps the path, declaring it
*adopts* it: the host keeps the original once and writes the mesh's. Where the successor does not keep
the path, the mesh does not remove the file, because it removes nothing it did not make; **the operator
removes it, once**, and the module's definition names those paths in its own documentation so the step
is not forgotten. This is the first instance of the one-off setup step to-be 29 leaves open, and the
rule chosen for it is that it is a person's act, listed, not a module's.
**The rule is the family's.** An ssh client module, a shell module, an agent module each declare their
directory and classify their paths this way. A module that cannot say which class a path is in has not
finished its definition.
## Consequences
- A person's work under their home survives every push and every unassign. The mesh's own files come
and go with the module; the mesh's keys in the tool's files come and go with it; the directory stays.
- **Stale files survive too.** Two workstations keep three predecessor files each until a person removes
them — a visible cost, accepted over a mesh that deletes under a person's home. A module author who
renames one of the mesh's own files has the ordinary path: the old resource id is undeclared and the
host removes what it made ([ADR 0118](0118-undeclaring-gives-a-unit-back-the-state-it-was-found-in.md)).
- A module's definition is longer by a classification, and a reviewer has one more question per path.
That is the point: *which parts are managed must be explicit rather than inferred* (to-be 15).
- **What got harder:** a module cannot seed a person's preference once and leave it. A seeded file
([ADR 0087](0087-a-seeded-file-is-created-once.md)) is the shape for that, and it is available to
this family unchanged; what is refused is a seed the module later wants to change, because what grew
in it is the person's.
## How it is checked
| Rule | Checked by |
|---|---|
| The directory is created owned by the account and kept when the module goes | host tests of a directory resource with an owner (ADR 0051's and 0118's), and the family's lab check below |
| An owned file found with no record is kept once, then written | host tests of ADR 0102's kept-original rule |
| Only the declared keys of a written-into file change, and are given back | host tests of ADR 0102: declared keys set, the rest kept, restored when undeclared |
| Nothing found is touched | the family's lab check: a machine with a seeded home holding a person's file beside a predecessor's; after apply the person's file is byte-identical, the predecessor's is kept as the original, the mesh's keys are set and the person's keys in the same file remain; after unassign the mesh's files are gone, the keys are restored, the person's files are untouched and the directory stands |
| Every path a home-scoped module touches is classified | a catalogue review rule for this family: each path is a directory, a file, a file written into, a secret-and-step, or absent — the first module written to it is [to-be 36](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/36-the-operators-agent-on-a-machine.md) |
## References
- [to-be 29 §3](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/29-a-node-has-operator-accounts.md) — the same boundary drawn for `~/.ssh`
- [to-be 15](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/15-the-agent-session.md) — a session's memory is declared by nobody
- [ADR 0102](0102-the-mesh-writes-into-a-shared-file-never-over-it.md), [ADR 0087](0087-a-seeded-file-is-created-once.md),
[ADR 0118](0118-undeclaring-gives-a-unit-back-the-state-it-was-found-in.md), [ADR 0030](0030-data-outlives-the-mesh-that-declared-it.md) — the mechanics each class rests on
- [ADR 0051](0051-shared-data-is-the-operators.md) — the third case the host had no word for: what it neither made nor configured
- the predecessor's `claude-code` module manifest, whose comment on `strategy: merge` records the reverted `/model` choice
@@ -0,0 +1,142 @@
---
topic: what runs on it
status: accepted
date: 2026-10-02
deciders: jochen
reconstructed: false
extends: 02-DECISIONS/0024-model-access-is-a-provision.md
---
# 178. The mesh binds and delivers a licence; the module alone writes the tool's credential; a switch is the binding changed, asked for through the console
## Context
**The operator's stance, set on 2026-10-02:** the controller has no part in the agent module. The
module owns the agent's directory under the operator's home and every related file, handles them
itself, and carries a licence-switching function as the predecessor's did.
**What the predecessor's switching actually was.** A registry of accounts held server-side; a tool,
callable from a session, that decrypted the chosen account's token on the server, refreshed it if near
expiry, and wrote the agent's credentials file on the target node — never returning the token. Beside
it, a shell helper that ran the agent with a token read from a plaintext file in the operator's own
configuration directory, one token per account, on every workstation; and an enrolment helper that
logged in once in a throwaway home and registered what came out. So the central half did the
refreshing and the writing; the node held nothing it could refresh with; and the convenience path kept
every account's token readable on disk wherever it was wanted.
**What the mesh has.** [To-be 14](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/14-model-access.md) is built as far as it goes:
a licence is a named record with a vendor; a consumer is a module on a node and is put on one licence;
the access token is sealed per holder and delivered to the holder's machine; for a refreshable grant
the manager node alone holds the refresh token, encrypted, and refreshes centrally — the one stated
carve-out of [ADR 0050](0050-model-access-is-vendor-agnostic.md). The controller has commands to add a
licence, put a consumer on it, release it, accept a key, set a manager, set and refresh a grant. **None
of them is a verb on the `mesh-controller` seat**, so none can be asked for through the console
([ADR 0154](0154-the-meshs-own-verbs-are-the-controller-seats-tools.md) exposes eighteen commands and
not these). The catalogue has the manager module and a consumer module that already writes an
access-token-only credentials file at a path it is told; both are assigned to nothing.
**Why refresh is central and must stay so.** A refreshable grant rotates its refresh token on use. Two
machines each refreshing one account's grant race: the second refresh presents a token the first
retired. The predecessor refreshed centrally for this reason, and ADR 0024 kept that half on purpose
(*the hard half of this already — and it works*). ADR 0050 narrowed the consequence to one node.
**The two designs are not in conflict, and the line has to be drawn in a record.** The controller
resolving *whose* home a file lands in ([ADR 0176](0176-the-operator-account-is-a-node-fact-and-a-home-is-a-placement-root.md))
and *which* licence a consumer holds (to-be 14) is what the controller does for every module. "No
part" cannot mean that, or the module could not be assigned. It can mean — and this record says it
means — that **the controller learns nothing about the agent**: no file shape, no path, no key, no
word beyond the vendor adapter it already has.
## Considered Options
1. **The module keeps its own registry of accounts and tokens**, the stance read literally. Rejected: a
second secret store outside the vault ([ADR 0113](0113-the-vault-makes-every-secret.md)); a refresh
token on every workstation, widening ADR 0050's one-node carve-out to every machine a person sits
at; and two records of one licence, which drift.
2. **The agent refreshes itself**: the mesh delivers a full grant once at a switch and the agent's own
refresh keeps it alive. Rejected: the refresh race above, between the agent and the manager and
between two machines on one account; and every node then holds a refresh token, which ADR 0050
decided no node does.
3. **The mesh binds and delivers; the module writes; a switch is the binding changed, asked for through
the console.** Chosen.
