2026-10-02 15:28:48 +00:00
31 changed files with 1788 additions and 13 deletions
@@ -9,6 +9,11 @@ another — and a mesh you cannot name precisely is a mesh two people describe d

 - **node** — a machine in the mesh. There are 0..n of them, and each runs the host agent. A node is
  just a machine that has joined; being one implies nothing about what it runs.
+- **operator account** — the login name of the person who works on a node, stated on the node
+  record; empty for a machine nobody logs into. Everything the mesh places under a person's home is
+  resolved against this account's home and owned by it
+  ([ADR 0181](../02-DECISIONS/0181-the-operator-account-is-a-node-fact-and-a-home-is-a-placement-root.md)).
+  Not "the user" (ambiguous with a module's own account) and not a name a definition carries.
 - **control-node** — the one node that also holds the `mesh-controller` seat. There is exactly one
  per mesh. "control-node" is not a separate kind of machine — it is a node that additionally runs
  the controller (and, today, the foundation). Lose it and the other nodes keep running what they
@@ -95,3 +100,21 @@ another — and a mesh you cannot name precisely is a mesh two people describe d
 A new name for an existing thing lands here first, in the same change that introduces it in code. A
 record under `02-DECISIONS/` keeps whatever word it was written with — those are immutable — so a
 term retired here may still appear there, and the mapping above is how to read it.
+
+## The operator's machine
+
+- **node tools** — the one tool runtime per node, a host-side process the host supervises, that loads
+  every assigned module's tools bundle and serves every tool and held seat's verb on the subjects the
+  memberships issue; its serving mode on loopback is what was called **the console**
+  ([ADR 0175](../02-DECISIONS/0175-one-tool-runtime-per-node-serves-every-modules-tools-on-the-host-side.md)).
+  Replaces **"console"** as the module's name; *console* remains the word for the person's end of it.
+- **bundle** — the artifact a module's tools are built into, interpreted or compiled; never an image.
+- **kept region** — a marked block in a managed file the mesh writes *into*, where the operator's own
+  lines survive every push and are given back when the module goes
+  ([ADR 0174](../02-DECISIONS/0174-a-node-varies-a-module-through-settings-and-kept-regions-never-an-edit.md)).
+  One of the two ways a node varies a module; the other is a **setting**.
+- **installed / holding** — a module may be assigned (its package installed, its files placed) without
+  holding the seat its family declares; *holding* is being the one — the login shell, the display
+  session — on that node ([ADR 0176](../02-DECISIONS/0176-the-login-shell-is-a-node-seat-and-execute-is-its-contract.md)).
+- ~~flavor~~ — not used. What a flavor varied is a setting or a separate module.
+
@@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
 ---
-status: active
+status: graduated
 initiated: 2026-10-02
 touches:
  - 02-DECISIONS/0040-what-a-module-is.md
@@ -15,7 +15,13 @@ touches:
  - 03-DESIGN/00-as-is/10-module-catalogue.md
  - 04-ISSUES/160-a-machine-says-little-about-itself-and-only-when-asked/00-report.md
  - 04-ISSUES/168-a-setting-reaches-every-file-and-contribution/00-report.md
-became: []
+became:
+  - 03-DESIGN/01-to-be/37-the-operators-machine.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0173-the-operators-machine-is-the-meshs-and-a-module-is-what-it-declares.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0174-a-node-varies-a-module-through-settings-and-kept-regions-never-an-edit.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0175-one-tool-runtime-per-node-serves-every-modules-tools-on-the-host-side.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0176-the-login-shell-is-a-node-seat-and-execute-is-its-contract.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0177-a-unit-may-be-user-scoped-and-the-service-manager-is-a-node-seat.md
 ---

 # 018 — The operator's machine as modules
@@ -63,7 +69,7 @@ and the catalogue's shape ([as-is 10](../../03-DESIGN/00-as-is/10-module-catalog
 - [04 — The seats of the environment](04-the-seats-of-the-environment.md): the roles a machine
  has once, their candidate contracts, and what gates each.

-**What this must settle before it graduates.**
+**What it had to settle, and where each landed.** *(Graduated 2026-10-02.)*

 1. A module is one *managed thing*, software or not, and every module may serve tools — or ADR
   0040 already says this and only its examples are narrow.
@@ -0,0 +1,55 @@
+---
+status: active
+initiated: 2026-10-02
+touches: [lab, the lab module, the catalogue, assignments, settings, the controller's store]
+became: []
+---
+
+# 019 — A warm twin of the running mesh
+
+## What is being investigated
+
+Whether the lab can keep a **warm twin of the mesh as it actually runs**: the same machines, carrying
+the same catalogue, the same assignments and the same settings as the live mesh, raised once and kept
+ready, so that a change can be tested against the mesh as it is rather than against a scenario
+written to resemble it. A run against the twin would go through the lab module like any other run:
+a branch per repository, the twin restored from its snapshot, the change applied, the beds run.
+
+## Why
+
+The lab's beds raise meshes from declarations written for the bed. They prove the mechanism. They
+do not prove that a change works on the mesh that runs, with its accumulated assignments, its
+operator settings, its adopted machines and its modules in their real combinations. The gap showed
+on 2026-10-02:
+
+- a change to how a module's settings reach its files was correct in every bed, and would have put a
+  setting into the container runtime's configuration on every machine running that module. Only the
+  composed plan for a real machine showed it;
+- a firewall change composed cleanly and still left one machine's wired port unfiltered, because
+  of a link that machine had and no bed did;
+- a recovery step was needed on every machine at once, after a change that every bed had passed.
+
+The lab already has a warm mode, a snapshot of a raised scenario restored between attempts. What it
+does not have is a scenario that **is** the running mesh, kept current with it.
+
+## What it touches
+
+- **What a twin is made of.** The catalogue and the assignments are records; settings are records;
+  secrets are sealed to machines and cannot be copied. Which of these can be carried to the lab as
+  they are, which must be substituted, and how a twin says what it substituted.
+- **Data.** A twin with the real catalogue and no real data proves composition and delivery, not a
+  migration. Whether a twin carries data, a sample of it, or none.
+- **Keeping it current.** A twin raised once goes stale with the first merge. Whether it is
+  re-derived from the live records on each run, refreshed on a schedule, or rebuilt only when asked.
+- **Machines.** The live mesh has machines of different kinds: a server on the internet, machines
+  behind a home router, a laptop that sleeps. Which of their properties a twin must reproduce for a
+  test to mean anything (reachability, the private network, the found firewall).
+- **Cost.** The lab machine's memory and disk, and how long a twin takes to raise from cold.
+- **The lab module's tools.** A run against the twin rather than a named bed: one more tool, or an
+  argument to the run tool.
+
+## Starting point
+
+The lab module (ADR 0172) runs beds through the mesh, and the lab's warm mode already snapshots and
+restores a raised scenario. The beds that raise a machine shaped like one live machine from the
+catalogue are the nearest existing thing, and the first to compare against.
@@ -78,6 +78,8 @@ capability. The host hardcodes no firewall, supervisor, package manager or runti
 generic apply primitives and platform detection, so it runs where none of those exist — an Android
 phone has no ufw, systemd, pacman or Docker.

+> **The mechanism changed — 2026-10-02, by [ADR 0176](0176-the-login-shell-is-a-node-seat-and-execute-is-its-contract.md).** The shell example above — *bash, zsh and fish all join `shell`; one may be default* — is read as *installed is not holding*: the three may all be installed, and the `login-shell` seat is node-scoped and held by exactly one. The decision — what a module is, and the three relationships — stands; [ADR 0173](0173-the-operators-machine-is-the-meshs-and-a-module-is-what-it-declares.md) applies it to the operator's whole machine.
+
 ## Consequences

 - **Supersedes the earlier "grouped by domain" decision** (folded in consolidation; see the
@@ -9,6 +9,8 @@ extends: 0043-a-module-broker-account-is-scoped-by-emits-and-consumes.md

 # 47. A module runs its code as its own process, with its own account

+> **The mechanism changed — 2026-10-02, by [ADR 0175](0175-one-tool-runtime-per-node-serves-every-modules-tools-on-the-host-side.md).** A module's *tools* are no longer served by the module's own process under its own account: one tool runtime per node, on the host side, serves every assigned module's bundle. A tool is still served on its own subject and only the module that serves it answers; what moved is the process and the account.
+
 ## Context

 A module is one self-contained thing ([ADR 0040](0040-what-a-module-is.md)), and it gets a broker
@@ -204,3 +204,14 @@ only, the refresh token only, the manager node only.**
  record extends, amended to describe the adapter generalisation.
 - The read-only vendor-agnostic analysis, 2026-09-05 (code workspace) — the inventory and the decisions
  taken on the open questions this record encodes.
+
+> **The mechanism changed — 2026-10-02, by [ADR 0183](0183-the-anthropic-licence-manager-is-a-module-and-hands-tokens-to-the-agent-over-the-bus.md).**
+> What stands: `model-access` is one vendor-blind provision for the consumers that do not care which
+> vendor answers; a vendor's lifecycle is an adapter's; the carve-out that one node holds a refreshable
+> grant's refresh token readably. What moved: the Anthropic adapter is no longer a part of the
+> controller's licences context but a module, `claude-licence-manager`, holding the seat
+> `anthropic-licence-manager`, with the grants in its own store encrypted with a key the vault made for
+> it; and the agent at a terminal is not a consumer of `model-access` — it is coupled to an Anthropic
+> grant and uses the seat. The consequence above that the three binding columns *become three ordinary
+> consumers of `model-access`* therefore no longer describes the agent's bindings; they are the
+> manager's. The static-key adapters and the vendor-blind records stay where this record put them.
@@ -283,3 +283,13 @@ modules in the catalogue require it — so a shared secret is a requirement answ
 which is what this record asks for. Private keys are still made where they are used and never
 travel, which is the other half and was never in question.

+
+> **The mechanism changed — 2026-10-02, by [ADR 0183](0183-the-anthropic-licence-manager-is-a-module-and-hands-tokens-to-the-agent-over-the-bus.md).**
+> What stands: every shared secret the mesh makes is the vault's, a private key is made where it is
+> used, and a long-lived value a backend issues enters the vault's custody — here as the key the vault
+> makes for the licence manager, which encrypts the vendor's grants at rest with it. What this record
+> did not foresee: a credential that lives hours, issued by a vendor to the one module that holds its
+> grant, and handed by that module to the agent on each node sealed to that node's module key, on
+> request/reply over the bus, never through the vault and never as a file the host writes. ADR 0183
+> states that as a bounded exception — one vendor, tokens that live hours, one recipient per message —
+> and a second such channel is a decision of its own.
@@ -9,6 +9,8 @@ extends: 02-DECISIONS/0047-a-module-runs-its-code-as-its-own-process-with-its-ow

 # 150. A module's own code runs as supervised processes under the module's one account

+> **The mechanism changed — 2026-10-02, by [ADR 0175](0175-one-tool-runtime-per-node-serves-every-modules-tools-on-the-host-side.md).** For a module's *tools*, read that record: one runtime per node, the node's one account, bundles loaded from the memberships. This record still governs a module's long-lived processes — a daemon, a provisioner, a scheduled ingest — and the account invariant for them.
+
 ## Context

 The repository answers "what runs a module's own code" two ways and reconciles them nowhere
@@ -111,6 +111,8 @@ 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.

+> **The mechanism changed — 2026-10-02, by [ADR 0175](0175-one-tool-runtime-per-node-serves-every-modules-tools-on-the-host-side.md).** The surface stays a module assigned per node, on loopback, with the machine's login as the authority. It is no longer a container: it is the node tools runtime's serving mode, host-side, and that runtime also serves every assigned module's tools. The module is renamed `node-tools`.
+
 ## Consequences

 - **The way a person drives the mesh is inside the mesh.** It is declared, delivered, replaced and
@@ -94,6 +94,13 @@ itself restarts, and the console says so rather than hiding the modules' tools w
 **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.

