ADR 0153 and ADR 0154: the record is read by a module, and the mesh's verbs are its seat's tools

Design 33 in progress against ADR 0154 (the twelve verbs, the prerequisites built); design 35 for the records module under ADR 0153, extending 0025; as-is 07 rewritten to a mesh that keeps no store; as-is 12 and 13 updated; issue 006 built and waiting on its live check.
The console shipped: design 34 implemented, as-is 13, issue 147 verified live
2026-09-30 17:47:49 +02:00 · 2026-09-30 17:13:09 +02:00 · 2026-09-30 14:47:36 +00:00 · 2026-09-30 16:21:33 +02:00 · 2026-09-30 16:08:52 +02:00 · 2026-09-30 13:25:34 +00:00
37 changed files with 1474 additions and 97 deletions
@@ -75,6 +75,18 @@ another — and a mesh you cannot name precisely is a mesh two people describe d
  is a role you occupy, and the two meet where a seat delivers a provision: occupying the seat is
  what makes a module *the* provider of it.

+## The surfaces
+
+- **console** — the module (`mesh-console`) that puts the mesh's tools in front of whoever is on a
+  machine: an MCP endpoint on the machine's loopback for an agent, the same endpoint for a person. It
+  is assigned like any module, holds a credential the mesh minted, and calls tools under a grant its
+  manifest declares (`invokes`). Loopback is the authority boundary: whoever is on the machine owns the
+  mesh there ([ADR 0152](../02-DECISIONS/0152-the-operators-surface-is-a-module-the-console.md)).
+  Not "the tool bridge", "the brain" or "the MCP server" — those name the predecessor's program or a
+  protocol, and the console is a module.
+- **invokes** — the manifest word for the tools a module calls, `<module>.<tool>` each or `*` for
+  every one. A grant on the publish side and nothing else; a module that declares none calls nothing.
+
 ## How this page is kept

 A new name for an existing thing lands here first, in the same change that introduces it in code. A
@@ -72,6 +72,12 @@ answers from it. Nothing flows back: this repository is public, the mesh is not,
 would be how installation-specific detail arrives into documents that must not carry it
 ([`README.md`](../README.md)).

+> **The mechanism changed — 2026-09-30, by ADR 0153.** What stands: read where it is written, no copy,
+> one-way. What moved: the reader is a module the mesh assigns (`records`, a checkout at a commit every
+> answer names) rather than the agent session of design 15, which is not built; and "the search consults
+> the agent" has no store to consult since the cut-over — the console's tool list is where the record
+> appears beside everything else. [ADR 0153](0153-the-record-is-read-by-a-module-and-the-console-lists-it.md).
+
 ## Consequences

 **This repository stops being a fourth knowledge system, properly.** The original objection was
@@ -47,6 +47,14 @@ Anything with the control plane in reach can ask any module anything it serves.
 harder: nothing outside the control plane can, and the control plane's connection is one more
 thing on the path of every question — a cost accepted for the audit it buys.

+> **The mechanism changed — 2026-09-30, by ADR 0152.** What stands: `ask` on the control plane, and
+> that every call passes an account whose permission list says what it may ask. What moved: "nothing
+> outside the control plane can" stopped being true when a person's account gained a publish grant per
+> tool (design 25 §7, 2026-09-28), and [ADR 0152](0152-the-operators-surface-is-a-module-the-console.md)
+> takes the first option above for a module as well — a manifest declares `invokes`, and the bus grants
+> exactly that publish side. The audit the second option bought is the bus's permission list, which
+> derives both.
+
 ## How it is checked