## Decision
**The consumer is the module on the machine: the operator's interactive sessions on that node, under
that account, hold one licence at a time.** That is to-be 15's `(node, module)` identity, with the
agent module as the module. Two machines may hold different licences, the ordinary case. The mesh's own
sessions on a machine are other modules and hold theirs in their own right.
**The mesh delivers; the module writes.** The module requires `model-access`. The mesh resolves the
licence the consumer is on, delivers the access token sealed to the machine as a secret in the module's
own state, and delivers the non-secret facts — the licence's name, what it serves — beside it. **The
module's own process writes the agent's credentials file** from the delivered secret: under the
account's home, owned by the account, readable by nobody else, written atomically, and access-token-only
— a refresh token found there is removed, because a node never holds one (ADR 0050). The file's content
is never a declared file's content ([ADR 0177](0177-inside-a-home-the-mesh-owns-what-it-places-and-holds-the-rest-as-found.md)).
The step runs when the delivered secret changes and on a schedule as a backstop, so a refreshed token
reaches the file without anyone asking.
**The controller learns nothing about the agent.** Where the file is, what shape it has, what the
agent calls its keys, how it is told about the console — all of that is the module's definition and
code. The controller contributes the facts it contributes to every module: the account, the home, the
licence, the delivery.
**A switch is the binding changed.** Putting the consumer on another licence is the mesh's existing
act — *use this licence, for this consumer* — and it becomes a verb on the `mesh-controller` seat the
way the other verbs did (ADR 0154): the command it already has, served on the bus, listed by the
console. The module serves two tools of its own: one that reports which licence the machine holds and
when its token expires, and one that invokes the seat's verb for a named licence and then waits until
the credentials file carries the new licence's token, answering with the licence's name — **never the
token, in any answer, log or event**. A skill in the agent's directory wraps the second so a person
asks in a sentence. Switching remains a reaction, not a declaration (ADR 0024): a person asks for it,
and nothing in the declaration language grows a conditional.
**Enrolling an account is the mesh's act on the manager node.** A new licence is added by name, its
grant obtained by a login in a throwaway home on the manager node and adopted sealed to that node's
key, as the manager module already does. No token is pasted into a prompt, printed, or passed as an
argument (to-be 14's rule for keys).
**The shell helper that read tokens from a file is retired, not replaced.** A second concurrent
session on the same machine under a different licence would need a second consumer identity — the
unbuilt half of to-be 14's gap — and is not provided here. Stated so it is not rediscovered as a bug.
**A licence the mesh no longer grants is withdrawn** at the binding (ADR 0024). The credentials file
the module wrote is the module's own output: unassigning the module leaves it, like the agent's other
files, and the access token in it expires within hours. Releasing the consumer from the licence is the
act that ends its access.
## Consequences
- The agent on a workstation authenticates with a token the mesh delivered and refreshes centrally,
and no workstation holds a refresh token or any other account's token.
- **The manager must run.** The refresh path exists in the catalogue and is assigned to nothing; it is
a prerequisite of this record, on the control node, and the first thing the build proves.
- **The controller gains a verb, not knowledge.** The licence commands become seat verbs, each
running the command it names, as ADR 0154 did for the others; nothing in them is about the agent.
- A switch is a round trip — binding, composition, push, apply — rather than the predecessor's direct
write: seconds to a minute, and reported when done rather than assumed.
- **What got harder:** running two sessions on one machine under two accounts at once, which the
retired helper allowed by keeping tokens readable. The price of not keeping them so.
## How it is checked
| Rule | Checked by |
|---|---|
| The module's definition declares no secret in a file's content, and requires `model-access` | a catalogue test on the module's definition |
| The credentials file is access-token-only, owned by the account, atomic | the consumer module's existing unit tests on the strip and the write, carried into this module; a live check that the file names no refresh token |
| A switch through the console changes the licence and the token, and no answer carries a token | a live check: the bound facts name the new licence, the file's fingerprint changes, the tool's answer and the module's log contain neither token |
| The controller's licence verbs run the commands they name and carry no agent vocabulary | the seat verb's test, as for the eighteen before it |
| The refresh path is live before the module is | the manager assigned on the control node and a refresh observed in the licence's record, before the module's first assignment |
| No workstation holds a refresh token | the live check above, on every machine the module is assigned to |
## References
- [ADR 0024](0024-model-access-is-a-provision.md), [ADR 0050](0050-model-access-is-vendor-agnostic.md),
[ADR 0055](0055-model-access-is-answered-by-a-licence-or-a-node.md) — what a licence is, who refreshes, what answers
- [to-be 14](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/14-model-access.md), [to-be 15](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/15-the-agent-session.md) — the consumer identity and the gap this leaves where it is
- [ADR 0154](0154-the-meshs-own-verbs-are-the-controller-seats-tools.md), [ADR 0152](0152-the-operators-surface-is-a-module-the-console.md) — how a verb reaches a person
- [ADR 0113](0113-the-vault-makes-every-secret.md) — why there is no second registry
- [ADR 0177](0177-inside-a-home-the-mesh-owns-what-it-places-and-holds-the-rest-as-found.md) — the class the credentials file is in
- the predecessor's `claude-code` module: its switch tool, its shell helpers and the rules of its skill
- mesh-catalog `modules/anthropic-manager`, `modules/anthropic-consumer` — the refresh and the write, as built
+7
View File
@@ -179,6 +179,10 @@ python3 00-META/checks/index.py fail if stale
- **0163** — [Taking a module over is a comparison: what it compares, what it refuses, and what it carries](0163-taking-a-module-over-is-a-comparison.md)
- **0167** — [A membership carries what its module receives, and who the mesh is](0167-a-membership-carries-what-its-module-receives-and-who-the-mesh-is.md)
- **0168** — [A converged machine is filtered by the mesh alone, and the host says what else refuses](0168-a-converged-machine-is-filtered-by-the-mesh-alone.md)
- **0169** — [A machine joins through the tunnel, and the bus is never public](0169-a-machine-joins-through-the-tunnel-and-the-bus-is-never-public.md)
- **0170** — [The firewall seat serves its verbs, and a foreign rule set is removed through one of them](0170-the-firewall-seat-serves-its-verbs.md)
- **0172** — [The lab is a module, and runs a bed when the mesh asks](0172-the-lab-is-a-module-and-runs-a-bed-when-the-mesh-asks.md)
- **0175** — [The found front end is uninstalled once a machine is converged](0175-the-found-front-end-is-uninstalled-once-a-machine-is-converged.md)
### Its tiers, from the bottom up
@@ -269,6 +273,9 @@ python3 00-META/checks/index.py fail if stale
- **0150** — [A module's own code runs as supervised processes under the module's one account](0150-a-modules-own-code-runs-as-supervised-processes-under-one-account.md)
- **0152** — [The operator's surface is a module the mesh assigns: the console](0152-the-operators-surface-is-a-module-the-console.md)
- **0155** — [A definition names no installation: how that is checked, and the three ways a value that did gets out](0155-a-definition-names-no-installation-and-how-that-is-checked.md)
- **0176** — [The operator account is a node fact, and a home is a placement root](0176-the-operator-account-is-a-node-fact-and-a-home-is-a-placement-root.md)
- **0177** — [Inside a home, the mesh owns the directory and the files it places, writes into the tool's own files, and holds everything else as found](0177-inside-a-home-the-mesh-owns-what-it-places-and-holds-the-rest-as-found.md)
- **0178** — [The mesh binds and delivers a licence; the module alone writes the tool's credential; a switch is the binding changed, asked for through the console](0178-the-mesh-binds-and-delivers-a-licence-and-the-module-writes-the-tools-credential.md)
### How it is built
+22 -3
View File
@@ -1,9 +1,10 @@
---
layer: to-be
status: in-progress
code: [mesh-lab]
updated: 2026-09-11
code: [mesh-lab, mesh-catalog modules/lab]
updated: 2026-10-02
decisions:
- 02-DECISIONS/0172-the-lab-is-a-module-and-runs-a-bed-when-the-mesh-asks.md
- 02-DECISIONS/0016-the-lab.md
- 02-DECISIONS/0010-delivery.md
---
@@ -119,7 +120,25 @@ In order, on a machine with nothing:
6. **Verification**, as above, before anything is raised.