+> **The mechanism changed — 2026-10-02, by [ADR 0175](0175-one-tool-runtime-per-node-serves-every-modules-tools-on-the-host-side.md).**
+> The seat gains a generic verb beside the named ones: `command`, which takes one command line as the
+> controller's binary takes it and answers what it printed. The named verbs stand and keep their
+> schemas; `command` is the whole binary, added because the operator decided any node may call any
+> tool and a verb per command was the only thing keeping `node account`, `node show` and the rest
+> behind a shell on the control node. Additive within the version, as §"additive" above allows.
+
 ## Consequences

 - **The console answers the mesh's own questions.** Issue 147's first paragraph closes: what a node
@@ -0,0 +1,108 @@
+---
+topic: what runs on it
+status: accepted
+date: 2026-10-02
+deciders: jochen
+reconstructed: false
+extends: 02-DECISIONS/0040-what-a-module-is.md
+---
+
+# 173. The operator's machine is the mesh's, and a module is whatever it declares
+
+## Context
+
+[ADR 0040](0040-what-a-module-is.md) says a module is *one self-contained piece of software the
+mesh installs and manages*, and every example it gives is a service: a database, an analytics
+server, a forge. The catalogue followed the examples. Of the predecessor's 34 modules on one
+workstation, 28 are the operator's environment — a login manager, a window manager with 88 files
+and four flavors, a shell, a terminal, a launcher, an audio setup, scripts — and the migration
+scoped all 28 out as *the workstation's own environment*, to be managed by nobody
+([research 018](../01-RESEARCH/018-the-operators-machine-as-modules/02-what-exists-and-what-is-missing.md)).
+Since the predecessor retired, nobody is exactly who manages them: a fix is a hand edit that
+nothing records and nothing regenerates.
+
+[To-be 29](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/29-a-node-has-operator-accounts.md) reached under the home for
+one directory and drew a boundary inside it. The operator's statement is wider: *the mesh manages
+my entire machine, all four of them, as far as it makes sense* — system folders and the home
+alike, the servers and the workstations from the same catalogue. And the operator refused a
+distinction this effort first drew between modules that ship code and modules that ship only
+declarations: *a module can have some tools, a seat implementation, some containers, a unit, a
+binary, some config files — one of these, or all, or two.*
+
+## Considered Options
+
+1. **Keep 0040's reading and manage the environment outside the catalogue** — dotfiles in a
+   repository, a script that places them. Rejected: that is the predecessor's first two days, the
+   origin of every inherited shape [as-is 10](../03-DESIGN/00-as-is/10-module-catalogue.md)
+   documents, and it puts the one thing a person looks at outside the one mechanism that is
+   checked.
+2. **Add a second kind of module for configuration** — a "config module" with files and no
+   process. Rejected by the operator: a kind is a distinction the manifest already makes by what
+   it declares, and a second kind is a second set of rules to keep in step.
+3. **One definition: a module is one managed thing, described by what it declares.** Chosen.
+
+## Decision
+
+**1. Everything configurable on a node is declared by a module.** Services, and equally the login
+manager, the display server, the window manager, the shell, the terminal, the launcher, the
+notifier, the audio setup, the boot images, the package manager's configuration, the agent at the
+terminal, and a folder a person works in. The test is *can it be configured on a machine*; if it
+can, some module owns it. What no module declares is found and left alone, as adoption already
+says of a machine ([ADR 0100](0100-a-node-in-use-is-adopted-before-it-is-converged.md)).
+
+**2. A module is whatever it declares, and there are no kinds of module.** A package, files, a
+container, a unit, a binary, a seat claim, tools — any one, or all. 0040's *one self-contained piece
+of software* stands; its examples were services, and that was the whole of the bias. A downloads
+folder with a process that tidies it, backs it up and answers questions about it is a piece of
+software by 0040's own test, and so is a shell that is a package, three files and a seat.
+
+**3. The home has no boundary of its own.** A file under the operator's home is placed and owned
+the way [to-be 29](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/29-a-node-has-operator-accounts.md) §2 built it: by a
+module, resolved against the account's home, owned by the account. Which files are the mesh's is
+decided by what modules declare, not by a line drawn through a directory. A person's documents,
+projects and history are data under [ADR 0051](0051-shared-data-is-the-operators.md) and no module
+declares them.
+
+**4. One module ships one default configuration.** No flavors. What differed between the
+predecessor's four flavors of one desktop module is what [ADR 0174](0174-a-node-varies-a-module-through-settings-and-kept-regions-never-an-edit.md)
+is for.
+
+**5. Servers and workstations take the same catalogue.** A module declares what it needs; a
+machine reports what it has; assignment refuses by name
+([ADR 0161](0161-what-deserves-a-seat.md) §3). The shell, the prompt, git and the agent are universal.
+A display server needs a graphical session; a window manager needs the display server held. Nothing
+in a manifest says *workstation*.
+
+## Consequences
+
+- The catalogue grows by a family of modules that run no service. Each is still built,
+  registered, assigned, pushed and reported like every other, and `status` says whether a
+  machine has applied them.
+- The account fact becomes load-bearing for every node a person uses. Today it is empty on all
+  four node records of this mesh; stating it is the first step of the build.
+- A module that *installs* a thing is distinct from a module that *holds its role*: zsh, fish and
+  bash may all be installed, and one holds the login shell
+  ([ADR 0176](0176-the-login-shell-is-a-node-seat-and-execute-is-its-contract.md)).
+- The host's `package` shape drives the distribution's package manager only. A module whose
+  package is outside the distribution's repositories — the login manager in use is one — needs
+  either an official package or a shape the host does not have. Recorded as a gap, not decided.
+- The predecessor's hooks go. What they did becomes declared state the host applies, or a verb a
+  seat serves ([ADR 0177](0177-a-unit-may-be-user-scoped-and-the-service-manager-is-a-node-seat.md)).
+
+## How it is checked
+
+| Rule | Checked by |
+|---|---|
+| A manifest with no container, no unit and no binary registers and resolves like any other | the catalogue's registration tests, with a package-and-files manifest |
+| A file resource under the home resolves against the account and is owned by it | the controller's composition tests (to-be 29 §2, built) |
+| A home-scoped module is refused on a node with no account, naming the fact | the same tests |
+| A module needing a capability the machine lacks is refused by name | the resolver's tests (ADR 0161 §3) |
+
+## References
+
+- [Research 018](../01-RESEARCH/018-the-operators-machine-as-modules/00-overview.md), documents
+  01 and 02 — the behaviour wanted and the inventory measured.
+- [ADR 0040](0040-what-a-module-is.md), [ADR 0112](0112-a-module-definition-names-no-node-mesh-or-path.md),
+  [ADR 0051](0051-shared-data-is-the-operators.md), [ADR 0100](0100-a-node-in-use-is-adopted-before-it-is-converged.md)
+- [To-be 29](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/29-a-node-has-operator-accounts.md) — the account and the home
+  as a placement root, built; the records for them are proposed in an open change.
@@ -0,0 +1,92 @@
+---
+topic: building it
+status: accepted
+date: 2026-10-02
+deciders: jochen
+reconstructed: false
+extends: 02-DECISIONS/0011-managed-files-are-generated-never-edited.md
+---
+
+# 174. A node varies a module through settings and kept regions, never through an edit
+
+## Context
+
+[ADR 0011](0011-managed-files-are-generated-never-edited.md) says a managed file is derived and an
+edit to it is overwritten without warning. The predecessor said the same and then undid it twice:
+a `merge` strategy that adopted disk drift back into its database, so a local edit became the
+record; and a theming layer of about 90 environment variables substituted into templates at sync
+time, with tools to list and set them, so that *nearly every value was a variable* — a second
+configuration language laid over the first.
+
+The operator wants both the variation and the rule. One window-manager module with one default
+configuration, and each node tweaking it; and the file carrying the wanted value rather than a
+variable the file reads. Two mechanisms already exist for exactly this: a **setting**, declared by
+the module and set per mesh or per node, rendered at composition
+(`${setting:…}` is live in the resolver's manifest); and a **kept region**, a block in a file the
+mesh writes *into* where the operator's own lines survive every push
+([ADR 0102](0102-the-mesh-writes-into-a-shared-file-never-over-it.md), used by the ssh-client module
+for the operator's own `Host` blocks).
+
+What stands in the way is [issue 168](../04-ISSUES/168-a-setting-reaches-every-file-and-contribution/00-report.md):
+a setting today reaches every mergeable file and every contribution of its module. Ninety theme
+knobs on that mechanism would reach ninety files. The record that fixes it — a setting declared
+with its type, meaning, default and the file it lands in — is proposed in an open change alongside
+the container-runtime records.
+
+## Considered Options
+
+1. **Carry the predecessor's merge strategy.** A local edit is adopted into the node's layer.
+   Rejected: two writers and no arbiter, which is the option 0011 removed, and the reason a
+   `/model` choice was silently reverted on every node for weeks before anyone found the cause.
+2. **Carry the environment-variable theming.** Rejected by the operator: the value belongs in
+   the file; a variable the file reads is a second place for the same fact.
+3. **A per-node file override** — a whole file replaced for one node. Rejected: it is a flavor
+   under another name, and a module update then misses that node entirely.
+4. **Settings rendered into the file, and kept regions, and nothing else.** Chosen.
+
+## Decision
+
+**A node varies a module in exactly two ways.**
+
+- **A setting.** Declared by the module with a default, set for the mesh or for one node, rendered
+  into the file at composition. The value is in the file. Asked, the mesh lists every setting
+  with its effective value and where it came from.
+- **A kept region.** A marked block in a file the mesh writes into, in which the operator's own
+  lines are kept across every push and given back when the module goes (ADR 0102).
+
+**An edit outside a kept region is overwritten, as ADR 0011 says, and never adopted.** Nothing
+reads a managed file back into the record.
+
+**The predecessor's theme knobs become settings** of the modules whose files they render — the
+window manager's colours are the window manager's settings, the bar's are the bar's — each
+landing in the file that reads it and no other.
+
+**Issue 168 is fixed before any environment module declares a setting.** A setting must name the
+file it lands in; until that ships, the environment modules carry their defaults in their files
+and no settings.
+
+## Consequences
+
+- No flavors, no per-node file copies, no environment layer. A module's definition is one set of
+  files; a node's difference is data in its layer, visible by asking.
+- The settings record proposed alongside the container-runtime records is on the critical path
+  of every module with a knob, and this record depends on it shipping as proposed.
+- A kept region is the only place a person edits a managed file, and the file says where it is.
+  The operator's own prompt customisations, aliases and window rules live there.
+- What got harder: a change that is neither a setting the module declared nor the operator's own
+  lines has no home, and is refused by the mechanism rather than silently kept. That is the point.
+
+## How it is checked
+
+| Rule | Checked by |
+|---|---|
+| A setting reaches only the file its declaration names | the controller's settings tests, once the proposed record ships; issue 168 closes on it |
+| A kept region survives a push with its content and is given back on undeclare | the host's write-into tests (ADR 0102), with a region declared by an environment module |
+| An edit outside a region does not survive a push | the same tests, asserting the file equals the composed content outside the region |
+| Every effective value names its source | `mesh-controller.settings` and the module's own `show-config` tool |
+
+## References
+
+- [Research 018](../01-RESEARCH/018-the-operators-machine-as-modules/01-the-intended-behaviour.md) §"One default, varied by settings, never by edits"
+- [ADR 0011](0011-managed-files-are-generated-never-edited.md), [ADR 0102](0102-the-mesh-writes-into-a-shared-file-never-over-it.md),
+  [issue 168](../04-ISSUES/168-a-setting-reaches-every-file-and-contribution/00-report.md)
@@ -0,0 +1,122 @@
+---
+topic: what runs on it
+status: accepted
+date: 2026-10-02
+deciders: jochen
+reconstructed: false
+extends: 02-DECISIONS/0150-a-modules-own-code-runs-as-supervised-processes-under-one-account.md
+---
+
+# 175. One tool runtime per node serves every module's tools, on the host side
+
+## Context
+
+A module's tools are code the module wrote, one function behind each verb, served on the subjects
+the controller issues in the module's membership
+([ADR 0160](0160-the-mesh-issues-an-assignments-subjects-and-a-runtime-serves-what-it-is-issued.md)).
+What *runs* that code is [ADR 0150](0150-a-modules-own-code-runs-as-supervised-processes-under-one-account.md):
+a supervised process per module under the module's own account, and in the catalogue as built,
+that process is a container per module per node, built on the tool runtime's base image.
+
+Measured on the live mesh ([research 018](../01-RESEARCH/018-the-operators-machine-as-modules/03-one-tool-executor-per-node.md)):
+67 module tools, each served from its module's container; the packet-filter seat's three verbs
+served by a container with `NET_ADMIN` on every one of four machines, for a module that is
+otherwise a package, three files and a service; and the console, a container per node, calling
+everything and serving nothing. The operator's environment adds a dozen modules of the
+packet-filter shape, and the operator's judgement is plain: *I would never run MCP tools inside
+a container; that is a very bad design.* And: *I don't care about permissions or account per
+module, that just complicates things for no good reason. Just a node-level tool executor. If a
+command needs root, that's the module's concern.*
+
+The tool runtime itself was written for this. Its own description: *the per-node process that
+makes a module's tools actually serve — imports the assigned modules' compiled tool entrypoints,
+each of which registers its tools as it loads; on a node the host resolves the list and starts it
+like any other supervised workload.* What the catalogue did instead was build one image per module
+around it.
+
+## Considered Options
+
+1. **Keep a process per module.** Rejected: one container per module per node for software that
+   is not a container, and the account-per-module invariant it exists to protect is one the
+   operator declines to pay for.
+2. **The host executes tools itself.** Rejected: the host is a static Go binary that loads no
+   plugins; a module's tools are TypeScript on the SDK, and building a second SDK in Go for the
+   host's sake is the cost ADR 0039 refuses.
+3. **One tool runtime per node, a sibling of the host, loading every assigned module's bundle.**
+   Chosen. It is what the runtime was written to be.
+
+## Decision
+
+**1. One tool runtime per node, supervised by the host, on the host side — never a container.**
+The host starts it the way the launcher starts the host
+([ADR 0005](0005-the-node-host.md)): a process on the machine, restarted when it dies. It holds one
