02-DECISIONS/0061-the-host-asks-an-init-for-start-and-restart.md

@@ -38,23 +38,41 @@ is a container the runtime restarts. Nothing in it declares a `service`.
 
 ## Decision
 
-**An init is asked for two things: start this at boot, and start it again if it exits.** Both are
-expressible in systemd, OpenRC, runit, s6 and an Android `init.rc`.
+**An init is asked for one thing: start this at boot.**
+
+An earlier version of this record asked for two — start, and restart on exit — and left the
+restart in the unit file while moving the give-up logic out. That was half a change: it kept the
+init deciding *when the host comes back*, which is the thing being removed. **The launcher does
+not exec the host; it supervises it**, so restarting is ours as well.
+
+The cost of not exec'ing is signals, and it is the reason people reach for a service manager in
+the first place. A supervisor that exits while its child is still running leaves the host to be
+*killed* rather than to *stop*, and an apply interrupted that way is the half-configured machine
+this project is about. So the launcher traps the shutdown signal, passes it to the host, and
+waits.
 
 **Everything else moves into a launcher**, which is what the init actually starts:
 
 ```
-init ──► nox-mesh-host-launch ──► nox-mesh-host
+init ──► nox-mesh-host-launch ──► nox-mesh-host   (a child, not an exec)
               │
-              ├─ halted?         say so and stop. a person has to look
-              ├─ count this start attempt
-              ├─ too many, and not yet rolled back?   roll back, then start
-              ├─ too many, and already rolled back?   halt — the machine is the problem
-              └─ otherwise                            start the host
+              └─ loop:
+                   halted?                    say so and stop; a person has to look
+                   too many failures?         roll back once, then halt
+                   start the host, and wait
+                     exited 0                 it upgraded itself — start the new binary,
+                                              and do NOT count it
+                     crashed                  count it, back off, loop
+                     shutting down            pass the signal down, wait, exit
 
 host, on a completed reconcile ──► clears the counter, records known-good
 ```
 
+**The counter counts consecutive failures, not starts**, and the difference is not cosmetic.
+Counting starts meant a host that upgraded itself three times rolled itself back, having worked
+perfectly every time — the clean exit *is* the upgrade path
+([ADR 0057](0057-the-host-is-a-root-service-installed-as-a-package.md)).
+
 **This keeps everything ADR 0059 decided and changes only where it lives.** Two watchdogs still,
 and neither substitutes for the other: the mesh stages a host rollout and stops when nodes go
 quiet; the node recovers itself. Recovery is still local, because nothing dials a node and a host
@@ -85,10 +103,13 @@ host, because a binary that will not start cannot be its own recovery.
 
 ## Consequences
 
-- **`Restart=always` stays load-bearing and stays subtle.** The host restarts onto a new binary
-  by exiting cleanly ([ADR 0057](0057-the-host-is-a-root-service-installed-as-a-package.md)), so
-  whatever supervises must restart on a zero exit. This caught out an earlier draft of 0059,
-  which specified `on-failure` and would have left every upgraded node stopped.
+- **A clean exit is the upgrade path, and it is the easiest thing to get wrong.** Twice now:
+  ADR 0059 specified `on-failure`, which would have left every upgraded node stopped; and the
+  first supervising loop counted a clean exit as a failure, which would have rolled back a host
+  that upgraded itself three times. Anything touching restart has to ask what a zero exit means
+  here.
+- **`Restart=` in the unit file becomes a backstop, not the mechanism.** It brings the launcher
+  back if the launcher itself is killed. It no longer decides anything about the host.
 - **The unit file becomes trivial**, which is the point: start, restart, a state directory.
   Nothing in it encodes policy, so porting it is transcription rather than design.
 - **A halted node is silent**, unchanged from 0059 and still the last gap. What notices is the