## Open
## The lab answers the mesh
*2026-10-02* ([ADR 0172](../../02-DECISIONS/0172-the-lab-is-a-module-and-runs-a-bed-when-the-mesh-asks.md)).
Once installed, the lab is also a module: `lab`, assigned to the machine that passed `check`. Its
tools run there and nowhere else:
| tool | does |
|---|---|
| `lab_check` | the lab's `check`, on this machine |
| `lab_run` | fresh checkouts of the named branches from the forge, side by side, then the suite on the named beds; answers with an id |
| `lab_status` | where a run is, and how it ended: the commits it tested, passed and failed |
| `lab_log` | the run's output so far |
| `lab_stop` | ends a run |
The runtime is a container holding the toolchain the suite builds with. It reaches the
virtualisation daemon and the container runtime through their sockets on the machine, so what it
raises is what a hand run raises. The prerequisites above stay installed by hand. The module uses
them, and never installs them.
- **Whether the lab's bootstrap may install packages at all**, given that the mesh's rules
forbid installing by hand. The resolution is probably that the lab's bootstrap *is* the
+35
View File
@@ -9,6 +9,9 @@ code:
- mesh-host internal/apply (the service that reflects a rule set)
updated: 2026-10-02
decisions:
- 02-DECISIONS/0175-the-found-front-end-is-uninstalled-once-a-machine-is-converged.md
- 02-DECISIONS/0170-the-firewall-seat-serves-its-verbs.md
- 02-DECISIONS/0169-a-machine-joins-through-the-tunnel-and-the-bus-is-never-public.md
- 02-DECISIONS/0168-a-converged-machine-is-filtered-by-the-mesh-alone.md
- 02-DECISIONS/0167-a-membership-carries-what-its-module-receives-and-who-the-mesh-is.md
- 02-DECISIONS/0148-the-meshs-names-are-resolved-not-copied-into-containers.md
@@ -173,6 +176,28 @@ the broker's node must be dialable by every node, at a stable address, and so mu
reachable; on one network it does not. A mesh whose nodes are all behind NAT cannot be raised, and
a broker node whose address moves invalidates every token issued for it.
*2026-10-02.* **The order changes at step 1: the tunnel comes first, from the token**
([ADR 0169](../../02-DECISIONS/0169-a-machine-joins-through-the-tunnel-and-the-bus-is-never-public.md)).
The circularity above is real, and it is broken differently. The overlay is configured by the mesh,
except for the one peer a joining machine needs, and the token carries that peer. So the sequence
becomes:
```
0 the node has an underlay address the machine's own
1 the node makes its tunnel key before any token; it prints the public half
2 a token is issued for that key its address assigned, and the hub sent it as a peer
3 the tunnel comes up to the hub from the token alone: the hub's endpoint and key, its address
4 the node dials the bus OVER THE TUNNEL, at the bus's private address
5 it proves itself, and is proved to enrolment, checking the key is the one the token named
6 the rest of the overlay the whole peer set, delivered as files
7 names, filtering, routes as before
```
The link no longer stays on the underlay. The bus is reached over the tunnel by every machine,
including one that is joining, so it is never opened to the internet. The precondition becomes: **the
hub's tunnel must be dialable by every node, at a stable address.** That port answers nothing to a
key it does not know.
**Whether the link should later move onto the overlay, with the underlay as fallback, is
[open](../../02-DECISIONS/0007-connectivity.md).** It is a decision rather than a derivation: the
gain is which network carries bytes, not what an attacker can reach, since the link is already
@@ -743,6 +768,16 @@ tests over a fixture report check the recording, the preview's fates, the status
predicate. Live: the home server's record names the predecessor's chain as *other* and `status`
names the machine until the chain is removed by hand.
*2026-10-02, [ADR 0170](../../02-DECISIONS/0170-the-firewall-seat-serves-its-verbs.md):* removing what
the host reports as *other* is reached through the packet filter seat's `remove` verb, an operator's act
by name on the bus; the seat also serves `rules` and `reload`, and its holder's runtime declares the
`NET_ADMIN` capability on the machine's network. See design 33.
*2026-10-02, [ADR 0175](../../02-DECISIONS/0175-the-found-front-end-is-uninstalled-once-a-machine-is-converged.md):*
once a machine is converged, the front end it was found with is uninstalled, not merely disabled — the
packet filter's holder declares its package absent after the mesh's filter is loaded, and a return to
adopted then enables nothing. The rollback path ADR 0100 kept on disk is given up on purpose.
## 5 — Certificates
**Two authorities, kept separate on purpose.**
+9 -1
View File
@@ -4,9 +4,10 @@ status: in-progress
code:
- mesh-controller internal/licences
- mesh-controller cmd/mesh-controller/licence.go
updated: 2026-09-05
updated: 2026-10-02
decisions:
- 02-DECISIONS/0024-model-access-is-a-provision.md
- 02-DECISIONS/0178-the-mesh-binds-and-delivers-a-licence-and-the-module-writes-the-tools-credential.md
- 02-DECISIONS/0009-modules-and-the-graph.md
- 02-DECISIONS/0054-model-usage-is-recorded-at-two-grains.md
- 02-DECISIONS/0055-model-access-is-answered-by-a-licence-or-a-node.md
@@ -96,6 +97,13 @@ So `(node, module)` tells them apart, and asking for a licence per session neede
identity. Checked rather than argued: two sessions on one machine hold different licences, each is
given its own key, and releasing one leaves the other.