+bus credential, the node's. It is module-agnostic: it knows bundles and subjects, nothing of what
+any module does.
+
+**2. It serves every assigned module's tools and every held seat's verbs** on the subjects the
+memberships issue. ADR 0159 and ADR 0160 are unchanged in what they say about subjects, grants
+and memberships; what changes is that one process on the node subscribes to all of them instead of
+one process per module. A module that runs a long-lived service of its own — a daemon, a
+container — keeps it; this record is about tools.
+
+**3. A module brings its tools as a bundle**, the artifact kind the catalogue already has for
+interpreted code, built by the pipeline and delivered to the node by the host as it delivers any
+artifact. Never an image. The runtime loads each bundle as the membership names it, and a push
+that adds or replaces a bundle reaches a running runtime as a reload.
+
+**4. Root is the module's concern.** A tool that must change the packet filter or rebuild boot
+images escalates itself. The runtime does not run as root for everyone's sake; the caller does not
+know and need not.
+
+**5. Any node may call any tool on any node.** The runtime's credential may call everything, as
+the console's already may. A per-module calling grant is not kept.
+
+**6. The console is this runtime's serving mode, renamed.** [ADR 0152](0152-the-operators-surface-is-a-module-the-console.md)
+stands in substance — a module assigned per node, MCP on the machine's loopback, the machine's
+login is the authority — and changes in form: host-side, serving as well as calling, and named for
+what it is: **node tools**. The mesh's own verbs stay with the controller
+([ADR 0154](0154-the-meshs-own-verbs-are-the-controller-seats-tools.md)); a mesh-scoped seat's verbs
+run on the node that holds it ([ADR 0121](0121-a-system-seat-is-named-for-its-scope-and-modules-define-their-own.md)).
+
+**Where ADR 0047 and ADR 0150 say a module's tools are served by the module's own process under
+the module's own account, read this record.** Everything else they decided stands: a tool is served
+on its own subject, only the module that serves it answers, a module's long-lived processes are the
+machine's to supervise. The invariant 0150 kept — one account per module — no longer holds for
+tools, and the reason is stated above: every tool is callable from everywhere by decision 5, so the
+account no longer scopes anything a caller cannot already reach.
+
+## Consequences
+
+- The packet-filter module's container goes; its verbs run on the host side and escalate as they
+  need. [ADR 0170](0170-the-firewall-seat-serves-its-verbs.md) §3's container capability is moot
+  for it.
+- The tool runtime's base image stays the way a module's *service* may be built; it is no longer
+  the way tools reach a node.
+- The node tools runtime needs an interpreter on the machine. The module that is the runtime
+  declares it as a package.
+- The container-runtime seat proposed in an open change says its holder *runs as a supervised
+  process and serves the verbs locally to the host and on the bus*. A supervised process serving
+  verbs is what this runtime is; whether that holder keeps a process of its own or serves through
+  the runtime is for that record's build to say.
+- What got harder: one process carries every module's tool code on a node, so one module's
+  faulty bundle can take down the node's tools. The runtime loads each bundle guarded and names
+  the one that failed; the others serve.
+
+## How it is checked
+
+| Rule | Checked by |
+|---|---|
+| The runtime loads every bundle its memberships name and serves each tool on its subject | the runtime's tests against a real bus: two bundles, three tools, each answers |
+| A bundle that fails to load is named and the others serve | the same tests, with one bundle that throws on load |
+| The host supervises the runtime and restarts it | the host's tests over the launcher's shape |
+| A push that replaces a bundle reloads it without a restart | the runtime's tests: a bundle replaced on disk, the membership re-read, the new tool answers |
+| No module in the catalogue declares a container whose only purpose is tools | a catalogue check: a manifest with `tools` and an image artifact built on the tool runtime's base is refused once the runtime is live |
+| Live | `login-shell.execute@<node>` answers on every node from the node tools runtime; `docker ps` shows no per-module tool container |
+
+## References
+
+- [Research 018](../01-RESEARCH/018-the-operators-machine-as-modules/03-one-tool-executor-per-node.md)
+- [ADR 0150](0150-a-modules-own-code-runs-as-supervised-processes-under-one-account.md), [ADR 0047](0047-a-module-runs-its-code-as-its-own-process-with-its-own-account.md),
+  [ADR 0152](0152-the-operators-surface-is-a-module-the-console.md), [ADR 0159](0159-a-tool-call-names-the-machine-and-a-holder-serves-its-seats-verbs.md),
+  [ADR 0160](0160-the-mesh-issues-an-assignments-subjects-and-a-runtime-serves-what-it-is-issued.md), [ADR 0154](0154-the-meshs-own-verbs-are-the-controller-seats-tools.md)
+- [To-be 33](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/33-the-tools-the-mesh-answers.md), [to-be 34](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/34-the-console.md)
@@ -0,0 +1,81 @@
+---
+topic: what runs on it
+status: accepted
+date: 2026-10-02
+deciders: jochen
+reconstructed: false
+extends: 02-DECISIONS/0132-a-seat-carries-the-tools-its-holder-must-serve.md
+---
+
+# 176. The login shell is a node seat held by one shell module, and `execute` is its contract
+
+## Context
+
+[ADR 0040](0040-what-a-module-is.md) names the shell as its example of a *shared* seat: bash, zsh
+and fish all join `shell`, and one may be default. The operator's reading is sharper, and it
+matches [ADR 0126](0126-a-module-declares-its-own-seats.md) better: *installing* a shell is
+installing software, and several may be installed; *holding* the seat is being the login shell,
+which a node has exactly one of. A definition says which seats a module can hold; the assignment
+says which it does.
+
+A seat carries the tools its holder must serve ([ADR 0132](0132-a-seat-carries-the-tools-its-holder-must-serve.md)),
+and [to-be 33](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/33-the-tools-the-mesh-answers.md) leaves which verbs each
+seat serves as a decision per seat, taken slowly. This is the first seat of the operator's
+environment, and the one every node has.
+
+## Considered Options
+
+1. **A shared `shell` seat with a default**, as 0040's example reads. Rejected: *default* is a
+   second concept beside *holder* for the same fact, and the `user` shape already makes the
+   login shell declared state ([to-be 05](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/05-the-node-host.md)).
+2. **No seat; each shell module sets the login shell for itself.** Rejected: two assigned shell
+   modules would fight over `chsh`, and nothing would say which won.
+3. **An exclusive node-scoped seat, `login-shell`, declared by the shell modules, held by one
+   per node.** Chosen.
+
+## Decision
+
+**1. `login-shell` is a node-scoped seat declared by the shell modules.** zsh, fish and bash each
+declare that they can hold it; a node's assignment says which does; the controller refuses a
+second holder by name as for every seat. A shell module that is assigned without holding the seat
+is installed and nothing more.
+
+**2. Holding the seat sets the account's login shell.** The holder's declaration carries the
+`user` shape with the shell it provides, so the login shell is declared state the host applies and
+gives back when the holding moves — `chsh` stops being a hook.
+
+**3. The seat's contract is `execute`.** One verb, one argument, the command, run on the node the
+seat is scoped to as the operator account, answering with what it printed and how it exited.
+Every holder serves it; a holder may serve its own tools beside it
+([ADR 0170](0170-the-firewall-seat-serves-its-verbs.md) §2) — show the rendered configuration, list
+the plugins, set a prompt value.
+
+**4. Any node may call it on any node.** The grant is the node tools runtime's
+([ADR 0175](0175-one-tool-runtime-per-node-serves-every-modules-tools-on-the-host-side.md) §5):
+*run `uptime` on every node* is five calls to one verb.
+
+## Consequences
+
+- The first environment module is a shell: a package, files under the home owned by the account,
+  a seat declaration and claim, a `user` shape, and one tool. It proves the whole pattern on every
+  node, servers included, before anything graphical is written.
+- ADR 0040's shell example is read as *installed is not holding*; a dated note in that record says
+  so. Its decision is untouched.
+- `execute` is a shell on every machine, addressed over the bus. That is the point, and it is
+  the widest verb the mesh serves; it exists because the operator decided every node may call
+  every tool, and this record does not narrow that.
+
+## How it is checked
+
+| Rule | Checked by |
+|---|---|
+| Two shell modules assigned to one node, one holding: one `user` shape in the declaration, naming the holder's shell | the controller's composition tests |
+| A second claimant is refused by name | the catalogue's seat tests |
+| `execute` runs as the account and answers output and exit status | the module's tool tests over a fake runner, and live on every node |
+| The seat's verb appears with its scope and machine in the node tools listing | the runtime's tests (to-be 33 §4) |
+
+## References
+
+- [Research 018](../01-RESEARCH/018-the-operators-machine-as-modules/04-the-seats-of-the-environment.md)
+- [ADR 0040](0040-what-a-module-is.md), [ADR 0126](0126-a-module-declares-its-own-seats.md),
+  [ADR 0132](0132-a-seat-carries-the-tools-its-holder-must-serve.md), [ADR 0170](0170-the-firewall-seat-serves-its-verbs.md)
@@ -0,0 +1,80 @@
+---
+topic: what runs on it
+status: accepted
+date: 2026-10-02
+deciders: jochen
+reconstructed: false
+extends: 02-DECISIONS/0121-a-system-seat-is-named-for-its-scope-and-modules-define-their-own.md
+---
+
+# 177. A unit may be user-scoped, and the service manager is a node seat whose holder answers for the units
+
+## Context
+
+The host's `service` shape puts a system unit into a state. It has no user scope.
+[To-be 29](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/29-a-node-has-operator-accounts.md) states the gap: *a
+workstation's per-user daemons have no form the mesh can send.* Four of the predecessor's
+environment modules ship user units — the desktop's reload watcher and bar watchdog, the audio
+module's masks, the power module's memory guard, the thermal daemon's profile switcher — and the
+predecessor needed a hook to enable them because *shipping a unit file does not run it*; one unit
+was deployed for months and ran on one machine only.
+
+[ADR 0040](0040-what-a-module-is.md) says the host hardcodes no supervisor, and a swappable
+machine mechanism is a module implementing a capability — which is what the nftables module is for
+the packet filter ([ADR 0170](0170-the-firewall-seat-serves-its-verbs.md)). The service manager is
+reported today as a capability, `service-manager`, and held by nobody. The operator's proposal: a
+systemd module that holds the seat and serves the tools about units, system and user.
+
+## Considered Options
+
+1. **Keep user units as a module concern** — each module runs `systemctl --user` in a hook.
+   Rejected: that is the hook that silently never ran, and an action over the link is refused.
+2. **The service-manager module applies units** on behalf of others, as a provision. Rejected by
+   the operator: provisioning is for resources a provider creates for a consumer; a unit is
+   declared state the host applies, as every resource is.
+3. **The host's `service` shape gains a user scope; a systemd module holds the service-manager
+   seat and serves the verbs about units.** Chosen.
+
+## Decision
+
+**1. The `service` shape gains `scope`: `system` (the default) or `user`.** A user-scoped unit
+is applied as the operator account through the account's own service manager: enabled, started,
+stopped, reloaded on its triggers, exactly as a system unit is, and refused on a node with no
+account, naming the fact. The host applies it; no module does.
+
+**2. `node-service-manager` is a seat of the mesh's own, node-scoped**, seeded by the controller
+under this record, as ADR 0121 requires of a `node-*` name. The `systemd` module claims it and is
+assigned to every machine whose profile reports `service-manager`.
+
+**3. The seat's verbs answer for every unit on the machine**, each taking an optional `scope`:
+`units`, `status`, `start`, `stop`, `restart`, `enable`, `disable`, `journal`. The host applies what
+is declared; the holder answers questions and operator acts about it, and says, for a mesh-held
+unit, that the host will restore what its declaration says.
+
+## Consequences
+
+- The host's vocabulary grows by one field on one shape, asserted by its count test
+  ([to-be 05](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/05-the-node-host.md)); an older host refuses a declaration
+  carrying it, so the host rolls before the first module that uses it.
+- The predecessor's four user-unit modules become declarable without a hook.
+- The seat's holder is the first system seat held by a module that runs nothing of its own: its
+  verbs are served by the node tools runtime ([ADR 0175](0175-one-tool-runtime-per-node-serves-every-modules-tools-on-the-host-side.md)).
+- What got harder: `journal` and `status` on a user unit need the account's manager reachable
+  from the runtime's process, which runs as the node's account; the holder's tool escalates or
+  switches user as it needs, which is ADR 0175 §4 applied.
+
+## How it is checked
+
+| Rule | Checked by |
+|---|---|
+| A `service` with `scope: user` is enabled and started under the account, and refused with no account | the host's tests with a fake service manager |
+| The seat declares its verbs; a claim serving fewer is refused by name | the catalogue's seat tests |
+| The verbs act on a named unit in the named scope and name the unit's holder when the mesh declares it | the module's tests over a fake runner |
+| Live | the desktop's reload watcher declared `scope: user` on a workstation; `node-service-manager.status@<node>` reports it active |
+
+## References
+
+- [Research 018](../01-RESEARCH/018-the-operators-machine-as-modules/04-the-seats-of-the-environment.md)
+- [ADR 0121](0121-a-system-seat-is-named-for-its-scope-and-modules-define-their-own.md), [ADR 0132](0132-a-seat-carries-the-tools-its-holder-must-serve.md),
+  [ADR 0040](0040-what-a-module-is.md), [ADR 0170](0170-the-firewall-seat-serves-its-verbs.md)
+- [To-be 05](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/05-the-node-host.md), [to-be 29](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/29-a-node-has-operator-accounts.md)
@@ -78,6 +78,13 @@ now logs the plain request too, with the asking address last, as its own jail's
  start. The fail2ban module claims them and gains a runtime — a tool server whose image carries the
  fail2ban client, with the daemon's socket shared in from the machine, and nothing else of the
  machine. The daemon stays the machine's; what runs in the container is only the client.
+- **That runtime is the shape the catalogue has today, and it is on its way out.**
+  [ADR 0175](0175-one-tool-runtime-per-node-serves-every-modules-tools-on-the-host-side.md),
+  accepted the same day as this record, replaces a tool container per module with one tool runtime
+  per node on the host side, taking each module's tools as a bundle. Nothing here depends on the
+  container: the verbs, the client that speaks to the daemon over its socket, and the jails are the
+  same code under either. This module converts with the packet filter's, whose runtime that record
+  names, and the socket it needs becomes the node runtime's to reach rather than a mount of its own.
 - The host's container vocabulary grows by `logging`; an older host refuses a declaration that carries
  it, so the host rolls before the modules. Three containers are recreated once, when their modules
  are pushed with the field: the mail front end, the forge and the proxy — each a moment's outage.
@@ -103,5 +110,5 @@ now logs the plain request too, with the asking address last, as its own jail's