 A tools-only bed asks a served tool through the control plane and asserts an answer arrived —
@@ -103,6 +103,13 @@ reintroduces 109 and 135 — silently, and on a live mesh, which is exactly how
   ([issue 110](../04-ISSUES/110-a-container-on-the-runtimes-own-network-cannot-reach-the-resolver/00-report.md));
   and on two of four machines the resolver binds loopback only, so the runtime hands containers a
   public resolver instead. Both are prerequisites, not related work.
+
+   > **Progressive insight — 2026-09-30, later the same day. The loopback claim was wrong.** The
+   > resolver bound the private address on all four machines; on two the runtime had never been told
+   > to use it, and on all four the resolver discarded a query that arrived on the runtime's bridge.
+   > The step stands; the facts under it were those. Both fixed the same day
+   > ([issue 110's resolution](../04-ISSUES/110-a-container-on-the-runtimes-own-network-cannot-reach-the-resolver/01-resolution.md)),
+   > and step 3 landed after them.
 2. **The runtime is told which resolver to use, per machine, as a file** — not per container as a
   creation-time argument, or the resolver's address is back in every container's identity and the
   problem has only got smaller.
@@ -143,6 +150,16 @@ closed by this record, only answered by it.
  resolvable inside the mesh — holds unchanged and by the same means the machine already uses.
 - **Issue 110 stops being a container-DNS inconvenience and becomes a prerequisite** for the mesh not
  restarting itself whenever it learns a name.
+- **A container that names a resolver of its own has opted out of the machine's**, and the copy this
+  record removes was the only reason such a container could reach anything by a mesh name.
+
+  > **Progressive insight — 2026-09-30, the afternoon this landed. Found the hard way.** The mail
+  > system's admin, behind Mailu's own resolver, lost its database the moment the copy went
+  > ([issue 171](../04-ISSUES/171-a-modules-own-resolver-knows-no-mesh-name/00-report.md)). A `dns` on
+  > a container is a decision about whether mesh names exist inside it, not a preference; the module
+  > was corrected, and whether the controller should refuse the contradiction is that issue's open
+  > question.
+
 - **A container started by hand gets the mesh's names too**, where before only declared containers did.
  Design 08 drew that boundary deliberately, on the grounds that reaching into every container is what
  a nameserver would be for. This record accepts that consequence rather than working around it: a
@@ -0,0 +1,99 @@
+---
+topic: the tiers
+status: accepted
+date: 2026-09-30
+deciders: jochen
+reconstructed: false
+extends: 02-DECISIONS/0066-public-routing-is-name-agnostic.md
+---
+
+# 151. A route's internal name is composed under the node that serves it
+
+## Context
+
+A module that requires a route is given two names from one label: a public one, `<label>.<public
+domain>`, and an internal one, `<label>.<node>.internal`
+([ADR 0138](0138-an-assignment-binds-an-endpoint-and-says-how-far-it-reaches.md)). Both were composed
+from the node the module runs on.
+
+The two are answered differently. The public name is published into every machine's roster at the
+address of the node whose proxy serves it ([ADR 0066](0066-public-routing-is-name-agnostic.md)), so
+it reaches the proxy from anywhere in the mesh. The internal name is answered by every machine's
+resolver as *anything under a node's name goes to that node*
+([design 08 §2](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/08-connectivity.md)) — the node it was composed from, which is
+the consumer's. Where the proxy runs on another machine, that name sends a client to a machine with
+nothing listening, while the public name works
+([issue 139](../04-ISSUES/139-an-internal-route-name-resolves-to-the-consumers-node/00-report.md)).
+Every route on this mesh today is served beside its module, so it has not been seen; `route` is
+provided mesh-wide precisely so that stops being true.
+
+Beside it, the roster gave every routed name a second entry with the mesh's suffix appended —
+`<name>.<public domain>.internal` — because it composed a full name for every entry as it does for a
+machine. That name resolved on every machine, was served by nothing, and was refused by the proxy at
+the handshake; the first three names tried while reproducing an unrelated issue were those, and the
+evidence pointed at a regression that had not happened
+([issue 157](../04-ISSUES/157-a-routed-names-internal-alias-is-served-by-nothing/00-report.md)).
+
+## Considered Options
+
+**1. Keep the consumer's name and publish it at the serving node's address**, as the public name is.
+The name stays `<label>.<consumer>.internal` and an exact roster entry overrides the wildcard.
+Rejected: it makes `<x>.<node>.internal` mean *goes to that node* except when it does not, which is
+the one rule the resolver design states; it needs an entry per route where the wildcard needed none;
+and which of an exact entry and a wildcard a resolver answers first is the resolver's business, which
+the mesh deliberately does not know.
+
+**2. A proxy on every machine, so the serving node is always the consumer's.** Rejected for this
+question: it is a different decision about what `route` is — a node-scoped seat with a mesh-wide
+fallback — and this mesh runs one proxy on the hub today. Whatever is decided there, a route served
+from another machine must have a name that reaches it.
+
+**3. Compose the internal name under the node that serves the route.** Chosen.
+
+## Decision
+
+**A route's internal name is `<label>.<serving node>.internal` — composed under the node whose proxy
+answers the route, which is the machine the request arrives at.** The public name is unchanged:
+`<label>.<public domain>` of the node the module runs on, which is where the operator put it.
+
+Where the proxy runs beside the module — every route on this mesh today — the two nodes are one and
+nothing changes. Where it does not, the name says where the request goes, which is what a name under
+a node's name has always meant.
+
+**A routed name has no mesh form.** The roster publishes it as itself, once, at the serving node's
+address. Only a machine has a bare name beside its full one.
+
+What certifies the internal name is unchanged by this: the proxy that terminates it obtains a
+certificate from the mesh's authority for the names it is given, and it is given this one.
+
+Taken on the operator's standing instruction to answer the open design questions in the work order.
+
+## How this is checked
+
+- **Composition.** A controller test contributes a route from a module on one node to a proxy offered
+  from another, gathered the way the controller gathers a consumer's contribution for a provider on
+  another machine, and asserts the internal name carries the serving node.
+- **Publication.** A controller test renders a roster with a machine and a routed name and asserts
+  the routed name appears as itself, once, and never with the suffix appended.
+- **On the mesh.** After the change no machine's roster carries a `<domain>.internal` entry, and a
+  route's internal name still answers from a container with a certificate from the mesh's authority.
+
+## Consequences
+
+- **A route served from another machine now has a usable internal name.** The first module assigned
+  that way will resolve, where before it would have resolved to the wrong machine with no error.
+- **The internal name of a route can change when its proxy moves.** A route re-homed from one proxy
+  to another gets a new internal name, as the design's rule implies; clients that dialled the old one
+  reach the old machine. The public name does not move with the proxy and is the stable one.
+- **The roster is one line shorter per routed name**, and a person reading a hosts file no longer
+  finds names that resolve to a refusal.
+- **Issue 139's second question — a per-node route holder — is left open**, and is a decision about
+  what a seat is rather than about a name.
+
+## References
+
+- [issue 139](../04-ISSUES/139-an-internal-route-name-resolves-to-the-consumers-node/00-report.md) — the question
+- [issue 157](../04-ISSUES/157-a-routed-names-internal-alias-is-served-by-nothing/00-report.md) — the alias
+- [ADR 0066](0066-public-routing-is-name-agnostic.md) — routed names propagate mesh-wide; extended here
+- [ADR 0138](0138-an-assignment-binds-an-endpoint-and-says-how-far-it-reaches.md) — how the two names are composed and how far each reaches
+- [design 08 §2](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/08-connectivity.md) — anything under a node's name goes to that node
@@ -0,0 +1,160 @@
+---
+topic: what runs on it
+status: accepted
+date: 2026-09-30
+deciders: jochen
+reconstructed: false
+extends: 02-DECISIONS/0095-the-control-plane-is-the-way-to-ask-a-module.md
+---
+
+# 152. The operator's surface is a module the mesh assigns: the console
+
+## Context
+
+**Since the bus moved, nobody can ask the mesh anything without opening a shell on a machine.** Every
+tool call an operator's assistant makes fails, on every machine including the one the operator sits
+at, with *AMQP not connected*
+([issue 147](../04-ISSUES/147-the-operators-tools-still-dial-the-bus-that-was-removed/00-report.md)).
+The program answering is the predecessor's tool server, started on the workstation by hand, with the
+predecessor's broker address written into the assistant's own configuration. It has no manifest, no
+assignment, no account on the bus, and the mesh has never known it exists. Nothing regressed: the
+mesh removed a transport that a program outside the mesh still dials.
+
+**The mesh has a tool model, and it works.** A module serves each tool on its own subject and its
+account may serve nothing else ([ADR 0047](0047-a-module-runs-its-code-as-its-own-process-with-its-own-account.md));
+a person is issued an account whose only permission is to publish the tool subjects named at issue
+([25 — The bus on NATS](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/25-the-bus-on-nats.md) §7); a client on the
+runtime repository's main branch speaks that account as a command line and as an MCP server. Measured
+on the live mesh on 2026-09-28: a call to the forge's `gitea_list_repos` answered with real
+repositories; the tool list came back empty, because it asks the catalogue for a tool nothing serves
+([ADR 0132](0132-a-seat-carries-the-tools-its-holder-must-serve.md)).
+
+**Two records have already said where the surface belongs.** ADR 0132's consequences: *the MCP
+surface belongs inside the mesh — a module the mesh assigns to the machine where the agent sits, with
+a credential the mesh minted and authority derived from what it may call, not a program started by
+hand with a credential printed to a terminal.* Design [33](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/33-the-tools-the-mesh-answers.md)
+§6 says the same. Neither is a decision about the surface: 0132 decided where a seat's tools live,
+and named the surface in passing.
+
+**And one record says the opposite, in the letter.** [ADR 0095](0095-the-control-plane-is-the-way-to-ask-a-module.md)
+made the control plane *the* way to ask a module, deferred "calling is a grant" until something asked
+for it, and recorded that *nothing outside the control plane can*. A person's account (design 25 §7,
+built 2026-09-28) is exactly that grant, minted for a person. So 0095's exclusivity has already been
+widened once without a record saying so; a module that calls tools widens it a second time, and this
+record is where that is said.
+
+**What a module's account may do today, counted from the composition** (`internal/broker`): publish
+its own events, publish the accept subjects of seats it uses, subscribe its own tools and what it
+consumes. No module principal may publish another module's tool subject. Of 72 modules in the
+catalogue, 45 serve tools and 0 may call one.
+
+The question the work order asks before any code: **does the mesh grow its own operator surface, or is
+the surface an ordinary module that happens to serve tools?**
+
+## Considered Options
+
+**1. The control plane serves the agent protocol itself** — a listener on the controller, or a verb
+its binary runs. Rejected. It puts a surface for tools the control plane does not implement on the one
+component that must stay answerable while it is itself being replaced, which is the reason 0132
+rejected the control plane as the answer to discovery. A person on a workstation would reach it over
+the network, and the networked surface [ADR 0035](0035-one-implementation-several-surfaces.md)
+reserves for that authenticates through an OAuth2 provider that is not configured — so the controller's
+`api` verb correctly serves nothing today, and this option would either wait for it or bypass it.
+
+**2. A program a person installs and starts by hand with a printed credential** — what exists on the
+runtime repository's main. Rejected as the end state. It is outside the mesh in every way issue 147
+names: no assignment, no declaration, no seat, no check that it reaches anything, revoked only by a
+person remembering to. It is the predecessor's arrangement one bus later, and it fails the same way
+the next time an address moves. It stays as the recovery path, the way the command line does
+(ADR 0035): a credential from `operator issue` and the `mesh` client work with no console assigned.
+
+**3. An ordinary module, assigned to the machine the person sits at, holding a credential the mesh
+minted, serving the mesh's tools on that machine's loopback.** Chosen.
+
+## Decision
+
+**The console is a module.** `mesh-console` is built by the mesh, registered like any module,
+assigned to a machine, and given a bus credential sealed to that machine. It serves the mesh's tools to
+whoever is on that machine: to an agent over MCP, and to a person through the same endpoint. Assigning
+it to a machine is what makes the mesh reachable from there; unassigning it revokes that, at the next
+composition, with nothing on the machine to remember to remove.
+
+**A grant to call is a manifest word: `invokes`.** A module declares the tools it calls, each as
+`<module>.<tool>`, or the single entry `*` for every tool on the mesh. The bus grants exactly that
+publish side and nothing beside it — no event, no subscription, no seat. This is ADR 0095's deferred
+first option, taken now that a consumer asks for it; a person's account already has this shape, and
+the same composition derives both. The control plane's `ask` stands, and 0095's audit point with it:
+every call still passes one account whose permission list says what it may ask.
+
+**Authority is the machine's login.** The console listens on the machine's loopback only, declared
+`from: machine`, so whoever can open a socket on the machine is whoever owns the machine, and *the
+account that installed the host owns the mesh on that node*
+([ADR 0034](0034-the-local-account-owns-the-mesh.md)). Anything on a machine may call anything on it,
+and that is the whole of local ([ADR 0144](0144-anything-on-a-machine-may-call-anything-on-it.md)).
+The mesh knows no person: what the audit sees is which console asked, under the account
+`<node>.mesh-console`. How a person's identity reaches a session is the question design 15 leaves
+open, and this record does not close it.
+
+**What the console lists is asked of the modules.** Design 33 §5: a module's own tools are answered by
+the module, from the code that defines them. The tool runtime therefore answers one reserved verb for
+every module it serves — `tools`, the module's tool names, descriptions and argument schemas — and the
+console assembles its list by asking the catalogue which modules the mesh holds and each module what
+it answers. A module that is not running is absent from the list and says so; a tool an agent already
+knows the name of can be called whether or not it was listed. A module may not name a tool of its own
+`tools`; the runtime refuses the collision at load rather than letting one shadow the other. A
+role's tools, and the mesh's own verbs, join the list when the `mesh-controller` seat serves them
+(design 33 §1, third family) — the console reads whatever the mesh can say about itself, and grows as
+that does.
+
+**The console holds one credential and one grant: `*`.** It is the operator's surface on a machine the
+operator owns; narrowing what it may call is a setting on its assignment, which
+[ADR 0046](0046-a-module-configuration-is-its-assignments-not-its-manifest.md) already provides for
+and nothing here builds.
+
+## Consequences
+
+- **The way a person drives the mesh is inside the mesh.** It is declared, delivered, replaced and
+  revoked by the same machinery as everything else, and `status` says whether the machine carrying it
+  has applied. Issue 147's shape — a surface kept alive by an address in a file — cannot recur, because
+  there is no file: the console's credential names the bus the mesh is on, and moves when it does.
+- **A module may now call tools, which ADR 0095 had reserved to the control plane.** The grant is
+  explicit, per tool or `*`, and derived by the same composition that grants everything else. A module
+  that declares no `invokes` gains nothing. What got harder: a manifest reviewer has one more field to
+  read for authority, and `*` in it deserves the reader's attention every time.
+- **A new manifest word ships one release before any manifest uses it**, and must reach both parsers:
+  the build machine's and the running controller's. The console's manifest cannot be registered until
+  the controller and the builder that packages it have been rebuilt with the word.
+- **Discovery costs a fan-out per list.** One request per module the mesh holds, answered at once by
+  the bus for every module nothing serves, so the cost is bounded by the modules that are up. The list
+  is cached briefly in the console; a module assigned a moment ago appears at the next refresh.
+- **Every tool runtime must be rebuilt once** to answer `tools`. Until a module is, it is callable and
+  not listed, and the console says which modules did not answer.
+- **The mesh's own verbs are not in the console yet.** `status`, `push`, `assign` are the
+  `mesh-controller` seat's tools under 0132, and the three prerequisites 0132 names are still not in
+  place. A person asking what a node runs still opens a shell for that question, and that gap is design
+  33's to close, not this record's — recorded here so nobody reads the console as the whole of 147.
+- **The person's credential is not retired.** `operator issue` and the `mesh` client remain the path
+  when no console is assigned, and the path an operator uses to bring a mesh up far enough to assign
+  one.
+
+## How this is checked
+
+| Rule | Checked by |
+|---|---|
+| A module's `invokes` becomes exactly that publish grant, and nothing else | the bus user composition test: a module invoking `shop.price` may publish that subject and no other tool's; `*` may publish every tool subject; neither may publish an event or subscribe anything it did not consume |
+| A malformed `invokes` entry is refused at registration | a parser test: an entry naming no tool is a problem named in the manifest's words |
+| The runtime answers `tools` for every module it serves | the runtime's test: a module registering two tools answers three names, and a module naming one of its own `tools` is refused at load |
+| The console's list is what the modules answer | the client's test against a real bus: two modules up, a third the catalogue holds and nothing serves, and the list carries the two and names the third as not answering |
+| A call from the console reaches a module over the bus | the same test, and the live mesh: the console assigned to a workstation answers `tools/list` on its loopback and a call to the forge returns repositories |
+| The console listens on loopback and nowhere else | its manifest declares `from: machine`, and the filter composed for the machine opens nothing for it |
+
+## References
+
+- [issue 147](../04-ISSUES/147-the-operators-tools-still-dial-the-bus-that-was-removed/00-report.md) — the surface outside the mesh
+- [ADR 0095](0095-the-control-plane-is-the-way-to-ask-a-module.md) — extended: a grant to call, for a module as for a person
+- [ADR 0132](0132-a-seat-carries-the-tools-its-holder-must-serve.md) — where a seat's tools live, and the sentence that named the surface
+- [ADR 0035](0035-one-implementation-several-surfaces.md) — three surfaces over one implementation
+- [ADR 0034](0034-the-local-account-owns-the-mesh.md), [ADR 0144](0144-anything-on-a-machine-may-call-anything-on-it.md) — why loopback is the authority boundary
+- [33 — The tools the mesh answers](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/33-the-tools-the-mesh-answers.md) §5, §6 — discovery, and what serves it to an agent
+- [34 — The console](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/34-the-console.md) — the design this record authorises
+- mesh-tools `src/client.ts`, `src/mcp.ts`, `src/mesh.ts` — the client this makes a module of
@@ -0,0 +1,113 @@
+---
+topic: how we work
+status: accepted
+date: 2026-09-30
+deciders: jochen
+reconstructed: false
+extends: 02-DECISIONS/0025-the-design-record-is-read-not-copied.md
+---
+
+# 153. The record is read by a module the mesh assigns, and the console lists it
+
+## Context
+
+[ADR 0025](0025-the-design-record-is-read-not-copied.md) decided that this repository is **read where
+it is written, never copied to be found**: an agent reads it directly, and a search of the mesh's
+memory consults that agent so its answers appear beside ordinary results. It named the check that
+closes [issue 006](../04-ISSUES/006-hq-is-not-indexed-into-the-knowledge-base/00-report.md): search
+for a phrase that appears only in a design document here, and get it back. It gated the build on an
+agent that did not exist — the mesh session of
+[15 — The agent session](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/15-the-agent-session.md) — and on a search that
+does not exist either, now: the knowledge base 0025 meant was the predecessor's, and since the
+cut-over nothing reaches it ([issue 147](../04-ISSUES/147-the-operators-tools-still-dial-the-bus-that-was-removed/00-report.md)).
+
+**So the two halves of 0025 have no home.** There is no store to be "beside", and no session to be
+the reader. What the mesh has instead, since today: a tool model in which every module answers what
+it serves, and a console on the machine a person sits at that lists every tool the running modules
+answer ([ADR 0152](0152-the-operators-surface-is-a-module-the-console.md)). An agent holding the
+console does not search a store; it reads a tool list and calls what fits the question.
+
+**What 0025 could not tolerate was a derived copy** — the enforced copy winning while the reasoned one
+quietly stops being true. It rejected a sync for that reason and for no other. A git checkout is not a
+derived copy: it is the same bytes at a commit the answer names, and the only way it can differ from
+the source is by lagging behind it, which is measurable and stated. 0025's own words allow it —
+*retrieval is an agent reading this repository, not a copy living in a second store* — and the
+transformation that makes a copy dangerous is exactly what a checkout does not do.
+
+## Considered Options
+
+**1. Wait for the mesh session.** Rejected. Design 15 is `designed` with nothing built, its model
+access is a provisions question with no consumer identity yet, and 006 has waited since 2026-08-23.
+A record whose check cannot run is a rule enforced by nothing.
+
+**2. The console reads the repository itself.** Rejected. The console holds nothing and decides
+nothing (ADR 0152, ADR 0035); a reader inside it would be a second implementation of a thing that
+should be one module, unavailable to a person's client and to any other module.
+
+**3. A module that keeps a checkout of the repository and answers questions about it, listed by the
+console like any tool.** Chosen.
+
+## Decision
+
+**The reader is a module: `records`.** It requires the `git` provision — the forge — clones the
+repository its settings name, keeps the checkout current on every merge the forge announces and on a
+timer, and answers over the bus: where a phrase appears as written (document, line, nearest heading),
+one document whole, what a folder holds, and where the checkout stands — always with the commit it
+read. Nothing is indexed, ranked or summarised: a design record is found by its own words, and a
+reader deciding which words matter would be a second opinion about somebody else's document.
+
+**The repository is a setting, not a manifest field.** The module names no mesh
+([ADR 0112](0112-a-module-definition-names-no-node-mesh-or-path.md)): which repository it reads is
+the assignment's business, and an installation that keeps its record elsewhere sets that. Until a
+repository is set it serves no tools and says why. Public repositories only; it asks for no
+credential, because a secret it did not need would be one more thing to seal.
+
+**"Beside everything else" is the console's tool list.** 0025's second half — the search consults the
+agent — has no store to consult and needs none: the console lists `records_search` beside the forge's
+tools and the mesh's own verbs, with a description that says when to call it, and an agent choosing
+tools for a symptom is the search. That is surfacing, not merely reaching: nobody has to know this
+repository exists to be offered it.
+
+**Reading stays one-way.** The module reads the forge and answers; nothing flows back into the
+repository. It holds no credential that could write.
+
+**The mesh session, when it exists, is a caller of this module, not a replacement for it.** Design 15's
+*it holds the design record by reading it* is satisfied by asking `records`; the session brings
+judgement, this brings the text.
+
+## Consequences
+
+- **Issue 006 closes on 0025's own check**, run through the console: `records_search` for a phrase
+  that appears in one design document here returns that document. The module's test does the same
+  against a repository it makes.
+- **The as-is knowledge document is rewritten.** [`07-knowledge.md`](../03-DESIGN/00-as-is/07-knowledge.md)
+  described the predecessor's two stores; neither is reachable from the mesh, and what the mesh knows
+  is now what its modules answer. Saying otherwise is the failure this repository exists to name.
+- **A checkout lags.** Between a merge and the next sync — seconds when the forge announces it,
+  minutes when it does not — an answer is the previous commit's, and says which. That is the cost of
+  no copy, and it is a number rather than a silence.
+- **The reader depends on the forge module's event, by name.** `consumes: gitea.pull.merged` names a
+  module rather than the `git` seat, because the seat declares no events. A forge that is not gitea
+  leaves the timer as the only refresh, which still works.
+- **What got harder:** the record is now reachable from every machine holding a console, which is what
+  was wanted, and a reader must remember that this repository is public and the mesh is not — the
+  module reads the public repository and nothing about the installation.
+
+## How this is checked
+
+| Rule | Checked by |
+|---|---|
+| A phrase in one document comes back from where it is written, with the commit | the module's test against a repository it makes; and live, through the console |
+| A merge on the origin is pulled and the next answer names the new commit | the same test |
+| A path outside the checkout is refused, not resolved | a test per shape |
+| A failed sync leaves the checkout standing and is said | a test against an unreachable origin |
+| Without a repository set, no tools are served and the log says why | the module's own start |
+| The console lists `records_search` beside every other tool | the console's listing, live |
+
+## References
+
+- [ADR 0025](0025-the-design-record-is-read-not-copied.md) — extended: the reader is a module, the search is the console's list
+- [ADR 0152](0152-the-operators-surface-is-a-module-the-console.md) — what lists it
+- [issue 006](../04-ISSUES/006-hq-is-not-indexed-into-the-knowledge-base/00-report.md) — what closes
+- [35 — Reading the record](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/35-reading-the-record.md) — the design
+- mesh-catalog `modules/records` — the module (PR 183)
@@ -0,0 +1,133 @@
+---
+topic: the mesh
+status: accepted
+date: 2026-09-30
+deciders: jochen
+reconstructed: false
+extends: 02-DECISIONS/0132-a-seat-carries-the-tools-its-holder-must-serve.md
+---
+
+# 154. The mesh's own verbs are the mesh-controller seat's tools, and which verbs those are
+
+## Context
+
+[ADR 0132](0132-a-seat-carries-the-tools-its-holder-must-serve.md) decided that a seat's protocol
+carries its tools in full, that holding a seat means serving them, and that the mesh's own verbs are
+the `mesh-controller` seat's. It named three prerequisites, none in place: the protocol in the store
+rather than in compiled defaults; a protocol richer than a list of verbs; a node-scoped seat's subject
+carrying the node. And it left one thing to a decision per seat: **which verbs each seat serves**,
+because a seat's tools bind every future holder.
+
+The console shipped the same day ([ADR 0152](0152-the-operators-surface-is-a-module-the-console.md))
+and made the gap visible from the operator's chair: a person on a workstation could call every tool a
+*module* serves and none of the mesh's own. What a node runs, what is assigned, whether a push
+applied — the questions issue 147 opened with — still meant a shell on the control node. The console's
+own handshake said so.
+
+The control plane already answers every one of those questions, as commands: `status --json`,
+`node show`, `plan --json`, `assign`, `push`. [ADR 0035](0035-one-implementation-several-surfaces.md)
+says a surface is an adapter over those with no decisions in it, and the `api` verb proves the shape:
+every route calls the function the command line calls.
+
+## Considered Options
+
+**1. Leave the mesh's verbs to the shell until an identity provider authenticates the HTTP API.**
+Rejected. The authenticated network surface is for a browser on another machine; the console is
+already behind the machine's login (0152), and the bus already carries every other tool call under an
+account whose permission list says what it may ask. Waiting would keep the one surface the mesh has
+from answering the mesh's own questions, for a reason that does not apply to it.
+
+**2. Serve the verbs as the mesh-controller *module's* tools, `mesh.mod.mesh-controller.tool.<verb>`.**
+Rejected; 0132 rejected it already. The controller holds a seat, and the verbs must keep their address
+while the control plane is being replaced, which is the moment they are most needed. A module's name
+would change with the implementation; the seat's does not.
+
+**3. Call each command's function inside the serving process.** Rejected on two facts: the commands
+print, to the process's standard output, and two calls answered at once would read each other's
+words; and each command opens and closes its own stores, which the serving process holds open. Making
+every command return a value is the larger refactor, and it would give the tools a second code path to
+keep in step with the command line — the thing ADR 0035 forbids.
+
+**4. The holder of the seat runs the command it names, in its own binary, and answers what it
+printed.** Chosen.
+
+## Decision
+
+**The `mesh-controller` seat serves twelve verbs**, and these are its interface, additive within a
+version ([33 — The tools the mesh answers](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/33-the-tools-the-mesh-answers.md) §7):
+
+| verb | answers with | takes |
+|---|---|---|
+| `tools` | every seat's tools, from the mesh's records | nothing |
+| `status` | what is wrong, quiet, behind, waiting — `status --json` | nothing |
+| `nodes` | every machine and its mode | nothing |
+| `node` | what one machine reported, what it is assigned, why | `node` |
+| `modules` | every module, its version, commit and machines | nothing |
+| `seats` | every seat, what it delivers, who holds it — `seats --json` | nothing |
+| `builds` | what was built lately and what came of it | `module` (optional) |
+| `plan` | the declaration a machine would be sent — `plan --json` | `node` |
+| `assign`, `unassign` | the mesh's own words, refusal included | `node`, `module` |
+| `push` | that it was sent; `status` says what the machine did | `node` (optional: every machine behind) |
+| `build` | that the build machine was asked; `builds` says what came of it | `repository`, `path`, `ref` |
+
+**Each verb runs the command it names, in the controller's own binary, and answers what the command
+printed** — the output, whether it succeeded, and, where the command speaks JSON, the same as data. A
+refusal is the command's refusal in the command's words, because it is the same output. A verb takes
+only the arguments its schema names; nothing reaches a flag the schema did not declare. `push` and
+`build` are sent and not waited for: a call that blocked for a whole apply would time out on every
+machine that takes a minute and say nothing about the others.
+
+**The three prerequisites are built.** A seat's protocol is three columns on its row, seeded from the
+compiled defaults where a row had none and additively thereafter, so a verb a release adds joins the
+row and nothing an operator wrote is taken away. A served verb is its name, what it does, and the
+schema of its arguments and answer; a manifest may still write a bare name. A node-scoped seat's tool
+carries the node it is asked of, as the last token of its subject; a mesh-scoped seat's stays flat.
+
+**Holding a mesh seat requires serving its verbs**, judged where the store's set is loaded, and the
+refusal names the missing verbs. The controller's own manifest lists the twelve under `tools`.
+
+**Discovery reads the records, through the seat.** `tools` is one of the twelve because the console
+cannot read the store and should not: the mesh answers for its own records through the role that owns
+them, and the answer is true while any *other* holder restarts. It is not true while the control plane
+itself restarts, and the console says so rather than hiding the modules' tools with it.
+
+**A grant of `*` reaches a role's tools; `seat:<seat>.<verb>` grants one.** The console's `*` needed no
+change to reach the mesh's verbs, which is what a grant meaning *every tool* should mean.
+
+## Consequences
+
+- **The console answers the mesh's own questions.** Issue 147's first paragraph closes: what a node
+  runs, what is assigned, whether a push applied, from the machine the person sits at, over the bus,
+  under an account whose permission list says so.
+- **Whoever may call `mesh-controller.push` may change the mesh.** That is the console's `*` on a
+  machine whose login owns the mesh (0152), and a person's account only if `operator issue` says so.
+  A grant reviewer reads `*` and `seat:mesh-controller.` with the same care.
+- **A verb here binds every future controller.** Twelve is deliberate: what an operator asks weekly,
+  and nothing that is still finding its shape (`take`, `converge`, `settings`, `secret` stay commands).
+- **A command's text is the answer**, and text changes. The three verbs that speak JSON carry it as
+  data; the rest are read by a person or an agent, not parsed. Anything that needs a shape asks for
+  `--json` to be added to the command first, which is the right order.
+- **What got harder:** the mesh-controller seat's row now carries a protocol an operator could edit, and
+  a verb removed from the row is a verb the controller stops serving without a build. That is
+  ADR 0122's arrangement applied to tools, and `seats` shows the row.
+
+## How this is checked
+
+| Rule | Checked by |
+|---|---|
+| Every declared verb is one the binary can run, with the arguments its schema names | a test walks the table and derives a command line for each |
+| A verb missing a required argument is refused in its own words, before anything runs | a test per shape |
+| A holder that does not serve a mesh seat's verbs cannot hold it, and the refusal names them | a catalogue test against a seat with two verbs and a holder with one |
+| A node-scoped seat's tool carries the node; a mesh seat's does not | the bus composition test: two nodes derive two addresses |
+| The controller subscribes its seat's tools and may answer | the composition test, and the golden user list |
+| `*` reaches a role's tools; `seat:` grants one and refuses a name with no verb | the composition test |
+| The protocol is seeded into the row and widened additively | the store-backed seat test |
+| Live: the console lists `mesh-controller.status` and a call answers what `status --json` prints | the rollout of this record |
+
+## References
+
+- [ADR 0132](0132-a-seat-carries-the-tools-its-holder-must-serve.md) — extended: the prerequisites built, the verbs decided
+- [ADR 0152](0152-the-operators-surface-is-a-module-the-console.md) — the surface that lists them
+- [ADR 0035](0035-one-implementation-several-surfaces.md) — a surface is an adapter with no decisions in it
+- [ADR 0122](0122-a-seat-is-data-a-rename-is-a-database-update.md) — the row is the mesh's, and now carries the protocol
+- [33 — The tools the mesh answers](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/33-the-tools-the-mesh-answers.md) — the design this completes
@@ -168,6 +168,7 @@ python3 00-META/checks/index.py            fail if stale
 - **0132** — [A seat carries the tools its holder must serve](0132-a-seat-carries-the-tools-its-holder-must-serve.md)
 - **0134** — [The mesh says what it applied](0134-the-mesh-says-what-it-applied.md)
 - **0142** — [The mesh delivers its own components as binaries, not as container images](0142-the-mesh-delivers-its-own-components-as-binaries.md)
+- **0154** — [The mesh's own verbs are the mesh-controller seat's tools, and which verbs those are](0154-the-meshs-own-verbs-are-the-controller-seats-tools.md)