*2026-10-02:* the operator's own interactive agent on a workstation is a consumer the same way —
`(node, claude-code)`, one licence at a time per machine, delivered by the mesh and written by the
module, switched through the console
([ADR 0178](../../02-DECISIONS/0178-the-mesh-binds-and-delivers-a-licence-and-the-module-writes-the-tools-credential.md),
[36 — The operator's agent on a machine](36-the-operators-agent-on-a-machine.md)). The licence commands
become verbs on the controller's seat for it; none was one before.
**What is still open is the rest of the gap, and it is the harder half.** A *worker* is not one
per machine — many can run on one, from one module — so `(node, module)` cannot name them apart
and this reasoning does not extend to them. That belongs with
@@ -5,8 +5,10 @@ code:
- mesh-controller internal/inventory
- mesh-controller internal/catalogue
- mesh-controller cmd/mesh-controller
updated: 2026-10-01
updated: 2026-10-02
decisions:
- 02-DECISIONS/0176-the-operator-account-is-a-node-fact-and-a-home-is-a-placement-root.md
- 02-DECISIONS/0177-inside-a-home-the-mesh-owns-what-it-places-and-holds-the-rest-as-found.md
- 02-DECISIONS/0112-a-module-definition-names-no-node-mesh-or-path.md
- 02-DECISIONS/0120-a-roster-fact-carries-its-format-as-a-template.md
- 02-DECISIONS/0051-shared-data-is-the-operators.md
@@ -171,6 +173,14 @@ fact, the home as a placement root, and what the mesh may and may not do under a
decision this document names but no record states. They are the next records to write, before the
family of §2 modules is built.
*2026-10-02:* two of them are written. [ADR 0176](../../02-DECISIONS/0176-the-operator-account-is-a-node-fact-and-a-home-is-a-placement-root.md)
records the account as a node fact and the home as a placement root, reconstructed from what shipped;
[ADR 0177](../../02-DECISIONS/0177-inside-a-home-the-mesh-owns-what-it-places-and-holds-the-rest-as-found.md)
generalises §3's boundary to every directory under a home. The first member of the §2 family is
designed in [36 — The operator's agent on a machine](36-the-operators-agent-on-a-machine.md). Still
unwritten: user-scope units, several accounts per node, and the CA. On the same day every node of the
live mesh still carried an empty account.
## Why now, and why not yet
**Why it matters:** when HAL retires, the generators that keep `~/.ssh`, shell config and the
@@ -2,8 +2,9 @@
layer: to-be
status: implemented
code: [mesh-controller, mesh-tools]
updated: 2026-10-01
updated: 2026-10-02
decisions:
- 02-DECISIONS/0170-the-firewall-seat-serves-its-verbs.md
- 02-DECISIONS/0160-the-mesh-issues-an-assignments-subjects-and-a-runtime-serves-what-it-is-issued.md
- 02-DECISIONS/0159-a-tool-call-names-the-machine-and-a-holder-serves-its-seats-verbs.md
- 02-DECISIONS/0154-the-meshs-own-verbs-are-the-controller-seats-tools.md
@@ -169,6 +170,18 @@ either way.
What stays as designed and not built: which verbs any *other* seat serves, and §3 for module-declared
seats' schemas beyond the names their manifests already list.
## The firewall seat's verbs, 2026-10-02
[ADR 0170](../../02-DECISIONS/0170-the-firewall-seat-serves-its-verbs.md). The first node-scoped seat
to carry verbs: `node-packet-filter` serves `rules` (the filter as the machine enforces it, nftables
and legacy), `reload` (the mesh's own filter from its file) and `remove` (one rule set the mesh did
not write, named as the host reports it under ADR 0168; refusing the mesh's tables, the runtime's
own chains, a built-in chain and an active found firewall's). Every holder serves all three; the
nftables module does so from a runtime on the machine's network with `NET_ADMIN`, which is the first
container to declare a capability. Removing a predecessor's rule set is an operator's act reached
through the seat, recorded on the bus, instead of a shell on the machine. *How it is checked:* ADR
0169's 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
+8
View File
@@ -28,6 +28,14 @@ module's credential and listens on loopback. It has no state, no provision, no s
the bus, which it gets the way every module does: a credential the mesh minted for `<node>.mesh-console`,
sealed to the machine, delivered as the module's own secret.
*2026-10-02:* it gains one provision, at node scope — the MCP endpoint on loopback, serving the port
the machine gave it — so that a module whose software must be told where the console is requires that
and is coupled to an endpoint rather than to a module's name
([ADR 0027](../../02-DECISIONS/0027-a-provision-names-what-the-consumer-is-coupled-to.md)). The first
consumer is the operator's agent, [36 — The operator's agent on a machine](36-the-operators-agent-on-a-machine.md) §6;
a machine without the console refuses such a module by name. Nothing else above changes: no seat, no
state, no tools of its own.
Its manifest says three things nothing else in the catalogue says together:
- `invokes: ["*"]` — it calls every tool on the mesh, and the bus grants exactly that publish side;
@@ -0,0 +1,257 @@
---
layer: to-be
status: designed
code: []
updated: 2026-10-02
decisions:
- 02-DECISIONS/0176-the-operator-account-is-a-node-fact-and-a-home-is-a-placement-root.md
- 02-DECISIONS/0177-inside-a-home-the-mesh-owns-what-it-places-and-holds-the-rest-as-found.md
- 02-DECISIONS/0178-the-mesh-binds-and-delivers-a-licence-and-the-module-writes-the-tools-credential.md
- 02-DECISIONS/0102-the-mesh-writes-into-a-shared-file-never-over-it.md
- 02-DECISIONS/0118-undeclaring-gives-a-unit-back-the-state-it-was-found-in.md
- 02-DECISIONS/0112-a-module-definition-names-no-node-mesh-or-path.md
- 02-DECISIONS/0155-a-definition-names-no-installation-and-how-that-is-checked.md
- 02-DECISIONS/0152-the-operators-surface-is-a-module-the-console.md
- 02-DECISIONS/0050-model-access-is-vendor-agnostic.md
- 02-DECISIONS/0109-a-package-registry-seat-is-one-per-ecosystem.md
---
# 36 — The operator's agent on a machine: the `claude-code` module
**The agent a person runs at a terminal, put on the machine by the mesh, instructed by the mesh,
pointed at the console, and authenticated with a licence the mesh delivers.** It is the first member of
the family [to-be 29 §2](29-a-node-has-operator-accounts.md) names — the modules that place files under
an operator's home — and the smallest, so it is where the pattern is proven before the shell, the
terminal and the desktop follow.
