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+---
+status: located
+opened: 2026-09-01
+located-in: [mesh-control]
+fixed-by:
+amended-design:
+---
+
+# 022 — A credential belongs to a node and a provision, so a second consumer refuses
+
+## Symptom
+
+A node running more than one module that wants the same provision **cannot be planned at all**:
+
+```
+anchor has 3 modules asking for "postgres-database" and they would share one
+credential: gitea, keycloak, umami
+```
+
+The refusal is correct about what it says. They *would* share one credential, and sharing one is
+worse than refusing — a login that opens three databases is not three credentials. But the
+arrangement being refused is the ordinary one. **The node this mesh exists to take over runs
+eight modules against one database server.**
+
+## Where it comes from
+
+A credential is keyed by *(provision, consumer node, provider node)*:
+
+```go
+func (i *Inventory) SecretFor(ctx context.Context, name, consumer, provider string) (Secret, error)
+```
+
+`consumer` is a **node**. Everything downstream inherits that granularity: `Grant.Consumer` is a
+node, the grant's file is named after a node, and the provisioner names the role it creates after
+one — `role := mark + c.Node`.
+
+So the refusal in `ContributionsTo` is not a check that found a problem. It is the only honest
+thing that function can do, given a key that cannot tell two consumers apart.
+
+## Why it was not noticed
+
+**Every scenario so far had one consumer per node.** That is the natural shape of a small test —
+a consumer here, a provider there — and it is the shape of every lab scenario written to date. A
+node with two modules wanting a database is not an edge case discovered by fuzzing; it is what a
+real machine looks like, and nothing had modelled a real machine yet.
+
+The refusal also reads as deliberate. It names the modules, explains the consequence, and refuses
+rather than picking — the house rule everywhere else. It looks like a decision. It is a limit.
+
+## Why the granularity is wrong
+
+The same argument that closed [`021`](../021-a-consumer-on-the-providers-machine-is-given-no-credential/00-report.md).
+There, the machine was treated as a trust boundary and containers made that untrue. Here, the
+machine is treated as an *identity* — as though "who is asking" is answered by naming a host.
+
+**Two modules on one node are as separate as two on different nodes.** They run as different
+containers, on different networks, with different data. A key that cannot distinguish them means
+the mesh cannot express the thing it is for.
+
+It also silently weakens what the provisioner does. `mesh_<node>` is one role. Had the refusal not
+been there, gitea's login would have opened keycloak's database — and nothing anywhere would have
+said so, because from the provisioner's side it created exactly what it was asked to create.
+
+## What a fix has to keep
+
+- **The refusal, where it is still right.** Two modules wanting one provision must not silently
+  share a credential. After a fix they do not share one, so there is nothing to refuse — but a
+  genuine collision must still refuse rather than pick.
+- **A credential per consuming module**, sealed to the node that holds it. Both facts are needed:
+  the module is who it is for, the node is what it is sealed to.
+- **The provisioner names what it creates after the module**, so a login is traceable to the thing
+  using it, and so withdrawing one consumer does not remove another's.
+- **Withdrawal still works.** A module unassigned must lose its login while the others keep theirs
+  — which is precisely what one role per node cannot do.
+- **Existing single-consumer nodes keep working**, since that is every scenario that exists.
+
+## Scope
+
+This crosses the control plane, the grant file naming, and every provisioner that names something
+after `Consumer`. It is not a local fix, and it is the last thing between the current state and a
+node that looks like a real one.