 ### Its tiers, from the bottom up

@@ -200,6 +201,7 @@ python3 00-META/checks/index.py            fail if stale
 - **0109** — [A package registry seat is one per ecosystem, not one for all of them](0109-a-package-registry-seat-is-one-per-ecosystem.md)
 - **0126** — [A module declares its own seats; the mesh reserves its own](0126-a-module-declares-its-own-seats.md)
 - **0148** — [The mesh's names are resolved, not copied into every container](0148-the-meshs-names-are-resolved-not-copied-into-containers.md)
+- **0151** — [A route's internal name is composed under the node that serves it](0151-a-routes-internal-name-is-composed-under-the-node-that-serves-it.md)

 ### What runs on them, and how it gets there

@@ -255,6 +257,7 @@ python3 00-META/checks/index.py            fail if stale
 - **0146** — [Connectivity is checked by name, per hosting form, with a valid certificate](0146-connectivity-is-checked-by-name-per-hosting-form.md)
 - **0147** — [A module anchors the mesh's authority on a machine, and takes it away again](0147-a-module-anchors-the-meshs-authority.md)
 - **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)

 ### How it is built

@@ -296,5 +299,6 @@ python3 00-META/checks/index.py            fail if stale
 - **0034** — [The local account owns the mesh, and a web application's login is not that](0034-the-local-account-owns-the-mesh.md)
 - **0080** — [The development cycle is checked, not trusted](0080-the-development-cycle-is-checked.md)
 - **0081** — [A decision nothing cites is not yet in the chain](0081-a-decision-nothing-cites-is-not-yet-in-the-chain.md)
+- **0153** — [The record is read by a module the mesh assigns, and the console lists it](0153-the-record-is-read-by-a-module-and-the-console-lists-it.md)

 <!-- index:end -->
@@ -1,78 +1,58 @@
 ---
 layer: as-is
 status: implemented
-code: [hal]
-updated: 2026-08-23
-decisions: []
+code: [mesh-catalog modules/records, mesh-catalog modules/mesh-console]
+updated: 2026-09-30
+decisions:
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0025-the-design-record-is-read-not-copied.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0153-the-record-is-read-by-a-module-and-the-console-lists-it.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0152-the-operators-surface-is-a-module-the-console.md
 ---

 # Knowledge

-The mesh keeps two knowledge stores. They are not redundant, and knowing which is which is the
-difference between finding an answer in one search and rediscovering it over several hours.
+**The mesh keeps no knowledge store.** What it knows is what its modules answer, and the way a person
+or an agent asks is the console's tool list on the machine they sit at
+([13 — The console](13-the-console.md)). This document used to describe two stores; it is rewritten
+because neither exists from the mesh's side, and an as-is document that describes what is gone is a
+brochure.

-## The operational memory
+## What was here, and where it went

-A store of operational notes, written and read by whoever — human or agent — is working. Each
-note is a slug and a body: how something works, what went wrong, what the fix was, what
-assumption turned out to be false.
+Until the cut-over of 2026-09-28 the predecessor ran two stores: an operational memory of notes
+indexed on symptoms, and a structured archive of governed documents with a librarian approving
+promotion. Both were reached through the predecessor's tool server over the bus the mesh removed
+([issue 147](../../04-ISSUES/147-the-operators-tools-still-dial-the-bus-that-was-removed/00-report.md)).
+Nothing in the mesh reaches them now, and nothing in the mesh has replaced them: there is no note
+store, no archive, no librarian, and the lessons of the last days were written into this repository by
+hand. That is a gap, and it is stated here rather than papered over. What replaces a symptom-indexed
+memory, if anything does, is undecided.

-It is indexed on **symptoms**. The entry someone needs is usually titled after the error they
-are staring at, which is why the standing instruction is to search the literal error text
-before forming a hypothesis rather than after one fails.
+## The record

-Its content is overwhelmingly the record of previous debugging: a large body of
-troubleshooting entries, module conventions, and standing notes about work that is open. It is
-the mesh's institutional memory of *what has already gone wrong*.
+**The design record is read where it is written.** Since 2026-09-30 a module, `records`, keeps a
+checkout of this repository from the forge — cloned from the `git` seat, reset to the origin on every
+merge the forge announces and every ten minutes — and answers over the bus: where a phrase appears as
+written, one document whole, what a folder holds, and where the checkout stands, each naming the
+commit it read. Which repository it reads is a setting on its assignment; the module names no mesh.

-The cost of skipping it is documented in the mesh's own record: entries have been rediscovered
-from scratch, over hours, in sessions where the search was skipped because the trail felt
-confident. It fires hardest on familiar ground, not unfamiliar ground.
+It is listed by the console beside every other tool, with a description that says to search the
+literal words of a symptom before forming a hypothesis. That is what
+[ADR 0025](../../02-DECISIONS/0025-the-design-record-is-read-not-copied.md) meant by *beside
+everything else*, in a mesh with no store to be beside
+([ADR 0153](../../02-DECISIONS/0153-the-record-is-read-by-a-module-and-the-console-lists-it.md)).

-## The structured archive
+Nothing is copied. A checkout lags the source by seconds after an announced merge and by minutes
+otherwise, and says so.

