04-ISSUES/087-the-controller-cannot-tell-a-host-is-too-old/00-report.md

@@ -2,7 +2,7 @@
 status: resolved
 opened: 2026-09-22
 located-in: [mesh-controller internal/link/protocol.go (the report field that was missing), internal/inventory, cmd/mesh-controller (node show and status)]
-fixed-by: mesh-controller 7683ba8
+fixed-by: mesh-controller 7683ba8, corrected by 1d9c102
 amended-design:
 ---
 

04-ISSUES/087-the-controller-cannot-tell-a-host-is-too-old/01-resolution.md

@@ -54,6 +54,49 @@ Two deliberate refusals to guess:
   for a scheme where `10` sorts before `9`. Said in the code at the place that would have to learn,
   rather than left as a surprise.
 
+## What I shipped first was wrong, and the mesh said so within the hour
+
+The first version reported *"N machine(s) run an older host than another machine does"* and worked out
+which by comparing versions as strings. **A host reports its version as a commit, and commits have no
+order.**
+
+On the live mesh, with the adopted machine pushed for the first time:
+
+```
+3 machine(s) run an older host than another machine does:
+  g14          04a27ca
+  novox        04a27ca
+  shanks       04a27ca
+```
+
+Those three run the **newer** host — installed 09:18, against the adopted machine's 01:13. `ced54d4`
+sorts above `04a27ca` and that is all it means. An arbitrary lexicographic result, presented as a fact,
+about the one thing this record exists to make trustworthy.
+
+The code carried a caveat saying versions compare as strings and that this "is enough for the timestamps
+and commits this mesh uses". That was the error, written down and not noticed: it is enough for
+timestamps and it is **meaningless** for commits, and the mesh reports commits.
+
+It now reports the split and claims no ordering:
+
+```
+4 machine(s) do not all run the same host:
+  04a27ca      g14, novox, shanks
+  ced54d4      ace
+
+  a host refuses a declaration carrying a field it does not know, whole — so the mesh may
+  send only what every one of these understands. Which of them is newer is not readable
+  from a commit; that needs a version the host reports as ordered
+```
+
+More useful as well as more honest — the reader sees who is on which side of the split, which is what
+decides whether a field can be sent — and it leaves the ordering where it belongs: with the host, which
+would have to report something ordered for anybody to have it.
+
+**This is [issue 145](../145-a-machine-reads-healthy-while-its-modules-cannot-reach-each-other/00-report.md)
+arriving by my own door**, an hour after closing it: a report that confidently says the opposite of the
+truth is worse than one that says less, because it trains a reader to distrust the whole surface.
+
 ## Measured on the mesh, and one limitation it exposed
 
 All four machines run the identical host binary — same digest, installed within eighteen seconds of each