What it replaces: the predecessor's module of the same name, which installed the agent's package and
placed five files under the operator's home, and a sibling that placed a sixth. The predecessor is
retired; those six files are still on both workstations telling every session to use tools that no
longer exist. That is the symptom this design answers, and it answers it by making the files a module's
again rather than by editing them.
## 1. What it is
A module, `claude-code`, universal tier: assigned to every node a person logs into, which is every node
with an operator account ([ADR 0176](../../02-DECISIONS/0176-the-operator-account-is-a-node-fact-and-a-home-is-a-placement-root.md)).
It declares the agent's package, owns the agent's configuration directory under the account's home, and
requires two things: `model-access`, for the licence
([ADR 0178](../../02-DECISIONS/0178-the-mesh-binds-and-delivers-a-licence-and-the-module-writes-the-tools-credential.md)),
and the console on the same machine, for the tools
([ADR 0152](../../02-DECISIONS/0152-the-operators-surface-is-a-module-the-console.md)). It names no
node, no path and no login: the account and its home are machine facts, the node's name is a machine
fact, the node's role is a setting on the assignment, and the console's address is what the console
serves.
**The controller has no part in it beyond what it has in every module.** It resolves the account, the
home, the licence and the console's port, and delivers them. It holds nothing about the agent: no file
shape, no key name, no path. The one controller change this design asks for is not about the agent at
all — the licence commands become verbs on the controller's seat, as the other commands did
([ADR 0154](../../02-DECISIONS/0154-the-meshs-own-verbs-are-the-controller-seats-tools.md)).
## 2. What it owns under the home, and what it leaves alone
Every path the module touches is in one of the four classes
[ADR 0177](../../02-DECISIONS/0177-inside-a-home-the-mesh-owns-what-it-places-and-holds-the-rest-as-found.md)
draws, and the class is visible from the shape the definition declares. The agent's directory is
`~/.claude`; its own state file is `~/.claude.json` beside it.
| path | class | declared as |
|---|---|---|
| `~/.claude/` | owned directory | a directory, owner the account, readable by the account alone |
| `~/.claude/CLAUDE.md` | owned | a file: how a session on this mesh works (§4) |
| `~/.claude/rules/00-mesh.md` | owned | a file: this node's identity (§4) |
| `~/.claude/rules/conventions.md` | owned | a file: the rules of the repositories (§4) |
| `~/.claude/skills/mesh-licence/SKILL.md` | owned | a file: the licence skill (§5) |
| `~/.claude/settings.json` | written into | the agent's settings; the mesh's key is `attribution`, and only that (below) |
| `~/.claude.json` | written into | the agent's own state; the mesh's key is the console's entry under the servers the agent speaks to (§3) |
| `~/.claude/.credentials.json` | written by the module's process | a delivered secret and a step (§5) |
| everything else | found | nothing — the person's memory, history, projects, local settings, plugins, their own rules and skills |
**Which keys of the settings file are the mesh's.** A key is the mesh's when it encodes a rule of the
mesh, and the person's when it is a preference. `attribution` — the trailers the agent adds to commits
and pull requests — encodes the repositories' convention and is the mesh's. The model, the spinner, the
drafts, the automation mode and everything else are the person's, and the predecessor's experience with
the model key is the evidence: a mesh that sets a preference reverts a person's choice on every push. A
preference the operator wants on every machine belongs to the family's dotfiles module, not here.
**The agent's own state file is written into for one key.** The agent is told about the console as one
entry among the servers it speaks to, in the file where it keeps that list. Everything else in that
file — the account it is logged in as, its caches, its history of projects — is the agent's, and
ADR 0102's rule is exactly what keeps it: the mesh sets one key and gives it back on undeclare.
## 3. The predecessor's six files
They were placed by a generator that no longer exists; to the mesh they are found. ADR 0177 says what
happens to each kind, and this is the list:
| file | fate |
|---|---|
| `CLAUDE.md`, `rules/conventions.md` | **adopted.** The module declares the same paths; the host keeps the found original once and writes the mesh's content ([ADR 0102](../../02-DECISIONS/0102-the-mesh-writes-into-a-shared-file-never-over-it.md)) |
| `settings.json` | **written into.** The values the predecessor merged and the person changed since — the model among them — stay; the mesh sets its one key |
| `rules/00-hal-mesh.md` | **removed by the operator, once.** Its successor is `rules/00-mesh.md`; the old name carries the predecessor's and stays otherwise |
| `skills/hal-switch-license/SKILL.md` | **removed by the operator, once.** Its successor is `skills/mesh-licence/SKILL.md` |
| `skills/cleanup/SKILL.md` | **removed by the operator, once.** A repository hygiene skill naming the predecessor's forge and repository; not the mesh's |
The module's documentation names the three removals, so a person assigning it on a workstation that
carried the predecessor knows the step. On a fresh machine there is nothing to remove.
**The console's entry changes name.** The agent on both workstations today reaches the console under
an entry named after this installation. A definition names no installation
([ADR 0155](../../02-DECISIONS/0155-a-definition-names-no-installation-and-how-that-is-checked.md)), so
the module writes the entry as `mesh`, and every tool an agent sees is prefixed accordingly. The
hand-made entry is the person's to remove; until they do, the agent sees the mesh's tools twice.
## 4. What the three documents say
**Prose, not a paste** — the files are the module's; this is what they are for.
**`CLAUDE.md` — how a session on this mesh works.** The console is the only path to the mesh, and its
tools are the vocabulary: the record is asked through the records module's tools, symptom first — the
literal error text before a hypothesis — and that is the *search before you dig* rule rewritten for a
knowledge base that is now the record itself ([ADR 0153](../../02-DECISIONS/0153-the-record-is-read-by-a-module-and-the-console-lists-it.md));
the mesh is asked and changed through the controller seat's verbs — status, plan, assign, push,
settings, and licence once it exists; the forge through the forge module's tools. The hard rules are the
same rules in new words: a file the mesh manages is changed through the verb that owns it or through
the catalogue, never on disk, and `plan` says what the mesh would write; a store's database is never
written by hand; main is never pushed; the mesh creates no symlinks and nobody else does either; a
package is declared, not installed by hand. It uses the glossary's words — controller, foundation,
node, seat, console — and none of the predecessor's.
**`rules/00-mesh.md` — who this node is.** Two facts and one pointer: the node's name, from the
machine; the node's role, from the assignment's settings on this node; and that the other nodes are
asked of the controller's `nodes` verb rather than listed here. The predecessor's rule carried a table
of every node with its public domain and role; a table is a copy that drifts, and the live answer is
one tool call away. No address, no public domain.