-A second store, structured rather than flat: spaces, pages, revisions, tiers, and full-text
-search. Where the operational memory is a note, this is a document with an owner and a
-lifecycle.
+## The constitution

-Content is promoted through tiers — private, then team, then platform — with a librarian agent
-owning approval and promotion at the boundary. Proposals to edit are reviewed rather than
-applied.
-
-This is where the mesh's **governed** documents live, including the constitution injected into
-design sessions ([ADR 0020](../../02-DECISIONS/0020-the-mesh-is-governed-by-a-constitution.md)).
-
-## Why both
-
-The distinction is by lifecycle, not by subject.
-
-| Operational memory | Structured archive |
-|---|---|
-| Written the moment something is learned | Written deliberately, reviewed |
-| Flat, symptom-indexed | Structured, tiered, owned |
-| Anyone writes; nothing approves | Promotion is approved |
-| Truth is "this happened" | Truth is "this is agreed" |
-
-Collapsing them would cost one of the two properties: either every hard-won note waits for
-review, or governed documents can be changed by anyone mid-incident.
+[`00-META/how-we-build.md`](../../00-META/how-we-build.md) is the source of the mesh constitution
+([ADR 0021](../../02-DECISIONS/0021-hq-is-the-source-of-the-constitution.md)). The page it used to be
+synchronised into lived in the predecessor's archive and is unreachable; the constitution today is
+read from this repository, through the same module, and playbook 05's sync has nothing to write to.

 ## Where this repository sits

-This repository is a third thing, and the objection was raised when it was created: a fourth
-knowledge system repeats the mistake the split was made to fix.
-
-The answer given was **indexing, not location** — that these documents are indexed into the
-knowledge base so that a symptom search returns them alongside everything else. One source,
-many surfaces.
-
-**That indexing does not currently exist.** A search for this repository's content returns
-nothing. The claim is load-bearing for the decision to separate the repository at all, and
-until it is true, this repository is exactly the fourth knowledge system the objection
-described. Recorded here because it is a statement about how the mesh's knowledge actually
-works today, and as [`04-ISSUES/006`](../../04-ISSUES/006-hq-is-not-indexed-into-the-knowledge-base/00-report.md).
-
-## The librarian
-
-A single agent owns the archive's approvals and promotions. Its approval capabilities have at
-times not been reachable as tools, which does not affect the operational memory but does mean
-promotion stops silently — the store keeps accepting proposals that nothing can approve.
+A third thing beside two that are gone, which makes it the first: the one governed record the mesh
+has, public, read by a module the mesh assigns, and edited nowhere else.
@@ -82,6 +82,22 @@ to clone.
 The schema column added for this defaults to empty rather than null, because "not on a seat" is a
 real answer, so every row recorded before the change keeps exactly the meaning it had.

+## A seat's protocol is on its row, and the controller serves its own
+
+*Since 2026-09-30 ([ADR 0154](../../02-DECISIONS/0154-the-meshs-own-verbs-are-the-controller-seats-tools.md)).*
+The `seat` table carries `accepts`, `emits` and `serves`; `serves` holds each verb with its description
+and input schema. The rows were seeded from the compiled defaults the first time a controller with the
+columns migrated, and each later migration adds any verb the defaults name that a row lacks, never
+removing one. `UseSeats` still falls back to the compiled protocol for a row with none, which after the
+first seeding is no row.
+
+The `mesh-controller` seat serves twelve verbs — `tools`, `status`, `nodes`, `node`, `modules`, `seats`,
+`builds`, `plan`, `assign`, `unassign`, `push`, `build` — on `mesh.seat.mesh-controller.tool.<verb>`,
+each answered by the controller running that command in its own binary and returning what it printed.
+A module claiming a mesh seat with verbs must list them under `tools` or registration refuses it by
+name. A node-scoped seat's tool is `mesh.seat.<seat>.tool.<verb>.<node>`; no node-scoped seat declares
+one yet.
+
 ## Where this differs from the design

 **Capacity is not implemented.** The design's vocabulary has a seat with a capacity, and a
@@ -0,0 +1,63 @@
+---
+layer: as-is
+status: implemented
+code: [mesh-catalog modules/mesh-console, mesh-tools src/mesh.ts, mesh-tools src/http.ts, mesh-tools src/runtime.ts, mesh-controller internal/broker, mesh-controller cmd/mesh-controller/check.go, mesh-controller cmd/mesh-controller/seatverbs.go]
+updated: 2026-09-30
+decisions:
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0152-the-operators-surface-is-a-module-the-console.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0095-the-control-plane-is-the-way-to-ask-a-module.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0037-where-a-module-lives.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0154-the-meshs-own-verbs-are-the-controller-seats-tools.md
+---
+
+# The console, as it runs
+
+**The mesh's tools reach a person through a module the mesh assigned to their machine.** Since
+2026-09-30 a workstation that is a node can be assigned `mesh-console`; the mesh mints a bus account
+`<node>.mesh-console`, seals its credential to the machine, and the container binds
+`127.0.0.1:<port>` with the port the mesh assigned for the manifest's declared one. An agent on the
+machine is pointed at `http://127.0.0.1:<port>/mcp` and sees the mesh's tools; a person uses the same
+endpoint. Nothing on the machine holds a credential a person had to carry.
+
+## What it answers
+
+`initialize`, `tools/list`, `tools/call`, over HTTP, one JSON body per request, no session and no event
+stream. `tools/list` is what the running modules answered: every tool runtime built on or after that day
+serves a `tools` verb for its module, and the console asks the catalogue for the roster and each module
+for its tools. A module that did not answer is named in the list's `_meta.notAnswering`. On the day it
+shipped that was 36 of 51 modules — those that serve no tools at all, and those whose rebuilt runtime the
+mesh records rather than rolls out — and 62 tools from the rest.
+
+`tools/call` reaches any tool by `<module>.<tool>`, listed or not. The console's grant is `*`, so what it
+may call is every tool on the mesh; its account may publish nothing else and subscribes nothing.
+
+## The mesh's own verbs
+
+*Since 2026-09-30 evening ([ADR 0154](../../02-DECISIONS/0154-the-meshs-own-verbs-are-the-controller-seats-tools.md)).*
+The console asks the `mesh-controller` seat's `tools` verb beside the modules and lists every role's
+tools as `<seat>.<verb>` — `mesh-controller.status`, `mesh-controller.push` and the other ten. A call
+to `<prefix>.<name>` reaches the seat when the prefix is a seat declaring that verb, and the module
+otherwise; `seat:<seat>.<verb>` says so outright. When the control plane does not answer, the list
+names `mesh-controller (seat)` as not answering and carries the modules' tools regardless.
+
+## Around it
+
+- **`invokes`** in a manifest is the grant. It is composed into the bus's user list exactly as a
+  person's account is; the console is the only module that declares it.
+- **`module check <file|dir>…`** on the controller's binary judges a manifest with no mesh: the strict
+  parse, every per-manifest problem, and the rules between the manifests given. It prints what it cannot
+  judge without a store rather than refusing. The console's own manifest was the first thing checked
+  with it, and the whole catalogue passes.
+- **The person's client remains.** `operator issue` and `mesh tools|call|mcp` with a credential file
+  still work, for a machine that is not a node and for a mesh not yet able to assign anything.
+  `mesh tools --console <url>` goes through a running console with no credential; it is covered by the
+  runtime repository's tests and was not exercised on the live mesh.
+
+## What shipped bent
+
+- A module registered by hand from the catalogue with `--source <url> --path modules/<m>` records a URL,
+  not a place on the git seat: `--self` takes the forge path form (`<owner>/<repository>`), which the
+  operator did not pass. The rebuild-on-merge matched the URL anyway.
+- Modules whose upgrade policy is *record* — the forge among them — answered `tools` only once
+  something pushed their rebuilt runtime; until then they are listed as not answering while still
+  callable. That is the policy doing what it says, not a fault of the console.
@@ -15,12 +15,13 @@ Where the two disagree, the implementation wins and the disagreement is stated.
 | [`04-delivery.md`](04-delivery.md) | Push to running: the three silos, levels, and what a green pipeline proves |
 | [`05-runtime-and-installation.md`](05-runtime-and-installation.md) | The node runtime, its modes, and how a node comes into being |
 | [`06-configuration-and-secrets.md`](06-configuration-and-secrets.md) | Managed files, value resolution, and where secrets live |
-| [`07-knowledge.md`](07-knowledge.md) | The two knowledge stores, and what each is for |
+| [`07-knowledge.md`](07-knowledge.md) | The mesh keeps no store: what it knows is what modules answer, and the record is read by one |
 | [`08-agents-and-work.md`](08-agents-and-work.md) | Agents as employees, tasks, workflows, and the meeting model |
 | [`09-interfaces-and-observability.md`](09-interfaces-and-observability.md) | How the mesh is reached and watched — tools, board, proxy, health, thoughts |
 | [`10-module-catalogue.md`](10-module-catalogue.md) | The catalogue's shape, and what its shape says |
 | [`11-the-lab.md`](11-the-lab.md) | The lab — the first piece of the new shape that exists, and what it does not yet do |
 | [`12-the-seats.md`](12-the-seats.md) | The seats the mesh defines, who holds one, and where a seat changes resolution |
+| [`13-the-console.md`](13-the-console.md) | The mesh's tools on the machine a person sits at, served by a module the mesh assigned there |

 ## What these documents are not

@@ -10,6 +10,7 @@ code:
 updated: 2026-09-30
 decisions:
  - 02-DECISIONS/0148-the-meshs-names-are-resolved-not-copied-into-containers.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0151-a-routes-internal-name-is-composed-under-the-node-that-serves-it.md
  - 02-DECISIONS/0147-a-module-anchors-the-meshs-authority.md
  - 02-DECISIONS/0138-an-assignment-binds-an-endpoint-and-says-how-far-it-reaches.md
  - 02-DECISIONS/0140-the-filter-constrains-what-arrives-from-outside.md
@@ -305,10 +306,11 @@ and [135](../../04-ISSUES/135-a-containers-mesh-names-are-not-compared/00-report

 **A container resolves the mesh's names through its machine's resolver, at the moment it asks, and
 nothing is copied.** The resolver is a machine-level process rather than a container, so nothing
-circular is being asked for. This is gated on a container being able to reach the resolver from any of
-the runtime's networks, which it cannot today
-([issue 110](../../04-ISSUES/110-a-container-on-the-runtimes-own-network-cannot-reach-the-resolver/00-report.md)) —
-until that lands the mesh keeps copying and keeps comparing, and the order is stated in the record.
+circular is being asked for. It was gated on a container being able to reach the resolver from any of
+the runtime's networks
+([issue 110](../../04-ISSUES/110-a-container-on-the-runtimes-own-network-cannot-reach-the-resolver/00-report.md)),
+and landed the day that did, 2026-09-30: the controller writes no mesh name into a container and the
+host's digest carries only what the module declared for itself.

 The paragraph below states the old boundary, and 0148 deliberately gives it up: a container somebody
 started by hand resolves the same names as everything else, because the resolver answers the machine,
@@ -324,6 +326,14 @@ machine — declared or not — is what a nameserver in `resolv.conf` would be f
 service, the rest is the node — so what resolves is *anything under a node's name*, going to that
 node. What routes it once it arrives is a proxy's, and stays separate.

+*2026-09-30.* **So the node in a route's internal name is the one whose proxy answers it**
+([ADR 0151](../../02-DECISIONS/0151-a-routes-internal-name-is-composed-under-the-node-that-serves-it.md)).
+Composed from the node the module ran on, the name sent a client to a machine with nothing listening
+whenever the proxy ran elsewhere
+([issue 139](../../04-ISSUES/139-an-internal-route-name-resolves-to-the-consumers-node/00-report.md));
+composed from the serving node, the rule above holds without exception. The public name stays the
+module's node's, which is where the operator put it.
+
 **The mesh writes the data and runs no daemon.** One wildcard per machine, from the same set that
 writes the hosts file. A resolver is third-party software and runs *on* the mesh rather than being
 *of* it: the mesh has no business shipping one, choosing which one, or knowing its configuration
@@ -399,7 +409,9 @@ can reach from the outside but cannot resolve from the inside is a name it canno
 authority of its own.

 **So a granted route is published into internal resolution as well** — the routed name to the node
-that serves it, mesh-wide, by the same mechanism that writes the node names. It is *given by the
+that serves it, mesh-wide, by the same mechanism that writes the node names — and as itself: a routed
+name has no mesh form, and the suffixed alias the roster once added beside it resolved to a refusal
+([issue 157](../../04-ISSUES/157-a-routed-names-internal-alias-is-served-by-nothing/00-report.md)). It is *given by the
 mesh, not chosen by a module*, for the same reason the node names are: a module listing the routes
 would go stale the day one changes. The mesh propagates the names it was told to serve and still
 knows nothing about what they mean
@@ -7,9 +7,10 @@ code:
  - mesh-controller internal/catalogue/build.go
  - mesh-controller internal/inventory/secrets.go
  - mesh-controller cmd/mesh-builder
-updated: 2026-09-12
+updated: 2026-09-30
 decisions:
  - 02-DECISIONS/0069-a-module-is-a-repository-and-a-path.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0037-where-a-module-lives.md
  - 02-DECISIONS/0009-modules-and-the-graph.md
  - 02-DECISIONS/0010-delivery.md
  - 02-DECISIONS/0005-the-node-host.md
@@ -60,6 +61,32 @@ module from a repository and a path, and the root-only reading left every existi
 unbuildable — pointed at the catalogue the builder finds no manifest, pointed at a module's source
 it finds no manifest either.*

+## A manifest is checked where it is written
+
+*Added 2026-09-30, from [issue 148](../../04-ISSUES/148-a-manifest-outside-this-catalogue-has-no-check/00-report.md).*
+
+The check the mesh applies at registration — the manifest parses strictly, every name in it is a
+usable one, its routes and events and seats are well formed, and no two manifests given together
+declare one seat — is a verb on the controller's binary, `module check <manifest>…`, and it needs no
+mesh. It reads the files it is given, runs the same functions registration runs, prints every problem
+in the manifest's own words, and exits non-zero if there was one. Somebody describing their own
+application in their own repository — the case [ADR 0037](../../02-DECISIONS/0037-where-a-module-lives.md)
+calls the one that matters most — runs it before pushing, and finds out there rather than when a
+running mesh refuses the registration, or later, when a machine applies something that resolved and
+should not have.
+
+**What it cannot know, it says.** A seat another module declares elsewhere is unknown to a check that
+was not handed that module's manifest, and the output says so rather than refusing: pass the other
+manifest too. The mesh's own seats it knows from the binary, which is the one place that set may be
+read without a store ([ADR 0122](../../02-DECISIONS/0122-a-seat-is-data-a-rename-is-a-database-update.md)
+keeps the store authoritative, so a claim on a mesh seat is judged fully only at registration, and the
+check says that too).
+
+*How it is checked:* the controller's test runs the check over the catalogue checkout beside it and
+over a manifest with a known fault, and asserts the first passes and the second names the fault; the
+test that used to be the only check, `TestEveryCatalogueManifestParses`, now stands beside a command
+anybody can run.
+
 ## The manifest in the repository is not the manifest the mesh holds

 A resource names an artifact:
@@ -148,6 +148,10 @@ than reproduced from a declaration — because there is nothing to reproduce it
 ([ADR 0025](../../02-DECISIONS/0025-the-design-record-is-read-not-copied.md)), not by holding a
 copy. It is that reader; there is not a second agent for it.