 ## References

- [ADR 0170](0170-the-firewall-seat-serves-its-verbs.md), [ADR 0168](0168-a-converged-machine-is-filtered-by-the-mesh-alone.md), [ADR 0112](0112-a-module-definition-names-no-node-mesh-or-path.md), [ADR 0159](0159-a-tool-call-names-the-machine-and-a-holder-serves-its-seats-verbs.md)
+- [ADR 0170](0170-the-firewall-seat-serves-its-verbs.md), [ADR 0168](0168-a-converged-machine-is-filtered-by-the-mesh-alone.md), [ADR 0112](0112-a-module-definition-names-no-node-mesh-or-path.md), [ADR 0159](0159-a-tool-call-names-the-machine-and-a-holder-serves-its-seats-verbs.md), [ADR 0175](0175-one-tool-runtime-per-node-serves-every-modules-tools-on-the-host-side.md)
 - [Design 31 — A module declares its fail2ban jail](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/31-a-module-declares-its-fail2ban-jail.md), [Design 33 — The tools the mesh answers](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/33-the-tools-the-mesh-answers.md), [Design 08 — Connectivity](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/08-connectivity.md)
@@ -7,7 +7,9 @@ reconstructed: false
 extends: 02-DECISIONS/0168-a-converged-machine-is-filtered-by-the-mesh-alone.md
 ---

-# 175. The found front end is uninstalled once a machine is converged
+# 180. The found front end is uninstalled once a machine is converged
+
+> **Renumbered 2026-10-02.** Written and merged as 0175 while another record already held that number on main (one tool runtime per node, merged minutes earlier); `cycle.py` refused main. The branch that lands last renumbers: 0178 and 0179 are claimed by open changes, so this is 0180. Nothing cited it by number.