**`rules/conventions.md` — the rules of the repositories.** Concise commit messages in the imperative,
focused on why; a branch, a pull request and a human approval for every merge; test before pushing,
because nodes update unattended; follow the playbooks in the record; shared logic in the SDK; the
module repository's rules on manifests. Nothing that names a tool of the predecessor's.
**Where the module gets the name and the role.** The name is a machine fact the controller already
offers a definition. The role is a value a person chooses per node — *the laptop*, *the home-server* —
and is an operator value on the assignment's node layer, refused by name when unset
([ADR 0155](../../02-DECISIONS/0155-a-definition-names-no-installation-and-how-that-is-checked.md)).
So assigning the module to a node is two acts: the assignment, and the node's role in its settings.
## 5. The licence
[ADR 0178](../../02-DECISIONS/0178-the-mesh-binds-and-delivers-a-licence-and-the-module-writes-the-tools-credential.md)
decides it; this is the shape.
**The consumer** is `(node, claude-code)`: the operator's interactive sessions on that machine, under
that account, on one licence at a time. The module requires `model-access` and is put on a licence like
the consumer module already in the catalogue.
**Delivery and the write.** The mesh delivers the access token sealed to the machine, as a secret in
the module's own state directory, and the bound facts beside it. A step in the module's own process —
the consumer module's existing write, carried over — reads the secret and writes
`~/.claude/.credentials.json`: owned by the account, readable by the account alone, atomically,
access-token-only. The step names the secret file as what it reads and runs again when it changes
([ADR 0099](../../02-DECISIONS/0099-a-step-that-runs-once-names-what-it-reads.md)), and on a schedule as
a backstop, so a refreshed token reaches the file unasked. It runs in the module's own context and
never as the person.
**Refresh** is the manager module's on the control node, as [ADR 0050](../../02-DECISIONS/0050-model-access-is-vendor-agnostic.md)
built it. It is assigned to nothing today and is the first prerequisite of the build.
**The two tools** the module serves, listed by the console under the module's name:
| tool | answers |
|---|---|
| `licence_status` | which licence this machine's agent holds, from the bound facts; when its access token expires; whether the file on disk matches what was delivered — by fingerprint, never by value |
| `licence_switch` | asks the controller seat's `licence` verb to put this consumer on the named licence, waits until the credentials file carries the new licence's token, and answers with the licence's name and expiry. Refuses with the mesh's own words when the licence does not exist or the consumer cannot be put on it |
Neither tool, nor the module's log, nor any event it emits, ever carries a token. The module declares
that it invokes the controller seat's `licence` verb, and nothing else.
**The skill** — `skills/mesh-licence/SKILL.md` — wraps `licence_switch` so a person asks in a sentence,
and carries the predecessor's rules unchanged in substance: never ask for or print a token; never edit
the credentials file by hand; the tool writes the file and the record together; with no licence named,
ask rather than guess.
**Enrolling an account** happens on the manager node: a licence added by name, its grant obtained by a
login in a throwaway home and adopted sealed to that node's key, as the manager module does. **The
shell helper** that ran the agent with a token from a plaintext file is retired and not replaced
([ADR 0178](../../02-DECISIONS/0178-the-mesh-binds-and-delivers-a-licence-and-the-module-writes-the-tools-credential.md)
says why).
## 6. The console
The agent reaches the mesh through the console on the machine's loopback
([to-be 34](34-the-console.md)). The module must tell the agent the console's address, and the port is
the console's to say: today the console's manifest declares it and the host assigns it, and nothing but
the console knows what was assigned. So **the console provides a node-scoped provision** — the MCP
endpoint on loopback — serving its port, and the module requires it. A requirement names what the
consumer is coupled to ([ADR 0027](../../02-DECISIONS/0027-a-provision-names-what-the-consumer-is-coupled-to.md)):
the agent is coupled to an MCP endpoint on its own machine, not to a module name. Co-location resolves
it, and a machine without the console refuses the agent module by name — which is right, because an
agent without the console is the predecessor's situation again.
This is a change to the console's definition, not to the controller. [To-be 34 §1](34-the-console.md)
says the console has *no provision*; this is the one it gains, at node scope, and the design is amended
in the same change.
## 7. Scope, settings and the order of assignment
**Every node with an operator account.** None has one today; the operator states them first. A node
with no account refuses the module, naming the fact.
**Per node:** the role, in the module's settings on the node layer. **Per mesh:** nothing.
**Order:** the manager on the control node and a refresh observed; the licences the operator uses,
enrolled; the console's provision and the module in the catalogue; one workstation assigned, the three
predecessor files removed there, and a new session read to confirm it sees the mesh's instructions and
the console's tools; then the rest.
## 8. The package
The module declares the agent's package. The distribution every node of the live mesh runs does not
carry it in its repositories: the two workstations have it from a build the predecessor's helper made
from the community repository, and nothing updates it since the predecessor retired. On those two the
declaration is satisfied — the package is present. **On a fresh machine the host's package manager
refuses it, in its own words, and the module is not applied there.** That is correct and is a gap.
The answer the mesh already has a shape for is a package repository for this ecosystem as a seat
([ADR 0109](../../02-DECISIONS/0109-a-package-registry-seat-is-one-per-ecosystem.md)), fed by the
builder with a package it builds from the vendor's release, and trusted by every node's package manager.
Then `package: claude-code` is answered the way every package is, and updates arrive the way every
update does. It is not built, and it is not this module's to build: it is a seat and a provider module
of its own, needed by every package the distribution does not carry.
Rejected as the answer: the vendor's own installer, which puts a self-updating binary under the
person's home. It is a hand-installed package the mesh cannot see, reproduce or roll back, and it
updates itself outside the mesh — the arrangement the manifest rule *never install a package by hand*
exists to end.
## How it is checked
| Check | Defends |
|---|---|
| the module's definition names no node, path or login, and declares no secret in a file's content | ADR 0112, ADR 0155, ADR 0178 |
| on a lab machine with an account, a seeded home holding a person's rule file, the predecessor's three leftovers and a settings file with the person's model: after assign, the mesh's files are present and owned by the account, the person's file and model are byte-identical, the leftovers are untouched, the console's entry is set; after unassign, the mesh's files are gone, the two keys are given back, the directory and everything else stand | ADR 0177 |
| on a lab machine with no account, the assignment is refused naming the fact | ADR 0176 |
| the credentials file is owned by the account, readable by it alone, and names no refresh token; a switch through the console changes the licence named in the bound facts and the file's fingerprint; neither the tool's answer nor the module's log holds a token | ADR 0178, ADR 0050 |
| the console's provision resolves by co-location and a machine without the console refuses the module by name | ADR 0027, ADR 0152 |
| a new session on the assigned workstation lists the console's tools under the `mesh` prefix and answers "which node am I" from the identity rule | the exit of the build |
| the package is reported present on the workstations and refused in the package manager's words on a machine without it | §8, honestly |
## What this does not settle
- **Several operator accounts on one node.** ADR 0176 decides one; the module follows.