+*2026-09-30:* the reading is a module's — `records`, [35 — Reading the record](35-reading-the-record.md),
+[ADR 0153](../../02-DECISIONS/0153-the-record-is-read-by-a-module-and-the-console-lists-it.md). The
+session, when built, asks it rather than reading for itself; what it adds is judgement, not text.
+
 **It answers into a symptom search**, so what it knows appears beside ordinary results rather than
 only when it is asked. **And when it cannot be reached, the search says so.** A result set that
 silently omits this material looks identical to one where nothing matched — the same rule as the
@@ -361,6 +361,13 @@ bridged. It is three things:

 Nothing is built of this before §10's bed passes; the MCP surface is a thin adapter over (2).

+*Built, and then made a module — 2026-09-30.* (1) and (2) exist: `operator issue` and the `mesh`
+client. What (2) describes as a program on the workstation is now the recovery path; the surface an
+operator uses is a module the mesh assigns to the machine, holding a credential the mesh minted —
+[ADR 0152](../../02-DECISIONS/0152-the-operators-surface-is-a-module-the-console.md),
+[34 — The console](34-the-console.md). The tool list it asks for is no longer
+`catalog_tools`, which nothing served: each runtime answers `tools` for its own module.
+
 ## 8. What a module sees, and what the wire does

 **The contract a module is written against does not change.** `publish` on an envelope becomes a
@@ -1,9 +1,10 @@
 ---
 layer: to-be
-status: designed
-code: []
-updated: 2026-09-28
+status: in-progress
+code: [mesh-controller, mesh-tools]
+updated: 2026-09-30
 decisions:
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0154-the-meshs-own-verbs-are-the-controller-seats-tools.md
  - 02-DECISIONS/0132-a-seat-carries-the-tools-its-holder-must-serve.md
  - 02-DECISIONS/0129-a-seat-carries-the-protocol-of-its-role.md
  - 02-DECISIONS/0095-the-control-plane-is-the-way-to-ask-a-module.md
@@ -102,6 +103,12 @@ being something a person carries and becomes something the mesh runs, on a node,
 An agent's authority can then be role-shaped: *the forge's tools*, rather than a list of
 module-specific names that changes the day the forge is replaced.

+*Decided and designed on 2026-09-30:* the module is the console —
+[ADR 0152](../../02-DECISIONS/0152-the-operators-surface-is-a-module-the-console.md),
+[34 — The console](34-the-console.md). It builds the second half of §5 now (a module's tools are
+asked of the module, through a `tools` verb every runtime answers) and lists a role's tools when the
+records carry them.
+
 ## 7. Versioning

 A seat's tools are an interface and change like one. Additive within a version. A change that would
@@ -120,6 +127,18 @@ by side until nothing is bound to the old one.
 - **Two nodes holding one node-scoped seat derive two addresses.** Checked by the same test as the rest
  of the subject table.

+## What is built, 2026-09-30
+
+Under [ADR 0154](../../02-DECISIONS/0154-the-meshs-own-verbs-are-the-controller-seats-tools.md): §2's
+two constraints (the protocol in the store's row, seeded additively; a verb with description and
+schema, a bare name still accepted), §3 for the mesh's seats (holding refused by naming the missing
+verbs), §4 (a node-scoped seat's tool carries the node as its last subject token; a user publishes
+`*`), and the third family — twelve verbs on the `mesh-controller` seat, each running the command it
+names in the controller's own binary. §5's first half is served rather than read: the seat's `tools`
+verb answers every seat's tools from the records, because the console cannot read the store; the
+console lists a role's tools beside the modules' own and resolves `<seat>.<verb>` to the seat when the
+seat declares that verb. Which verbs each *other* seat serves stays a decision per seat, still untaken.
+
 ## 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
@@ -0,0 +1,133 @@
+---
+layer: to-be
+status: implemented
+code: [mesh-catalog, mesh-tools, mesh-controller]
+updated: 2026-09-30
+decisions:
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0152-the-operators-surface-is-a-module-the-console.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0132-a-seat-carries-the-tools-its-holder-must-serve.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0095-the-control-plane-is-the-way-to-ask-a-module.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0035-one-implementation-several-surfaces.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0034-the-local-account-owns-the-mesh.md
+---
+
+# 34 — The console
+
+**The mesh's tools, on the machine a person sits at, served by a module the mesh assigned there.**
+An agent reaches them over MCP on the machine's loopback; a person reaches the same endpoint. Nothing is
+installed by hand, nothing is configured with an address, and the mesh knows the surface exists because
+it put it there ([ADR 0152](../../02-DECISIONS/0152-the-operators-surface-is-a-module-the-console.md)).
+
+## 1. What it is
+
+A module, `mesh-console`, in the catalogue. Its image is the tool runtime's own — the client that
+already speaks the bus as a command line and as an MCP server — started in a mode that reads the
+module's credential and listens on loopback. It has no state, no provision, no seat. What it needs is
+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.
+
+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;
+- `listens` on a port `from: machine` — the filter opens nothing for it, because loopback is not outside;
+- no `emits`, no `consumes`, no `tools` — it answers nothing on the bus and nobody can address it there.
+
+## 2. What it serves, and to whom
+
+**One endpoint, `POST /mcp` on the machine's loopback**, speaking MCP over HTTP: `initialize`,
+`tools/list`, `tools/call`. An agent on the machine is pointed at it once — the address is the machine's
+own and never changes — and sees every tool the mesh can say it has. A person at a terminal uses the
+same endpoint through the `mesh` client, or through anything that can make an HTTP request; the client
+needs no credential, because the console holds it.
+
+**The endpoint is the machine's login.** It binds `127.0.0.1` and nothing else. Whoever can connect is
+on the machine, and whoever is on the machine is the account that owns the mesh there
+([ADR 0034](../../02-DECISIONS/0034-the-local-account-owns-the-mesh.md),
+[ADR 0144](../../02-DECISIONS/0144-anything-on-a-machine-may-call-anything-on-it.md)). There is no
+token, no login page and no second identity, on purpose: a credential a person had to carry to reach
+their own machine's console would be the arrangement this replaces, moved one hop.
+
+## 3. How it knows what the mesh can do
+
+Design [33](33-the-tools-the-mesh-answers.md) §5 splits discovery in two: a role's tools are read from
+the mesh's records, a module's own are asked of the module. The console builds the second half now and
+reads the first when it exists.
+
+**Every tool runtime answers `tools`.** The runtime that serves a module's tools also serves one verb of
+its own under that module's name, `mesh.mod.<module>.tool.tools`, answering the module's tool names,
+descriptions and argument schemas — the definitions from the code that answers them, and from nowhere
+else. A module may not name a tool of its own `tools`; the runtime refuses the collision at load.
+
+**The console asks the catalogue which modules the mesh holds, then asks each.** `catalog_modules`
+answers the roster; one `tools` request per module, in parallel, answers the list. The bus refuses at
+once a request nothing serves, so a module that is not running costs nothing and is named in the answer
+as not answering, rather than silently absent — *silence and success must never look alike*. The list is
+kept for a short while and refreshed, so an agent asking on every turn does not fan out on every turn.
+
+**A tool that was not listed can still be called.** Listing is discovery; calling is the grant. An agent
+that knows a tool's name asks for it by `<module>.<tool>` and the module answers or the bus says why not.
+
+**What is missing from the list, and until when.** A role's tools and the mesh's own verbs — `status`,
+`push`, `assign` — are the `mesh-controller` seat's under ADR 0132 and are not served yet; their three
+prerequisites are listed in that record. When the seat serves them, the console lists them beside the
+modules' own, and the person stops opening a shell for the mesh's own questions. Until then the console
+says so in its handshake.
+
+## 4. Where it runs
+
+On whichever machines an operator sits at, by assignment. It is not on the control node by default and
+does not need to be: it reaches the bus like any module, from anywhere in the mesh. A machine that is
+not a node cannot have it, which is the right refusal — the mesh reaches what it declares, and a
+workstation that wants the console joins first.
+
+The person's credential and the `mesh` client (design [25](25-the-bus-on-nats.md) §7) remain the path
+for a machine that is not a node, and the path to a mesh not yet far enough along to assign anything.
+
+## 5. Removing it
+
+Unassigning the console from a machine revokes its bus account at the next composition and stops the
+container; nothing is left on the machine that could still connect. An agent pointed at the loopback
+address gets a refused connection, which is the truthful answer.
+
+## How it is checked
+
+| Check | Defends |
+|---|---|
+| a module invoking one tool may publish that subject and no other tool's; `*` may publish every one; neither may publish an event or subscribe what it did not consume | ADR 0152, the grant |
+| a module registering two tools answers three names to `tools`, with schemas; a module naming its own `tools` is refused at load | ADR 0152, discovery |
+| against a real bus: two modules up, a third held and not running — the console lists the two and names the third as not answering | ADR 0152, silence is not success |
+| a call through the console's endpoint reaches a module over the bus and the answer is the module's own, unshaped | ADR 0035, a surface decides nothing |
+| on the live mesh: the console assigned to a workstation answers `tools/list` on loopback and a call to the forge returns repositories | the exit of work-order step 3 |
+| the composed filter for a machine carrying the console opens no port for it | ADR 0144 |
+
+## What shipped, 2026-09-30
+
+Everything above, the same day: mesh-controller PR 164 (`invokes`, `module check`), mesh-tools PR 20
+(`mesh serve`, the `tools` verb), mesh-catalog PR 181 (`mesh-console`). Verified on the live mesh: the
+console assigned to a workstation answered `tools/list` on its loopback with 62 tools from the modules
+whose runtimes had been rebuilt to answer `tools`, named 36 modules as not answering (modules that serve
+no tools, and modules whose new runtime the mesh records rather than rolls out), and a `tools/call` of
+the forge's `gitea_list_repos` returned repositories. An agent on that machine reaches it as an HTTP
+MCP server and reports it connected. The mesh assigned the declared port unchanged, which is what a
+machine with nothing else on it does; the console binds whatever it is given.
+
+Two things shipped bent, both stated in [`00-as-is/13-the-console.md`](../00-as-is/13-the-console.md):
+the person's client through the console (`--console`) exists and was exercised in the test suite, not
+on the live mesh; and a module registered from the catalogue by hand recorded its source as a URL rather
+than as a path on the git seat, because `--self` takes the forge path form — the rebuild-on-merge still
+matched it by URL.
+
+## What this does not settle
+
+- Narrowing a console's grant per assignment. ADR 0046 makes it a setting; nothing reads one yet.
+- The mesh's own verbs on the bus. Design 33's third family; this document only says where they appear
+  once they exist.
+- A person's identity behind the console. The mesh sees the console's account; design 15 keeps the
+  question open.
+
+## References
+
+- [ADR 0152](../../02-DECISIONS/0152-the-operators-surface-is-a-module-the-console.md) — the decision
+- [33 — The tools the mesh answers](33-the-tools-the-mesh-answers.md) — what the console lists
+- [25 — The bus on NATS](25-the-bus-on-nats.md) §7 — the person's client this makes a module of
+- [issue 147](../../04-ISSUES/147-the-operators-tools-still-dial-the-bus-that-was-removed/00-report.md) — the symptom
@@ -0,0 +1,85 @@
+---
+layer: to-be
+status: in-progress
+code: [mesh-catalog modules/records]
+updated: 2026-09-30
+decisions:
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0153-the-record-is-read-by-a-module-and-the-console-lists-it.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0025-the-design-record-is-read-not-copied.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0112-a-module-definition-names-no-node-mesh-or-path.md
+---
+
+# 35 — Reading the record
+
+**The design record, answered from a checkout the mesh keeps, at the commit it read.** A module,
+`records`, holds a working copy of a repository of markdown — this one, for this mesh — and answers
+where a phrase appears, what a document says, what a folder holds and where the copy stands. The
+console lists those answers beside every other tool
+([ADR 0153](../../02-DECISIONS/0153-the-record-is-read-by-a-module-and-the-console-lists-it.md)).
+
+## 1. What it keeps, and why that is not a copy
+
+A git checkout, cloned from the forge that holds the `git` seat, brought up to date on every merge the
+forge announces and every ten minutes besides. The bytes are the repository's; nothing is derived
+from them and stored. What [ADR 0025](../../02-DECISIONS/0025-the-design-record-is-read-not-copied.md)
+refused was a second store that is *searched* while the first is *edited*, drifting silently. A
+checkout cannot drift; it can lag, and the lag is in every answer as the commit it was read at and
+in `records_status` as when it was last brought up to date.
+
+The checkout is reset to the origin on every sync, never merged: it is the mesh's, so a local change
+is nobody's.
+
+## 2. What it answers
+
+| tool | answers |
+|---|---|
+| `records_search` | every place a phrase appears, as written and case-insensitively: document, line, the nearest heading above it; bounded, and says when it was |
+| `records_read` | one document, whole, or its first part with a note when very long |
+| `records_list` | what a folder holds: sub-folders and documents |
+| `records_status` | repository, forge, commit and its date, last sync, document count, last error |
+| `records_sync` | bring the checkout up to date now |
+
+No ranking and no summary, on purpose: a record is found by its own words, and the reasoning is in
+the document, not in the tool.
+
+## 3. What it is told, and what it refuses to guess
+
+Three things, none from a manifest ([ADR 0112](../../02-DECISIONS/0112-a-module-definition-names-no-node-mesh-or-path.md)):
+the directory its checkout lives in (a resource the mesh gives it), the forge's address (the `git`
+provision's binding, written into a file as `scheme://host:port`), and the repository's path on the
+forge (a **setting**, `{"repository": "<owner>/<name>"}`). Without the third it serves no tools and its
+log says so. Public repositories only; it holds no credential.
+
+## 4. How it is found
+
+The console asks every module what it serves and lists `records_search` with a description that says
+when to call it — *search the literal words of a symptom or a term before forming a hypothesis*. That
+is 0025's second half in today's mesh: there is no store to be beside, and an agent choosing from a
+tool list is the search.
+
+## 5. Where it runs
+
+Anywhere a node has the forge in reach; one assignment is enough, and a second on another machine is
+harmless. The mesh session of design 15, when it exists, calls this rather than reading for itself.
+
+## How it is checked
+
+| Check | Defends |
+|---|---|
+| a phrase in one document of a repository the test makes comes back from that document, with the commit; a second commit on the origin is pulled and the next answer names it | ADR 0025's check, ADR 0153 |
+| a path outside the checkout is refused; an empty search is refused | the reader reads the repository and nothing else |
+| a sync against an unreachable origin leaves the checkout standing and says why | silence and success never look alike |
+| live: through the console, `records_search` for a phrase that appears only in a design document here returns it | issue 006's closing check |
+
+## What this does not settle
+
+- Ranking or meaning. A search that understands a question is the session's job, not the reader's.
+- A private repository. That is a credential the module would have to hold, and a decision about
+  what may read what.
+
+## References
+
+- [ADR 0153](../../02-DECISIONS/0153-the-record-is-read-by-a-module-and-the-console-lists-it.md)
+- [ADR 0025](../../02-DECISIONS/0025-the-design-record-is-read-not-copied.md)
+- [34 — The console](34-the-console.md) — what lists it
+- [issue 006](../../04-ISSUES/006-hq-is-not-indexed-into-the-knowledge-base/00-report.md)
@@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
 ---
 status: located
 opened: 2026-08-23
-located-in: [hal, hq]
+located-in: [mesh-catalog modules/records, mesh-catalog modules/mesh-console]
 fixed-by:
 amended-design: 02-DECISIONS/0025-the-design-record-is-read-not-copied.md
 ---
@@ -169,3 +169,27 @@ them into. The record stays open, and its answer is no longer "index this reposi
 is whatever the mesh grows as its own knowledge surface, if it grows one. Until then the honest fix
 is the README, which should stop claiming a property nothing provides.