 ## Context

@@ -0,0 +1,118 @@
+---
+topic: what runs on it
+status: accepted
+date: 2026-09-27
+deciders: jochen
+reconstructed: true
+extends: 02-DECISIONS/0112-a-module-definition-names-no-node-mesh-or-path.md
+---
+
+# 181. The operator account is a node fact, and a home is a placement root
+
+*Reconstructed. The controller shipped this on 2026-09-27 and
+[to-be 29](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/29-a-node-has-operator-accounts.md) recorded it as built without a
+decision behind it. This record states what was decided, from the code and the design, and adds the
+two rules the code left implicit — what an empty account means for a module, and that the account is
+stated rather than discovered. Written 2026-10-02.*
+
+## Context
+
+[ADR 0112](0112-a-module-definition-names-no-node-mesh-or-path.md) took every host path out of a
+module definition and gave a module's *system* data a place: a directory the mesh resolves under the
+node's root, owned by the module. It said nothing about the other half of a filesystem — the files
+that belong under a person's home and are owned by that person. The predecessor wrote several of
+those: the ssh client configuration, the shell's configuration, an agent's instruction files. It knew
+whose home it was writing into because each of its node records carried a login name. The mesh took
+the machine facts over and dropped the human one.
+
+The loss was found the ordinary way: `ssh <node>` logged into the home-server under the workstation's
+own login name, because nothing in the mesh said the home-server's account was a different one
+([to-be 29](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/29-a-node-has-operator-accounts.md),
+[issue 172](../04-ISSUES/172-the-ssh-client-block-matches-one-spelling-of-a-machine/00-report.md)).
+
+What the controller does since 2026-09-27: a node record carries an operator account and, optionally,
+its home; the account and its home are machine facts a definition may name in a resource's path, owner
+and content; a roster file may say it lives under the home, and is then rendered per node, placed under
+that node's account's home, owned by the account, and left out on a node with no account. On
+2026-10-02 **all four nodes of the live mesh carry an empty account**: the fact exists and nobody has
+stated it, so no home-scoped resource can land anywhere yet.
+
+## Considered Options
+
+1. **The definition names the login.** `owner: <name>` in the module. Rejected: it is the installation
+   written into a definition, which ADR 0112 forbids and
+   [ADR 0155](0155-a-definition-names-no-installation-and-how-that-is-checked.md) checks for, and it is
+   wrong on the first machine whose login differs — which is exactly the machine that surfaced this.
+2. **The host discovers the account.** The first non-system user, or whoever ran the enrolment.
+   Rejected: a guess. A shared machine has several people on it, a server may have none, and a host
+   deciding whose files these are is a decision the mesh then cannot see, state or correct.
+3. **The account is a fact the operator states on the node record, and the home is derived from it
+   unless stated.** Chosen.
+
+## Decision
+
+**A node has an operator account: the login name of the person who works on it.** It is stated by the
+operator on the node record, the way a node's address or mode is held there, and it is empty for a
+machine nobody logs into. Empty is a real state, not a missing value. The mesh holds the fact because
+everything below derives from it, and because it is precisely the fact that was lost when the
+predecessor's records were not carried over.
+
+**The account's home is derived unless stated.** The superuser's home for the superuser, the
+distribution's conventional per-user home otherwise; a node whose account lives elsewhere states its
+home. One place computes the default, so a fact and the record cannot disagree about it.
+
+**A resource may be placed under the home, owned by the account.** This is ADR 0112's move one level
+over: as a module's system directory is resolved under the node's root, a file under a person's home is
+resolved against the account's home, and owned by the account rather than by root or a module's own
+account. A definition names the account and its home as machine facts, never as a path; a roster fact
+may say it is a home file and is then placed and owned the same way. The controller resolves both at
+composition, and the host chowns what it creates.
+
+**A node with no account cannot carry a home-scoped resource, and says so.** A roster fact that lives
+under the home is left out of that node's declaration rather than written to nowhere. A resource naming
+the account fact on such a node is refused at composition, naming the fact the machine does not have.
+A module that writes a person's files is thereby unassignable to a machine with no person on it, which
+is the right refusal.
+
+**One account per node is what this record decides.** Several people on one machine is left open, with
+the constraint that allowing it must not force the common case — one workstation, one person — to name
+anything.
+
+## Consequences
+
+- **The operator states the account before any home-scoped module lands.** Today none is stated, so the
+  first assignment of such a module begins with four node records.
+- The roster carries each node's account, so a composed ssh configuration logs in as the right person
+  on every machine — the gap that surfaced this, closed by the same fact.
+- A family of modules becomes writable: everything the predecessor placed under a home — ssh client,
+  shell, the agent's instruction files — is now a module naming a fact rather than a path
+  ([to-be 29 §2](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/29-a-node-has-operator-accounts.md)).
+- **What got harder:** a definition cannot say "my user's home" without the mesh knowing who the user
+  is, so a module of this family is refused on a freshly enrolled machine until a person is named on
+  it. That is a prompt, not an obstacle.
+- **Not decided here:** several accounts per node; a service unit running as the account rather than
+  as root or a module; a one-off step run as the account. Each is a record of its own.
+
+## How it is checked
+
+| Rule | Checked by |
+|---|---|
+| A resource's path and owner resolve the account and its home | controller tests on machine-fact resolution: a file naming the account facts lands under the account's home, owned by the account |
+| The home is derived unless stated | a controller test: the superuser's home for the superuser, the conventional home otherwise, the stated home when one is stored |
+| A home roster fact is left out on a node with no account | a controller test on roster composition: the file is absent from that node's declaration and present on a node with an account |
+| A resource naming the account on a node with no account is refused by name | a controller test on machine-fact resolution: the refusal names `account` and lists the facts the machine does have |
+| No definition names a home path | ADR 0112's catalogue test on host paths, which a `/home` or `/root` literal fails |
+
+## References
+
+- [to-be 29](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/29-a-node-has-operator-accounts.md) — the design this record
+  gives a foundation to, and its "what has shipped" section
+- [ADR 0112](0112-a-module-definition-names-no-node-mesh-or-path.md) — the system-path placement
+  this mirrors; [ADR 0155](0155-a-definition-names-no-installation-and-how-that-is-checked.md) — why
+  a login name may not be in a definition
+- [ADR 0120](0120-a-roster-fact-carries-its-format-as-a-template.md) — the roster fact a home file
+  may be
+- [ADR 0182](0182-inside-a-home-the-mesh-owns-what-it-places-and-holds-the-rest-as-found.md) — what
+  the mesh may and may not do inside the home this record lets it reach
+- mesh-controller `internal/inventory/nodes.go` (the account and its home on the node record),
+  `internal/catalogue/machine_into_files.go` and `roster.go` (resolution and the home fact)
@@ -0,0 +1,117 @@
+---
+topic: what runs on it
+status: accepted
+date: 2026-10-02
+deciders: jochen
+reconstructed: false
+extends: 02-DECISIONS/0118-undeclaring-gives-a-unit-back-the-state-it-was-found-in.md
+---
+
+# 182. Inside a home, the mesh owns the directory and the files it places, writes into the tool's own files, and holds everything else as found
+
+## Context
+
+[ADR 0181](0181-the-operator-account-is-a-node-fact-and-a-home-is-a-placement-root.md) lets a module
+place files under a person's home. A home is unlike any directory the mesh has written into so far:
+it is shared with the person, and with every program the person runs. The agent's configuration
+directory on the laptop makes the point. On 2026-10-02 it holds thirty entries. The predecessor placed
+five of them (an instruction file, a conventions rule, a settings file it merged into, two skills); a
+sibling module placed a sixth (the node's identity rule). The agent itself writes the other
+twenty-four: its settings, its credentials, its history, the memory of every project it has worked in,
+its plugins, its session logs. Several of those are what [to-be 15](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/15-the-agent-session.md)
+calls memory *written by the session itself and declared by nobody*: a mechanism that regenerated the
+directory would erase a season of it, silently, while reporting success.
+
+The predecessor's own module recorded the hazard in the other direction. Its settings file was first
+shipped as *replace*, and every `/model` choice a person made inside a session was reverted to the
+template's value on the next synchronisation — on every node, indefinitely, with no indication why. It
+was changed to *merge*, and the comment explaining why is still in its manifest.
+
+**And the generator is gone while its output stayed.** The predecessor was retired from the laptop on
+2026-10-01. Its six files are still on both workstations, with their content telling every session to
+use tools that no longer exist. Nothing owns them; nothing will ever rewrite or remove them.
+
+[To-be 29 §3](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/29-a-node-has-operator-accounts.md) drew the line for one directory,
+`~/.ssh`: the mesh owns the directory and the files it places; it holds the person's private keys and
+personal drop-ins as found. That was argued from the lockout `~/.ssh` can cause. The argument here is
+the same shape with a different stake — the person's work rather than the person's way in — and it has
+to hold for every directory the family of home-scoped modules will touch, so it is a rule, not a
+section.
+
+## Considered Options
+
+1. **The module owns the directory whole**, regenerating it from the definition. Rejected: it destroys
+   the memory, history and local settings the agent writes for itself, which is the failure to-be 15
+   names and the predecessor's settings file demonstrated at small scale.
+2. **The module owns only the files it names, and nothing about the directory.** Rejected: *owning one
+   file beside foreign ones is not owning anything* (to-be 29). The directory must exist, with the right
+   owner and mode, before the tool first runs on a fresh machine; and a credentials file in a
+   world-readable directory is a credentials file in the wrong directory.
+3. **The module owns the directory and the files it places; a file the tool writes for itself is
+   written into, never over; everything else is held as found.** Chosen.
+
+## Decision
+
+**A home-scoped module owns the directory it declares: its existence, owner and mode.** The host creates
+it if absent, owned by the account, and never removes it while it holds anything
+([ADR 0030](0030-data-outlives-the-mesh-that-declared-it.md)). Inside it, every path the module touches
+is in exactly one of four classes, and **the class is visible in the definition from the shape
+declared**, not inferred from what happened to be on disk:
+
+| class | declared as | the host's rule |
+|---|---|---|
+| **owned** | a file with content, or a roster fact | written whole, regenerated, removed when undeclared; a file found there with no record of the mesh making it is kept once before it is written over ([ADR 0102](0102-the-mesh-writes-into-a-shared-file-never-over-it.md)) |
+| **written into** | a file written *into* a structured document | only the keys the definition names are set, every other key is kept, and each set key is given back when undeclared (ADR 0102). The key list is the module's and is short |
+| **written by the module's own process** | nothing the host applies: the module's code writes it from what it was handed | the file's content is never a declared file's content, because a declaration travels in the clear on the bus and the host records it; the module's code writes it, owned by the account, atomically. [ADR 0183](0183-the-anthropic-licence-manager-is-a-module-and-hands-tokens-to-the-agent-over-the-bus.md) says how for a credential |
+| **found** | nothing | never read, never rewritten, never removed. The person's memory, history, projects, local settings, their own rules and skills |
+
+**A file the tool writes for itself is written into, never over.** The agent's settings file and its
+own state file are the tool's; the mesh has one or two facts to state in each. Setting those keys and
+nothing else is what lets a person's `/model` choice survive a push, and what lets the mesh's keys be
+taken back cleanly when the module goes.
+
+**A predecessor's output is found.** A file placed by a generator that no longer exists is, to the
+mesh, a file it has no record of making. Where the successor module keeps the path, declaring it
+*adopts* it: the host keeps the original once and writes the mesh's. Where the successor does not keep
+the path, the mesh does not remove the file, because it removes nothing it did not make; **the operator
+removes it, once**, and the module's definition names those paths in its own documentation so the step
+is not forgotten. This is the first instance of the one-off setup step to-be 29 leaves open, and the
+rule chosen for it is that it is a person's act, listed, not a module's.
+
+**The rule is the family's.** An ssh client module, a shell module, an agent module each declare their
+directory and classify their paths this way. A module that cannot say which class a path is in has not
+finished its definition.
+
+## Consequences
+
+- A person's work under their home survives every push and every unassign. The mesh's own files come
+  and go with the module; the mesh's keys in the tool's files come and go with it; the directory stays.
+- **Stale files survive too.** Two workstations keep three predecessor files each until a person removes
+  them — a visible cost, accepted over a mesh that deletes under a person's home. A module author who
+  renames one of the mesh's own files has the ordinary path: the old resource id is undeclared and the
+  host removes what it made ([ADR 0118](0118-undeclaring-gives-a-unit-back-the-state-it-was-found-in.md)).
+- A module's definition is longer by a classification, and a reviewer has one more question per path.
+  That is the point: *which parts are managed must be explicit rather than inferred* (to-be 15).
+- **What got harder:** a module cannot seed a person's preference once and leave it. A seeded file
+  ([ADR 0087](0087-a-seeded-file-is-created-once.md)) is the shape for that, and it is available to
+  this family unchanged; what is refused is a seed the module later wants to change, because what grew
+  in it is the person's.
+
+## How it is checked
+
+| Rule | Checked by |
+|---|---|
+| The directory is created owned by the account and kept when the module goes | host tests of a directory resource with an owner (ADR 0051's and 0118's), and the family's lab check below |
+| An owned file found with no record is kept once, then written | host tests of ADR 0102's kept-original rule |
+| Only the declared keys of a written-into file change, and are given back | host tests of ADR 0102: declared keys set, the rest kept, restored when undeclared |
+| Nothing found is touched | the family's lab check: a machine with a seeded home holding a person's file beside a predecessor's; after apply the person's file is byte-identical, the predecessor's is kept as the original, the mesh's keys are set and the person's keys in the same file remain; after unassign the mesh's files are gone, the keys are restored, the person's files are untouched and the directory stands |
+| Every path a home-scoped module touches is classified | a catalogue review rule for this family: each path is a directory, a file, a file written into, a secret-and-step, or absent — the first module written to it is [to-be 36](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/36-the-operators-agent-on-a-machine.md) |
+
+## References
+
+- [to-be 29 §3](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/29-a-node-has-operator-accounts.md) — the same boundary drawn for `~/.ssh`
+- [to-be 15](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/15-the-agent-session.md) — a session's memory is declared by nobody
+- [ADR 0102](0102-the-mesh-writes-into-a-shared-file-never-over-it.md), [ADR 0087](0087-a-seeded-file-is-created-once.md),
+  [ADR 0118](0118-undeclaring-gives-a-unit-back-the-state-it-was-found-in.md), [ADR 0030](0030-data-outlives-the-mesh-that-declared-it.md) — the mechanics each class rests on
+- [ADR 0051](0051-shared-data-is-the-operators.md) — the third case the host had no word for: what it neither made nor configured
+- the predecessor's `claude-code` module manifest, whose comment on `strategy: merge` records the reverted `/model` choice
@@ -0,0 +1,163 @@
+---
+topic: what runs on it
+status: accepted
+date: 2026-10-02
+deciders: jochen
+reconstructed: false
+extends: 02-DECISIONS/0024-model-access-is-a-provision.md
+---
+
+# 183. The Anthropic licence manager is a module holding a seat; it hands each node's agent its token over the bus, sealed; the controller and the host have no part
+
+## Context
+
+**The operator's stance, set on 2026-10-02 and sharpened during the day.** The controller has no part in
+the agent module. The host is module-agnostic: it knows no vendor, no agent, no path under a home. The
+agent module owns its own files. And there must be a *real* licence manager — a module that doles out
+the correct licence in every situation the mesh has: two subscription accounts and one API key today,
+used by a person's interactive agent on each workstation, by the mesh's own sessions, and by workers.
+
+**What the predecessor built, read from its code the same day.** Two modules, split after an incident.
+A *manager* on exactly one node held every account's full OAuth grant encrypted, rotated each grant
+under a per-licence lease on a cadence and an expiry floor, published each rotation over its bus with
+the tokens encrypted, collected the vendor's usage figures per licence, and alerted once a day on
+repeated failure or on a refresh token within three days of its own expiry. A *consumer* on every node
+was the single writer of the agent's credentials file: it applied a published rotation, stripped the
+refresh token so a node could never rotate, pulled when stale, refused a stale grant by comparing
+expiries within one lineage, and mirrored a local login back to the manager only after checking the
+account's identity against the licence's record — because an unchecked mirror had once written one
+account's grant into another's row and published it mesh-wide. Three **touchpoints** with fallbacks: the
+node's interactive agent; the mesh's own sessions on the node, falling back to the node's licence; a
+worker's own account, falling back to the node's, and refusing to spawn when assigned a licence that
+could not be served. The split exists because four nodes refreshing one grant destroyed it: an OAuth
+refresh rotates the refresh token, and the predecessor's own code records both that a reused token
+killed a licence and that a malformed client id was once misdiagnosed as the same fault. **Whether a
+refresh token is single-use is not documented by the vendor**; the predecessor treated it as so, and
+this record keeps one rotation source for that reason while leaving the fact to be measured.
+
+**What the mesh has.** [ADR 0050](0050-model-access-is-vendor-agnostic.md) put a per-vendor adapter
+inside the controller's licences context, with the carve-out that the manager node holds the refresh
+token readably; the catalogue has a manager and a consumer module built on it, assigned to nothing. The
+controller's licence commands are not seat verbs and cannot be asked for through the console
+([to-be 33](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/33-the-tools-the-mesh-answers.md)). `model-access` is a vendor-blind
+provision ([ADR 0024](0024-model-access-is-a-provision.md)), and the operator's judgement is that the
+agent is not a vendor-blind consumer: it is coupled to an Anthropic subscription grant and nothing else,
+so a name that hides the vendor misdescribes the coupling
+([ADR 0027](0027-a-provision-names-what-the-consumer-is-coupled-to.md)).
+
+**The bus's rule for a secret** ([to-be 32 §10](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/32-what-a-module-declares.md)): the
+bus is not trusted with one; a secret travels sealed to its recipient, on core request/reply, never
+through a stream that persists it.
+
+## Considered Options
+
+1. **Keep the lifecycle in the controller** ([ADR 0050](0050-model-access-is-vendor-agnostic.md) as
+   built), and make the agent module a consumer of `model-access` delivered by the host as a sealed
+   file. Rejected by the operator: the controller and the host would both carry a part of an
+   Anthropic-specific mechanism, and the agent's coupling is misnamed.
+2. **The manager delivers each short-lived token through the vault**, as a backend-issued secret the
+   vault provides to each consumer ([ADR 0113](0113-the-vault-makes-every-secret.md)). Rejected: every
+   hourly rotation becomes a vault delivery, a composition and a push to every node, and the host
+   ends up writing a vendor's credential as a file — the module-agnostic host, carrying a vendor's
+   traffic.
+3. **A seat-holding manager module that talks to the agent module on every node over the bus.**
+   Chosen.
+
+## Decision
+
+**The Anthropic licence manager is a module, `claude-licence-manager`, holding the mesh-scoped seat
+`anthropic-licence-manager`.** The seat's contract is the licence verbs: list the licences and their
+health, list the bindings, bind or switch a consumer, release one, refresh now, read usage, adopt a
+grant, register a node's key, answer a consumer's current token. One holder, on a node the operator
+assigns, is what makes rotation happen once ([ADR 0126](0126-a-module-declares-its-own-seats.md),
+[ADR 0132](0132-a-seat-carries-the-tools-its-holder-must-serve.md)). The seat is named for the vendor,
+because what it manages is one vendor's grants and nothing else is coupled to it. The vendor-blind
+`model-access` provision stands for the consumers that do not care which vendor answers; the agent is
+not among them.
+
+**The manager owns the licences.** The records, the grants, the bindings per touchpoint, the usage
+readings and the audit of every switch live in the manager's own store, not in the controller's
+licences context, which keeps only what it already serves to vendor-blind consumers. The manager is the
+one rotation source: it alone calls the vendor's token endpoint, under a lease per licence, on an expiry
+floor and a cadence it declares as a setting.
+
+**The long-lived grants are encrypted at rest with a key the vault made for the manager.** The vault
+keeps custody of that one key as the manager's own secret ([ADR 0113](0113-the-vault-makes-every-secret.md));
+the grants themselves — a refresh token per subscription account, the API key — are the manager's
+rows, readable only by it. This is [ADR 0050](0050-model-access-is-vendor-agnostic.md)'s carve-out,
+moved with the manager: *one module, one node, the long-lived grants only.*
+
+**The short-lived tokens travel module to module, sealed, on request/reply.** The agent module on each
+node makes a keypair of its own when it first runs — a private key made where it is used, never leaving
+([ADR 0113](0113-the-vault-makes-every-secret.md)) — and registers its public half with the seat. The
+manager hands a node its token by calling that node's agent module (`<module>.<tool>@<node>`,
+[ADR 0159](0159-a-tool-call-names-the-machine-and-a-holder-serves-its-seats-verbs.md)) with the token
+sealed to that key, and the module answers *applied* or *refused* and why. An agent module that starts,
+or finds its token near expiry, asks the seat for its current token the same way. **A token is never
+published as an event**: what the manager emits — rotated, switched, failing, usage read — names the
+licence and nothing secret, and the audit logger records it. This is a second channel for a secret
+beside the vault's, and it is bounded as 0050's carve-out is: this vendor, tokens that live hours, sealed
+to one recipient, request/reply only.
+
+**The agent module alone writes what the agent reads.** For a subscription licence it writes the
+agent's credentials file under the operator's home, as the operator, access-token-only, atomically. For
+the API-key licence it serves the key through the agent's own key-helper setting, so nothing is written
+under the home at all. For the mesh's own sessions and workers on that node, it is the local source of
+their token. **The host delivers the module's package and its state directory and knows nothing else**:
+no path under the home, no vendor, no file shape.
+
+**A binding is explicit, and a switch is a reaction.** Every consumer — a node's interactive agent, the
+mesh's session on a node, a worker — is bound to a licence by the operator through the seat's verb, with
+the predecessor's fallbacks: a session inherits its node's licence, a worker inherits its node's, and a
+worker assigned a licence that cannot be served is refused rather than lent another. Exhaustion is
+observed and warned about once per crossing of a declared threshold; moving a consumer to another
+licence is a person's act through the seat's verb, as [ADR 0024](0024-model-access-is-a-provision.md)
+says, and the declaration language grows no conditional. An automated policy is not decided here.
+
+**A login is attributed only to the account it belongs to.** When a person logs in on a node, the
+agent module reads the account's identity from the agent's own state and offers the grant to the
+manager sealed to the manager's key; the manager adopts it only when the identity matches the licence
+the node is bound to, and refuses with a notification otherwise.
+
+## Consequences
+
+- One module decides which licence every consumer gets, one module writes what each agent reads, and
+  neither the controller nor the host carries a word of the vendor.
+- **A second sealed channel exists** beside the vault's, bounded as stated. A record that widens it to
+  another vendor or a longer-lived secret is a new decision, not an application of this one.
+- The catalogue's `anthropic-manager` and `anthropic-consumer` modules, built on ADR 0050's placement,
+  are retired once the manager runs; the controller's licences context stops holding Anthropic licences.
+- The console lists the seat's verbs, so a person switches a licence in a sentence, and the controller
+  gains no `licence` verb.
+- **What got harder:** a manager that is down leaves every node on its last token until it expires;
+  the agent module keeps the last token and says so. And a node whose agent module has not registered
+  its key cannot be handed a token, which the manager reports by name.
+- Every interactive session on a machine shares the node's one agent directory, and so its licence;
+  twenty sessions share it as one does. A consumer with a licence of its own on the same machine is a
+  worker running from a home of its own with its own agent directory — the worker touchpoint above, for
+  when workers exist ([ADR 0003](0003-agents-are-persistent-employees.md)); the predecessor ran its
+  agents that way.
+- **Not decided here:** an automated switch on exhaustion; whether a refresh token is single-use, to be
+  measured in the lab.
+
+## How it is checked
+
+| Rule | Checked by |
+|---|---|
+| Only the seat's holder calls the vendor's token endpoint | a catalogue test: no module but the manager names it; the manager's refresh runs under a lease per licence, tested with two concurrent runs |
+| A token crosses the bus only sealed, only on request/reply | a bus test: every message the manager publishes as an event carries no token; the hand-over is a request whose payload opens only with the receiving module's key |
+| The agent module's private key never leaves the node | the per-key test of ADR 0113, extended to this module's key |
+| The host writes nothing under a home and names no vendor | a catalogue test on the agent module's definition: no file resource under a home, no vendor word in anything the host applies |
+| A grant is attributed only to a matching identity | a manager test: a grant whose account identity differs from the bound licence's is refused and a notification emitted |
+| An unservable binding refuses rather than lends | a manager test: a worker bound to a dead licence is answered with a refusal, never another licence's token |
+| A switch through the console changes the token on the node and nothing in the answer is a token | a live check on one workstation |
+
+## References
+
+- [ADR 0024](0024-model-access-is-a-provision.md), [ADR 0050](0050-model-access-is-vendor-agnostic.md) — the licence as a named thing, the carve-out this moves with the manager
+- [ADR 0027](0027-a-provision-names-what-the-consumer-is-coupled-to.md) — why the seat is named for the vendor
+- [ADR 0113](0113-the-vault-makes-every-secret.md) — the vault's custody of the manager's key, and the exception stated here
+- [ADR 0126](0126-a-module-declares-its-own-seats.md), [ADR 0132](0132-a-seat-carries-the-tools-its-holder-must-serve.md), [ADR 0159](0159-a-tool-call-names-the-machine-and-a-holder-serves-its-seats-verbs.md) — a module's seat, its verbs, a call addressed to one machine
+- [to-be 32 §10](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/32-what-a-module-declares.md) — a secret on the bus
+- [to-be 36](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/36-the-operators-agent-on-a-machine.md), [to-be 39](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/39-the-anthropic-licence-manager.md) — the two modules
+- the predecessor's `claude-licences` and `claude-code` modules, read 2026-10-02: the lease, the floor, the lineage comparison, the identity guard, the touchpoints
@@ -182,8 +182,8 @@ python3 00-META/checks/index.py            fail if stale
 - **0169** — [A machine joins through the tunnel, and the bus is never public](0169-a-machine-joins-through-the-tunnel-and-the-bus-is-never-public.md)
 - **0170** — [The firewall seat serves its verbs, and a foreign rule set is removed through one of them](0170-the-firewall-seat-serves-its-verbs.md)
 - **0172** — [The lab is a module, and runs a bed when the mesh asks](0172-the-lab-is-a-module-and-runs-a-bed-when-the-mesh-asks.md)
- **0175** — [The found front end is uninstalled once a machine is converged](0175-the-found-front-end-is-uninstalled-once-a-machine-is-converged.md)
 - **0179** — [The intrusion seat serves its verbs, a container may log to the journal, and every door declares its jail](0179-the-intrusion-seat-serves-its-verbs-and-every-door-declares-its-jail.md)
+- **0180** — [The found front end is uninstalled once a machine is converged](0180-the-found-front-end-is-uninstalled-once-a-machine-is-converged.md)