- **A parallel session under another licence on the same machine.** The retired helper allowed it by
keeping tokens readable; a clean form needs a second consumer identity (to-be 14's open half).
- **The package repository seat.** §8 names it and leaves it to its own design.
- **The rest of the family** — shell, terminal, desktop, user-scoped services — each a module of the
same shape, each proving nothing new about ownership and something new about its own tool.
## References
- [ADR 0176](../../02-DECISIONS/0176-the-operator-account-is-a-node-fact-and-a-home-is-a-placement-root.md),
[ADR 0177](../../02-DECISIONS/0177-inside-a-home-the-mesh-owns-what-it-places-and-holds-the-rest-as-found.md),
[ADR 0178](../../02-DECISIONS/0178-the-mesh-binds-and-delivers-a-licence-and-the-module-writes-the-tools-credential.md) — the three decisions this rests on
- [to-be 29](29-a-node-has-operator-accounts.md) — the family; [to-be 14](14-model-access.md),
[to-be 15](15-the-agent-session.md) — the licence and the consumer; [to-be 34](34-the-console.md) — the console
- the predecessor's `claude-code` module and its sibling's identity rule — what is replaced, read from the workstations on 2026-10-02
- mesh-catalog `modules/anthropic-consumer` — the write this module carries over; `modules/anthropic-manager` — the refresh it depends on
@@ -1,10 +1,10 @@
---
status: located
status: resolved
opened: 2026-09-29
located-in:
- mesh-host internal/apply/opening.go (retireFirewall)
- mesh-host internal/apply/apply.go (the condition it is called under)
fixed-by:
fixed-by: mesh-host 67 (retire on every converged apply; found-inactive apart from disabled-by-mesh; a skipped step said), mesh-controller 211 (the found firewall's state on node show)
amended-design:
---
@@ -108,3 +108,13 @@ convergence is a state the host keeps — the found firewall active again is ret
reconcile that finds it inactive records *found so* and never *done by the mesh*, and a step skipped
after a failed apply is said. Built in mesh-host on `feat/one-thing-filters-a-converged-machine`; the
record of both machines of this mesh is corrected by the first report under it.
## Resolved, 2026-10-02
mesh-host 67 and mesh-controller 211, live on every machine at 10:10Z. The step now runs on every
converged apply and says what it did; a found firewall enabled again is retired again. The record's
one inherited lie stands as history: on the control node the machine's own record already said the
mesh had disabled the firewall, and the host trusts its record, so `node show` says "retired by the
mesh" there. From this build on, a reconcile that finds the firewall inactive records *found inactive*
and never the other thing. Whether the flip's step took on 2026-09-29 is not recoverable and is not
owed by this record any more.
@@ -1,10 +1,10 @@
---
status: located
status: resolved
opened: 2026-09-29
located-in:
- mesh-host internal/apply/opening.go
- mesh-controller cmd/mesh-controller (the converge preview)
fixed-by:
fixed-by: mesh-host 67 (every refusing table and legacy chain classified with an owner; the runtime's user chain is other), mesh-controller 211 (kept, shown on node show, named by status, previewed with fates)
amended-design:
---
@@ -91,3 +91,15 @@ chain's refusals as *other*; `node show`, `status` and the converge preview say
`feat/one-thing-filters-a-converged-machine` in mesh-host and mesh-controller. On 2026-10-02 the home
server still carries the predecessor's chain in its legacy filter; the record's live row is reading it
there.
## Resolved, 2026-10-02
mesh-host 67 and mesh-controller 211, live at 10:10Z. The live row of
[ADR 0168](../../02-DECISIONS/0168-a-converged-machine-is-filtered-by-the-mesh-alone.md) was read the
same hour: the home server's record names the predecessor's chain in the legacy filter's user chain
as *other*, with what it refuses, beside two chains a retired front end left in the IPv6 legacy filter;
the control node's record names the same two leftovers; the laptop and the workstation read *the mesh
alone*. `status` names both machines and is not well until the operator removes what the mesh did not
write. The allowance the predecessor's chain carried is
[issue 145](../145-a-machine-reads-healthy-while-its-modules-cannot-reach-each-other/00-report.md)'s,
and that record is not closed by this one.
@@ -0,0 +1,43 @@
---
status: resolved
opened: 2026-10-02
located-in: [mesh-host internal/outward (Links reported only the links carrying a default route)]
fixed-by: mesh-host PR 66 (a link backed by a physical device is named outward, up or down), live 2026-10-02
amended-design: []
---
# 197 — A physical link that is down is not filtered when it comes up
## What was observed
A sweep of every machine's filter on 2026-10-02. A laptop-class machine connected by its radio has a
wired port that was unplugged. Its filter guarded the radio and the tunnel, and accepted everything
arriving on any other link:
```
iifname != { "mesh0", "<radio>" } accept
```
The wired port was not in the list. Plugged in, everything arriving on it would have been accepted,
every port of the machine open to whatever network the cable reached. That would last until the
machine reported again and was pushed a new filter.
## Why it matters
**The filter's one rule about links fails open.** [ADR 0140](../../02-DECISIONS/0140-the-filter-constrains-what-arrives-from-outside.md)
has the filter constrain what arrives from outside, and has the machine say which links face outside.
Everything not named is treated as the machine's own, its containers and bridges. So a link the machine
fails to name is not filtered at all. The host named only the links carrying a default route at the
moment it reported. A cable plugged in later is the ordinary case for a laptop. A second wired network
that never carries the default route, such as a direct link to a storage box, is never named at all.
## Open questions
- A virtual link that faces outside (a VPN client's interface, a USB tether that appears as a virtual
device) has no physical device behind it. It is named only while it carries the default route. Is
that enough?
## Resolved (2026-10-02)
Live on the affected machine after the host was delivered and one more push: its filter now guards the
radio, the tunnel and the unplugged wired port, before anything is plugged into it.
@@ -0,0 +1,14 @@
# Diagnosis
*2026-10-02.*
**Located in `mesh-host` `internal/outward`.** `Links` read the kernel's routing tables and returned the
interfaces carrying a default route. An unplugged port carries none, so it was never reported, and the
controller rendered the filter around the links it was given.
**The fix.** A link faces outside if it carries a default route **or** has a physical device behind it.
The kernel lists every interface under `/sys/class/net`, with a `device` entry for one backed by
hardware. A bridge, a veth, the tunnel and the loopback have none, so they stay the machine's own. The
wired port is now reported up or down, and the filter guards it before anything is plugged in. Tested
with a radio carrying the default route and an unplugged wired port beside a bridge, a veth, the docker
bridge, the tunnel and the loopback: the two physical links are reported, nothing else.