+
+## Where this stands, 2026-09-30
+
+The README no longer claims a property nothing provides: it says the indexing never existed, that the
+store it named is unreachable since the cut-over, and that ADR 0025's answer — read, not copied, by an
+agent that consults this repository — is decided and not built. That was the honest fix the previous
+note asked for, and it is done.
+
+The record stays open on ADR 0025's build, and on nothing else. The mesh's own operator surface is now
+a module ([ADR 0152](../../02-DECISIONS/0152-the-operators-surface-is-a-module-the-console.md)); the
+reader ADR 0025 describes is the mesh session of design 15, which would answer through that surface
+like any tool. What closes this is still the check 0025 names: search for a phrase that appears only in
+a design document here, and get it back.
+
+## Built, 2026-09-30
+
+[ADR 0153](../../02-DECISIONS/0153-the-record-is-read-by-a-module-and-the-console-lists-it.md): the
+reader is a module, `records` (mesh-catalog PR 183), keeping a checkout of this repository from the
+forge and answering `records_search`, `records_read`, `records_list`, `records_status` and
+`records_sync` at the commit it read; the console lists them beside every other tool, which is where
+"beside everything else" lives in a mesh with no store. Design
+[35 — Reading the record](../../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/35-reading-the-record.md). The module's test runs
+0025's check against a repository it makes; this record closes when the same check passes through the
+console on the live mesh, and says so below.
@@ -1,8 +1,8 @@
 ---
-status: located
+status: resolved
 opened: 2026-09-23
 located-in: [mesh-controller internal/link, mesh-host internal/link]
-fixed-by:
+fixed-by: mesh-host PR 59 (the host refuses an older sequence and drains by it), mesh-controller PR 160 (each send is numbered under the node's hold) — measured 2026-09-30, 02-resolution.md
 amended-design:
 ---

@@ -66,3 +66,11 @@ Left `located`. The owner is unchanged, the shape of the fix is agreed, and the
 [issue 142](../142-the-host-is-the-one-thing-the-mesh-does-not-deliver/00-report.md) rather than anything
 in this record. **This is a judgement about order, not a refusal** — it is cheap to overrule, and the
 code is a day's work once a host can be delivered.
+
+## The gate has opened (2026-09-30, evening)
+
+The mesh delivers the host now — built by its own toolchain, published to its own registry, delivered
+over the bus and started by the launcher, on all four machines
+([issue 142](../142-the-host-is-the-one-thing-the-mesh-does-not-deliver/01-progress.md)). A declaration
+field is a build and a push, not an expedition. The order this record asked for — hosts first, then
+the controller — is now two commands and a status line that says when the first has finished.
@@ -0,0 +1,60 @@
+# 107 — resolved: a declaration carries its order
+
+*2026-09-30. Measured on the mesh.*
+
+## What was done
+
+**Hosts first, then the controller** — the order [issue 087](../087-the-controller-cannot-tell-a-host-is-too-old/00-report.md)
+says a new declaration field needs, and now a build and a push rather than an expedition
+([issue 142](../142-the-host-is-the-one-thing-the-mesh-does-not-deliver/01-progress.md)).
+
+The host understands a `sequence` on a declaration and tolerates its absence: absent reads as "no
+order claimed", not "first", so a controller that sends none is still understood and a host that kept
+a declaration before it understood the field compares nothing. It refuses a declaration with a lower
+sequence than the one it kept, whole, and says why; and the drain that picks one declaration from a
+batch keeps the highest sequence rather than the last to arrive — which is the case the report
+constructed, a backlog drained out of order.
+
+The controller numbers each send: the next number for that node, taken under the node's hold, before
+the body exists, so the number is inside what the mesh signs and a replayed older declaration cannot
+borrow a newer one's.
+
+## Measured
+
+```
+push shanks; push shanks
+sequence in kept declaration: 2
+node      sequence
+novox     2
+shanks    2
+ace       (none — not sent since numbering)
+g14       (none)
+status:   nobody "not running what the mesh would send them"
+```
+
+Both applies went through; neither was refused; the machine holding the earlier one accepted the later.
+
+## The subtlety, which would have read every machine as behind for ever
+
+The mesh decides a machine is behind by comparing the digest of what it **would** send against what it
+**did** send. A number changes the bytes. So the read-only comparison composes with the number the
+machine was *last* sent — not a fresh one — and is byte for byte what was sent when nothing else
+changed. Without that, numbering would have made `status` name all four machines as out of date on
+every reading, permanently.
+
+## The open questions
+
+- *A per-node `sequence` under the controller's node hold?* Yes, as described. **`supersedes` — the
+  previous digest — is not added.** A strictly-greater sequence gives the ordering; a chain of digests
+  would give continuity, which nothing here needs yet and which every re-composition would break.
+- *Genesis signing its bundle as sequence zero?* Zero is "no order claimed", which is what the bundle
+  carries by carrying nothing. Same rule, no genesis branch.
+- *A marker for a mode change?* Not needed for the incident it guards: a replayed converged declaration
+  reaching a node returned to adopted is already refused **by mode**, before this check runs.
+
+## How it is checked
+
+Host: an older sequence is refused, a newer or equal one is not, and no order claimed on either side
+compares nothing; the drain keeps the highest sequence, and falls back to arrival when none is claimed.
+Controller: a send carries its number inside the signed bytes, an unnumbered send is byte for byte what
+it was before, and each node's counter is one higher per send and readable for the comparison.
@@ -1,8 +1,8 @@
 ---
-status: located
+status: resolved
 opened: 2026-09-24
-located-in: [mesh-host internal/apply]
-fixed-by:
+located-in: [mesh-controller internal/catalogue/declaration.go (every container was given the roster at creation)]
+fixed-by: mesh-controller PR 161 — no container is given a mesh name; it resolves through its machine's resolver (ADR 0148, landed 2026-09-30 once issue 110 did)
 amended-design:
 ---

@@ -73,3 +73,13 @@ copying: a container resolves through its machine's resolver at the moment it as
 record reports then has nowhere to occur. It is gated on
 [issue 110](../110-a-container-on-the-runtimes-own-network-cannot-reach-the-resolver/00-report.md), so
 until that lands the mesh still copies and still compares.
+
+## Resolved (2026-09-30)
+
+110 landed the same day ([its resolution](../110-a-container-on-the-runtimes-own-network-cannot-reach-the-resolver/01-resolution.md)),
+and mesh-controller PR 161 then removed the copy: no container is given a mesh name or a mesh address,
+and a module's own declared entries are the only `host` lines it carries. Verified on the control-node
+after its containers were recreated once — the last time a name will do that: the forge's container
+carries no extra hosts and resolves another machine and a routed name through the machine's resolver,
+so the shape this record describes has nowhere to occur. Checked in the controller's tests: a
+container's declaration is byte-for-byte the same under a roster of one machine and a roster of three.
@@ -1,8 +1,9 @@
 ---
-status: open
+status: resolved
 opened: 2026-09-24
-located-in: []
-fixed-by:
+located-in:
+  - mesh-catalog modules/dnsmasq (the runtime was never told; the resolver answered by interface)
+fixed-by: mesh-catalog PR 175 (the runtime is reloaded and keeps its containers over a restart) and PR 176 (the resolver answers by address, so a query from a bridge is admitted) — measured 2026-09-30, 01-resolution.md
 amended-design:
 ---

@@ -67,3 +68,6 @@ and [135](../135-a-containers-mesh-names-are-not-compared/00-report.md)).
 network is the case with no DNS at all, and it is the case the mesh's own forge runs in. Two of four
 machines also bind the resolver to loopback only, so the runtime hands their containers a public
 resolver. Both halves are this issue.
+
+*Later the same day: the second half was wrong, and the first had a different cause than the one above.
+[01-resolution.md](01-resolution.md) has what was actually found.*
@@ -0,0 +1,64 @@
+# 110 — resolved: a container on any network reaches the resolver, and is answered
+
+*2026-09-30. Measured on the three converged machines; the adopted one holds its resolver module until it
+is taken and is not covered.*
+
+## What was actually wrong
+
+Not what the report predicted. The report named the filter: a container on the runtime's default
+network asks from a bridge address, and the converged filter admitted queries by source address only.
+That was true when it was written and was fixed before this issue was ever tested — the filter admits
+by the link a packet arrives on ([ADR 0144](../../02-DECISIONS/0144-anything-on-a-machine-may-call-anything-on-it.md)),
+and a container's bridge is admitted whole. Tested on every machine: the query arrives, the filter
+passes it.
+
+Three other things were wrong, each hiding the next.
+
+**The runtime had never been told.** The resolver module writes the runtime's `dns` key into the
+runtime's own configuration file. The runtime reads that key when it starts and not on a reload, and on
+two machines the runtime predated the file — so every container they started got a public resolver, and
+`novox.internal` came back as not existing. Nothing reported this: the file was present and current,
+the resolver ran, and a name not existing is a valid answer. Fixed in mesh-catalog PR 175: the module
+also sets `live-restore` and reloads the runtime when its file changes, so the one restart the `dns` key
+needs no longer stops every container. The restart is then the operator's, once per machine; done on
+both today, with every running container kept.
+
+**The resolver dropped the query.** With the runtime corrected, a container's query reached the resolver
+— and got no answer, on every machine, including the one whose runtime had been right all along. The
+socket was bound to the private address; the filter admitted the packet; dnsmasq received it and
+discarded it without a line of log. Its configuration said `interface=mesh0`, and dnsmasq admits a
+query by the interface it arrives on when told an interface: a container's query is addressed to the
+private address but arrives on the runtime's bridge, and the bridge is not `mesh0`. Fixed in mesh-catalog
+PR 176: the resolver is told the address to answer on, not the interface that carries it, and a query to
+that address is admitted whatever bridge brings it. The bridges are the runtime's to name.
+
+**The report's second half was wrong.** "Two of four machines bind the resolver to loopback only" was
+an inference from the containers' behaviour, and the behaviour had the cause above. The resolver bound
+the private address on all four; nothing had asked it there.
+
+## What is verified
+
+From a container on the runtime's default network, started by hand and given nothing, on each of the
+three converged machines: `novox.internal` answers with the hub's private address, through the machine's
+own resolver. That is the fourth check of
+[ADR 0148](../../02-DECISIONS/0148-the-meshs-names-are-resolved-not-copied-into-containers.md) — "on every
+network the runtime offers" — and its first step; the record's step 2 (the runtime told per machine, as
+a file) was already how the module works. Step 3 may now begin.
+
+## What checks it
+
+By hand, today. Nothing in the mesh asserts that a container can resolve a mesh name: the resolver's
+own tests cover what it answers, not who can ask. The check that would have caught all three faults is
+the one the report asked for and 0148 lists — a container on the default network resolving a mesh name
+— and it is not built. It belongs with the reachability check of
+[issue 145](../145-a-machine-reads-healthy-while-its-modules-cannot-reach-each-other/00-report.md),
+which is parked; until then this is a thing a person verifies after touching the resolver, the filter,
+or the runtime's configuration.
+
+## What this cost to find
+
+The three faults produced one symptom — a container that cannot resolve — and each fix revealed the
+next. The first was found by reading the runtime's own view of its configuration rather than the file;
+the second by capturing the query on the bridge and finding it arrive and go unanswered; the third only
+by admitting the first belief was wrong. A machine that had been believed to work all day had never
+worked either.
@@ -1,9 +1,9 @@
 ---
-status: open
+status: resolved
 opened: 2026-09-28
-located-in: [mesh-controller internal/catalogue]
-fixed-by:
-amended-design:
+located-in: [mesh-controller internal/catalogue/declaration.go (composeName took the consumer's own name as the internal domain)]
+fixed-by: mesh-controller PR 163 — the internal name composes under the node whose proxy serves the route (ADR 0151, 2026-09-30)
+amended-design: 03-DESIGN/01-to-be/08-connectivity.md
 ---