 ### Its tiers, from the bottom up

@@ -274,6 +274,13 @@ python3 00-META/checks/index.py            fail if stale
 - **0150** — [A module's own code runs as supervised processes under the module's one account](0150-a-modules-own-code-runs-as-supervised-processes-under-one-account.md)
 - **0152** — [The operator's surface is a module the mesh assigns: the console](0152-the-operators-surface-is-a-module-the-console.md)
 - **0155** — [A definition names no installation: how that is checked, and the three ways a value that did gets out](0155-a-definition-names-no-installation-and-how-that-is-checked.md)
+- **0173** — [The operator's machine is the mesh's, and a module is whatever it declares](0173-the-operators-machine-is-the-meshs-and-a-module-is-what-it-declares.md)
+- **0175** — [One tool runtime per node serves every module's tools, on the host side](0175-one-tool-runtime-per-node-serves-every-modules-tools-on-the-host-side.md)
+- **0176** — [The login shell is a node seat held by one shell module, and `execute` is its contract](0176-the-login-shell-is-a-node-seat-and-execute-is-its-contract.md)
+- **0177** — [A unit may be user-scoped, and the service manager is a node seat whose holder answers for the units](0177-a-unit-may-be-user-scoped-and-the-service-manager-is-a-node-seat.md)
+- **0181** — [The operator account is a node fact, and a home is a placement root](0181-the-operator-account-is-a-node-fact-and-a-home-is-a-placement-root.md)
+- **0182** — [Inside a home, the mesh owns the directory and the files it places, writes into the tool's own files, and holds everything else as found](0182-inside-a-home-the-mesh-owns-what-it-places-and-holds-the-rest-as-found.md)
+- **0183** — [The Anthropic licence manager is a module holding a seat; it hands each node's agent its token over the bus, sealed; the controller and the host have no part](0183-the-anthropic-licence-manager-is-a-module-and-hands-tokens-to-the-agent-over-the-bus.md)

 ### How it is built

@@ -295,6 +302,7 @@ python3 00-META/checks/index.py            fail if stale
 - **0107** — [Persistent data is a directory bind, never a named volume](0107-persistent-data-is-a-directory-bind-never-a-named-volume.md)
 - **0111** — [A build source is on the mesh's git seat, or it is an external repository](0111-a-build-source-is-on-the-git-seat-or-external.md)
 - **0149** — [The live mesh is the test bed](0149-the-live-mesh-is-the-test-bed.md)
+- **0174** — [A node varies a module through settings and kept regions, never through an edit](0174-a-node-varies-a-module-through-settings-and-kept-regions-never-an-edit.md)

 ### How it is checked

@@ -9,7 +9,7 @@ code:
  - mesh-host internal/apply (the service that reflects a rule set)
 updated: 2026-10-02
 decisions:
-  - 02-DECISIONS/0175-the-found-front-end-is-uninstalled-once-a-machine-is-converged.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0180-the-found-front-end-is-uninstalled-once-a-machine-is-converged.md
  - 02-DECISIONS/0170-the-firewall-seat-serves-its-verbs.md
  - 02-DECISIONS/0169-a-machine-joins-through-the-tunnel-and-the-bus-is-never-public.md
  - 02-DECISIONS/0168-a-converged-machine-is-filtered-by-the-mesh-alone.md
@@ -773,7 +773,7 @@ the host reports as *other* is reached through the packet filter seat's `remove`
 by name on the bus; the seat also serves `rules` and `reload`, and its holder's runtime declares the
 `NET_ADMIN` capability on the machine's network. See design 33.

-*2026-10-02, [ADR 0175](../../02-DECISIONS/0175-the-found-front-end-is-uninstalled-once-a-machine-is-converged.md):*
+*2026-10-02, [ADR 0180](../../02-DECISIONS/0180-the-found-front-end-is-uninstalled-once-a-machine-is-converged.md):*
 once a machine is converged, the front end it was found with is uninstalled, not merely disabled — the
 packet filter's holder declares its package absent after the mesh's filter is loaded, and a return to
 adopted then enables nothing. The rollback path ADR 0100 kept on disk is given up on purpose.
@@ -4,9 +4,10 @@ status: in-progress
 code:
  - mesh-controller internal/licences
  - mesh-controller cmd/mesh-controller/licence.go
-updated: 2026-09-05
+updated: 2026-10-02
 decisions:
  - 02-DECISIONS/0024-model-access-is-a-provision.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0183-the-anthropic-licence-manager-is-a-module-and-hands-tokens-to-the-agent-over-the-bus.md
  - 02-DECISIONS/0009-modules-and-the-graph.md
  - 02-DECISIONS/0054-model-usage-is-recorded-at-two-grains.md
  - 02-DECISIONS/0055-model-access-is-answered-by-a-licence-or-a-node.md
@@ -96,6 +97,14 @@ So `(node, module)` tells them apart, and asking for a licence per session neede
 identity. Checked rather than argued: two sessions on one machine hold different licences, each is
 given its own key, and releasing one leaves the other.

+*2026-10-02:* the operator's own agent at a terminal is **not** a consumer of this provision: it is
+coupled to an Anthropic grant and nothing else, so it uses the `anthropic-licence-manager` seat, whose
+holder owns the Anthropic licences, their bindings and their rotation, and hands each node's agent its
+token over the bus
+([ADR 0183](../../02-DECISIONS/0183-the-anthropic-licence-manager-is-a-module-and-hands-tokens-to-the-agent-over-the-bus.md),
+[36](36-the-operators-agent-on-a-machine.md), [39](39-the-anthropic-licence-manager.md)). This
+provision stays for the consumers that do not care which vendor answers.
+
 **What is still open is the rest of the gap, and it is the harder half.** A *worker* is not one
 per machine — many can run on one, from one module — so `(node, module)` cannot name them apart
 and this reasoning does not extend to them. That belongs with
@@ -5,8 +5,10 @@ code:
  - mesh-controller internal/inventory
  - mesh-controller internal/catalogue
  - mesh-controller cmd/mesh-controller
-updated: 2026-10-01
+updated: 2026-10-02
 decisions:
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0181-the-operator-account-is-a-node-fact-and-a-home-is-a-placement-root.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0182-inside-a-home-the-mesh-owns-what-it-places-and-holds-the-rest-as-found.md
  - 02-DECISIONS/0112-a-module-definition-names-no-node-mesh-or-path.md
  - 02-DECISIONS/0120-a-roster-fact-carries-its-format-as-a-template.md
  - 02-DECISIONS/0051-shared-data-is-the-operators.md
@@ -171,6 +173,15 @@ fact, the home as a placement root, and what the mesh may and may not do under a
 decision this document names but no record states. They are the next records to write, before the
 family of §2 modules is built.