@@ -0,0 +1,71 @@
---
status: resolved
opened: 2026-10-02
located-in: [mesh-catalog modules/dnsmasq (listens on loopback and the machine's mesh address only), the home-server's DNS (a predecessor's dnsmasq configuration the mesh did not own), the home network's DHCP (hands out the home-server as every device's DNS)]
fixed-by: mesh-catalog PR 214 (dnsmasq listens on addresses from a setting; docker's file takes no settings), mesh-controller PR 210 (the settings verb), mesh-catalog PR 215 (unifi network DNS tools), live 2026-10-02
amended-design: []
---
# 198 — The home network's DNS server ran outside the mesh, and the mesh's filter closed it
## What was observed
Every phone on the home Wi-Fi had no internet, while a laptop on the same Wi-Fi did. The router's
DHCP hands every device the home-server's LAN address as its DNS server. The home-server's DNS daemon
was listening on that address, and every query to it timed out. The router itself answered the same
query at once. The laptop worked because it resolves through its own local resolver, not through the
server DHCP names.
## Why it happened
The DNS daemon on the home-server was not the mesh's. It ran under a configuration file a predecessor
generated, listening on loopback, the mesh address and the LAN address. The mesh's `dnsmasq` module was
assigned to the other three machines and not to this one, so no module on the home-server declared
port 53. Its filter opens only what a module declares, so DNS from the LAN was dropped. It started when
the home-server applied the filter this morning, after nine hours of applying nothing
([issue 194](../194-the-hosts-own-former-archive-stops-every-apply/00-report.md)).
Nothing said so. The daemon reported running, the filter applied cleanly, and the mesh had no record
that the home network depended on a service it did not know.
## Why it matters
**A service the mesh does not know is closed by the mesh's filter, by design, and nothing asks whether
something depends on it.** That is the right default for an unknown port. It is the wrong outcome for
the one service a whole network was told to use. The gap is that a machine can run something
important outside the mesh with nothing to show it.
**The mesh's `dnsmasq` could not have served the LAN either.** It listened on loopback and the mesh
address only. The reach of its DNS endpoints opens the filter, but the daemon would not have been
listening on the LAN address anyway.
## Open questions
- Should a machine report the listening services the mesh does not own, the way it reports the links
that face outside? This one would have been visible before the filter closed it.
- The LAN address the home-server answers on is now a setting, beside the reach that opens the filter.
Two statements that must agree. Should reach `public` on a DNS endpoint imply listening beyond the
mesh?
## Resolved (2026-10-02)
The home network was pointed at the gateway for DNS while the fix was built, which got the phones back
within minutes. Then:
- the mesh's `dnsmasq` takes the addresses it listens on beside the machine's from a setting, with
loopback as the mesh-wide default, so no other machine changed;
- the home-server's layer adds its LAN address, and its DNS endpoints' reach is `public`. The router
forwards no DNS, so that means the LAN;
- the module and its sibling `resolv-conf` were assigned to the home-server, replacing the
predecessor's daemon and configuration, which were kept aside;
- the home network was pointed back at the home-server, through a new `unifi` tool.
Checked live: from another machine on the LAN, public names and mesh names both resolve through the
home-server's LAN address, and the mesh and the machine itself resolve as before.
**One fault found on the way, and caught before it reached any machine.** A module's settings are
merged into every mergeable file the module owns. The first attempt therefore put the new setting into
docker's `daemon.json` as well as into dnsmasq's config, and dockerd refuses keys it does not know. The
plan showed it before any push. The change was reverted and redone with docker's file declared to take
no settings. The general fault, a module's settings reaching files they were not meant for, is still
there for any module with more than one file.
@@ -0,0 +1,35 @@
---
status: resolved
opened: 2026-10-02
located-in: [mesh-tools src/client.ts (toolsOn left node-scoped seats out of the listing), mesh-tools src/mcp.ts (the call resolved the key against that listing)]
fixed-by: mesh-tools 27 — node-scoped seats are listed with their scope, the verb requires the machine, and the call carries it in the subject
amended-design:
---
# 199 — A node-scoped seat's verb could not be called through the console
## What was observed
2026-10-02, the first time a node-scoped seat declared verbs
([ADR 0170](../../02-DECISIONS/0170-the-firewall-seat-serves-its-verbs.md)). The packet filter's
holder on every machine served `rules`, `reload` and `remove` on the seat's per-machine subjects, and
the bus admitted them. The console answered every call with *nothing serves
node-packet-filter.rules@<machine>*.
[Design 33 §4](../../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/33-the-tools-the-mesh-answers.md) says a node-scoped seat's
tool carries the node it is asked of, as `<seat>.<verb>@<node>`. The console's listing left
node-scoped seats out — the comment said they *wait for a caller naming the node* — but the roles map
the console resolves a name against is built from that same listing. So the name never resolved as a
seat's verb, fell through to a module's subject nobody served, and the refusal named the wrong cause.
## Why it matters beyond this instance
A stated behaviour that did not happen, with a refusal that pointed elsewhere: the seat's verbs were
live on four machines and unreachable from the one surface a person uses. It could only be found by a
node-scoped seat declaring verbs, which none had.
## Resolved, 2026-10-02
mesh-tools 27: node-scoped seats are listed with their scope, their verbs take a required `node`, the
call carries it in the subject, and a call without one is refused in words. Tested with a round trip
asking one machine's holder and being refused without a machine.
@@ -0,0 +1,36 @@
---
status: open
opened: 2026-10-02
located-in: []
fixed-by:
amended-design:
---
# 200 — The controller's answer to a long console call is refused by the bus
## What was observed
2026-10-02. A `push` of the control node asked through the console came back as *mesh-controller.push
did not answer in time. Something is serving it, so this is the tool being slow rather than absent.*
The push had run; the machine applied. The bus's log on the control node, at the same moment:
```
[ERR] 10.10.0.1:56030 - cid:4015 - Publish Violation - User "controller",
Subject "_INBOX.shanks.mesh-console.WRNO5V9IJ1FX35AU5NRBEB.WRNO5V9IJ1FX35AU5PN1UW"
```
The controller's reply to the console's request was refused: the controller's bus account may not
publish to the console's reply inbox. Shorter calls (`status`, `node`, `nodes`) answer; the long ones
(`push` of a large machine, `issue`) time out on the console's side although they succeed.
## Why it matters beyond this instance
A call that succeeds and is reported as a timeout sends a person to retry what already happened — a
second push, a second issue — and reads as the mesh being slow when it is the mesh refusing itself.
Whether the inbox prefix the console uses is the one the controller's account is allowed to answer, or
the request outlives the inbox subscription, is what a diagnosis has to tell apart.
## Open questions
- Which reply inboxes may the controller's account publish to, and which does the console request on?
- Does a reply after the requester's timeout count as a violation, or is the prefix itself refused?