 # 139 — An internal route name resolves to the consumer's node, not the one that serves it
@@ -49,3 +49,15 @@ resolve whether or not anything answers.
  and if so, is `route` still one mesh-wide provision or a node-scoped seat with a mesh-wide fallback?
 - What certifies the name in either case? The certificate is obtained by whoever terminates TLS, and
  that is the question above in another form.
+
+## Answered (2026-09-30)
+
+[ADR 0151](../../02-DECISIONS/0151-a-routes-internal-name-is-composed-under-the-node-that-serves-it.md):
+the internal name is composed under the node that serves the route — the machine the request arrives
+at — because `<x>.<node>.internal` means *goes to that node* and nothing else. The public name stays
+the consumer node's, which is where the operator put it. The first question is answered that way; the
+second, a per-node route holder, is a decision about seats and is left where it is; the third is
+unchanged, since the proxy that terminates the name is given it and certifies it.
+
+mesh-controller PR 163 carries it. On this mesh every route is served beside its module, so no name
+changed; the controller's tests hold the case where it would.
@@ -138,3 +138,48 @@ push. The control node is worth last.
 One thing this found on the way out: an archive cannot be undeclared, and the attempt stops the machine
 applying anything at all — [issue 162](../162-an-archive-cannot-be-undeclared/00-report.md). It is how
 undoing the first delivery froze the workstation, and it is not specific to the host.
+
+## Every machine self-updates (2026-09-30, evening)
+
+```
+shanks  76f4566bef3d/nox-mesh-host  active
+g14     76f4566bef3d/nox-mesh-host  active
+novox   76f4566bef3d/nox-mesh-host  active
+ace     76f4566bef3d/nox-mesh-host  active
+
+mesh-controller status: (no host split)
+```
+
+The last delivery was unattended on all four: the fixed host was built, pushed, each machine stood
+aside exactly once for the genuinely newer version, and the delivered launcher started it — no
+restart by hand. A following push that delivered nothing new was applied and reported by every
+machine and stood nobody aside, which is the check
+[issue 163](../163-a-delivered-host-stood-aside-on-every-push-and-reported-nothing/00-report.md) asks
+for.
+
+**Two more faults on the way, both mine, both found by reading the machine rather than the success
+line.** A delivered host compared the newest delivered version against its link-time stamp rather
+than the version it was running, so it stood aside on every push and — because standing aside cancels
+the report — never reported again (163). And the adopted machine kept its found launcher as the
+adoption rule says, so the delivery there needed a `take` before the launcher moved.
+
+**The crossover needs one restart of the unit per machine, once.** The launcher process that was
+running on each machine was the old script, executing from its own inode; a new file beside it
+changes nothing until the unit restarts. Every subsequent delivery is unattended.
+
+**Timing, measured:** on a machine, hearing a declaration to reporting it applied is about three
+seconds. A push as the operator sees it takes 17–20 seconds, and the difference is the control plane
+composing the declaration before it sends. A `--wait` shorter than that reads as "did not report" for
+a machine that did; the three-minute default read as slowness for a machine that never would. Neither
+number is a defect being chased here, and both are worth knowing before reading a push's answer.
+
+## What this leaves
+
+- [Issue 162](../162-an-archive-cannot-be-undeclared/00-report.md): an archive cannot be undeclared, so
+  the host module — and any module with an archive — cannot be unassigned, and trying stops the machine
+  applying anything.
+- [Issue 107](../107-a-declaration-carries-no-order/00-report.md) is unblocked: a declaration field is
+  now a build and a push rather than an expedition.
+- Three stale version directories on the workstation from the first attempts, moved aside under
+  `/var/lib/mesh-host/versions-held-back/`, and a backup of the adopted machine's hand-placed binary
+  beside its state. Both are safe to delete and are not the mesh's to delete.
@@ -1,7 +1,9 @@
 ---
-status: located
+status: resolved
 opened: 2026-09-29
-located-in: [nothing in the mesh — the surface in use is the predecessor's, installed on the workstation]
+located-in: [mesh-catalog modules/mesh-console, mesh-tools src/mesh.ts, mesh-controller internal/broker]
+fixed-by: ADR 0152; mesh-controller PR 164 (invokes); mesh-tools PR 20 (mesh serve, the tools verb); mesh-catalog PR 181 (mesh-console)
+amended-design: 03-DESIGN/01-to-be/34-the-console.md
 ---

 # 147 — the operator's tools still dial the bus that was removed
@@ -73,3 +75,28 @@ outside the mesh.
 - It fails identically for the local machine, which rules out reachability and points at the
  transport alone.
 - The mesh's own traffic over the new bus is unaffected: nodes report, declarations apply.
+
+## Answered, 2026-09-30
+
+The work order's question — does the mesh grow its own operator surface, or is the surface an
+ordinary module — is answered by [ADR 0152](../../02-DECISIONS/0152-the-operators-surface-is-a-module-the-console.md):
+**the console is a module.** `mesh-console` is assigned to the machine a person sits at, holds a
+credential the mesh minted, calls tools under a grant its manifest declares (`invokes`), and serves the
+mesh's tools on that machine's loopback to an agent over MCP and to a person through the same endpoint.
+Designed in [34 — The console](../../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/34-the-console.md).
+
+What that leaves, said plainly so nobody reads this record as closed on the whole of its first
+paragraph: the console reaches every tool a *module* serves. The mesh's own questions — what a node
+runs, what is assigned — are the `mesh-controller` seat's tools under ADR 0132 and are not on the bus
+yet; for those a shell is still the way, and design 33 is where that closes.
+
+The predecessor's program on the workstation is not replaced by the mesh; it is left where it is and
+the assistant is pointed at the console beside it. The `hal` entry in the assistant's configuration
+still names things that are not the mesh's.
+
+**Verified live, 2026-09-30 evening.** The four pull requests merged; the console was registered
+(checked first with `module check`), built, assigned to a workstation, issued a bus account, and pushed.
+On that machine `tools/list` answered on loopback with 62 tools and named 36 modules as not answering,
+and a call to the forge's `gitea_list_repos` returned repositories. The assistant on that machine now
+lists the console as a connected MCP server beside the predecessor's program, which was left where it
+is. As-is: [`13-the-console.md`](../../03-DESIGN/00-as-is/13-the-console.md).
@@ -1,7 +1,9 @@
 ---
-status: open
+status: resolved
 opened: 2026-09-29
-located-in: [mesh-controller cmd/mesh-controller]
+located-in: [mesh-controller cmd/mesh-controller, mesh-controller internal/catalogue]
+fixed-by: mesh-controller PR 164 (module check)
+amended-design: 03-DESIGN/01-to-be/12-a-module-repository.md
 ---

 # 148 — a manifest outside this catalogue has no check
@@ -35,3 +37,14 @@ Nothing prevents this; it was noticed and left. ADR 0037 named it on 2026-09-01
  take a path from `MESH_CATALOG`, so the mechanism is already path-driven and not repository-bound.
 - `mesh-controller module add` refuses a bad manifest at registration, which is the same check far
  too late: by then it is in a running mesh's records.
+
+## Built, 2026-09-30
+
+`mesh-controller module check <manifest>…` runs what registration runs — the strict parse, the
+per-manifest problems, and the cross-manifest rules over every manifest given — with no store and no
+mesh, prints every problem in the manifest's words, and exits non-zero on any. What it cannot judge
+without a store it says: a claim on one of the mesh's own seats is judged fully only at registration
+([ADR 0122](../../02-DECISIONS/0122-a-seat-is-data-a-rename-is-a-database-update.md)), and a seat
+declared by a module whose manifest was not passed reads as unknown. Written into
+[12 — A module repository](../../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/12-a-module-repository.md) as the section *a
+manifest is checked where it is written*. The console's own manifest was the first checked with it.
@@ -1,10 +1,10 @@
 ---
-status: open
+status: resolved
 opened: 2026-09-29
 located-in:
  - mesh-host internal/apply/apply.go (containerSpecReading hashes every `host` entry)
  - mesh-controller internal/catalogue/declaration.go (withMeshNames gives every container the mesh's names)
-fixed-by:
+fixed-by: mesh-controller PR 161 — the roster left every container's declaration and so its digest (ADR 0148 step 3, 2026-09-30)
 ---

 # 151 — A new name recreates every container in the mesh
@@ -92,3 +92,15 @@ copying names until a container can reach the resolver from any of the runtime's
 ([issue 110](../110-a-container-on-the-runtimes-own-network-cannot-reach-the-resolver/00-report.md)),
 which it cannot on two of four machines today. Removing the copy first reintroduces 109 and 135
 silently, on a live mesh, which is how both were found. The order is in the record.
+
+## Resolved (2026-09-30)
+
+Step 3 landed the day 110 did. mesh-controller PR 161 stops writing the roster into any container, so
+a container's digest no longer carries a name that is not its own. The controller's tests hold the
+record's check — a container's declaration does not move when the mesh's roster does, and does move
+when the module's own declared entries do.
+
+The first push after the change recreated every container once, because every digest lost its host
+entries at the same moment. That was the last such event: from here a name added or moved on one
+machine changes no container anywhere, and the record's second check — add a routed name, watch every
+other machine's apply report say nothing changed — is what the next module assignment will show.
@@ -1,9 +1,9 @@
 ---
-status: located
+status: resolved
 opened: 2026-09-30
 located-in:
  - mesh-controller internal/catalogue/roster.go (the roster's entries for a routed name)
-fixed-by:
+fixed-by: mesh-controller PR 163 — a routed name is published as itself, once, with no suffixed alias (ADR 0151, 2026-09-30)
 amended-design:
 ---

@@ -61,3 +61,10 @@ composition produces `keycloak.novox.be.internal`, which is not a name anything

 The fix is a judgement about what a routed name's internal form is, and 139 is the record that asks it;
 this one is the evidence that the current answer publishes a third thing that is neither.
+
+## Resolved (2026-09-30)
+
+The judgement 139 asked for is [ADR 0151](../../02-DECISIONS/0151-a-routes-internal-name-is-composed-under-the-node-that-serves-it.md):
+a routed name has no mesh form. The roster now publishes it as itself, once, at the serving node's
+address; the `<domain>.internal` line is gone from every machine's hosts file, and a controller test
+refuses it coming back.
@@ -0,0 +1,56 @@
+---
+status: resolved
+opened: 2026-09-30
+located-in: [mesh-host cmd/mesh-host/main.go (the successor check after an apply)]
+fixed-by: mesh-host PR 58 — the check asks with the running version, read from the binary's path, not the link-time stamp
+amended-design:
+---
+
+# 163 — A delivered host stood aside on every push, and reported nothing
+
+## What was observed
+
+*2026-09-30, rolling the mesh-built host onto the last two machines.*
+
+Every push to a machine running a delivered host produced, in order:
+
+```
+host 093231796eb0 is delivered; standing aside so the launcher runs it
+applied 333 resource(s)
+applied, and could not tell the mesh: reporting: context canceled
+nox-mesh-host-launch: the host exited cleanly; starting it again
+nox-mesh-host-launch: running /usr/lib/nox-mesh-host/versions/093231796eb0/nox-mesh-host
+```
+
+— for the version it was **already running**. It restarted itself on every push, for ever, and the mesh
+never received a single report from it: `node show` kept the version from before the crossover, and
+the operator's push waited its full three minutes for an answer that was never coming.
+
+Read as healthy throughout: unit active, bus link up, "hearing what this node should be".
+
+## Why
+
+After an apply the host asks whether a newer host has been delivered than the one running, and the
+question was asked with the **link-time version stamp**. Since
+[issue 161](../161-a-delivered-host-carries-none-of-its-link-time-facts/01-resolution.md) a delivered
+host's version comes from where it sits and its stamp is `development build` — so the comparison never
+matched the newest delivered version, and "a newer host is waiting" was always true.
+
+Standing aside cancels the context the report is published with, so the report was lost on every one
+of those applies. Two faults from one wrong argument.
+
+The change that moved the version to the path was applied to the report and to the known-good record,
+and not here. Half a change, and the half left behind was the one that decides whether to exit.
+
+## Why the three-minute wait made it invisible
+
+The push's `--wait` timing out read as *slow*. It was not slow: **the report was never going to arrive.**
+The operator put it exactly: *if you don't get a response in five seconds, something is wrong.* A wait
+long enough to absorb a machine's whole apply is a wait long enough to hide that the machine never
+answered.
+
+## How it is checked
+
+A machine running a delivered host is pushed a declaration that delivers nothing new; it applies,
+reports, and does not stand aside. A machine running a delivered host is pushed a genuinely newer
+version; it stands aside once, and the next push it does not.
@@ -0,0 +1,78 @@
+---
+status: resolved
+opened: 2026-09-30
+located-in:
+  - mesh-catalog modules/mailu (eight containers name Mailu's own resolver, and one of them binds a mesh name)
+  - mesh-catalog modules/dnsmasq (dropped the DNSSEC bit its upstreams set)
+fixed-by: mesh-catalog PR 178 (mailu-admin uses the machine's resolver) and PR 179 (the machine's resolver passes the DNSSEC bit down) — 2026-09-30, the same afternoon
+amended-design:
+---
+
+# 171 — A module that names its own resolver knows no mesh name
+
+## What was observed
+
+The afternoon [ADR 0148](../../02-DECISIONS/0148-the-meshs-names-are-resolved-not-copied-into-containers.md)
+landed — no container is given the mesh's names any more; it asks the machine's resolver — the mail
+system's admin container began logging, 523 times in three minutes:
+
+```
+psycopg2.OperationalError: could not translate host name "novox.internal" to address: Name does not resolve
+```
+
+Mail was accepted on every port and the web front answered; the admin and the spam filter beside it
+were unhealthy, and anything that needed the database — a mailbox change through the API, the spam
+filter's domain list — failed. Found by the operator asking whether mail was back, forty minutes in.
+
+Mailu ships its own resolver, an unbound in a container, and every other Mailu container is told to
+use it — the module carries `dns: [192.168.203.254]` on eight containers. That resolver recurses from the
+root and knows nothing under `.internal`. Until that afternoon the admin container had the database's
+name anyway, because the mesh wrote every name into every container at creation; the copy was the only
+reason a container behind its own resolver could reach anything by a mesh name, and nobody knew it was
+load-bearing.
+
+**Removing the override was not enough.** Given the machine's resolver instead, the admin refused to
+start: `Your DNS resolver at 127.0.0.11 isn't doing DNSSEC validation`. Mailu checks, at start, that
+its resolver returns the Authenticated Data bit for a signed name. The mesh's resolver forwards to two
+upstreams that validate and set the bit, and dropped it on the way down — dnsmasq does unless told
+otherwise. Mailu's own unbound has no hook to forward a zone elsewhere, so it could not be taught the
+mesh's names either.
+
+## Why it matters beyond this instance
+
+**A container with a resolver of its own has opted out of the machine's, and nothing says so.** 0148
+made the machine's resolver load-bearing for every container; a `dns` on a container is a quiet
+exception to that, and the exception used to be papered over by the copy the record removed. The
+manifest field reads like a preference and is a decision about whether mesh names exist inside the
+container.
+
+**A resolver that forwards to validating upstreams and hides the fact is less useful than it could
+be**, and the first program to check found out.
+
+**The mesh reported nothing.** Every container ran; the failing one accepted connections; the report
+was about bytes. It is [issue 145](../145-a-machine-reads-healthy-while-its-modules-cannot-reach-each-other/00-report.md)
+again, and the check that would have caught it is the same unbuilt one.
+
+## What was done
+
+- The one Mailu container that binds a mesh name — the admin, through the database it is granted —
+  no longer names Mailu's resolver and uses the machine's, like every container without a `dns` of
+  its own (mesh-catalog PR 178). The other seven keep unbound: the spam filter needs a validating
+  resolver for its blocklist lookups, and none of them asks for a mesh name.
+- The machine's resolver passes the DNSSEC bit down from its upstreams, `proxy-dnssec` (PR 179). It
+  does not validate itself; the trust is the upstream's and the path to it, as a forwarding resolver's
+  always was, and the configuration says so.
+
+## What checks it
+
+The admin container's own start-up check, which is what failed, and the mesh's status once it reads
+healthy. A container-level check that a mesh name resolves from inside every declared container is
+the one 110 and 145 both ask for and is not built.
+
+## Open questions
+
+- Should a container's `dns` be refused, or made to say what it gives up? A module that names its
+  own resolver and binds a mesh name is a contradiction the controller can see at composition — the
+  grant hands it a name its resolver will not answer.
+- Should the machine's resolver validate rather than proxy? It would cost a trust anchor on every
+  machine and make the resolver slower to start; proxying was enough for the one program that asked.
@@ -0,0 +1,55 @@
+---
+status: located
+opened: 2026-09-30
+located-in:
+  - the predecessor's terminal module (still generating the operator's ssh client blocks on every workstation)
+  - mesh-controller internal/catalogue (the ssh-client roster, tested and not yet a catalogue module)
+fixed-by:
+amended-design:
+---
+
+# 172 — The ssh client block for a machine matches one spelling of its name, and the other gets the wrong user
+
+## What was observed
+
+On a workstation, 2026-09-30, reported by the operator. `ssh home-server` logs in; `ssh
+home-server.internal` is refused with `Permission denied (publickey)`. The operator expected the
+opposite, if either: the full mesh name is the one the resolver serves.
+
+The name is not the fault. Both spellings resolve to the machine's private address — the mesh's roster
+region in the hosts file carries `<node>.internal <node>` on one line, and the resolver answers
+anything under the node's name. What differs is the login: the generated client configuration has a
+`Host home-server` block naming the account to log in as, and `home-server.internal` matches no block,
+so ssh falls back to the operator's local username, which has no account on that machine. Spelled
+`account@home-server.internal` it works.
+
+The file is the predecessor's. `~/.ssh/config.d/mesh` says in its own header that it is generated by
+the predecessor's terminal module, which only ever wrote the bare name. The mesh's own ssh-client
+roster — every other machine's Host block, written as a marked region of the operator's `~/.ssh/config`
+with the account the mesh knows for that machine (to-be 29) — already matches both spellings, and a
+controller test holds `Host marge marge.internal`. It is composed and tested in the controller and is
+not a module in the catalogue, so no machine receives it; every workstation still runs the
+predecessor's generator.
+
+## Why it matters beyond this instance
+
+**A name the mesh serves and a name a person can use are not the same set**, and the difference is
+silent. The resolver, the hosts file and the certificate authority all treat `<node>.internal` as the
+machine's name; the one file that decides who you log in as does not know it. A person who learns the
+mesh's name from `status` or from a certificate and types it is refused with an error that says
+nothing about a missing Host block.
+
+**It is the migration story for the operator's own tooling, arriving as a symptom.** The mesh has the
+right file and does not ship it. Until the ssh-client roster is a module and is assigned to the
+workstations, the predecessor's generator keeps writing a file the mesh has already superseded, and
+every such file is one the mesh cannot correct.
+
+## Open questions
+
+- Should the ssh-client roster become a catalogue module now, assigned to every workstation, and take
+  the predecessor's `config.d/mesh` out of the operator's `Include`? Its content is settled; what is
+  not is the takeover of a file in a person's home that another generator still writes.
+- Should the block match a third spelling — the machine's public name, where it has one — or is that
+  a different key and a different account?
+- What checks it? A controller test holds the two spellings; nothing checks that the file a workstation
+  actually has is the mesh's rather than the predecessor's.
@@ -87,12 +87,15 @@ rather than location** — that these documents would be indexed into the knowle
 symptom search returns them beside everything else. One source, many surfaces. Where the source
 is authored is then a separate question.

-**That indexing does not exist.** It was checked on 2026-08-23 and returns nothing; it appears
-never to have existed. Until it does, the objection stands unanswered and this repository is
-the fourth knowledge system it was argued not to be. Recorded as
-[`04-ISSUES/006`](04-ISSUES/006-hq-is-not-indexed-into-the-knowledge-base/00-report.md), and
-left standing here rather than quietly reworded, because a claim that held up a decision and
-was never checked is precisely the failure this repository exists to name.
+**That indexing never existed, and the store it would have indexed into is gone.** It was checked
+on 2026-08-23 and returned nothing; the knowledge base it named was the predecessor's, and since the
+mesh moved to its own bus on 2026-09-28 nothing can reach it at all. The claim is recorded as
+[`04-ISSUES/006`](04-ISSUES/006-hq-is-not-indexed-into-the-knowledge-base/00-report.md) and answered
+by [ADR 0025](02-DECISIONS/0025-the-design-record-is-read-not-copied.md): these documents are
+**read, not copied** — an agent reads this repository and a search consults it — and that agent is
+not built. So today this repository is reachable by whoever knows to open it and surfaces to nobody
+else. Said here rather than quietly reworded, because a claim that held up a decision and was never
+checked is precisely the failure this repository exists to name.

 Answered separately, a repository of its own is the better home:
Author	SHA1	Message	Date
jschoubben	37b46d5349	ADR 0153 and ADR 0154: the record is read by a module, and the mesh's verbs are its seat's tools Design 33 in progress against ADR 0154 (the twelve verbs, the prerequisites built); design 35 for the records module under ADR 0153, extending 0025; as-is 07 rewritten to a mesh that keeps no store; as-is 12 and 13 updated; issue 006 built and waiting on its live check.	2026-09-30 17:47:49 +02:00
jschoubben	16855ade02	The console shipped: design 34 implemented, as-is 13, issue 147 verified live	2026-09-30 17:13:09 +02:00
jschoubben	8dd566c0aa	Merge pull request 'ADR 0152: the operator's surface is a module, the console (group 3)' (#222 ) from feat/the-console into main Reviewed-on: #222	2026-09-30 14:47:36 +00:00
jschoubben	a98ee0f529	Issues 147 and 148 name what fixed them	2026-09-30 16:21:33 +02:00
jschoubben	ad4a5ea004	ADR 0152: the operator's surface is a module, the console The work order's group-3 question answered: an ordinary module the mesh assigns to the machine a person sits at, holding a minted credential, calling tools under a manifest grant (invokes), serving MCP on loopback. Design 34; pointers in 33, 25 and 0095; module check designed into 12 (issue 148); README stops claiming an indexing nothing provides (issue 006).	2026-09-30 16:08:52 +02:00
jschoubben	0cf1ad5dad	Merge pull request 'Issue 172: the ssh client block matches one spelling of a machine's name' (#221 ) from issue/172-the-ssh-client-block-matches-one-spelling-of-a-machine into main	2026-09-30 13:25:34 +00:00
jschoubben	69a002fce3	Issue 172: the ssh client block matches one spelling of a machine's name Reported by the operator: ssh by the bare name logs in, by the mesh name is refused. The predecessor's generator writes the bare name only; the mesh's ssh-client roster already matches both and is not yet shipped.	2026-09-30 15:25:30 +02:00
jschoubben	16a1a52cd8	Merge pull request 'Issue 171: a module that names its own resolver knows no mesh name' (#220 ) from issue/171-a-modules-own-resolver-knows-no-mesh-name into main	2026-09-30 13:20:30 +00:00
jschoubben	af170e3a67	Issue 171: a module that names its own resolver knows no mesh name Found and fixed the afternoon ADR 0148 landed: mailu-admin lost its database behind Mailu's own resolver. Two catalogue PRs; an insight on 0148 that a container's dns is a decision, not a preference.	2026-09-30 15:20:26 +02:00
jschoubben	6c2d5f5913	Merge pull request 'Group 2 is resolved: containers resolve, nothing is copied, a route's name says where it arrives' (#219 ) from issue/110-resolved into main	2026-09-30 13:07:14 +00:00
jschoubben	04c9500b5b	Group 2 is resolved: containers resolve, nothing is copied, a route's name says where it arrives Issue 110's cause was not the filter: the runtime had never been told, and the resolver dropped a query arriving on a bridge. ADR 0148 step 3 landed once it did (109, 151 resolved). ADR 0151 composes a route's internal name under the serving node and drops the suffixed alias (139, 157 resolved). Design 08 amended; a fact in 0148 corrected.	2026-09-30 14:56:43 +02:00
jschoubben	846c1f85f2	Merge pull request 'Issue 107 is resolved: a declaration carries its order' (#217 ) from issue/107-resolved into main	2026-09-30 12:13:57 +00:00
jschoubben	9eef0bd525	Issue 107 is resolved: a declaration carries its order Hosts first, then the controller — a build and a push each, now that the mesh delivers the host. The host refuses a lower sequence than it kept and drains a batch by sequence rather than arrival; the controller numbers each send under the node's hold, inside the signed bytes. Measured: two pushes, sequence 2 in the kept declaration, counters in the store agree, no machine reads as behind. That last one is the subtlety: the mesh compares the digest of what it would send against what it did, and a number changes the bytes, so the read-only comparison composes with the last number sent rather than a fresh one.	2026-09-30 14:13:50 +02:00
jschoubben	6e08cdf3d6	Merge pull request 'Every machine self-updates, verified, and 107's gate has opened' (#216 ) from issue/142-self-update-on-every-machine into main	2026-09-30 11:51:53 +00:00
jschoubben	02f291a129	Every machine self-updates, verified, and 107's gate has opened All four machines run a host the mesh built, published and delivered, the last delivery unattended: each stood aside once for a genuinely newer version and the delivered launcher started it. A following push that delivered nothing new was applied and reported by every machine and stood nobody aside. The crossover needs one restart of the unit per machine, once, because the running launcher executes from its own inode. Measured timing: three seconds on the machine, 17-20 as the operator sees it, the difference being the control plane composing before it sends. 107 is unblocked: a declaration field is now a build and a push.	2026-09-30 13:51:46 +02:00
jschoubben	9b14430d3f	Merge pull request 'Issue 163: a delivered host stood aside on every push and reported nothing' (#214 ) from issue/163-a-delivered-host-stands-aside-on-every-push into main	2026-09-30 11:47:35 +00:00
jschoubben	a4384f13d3	Issue 163: a delivered host stood aside on every push and reported nothing Asked whether a newer host was delivered using the link-time stamp, which every delivered host carries as 'development build' now that the version comes from where the binary sits. Never matched, so it stood aside on every push for ever; standing aside cancels the report, so the mesh never heard from it. Read as healthy throughout. The three-minute push wait made it invisible: a wait long enough to absorb a whole apply is long enough to hide that the machine never answered.	2026-09-30 13:47:28 +02:00