+*2026-10-02:* two of them are written. [ADR 0181](../../02-DECISIONS/0181-the-operator-account-is-a-node-fact-and-a-home-is-a-placement-root.md)
+records the account as a node fact and the home as a placement root, reconstructed from what shipped;
+[ADR 0182](../../02-DECISIONS/0182-inside-a-home-the-mesh-owns-what-it-places-and-holds-the-rest-as-found.md)
+generalises §3's boundary to every directory under a home. The first member of the §2 family is
+designed in [36 — The operator's agent on a machine](36-the-operators-agent-on-a-machine.md). User-scoped
+units are [ADR 0177](../../02-DECISIONS/0177-a-unit-may-be-user-scoped-and-the-service-manager-is-a-node-seat.md),
+written the same day; still unwritten: several accounts per node, and the CA. On the same day every node of the
+live mesh still carried an empty account.
+
 ## Why now, and why not yet

 **Why it matters:** when HAL retires, the generators that keep `~/.ssh`, shell config and the
@@ -205,6 +216,10 @@ keeping the predecessor running, so the model questions above are no longer defe
 record, the home as a placement root, user-scoped services and the one-off steps a hook used to run
 each need a decision before the modules that replace the generators can be written.

+## The family beyond `~/.ssh` — 2026-10-02
+
+The modules §2 calls *a family* — the shell, the terminal, the desktop, everything under a home that is not `~/.ssh` — are designed in [37 — The operator's machine](37-the-operators-machine.md), under [ADR 0173](../../02-DECISIONS/0173-the-operators-machine-is-the-meshs-and-a-module-is-what-it-declares.md) to [0177](../../02-DECISIONS/0177-a-unit-may-be-user-scoped-and-the-service-manager-is-a-node-seat.md). This document keeps `~/.ssh`, the CA and the roster files. Two things it listed as not built are decided there: user-scoped services (ADR 0177) and the one-off steps a hook used to run (declared state, or a seat's verb).
+
 ## References

 - The gap was found generating `~/.ssh/config` from the *HAL* registry (`hal/terminal`'s
@@ -123,6 +123,8 @@ module-specific names that changes the day the forge is replaced.
 asked of the module, through a `tools` verb every runtime answers) and lists a role's tools when the
 records carry them.

+*Amended 2026-10-02 by [ADR 0175](../../02-DECISIONS/0175-one-tool-runtime-per-node-serves-every-modules-tools-on-the-host-side.md):* the module that serves this to an agent is the node tools runtime — one per node, host-side, serving every assigned module's tools as well as answering the person on loopback. The console is its serving mode, renamed. See [37 — The operator's machine](37-the-operators-machine.md) §3.
+
 ## 7. Versioning

 A seat's tools are an interface and change like one. Additive within a version. A change that would
@@ -190,8 +192,10 @@ The second node-scoped seat to carry verbs: `node-intrusion-prevention` serves `
 with what it watches and holds), `banned` (every address held now, with its jail and when the ban
 ends), `ban` and `unban` (an operator's act on the live ban list). The fail2ban module serves them
 from a runtime that carries only the daemon's client, the socket shared in from the machine — no
-capability, no machine network, since the daemon on the machine does the banning. The module's own
-tool beside them reads one jail's effective settings. *How it is checked:* ADR 0179's table.
+capability, no machine network, since the daemon on the machine does the banning. That runtime is the
+per-module container [ADR 0175](../../02-DECISIONS/0175-one-tool-runtime-per-node-serves-every-modules-tools-on-the-host-side.md)
+retires; the verbs and the client are the same code once the node's own runtime loads them as a bundle.
+The module's own tool beside them reads one jail's effective settings. *How it is checked:* ADR 0179's table.

 ## What this does not settle

@@ -2,7 +2,7 @@
 layer: to-be
 status: implemented
 code: [mesh-catalog, mesh-tools, mesh-controller]
-updated: 2026-10-01
+updated: 2026-10-02
 decisions:
  - 02-DECISIONS/0160-the-mesh-issues-an-assignments-subjects-and-a-runtime-serves-what-it-is-issued.md
  - 02-DECISIONS/0159-a-tool-call-names-the-machine-and-a-holder-serves-its-seats-verbs.md
@@ -20,6 +20,8 @@ An agent reaches them over MCP on the machine's loopback; a person reaches the s
 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)).

+> **Amended 2026-10-02 by [ADR 0175](../../02-DECISIONS/0175-one-tool-runtime-per-node-serves-every-modules-tools-on-the-host-side.md).** What this document describes stays true in substance and changes in form: the console becomes the serving mode of the node tools runtime, a host-side process the host supervises rather than a container, which also serves every assigned module's tools from their bundles. The module is renamed `node-tools`. [37 — The operator's machine](37-the-operators-machine.md) §3 is where it now lives.
+
 ## 1. What it is

 A module, `mesh-console`, in the catalogue. Its image is the tool runtime's own — the client that
@@ -28,6 +30,14 @@ module's credential and listens on loopback. It has no state, no provision, no s
 the bus, which it gets the way every module does: a credential the mesh minted for `<node>.mesh-console`,
 sealed to the machine, delivered as the module's own secret.

+*2026-10-02:* it gains one provision, at node scope — the MCP endpoint on loopback, serving the port
+the machine gave it — so that a module whose software must be told where the console is requires that
+and is coupled to an endpoint rather than to a module's name
+([ADR 0027](../../02-DECISIONS/0027-a-provision-names-what-the-consumer-is-coupled-to.md)). The first
+consumer is the operator's agent, [36 — The operator's agent on a machine](36-the-operators-agent-on-a-machine.md) §6;
+a machine without the console refuses such a module by name. Nothing else above changes: no seat, no
+state, no tools of its own.
+
 Its manifest says three things nothing else in the catalogue says together:

 - `invokes: ["*"]` — it calls every tool on the mesh, and the bus grants exactly that publish side;
@@ -0,0 +1,212 @@
+---
+layer: to-be
+status: designed
+code: []
+updated: 2026-10-02
+decisions:
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0181-the-operator-account-is-a-node-fact-and-a-home-is-a-placement-root.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0182-inside-a-home-the-mesh-owns-what-it-places-and-holds-the-rest-as-found.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0183-the-anthropic-licence-manager-is-a-module-and-hands-tokens-to-the-agent-over-the-bus.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0112-a-module-definition-names-no-node-mesh-or-path.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0155-a-definition-names-no-installation-and-how-that-is-checked.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0152-the-operators-surface-is-a-module-the-console.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0027-a-provision-names-what-the-consumer-is-coupled-to.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0109-a-package-registry-seat-is-one-per-ecosystem.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0175-one-tool-runtime-per-node-serves-every-modules-tools-on-the-host-side.md
+---
+
+# 36 — The operator's agent on a machine: the `claude-code` module
+
+**The agent a person runs at a terminal, put on the machine by the mesh, instructed by the mesh, pointed
+at the console, and holding the licence the manager hands it.** It is a member of the family
+[to-be 29 §2](29-a-node-has-operator-accounts.md) names, the modules that touch a person's machine, and
+its counterpart is [39 — The Anthropic licence manager](39-the-anthropic-licence-manager.md).
+
+What it replaces: the predecessor's module of the same name and a sibling, which placed six files under
+the operator's home. The predecessor is retired; the six files are still on both workstations telling
+every session to use tools that no longer exist.
+
+**Three rules shape everything below.** The host is module-agnostic: it installs the package and gives
+the module a state directory, and knows no vendor, no agent, no path under a home. The controller has no
+part beyond resolving what it resolves for every module. And the module handles its own files: the
+mesh's part of the agent's configuration is written by the module's own code, from what the mesh
+delivered it and what the manager handed it.
+
+## 1. Where the mesh's configuration lives: the agent's managed directory, not the home
+
+The agent reads a machine-wide, administrator-owned configuration directory under `/etc`, documented
+by the vendor: a managed settings file that outranks every user and project setting; a key in it that
+adds HTTP tool servers *beside* a person's own without blocking them; and a managed instruction file every
+session reads before the user's and the project's. The agent has **no** machine-wide directory for
+rules, skills, slash commands or hooks; those exist only under a home or a project.
+
+So the mesh's part of the agent's configuration lives there, **owned whole by the module**, and the home
+is left alone. What the predecessor shipped as two rule files and two skills folds into the managed
+instruction file and the manager's tools:
+
+| the predecessor placed | becomes |
+|---|---|
+| `~/.claude/CLAUDE.md` | the managed instruction file: how a session on this mesh works (§3) |
+| `~/.claude/rules/00-hal-mesh.md`, `~/.claude/rules/conventions.md` | sections of the same file: this node's identity, the repositories' conventions |
+| `~/.claude/settings.json`, merged | the managed settings file: the mesh's keys only, outranking nothing a person did not also set |
+| `~/.claude/skills/hal-switch-license/SKILL.md` | the manager seat's `switch` verb, listed by the console, and a sentence in the instruction file saying to use it |
+| `~/.claude/skills/cleanup/SKILL.md` | nothing; it named the predecessor's forge |
+| the console's entry in the agent's user-scope state | the managed settings' tool-server key, from the console's provision (§4) |
+
+**The home.** Under [ADR 0182](../../02-DECISIONS/0182-inside-a-home-the-mesh-owns-what-it-places-and-holds-the-rest-as-found.md)
+every path under `~/.claude` is *found*, with one exception: the agent's credentials file, which the
+module's own code writes for a subscription licence (§5). The person's memory, history, projects, local
+settings, their own rules, skills and tool servers are never read or written by the mesh. **The six
+predecessor files are the operator's to remove, once, on each workstation**; the module's documentation
+lists them, and until they go the agent reads stale instructions beside the mesh's.
+
+## 2. What the module declares and what its code writes
+
+**Declared, applied by the host:** the agent's package (§7); the module's state directory; a facts file
+in that directory carrying the node's name, the operator account, the console's endpoint, the module's
+settings; the bus, the console's provision, and that it uses the `anthropic-licence-manager` seat.
+Nothing under the home, nothing under `/etc`.
+
+**Written by the module's code**, from the facts file and the manager's hand-over, whenever either
+changes:
+
+| path | content |
+|---|---|
+| the managed settings file | the mesh's keys: the tool servers (the console, plus any the operator declared as settings), the attribution trailers, and — for an API-key binding only — the key-helper that serves the key |
+| the managed instruction file | §3 |
+| the agent's credentials file under the operator's home | for a subscription binding only: the access token the manager handed over, as the operator, readable by the operator alone, atomic, no refresh token |
+| the module's keypair in its state | made once, the private half never leaves (§5) |
+
+Writing under `/etc` and as the operator under the home are two escalations the module's code performs
+for itself; the mesh does not run the module as root for everyone, and the caller does not know
+([ADR 0175](../../02-DECISIONS/0175-one-tool-runtime-per-node-serves-every-modules-tools-on-the-host-side.md)).
+
+**Which settings keys are the mesh's.** A key is the mesh's when it encodes a rule of the mesh: the tool
+servers that reach the mesh, the attribution convention of its repositories, the key-helper a binding
+requires. The model, the spinner, the drafts and every other preference are the person's, and the
+predecessor's experience with the model key is the evidence: a mesh that sets a preference reverts a
+person's choice on every push.
+
+## 3. What the instruction file says
+
+Prose, not a paste; the file is the module's.
+
+**How a session on this mesh works.** The console is the only path to the mesh, and its tools are the
+vocabulary: the record is asked through the records module, symptom first — the literal error text before
+a hypothesis ([ADR 0153](../../02-DECISIONS/0153-the-record-is-read-by-a-module-and-the-console-lists-it.md));
+the mesh is asked and changed through the controller seat's verbs; the forge through the forge module's
+tools; a licence through the `anthropic-licence-manager` seat's verbs, never by editing a file. The hard
+rules in new words: a file the mesh manages is changed through the verb that owns it or through the
+catalogue, never on disk; a store's database is never written by hand; main is never pushed; the mesh
+creates no symlinks and nobody else does; a package is declared, not installed by hand. The glossary's
+words, none of the predecessor's.
+
+**Who this node is.** The node's name, from the facts file; the node's role, from the module's settings
+on the node's layer; and that the other nodes are asked of the controller's `nodes` verb rather than
+listed here, because a table is a copy that drifts.
+
+**The repositories' conventions.** Concise commit messages in the imperative, about why; a branch, a
+pull request and a human approval for every merge; test before pushing, because nodes update unattended;
+the playbooks in the record.
+
+## 4. The console
+
+The module tells the agent where the console is, and the port is the console's to say. **The console
+provides a node-scoped provision** — its MCP endpoint on loopback — serving the port the machine gave
+it, and the module requires it. A requirement names what the consumer is coupled to
+([ADR 0027](../../02-DECISIONS/0027-a-provision-names-what-the-consumer-is-coupled-to.md)); co-location
+resolves it; a machine without the console refuses the module by name. [To-be 34](34-the-console.md) is
+amended in the same change; issue 192 (open) found the gap.
+
+**Other tool servers** a person wants on every machine, or on one, are a declared setting of this module
+— mesh layer or node layer — rendered into the same managed key. A module tool, `mcp_configure`,
+validates a server and sets the setting through the controller's settings verb, so the list stays
+declared state. The agent's own HTTP-only constraint for managed servers applies; a person's local
+command-based servers stay their own, in their own file.
+
+**The entry's name is `mesh`.** The hand-made entry both workstations carry today is named after this
+installation, which a definition may not be ([ADR 0155](../../02-DECISIONS/0155-a-definition-names-no-installation-and-how-that-is-checked.md));
+it is the person's to remove, and until then the agent sees the mesh's tools twice.
+
+## 5. The licence: the consumer side
+
+[ADR 0183](../../02-DECISIONS/0183-the-anthropic-licence-manager-is-a-module-and-hands-tokens-to-the-agent-over-the-bus.md)
+decides it; to-be 39 is the manager's half. This module:
+
+- **makes a keypair** in its state the first time it runs and registers the public half with the seat;
+- **serves `apply`**: the manager's hand-over, a token sealed to the module's key, with the licence's
+  name and kind. A rotation of the same licence is applied only if newer within one lineage; a switch is
+  applied regardless, because across licences the expiries are unrelated. The answer says applied or
+  refused and why, and never echoes a token;
+- **pulls** at start and when its token nears expiry, by the seat's `current` verb, and keeps the last
+  token when the manager does not answer, saying so;
+- **writes** for a subscription licence the credentials file as the operator, access-token-only; for the
+  API-key licence sets the key-helper in the managed settings to a small program that prints the key
+  from the module's state, so no file under the home is touched;
+- **offers a login to the manager**: when the credentials file changes by a person's login, it reads the
+  account's identity from the agent's state file and offers the grant to the seat, sealed to the manager's
+  key, for adoption; the manager decides;
+- **serves `licence_status`**: which licence and kind this node holds, when the token expires, whether
+  the file matches what was handed over — by fingerprint, never by value.
+
+Switching is the seat's `switch` verb, asked through the console; this module only applies what it is
+handed.
+
+## 6. Scope, settings and the order of assignment
+
+**Every node with an operator account** ([ADR 0181](../../02-DECISIONS/0181-the-operator-account-is-a-node-fact-and-a-home-is-a-placement-root.md)).
+None has one today; the operator states them first. **Per node:** the role. **Per mesh or per node:**
+extra tool servers. **Prerequisite:** the manager holds its seat and has adopted the licences.
+
+**Order:** the manager assigned and a refresh observed; the console's provision in the catalogue; this
+module on one workstation; the six predecessor files and the hand-made console entry removed there; a
+new session read to confirm it sees the mesh's instruction file, the console's tools under `mesh`, and
+its licence; then the rest.
+
+## 7. The package
+
+The module declares the agent's package. The distribution every node runs does not carry it in its
+repositories: the two workstations have it from a build the predecessor's helper made from the community
+repository, and nothing updates it since. On those two the declaration is satisfied. **On a fresh machine
+the host's package manager refuses it, in its own words, and the module is not applied there.** The
+answer is a package repository for this ecosystem as a seat
+([ADR 0109](../../02-DECISIONS/0109-a-package-registry-seat-is-one-per-ecosystem.md)), fed by the builder
+and trusted by every node's package manager; not built, and not this module's to build. The vendor's own
+installer is rejected: it puts a self-updating binary under the person's home, invisible to the mesh.
+
+## How it is checked
+
+| Check | Defends |
+|---|---|
+| the module's definition names no node, path or login, declares nothing under a home or `/etc`, and no file resource carries a secret | ADR 0112, ADR 0155, ADR 0183 |
+| on a lab machine with an account and a seeded home holding a person's rule file and the predecessor's leftovers: after assign, the managed directory holds the mesh's files, the home is byte-identical except the credentials file, which is owned by the operator and names no refresh token; after unassign, the managed directory's files are gone and the home is untouched | ADR 0182, the host's agnosticism |
+| on a lab machine with no account, the assignment is refused naming the fact | ADR 0181 |
+| a switch asked of the seat through the console changes the licence and the token on the node; no tool answer and no log line holds a token | ADR 0183 |
+| the API-key binding writes nothing under the home and the agent authenticates through the helper | ADR 0183 |
+| the console's provision resolves by co-location; a machine without the console refuses the module by name | ADR 0027, ADR 0152 |
+| a new session on the assigned workstation lists the console's tools under `mesh` and answers "which node am I" from the instruction file | the exit of the build |
+
+## What this does not settle
+
+- **Several operator accounts on one node** (ADR 0181 decides one).
+- **A worker's own licence on a machine.** Every interactive session shares the node's one agent
+  directory and its licence, however many run. A worker runs from a home of its own with an agent
+  directory in it, bound to its own licence through the manager (to-be 39 §5); that is for when workers
+  exist, and nothing here changes for it.
+- **The package repository seat** (§7).
+- **How the module's tools are run** is decided: the node's tool runtime, host-side
+  ([ADR 0175](../../02-DECISIONS/0175-one-tool-runtime-per-node-serves-every-modules-tools-on-the-host-side.md)).
+  The managed files and the credential write are tools of this module that runtime serves. Until the
+  runtime exists on every node, the module's code runs as a supervised process of its own
+  ([ADR 0150](../../02-DECISIONS/0150-a-modules-own-code-runs-as-supervised-processes-under-one-account.md)),
+  which changes nothing in what it writes.
+
+## References
+
+- [ADR 0181](../../02-DECISIONS/0181-the-operator-account-is-a-node-fact-and-a-home-is-a-placement-root.md),
+  [ADR 0182](../../02-DECISIONS/0182-inside-a-home-the-mesh-owns-what-it-places-and-holds-the-rest-as-found.md),
+  [ADR 0183](../../02-DECISIONS/0183-the-anthropic-licence-manager-is-a-module-and-hands-tokens-to-the-agent-over-the-bus.md) — the decisions
+- [39 — The Anthropic licence manager](39-the-anthropic-licence-manager.md), [34 — The console](34-the-console.md), [29 — A node has operator accounts](29-a-node-has-operator-accounts.md)
+- [research 018](../../01-RESEARCH/018-the-operators-machine-as-modules/00-overview.md) — the operator's machine as modules, and where tools run
+- the vendor's documentation on managed settings, managed tool servers, the managed instruction file and the key-helper, read 2026-10-02
+- the predecessor's two modules and the six files on the workstations, read 2026-10-02
@@ -0,0 +1,142 @@
+---
+layer: to-be
+status: in-progress
+code: [mesh-host, mesh-controller, mesh-tools, mesh-catalog]
+updated: 2026-10-02
+decisions:
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0173-the-operators-machine-is-the-meshs-and-a-module-is-what-it-declares.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0174-a-node-varies-a-module-through-settings-and-kept-regions-never-an-edit.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0175-one-tool-runtime-per-node-serves-every-modules-tools-on-the-host-side.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0176-the-login-shell-is-a-node-seat-and-execute-is-its-contract.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0177-a-unit-may-be-user-scoped-and-the-service-manager-is-a-node-seat.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0040-what-a-module-is.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0112-a-module-definition-names-no-node-mesh-or-path.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0126-a-module-declares-its-own-seats.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0132-a-seat-carries-the-tools-its-holder-must-serve.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0161-what-deserves-a-seat.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0102-the-mesh-writes-into-a-shared-file-never-over-it.md
+---
+
+# 37 — The operator's machine
+
+**Every configurable thing on a node is a module, the home included, and the same catalogue serves
+a server and a laptop.** One default configuration per module, varied per node by a setting or a
+kept region; roles a machine has once as node-scoped seats with tool contracts; one tool runtime
+per node serving every module's tools on the host side
+([ADR 0173](../../02-DECISIONS/0173-the-operators-machine-is-the-meshs-and-a-module-is-what-it-declares.md)
+to [0177](../../02-DECISIONS/0177-a-unit-may-be-user-scoped-and-the-service-manager-is-a-node-seat.md)).
+This is the design [to-be 29](29-a-node-has-operator-accounts.md) §2 called *a family* and
+[research 018](../../01-RESEARCH/018-the-operators-machine-as-modules/00-overview.md) measured.
+
+## 1. What a module of the environment looks like
+
+Worked on the first one, a shell. The `zsh` module declares:
+
+- a **package**, `zsh`;
+- **files under the home**, owned by the account: the shell's rc file with the module's default
+  configuration, carrying a kept region for the operator's own lines, and `${setting:…}`
+  placeholders for the few values a node varies; the account and its home are machine facts the
+  controller resolves ([ADR 0112](../../02-DECISIONS/0112-a-module-definition-names-no-node-mesh-or-path.md),
+  to-be 29 §2);
+- a **seat declaration**, `login-shell`, node-scoped, with its one verb; and a **claim** on it;
+- a **`user` shape** naming the shell, applied only where the module holds the seat;
+- a **tools bundle**, the artifact kind for interpreted code, with `execute` and the module's own
+  `show-config`.
+
+No container, no unit, no service. It is assigned to every node with an operator account. The
+`fish` and `bash` modules are the same with another package and other files; one of the three
+holds the seat on each node.
+
+The second shape is **system scope**: the login manager declares a package, two files under
+`/etc`, and a service, which is exactly what the ssh daemon module declares today. The third
+shape is **graphical**: the window manager declares a package, files under the home, a
+user-scoped unit or two, a claim on the display-session seat, a dependency on the display server
+being held, and a bundle with its tools. Nothing in any of them says which machine it is for.
+
+## 2. Variation
+
+A node differs from the default in two ways and no other
+([ADR 0174](../../02-DECISIONS/0174-a-node-varies-a-module-through-settings-and-kept-regions-never-an-edit.md)):
+a **setting** the module declared, set in the node's layer and rendered into the file; or lines in
+a **kept region** the file marks. The predecessor's ninety theme variables become the settings of
+the modules whose files read them. Until the settings record proposed alongside the
+container-runtime records ships — a setting names the file it lands in — environment modules carry
+defaults in their files and declare no setting; that is the order, not a preference.
+
+## 3. The node tools runtime
+
+One per node, started and restarted by the host as a sibling process, never a container
+([ADR 0175](../../02-DECISIONS/0175-one-tool-runtime-per-node-serves-every-modules-tools-on-the-host-side.md)).
+It is the tool runtime that exists, in the role it was written for: it reads the memberships of
+every module assigned to the node, loads each module's tools bundle, and serves every tool and
+every held seat's verb on the subjects issued. It holds the node's one bus credential and may call
+every tool on the mesh. Its serving mode on the machine's loopback is what the console was
+([to-be 34](34-the-console.md)); the module is renamed **node-tools** and declares the interpreter
+it needs as a package.
+
+A bundle reaches the node as any artifact does. A push that adds or replaces one is a reload. A
+bundle that fails to load is named in the node's report and the others serve. A tool that needs
+root escalates itself.
+
+## 4. The seats of the environment
+
+Decided now: **`login-shell`** (module-declared; zsh, fish, bash; verb `execute`) and
+**`node-service-manager`** (the mesh's own; systemd; verbs over units in both scopes). The rest
+are candidates from [research 018](../../01-RESEARCH/018-the-operators-machine-as-modules/04-the-seats-of-the-environment.md),
+one record each when its first holder is written: display server, display session, terminal
+emulator, launcher, notifier, compositor, lock screen, bar, login manager, audio, clipboard, boot.
+Editors, browsers, media players, the agent, the downloads and scripts folders are modules with
+tools and no seat.
+
+A module that needs a role filled depends on **the seat being held** on the node, not on a
+capability: the window manager needs the display server seat held, by xorg or by a compositor
+that is its own server. Whether a held seat can gate an assignment is the first question the
+resolver is asked by the second graphical module; the display server itself is gated by the
+`graphical-session` capability the profile already reports.
+
+## 5. What the host gains, and what it does not
+
+- `service` gains `scope: user`, applied as the account
+  ([ADR 0177](../../02-DECISIONS/0177-a-unit-may-be-user-scoped-and-the-service-manager-is-a-node-seat.md)).
+- The host starts and supervises the node tools runtime as it would any host-side process, and
+  delivers bundles as artifacts.
+- Nothing else. No hooks, no actions: `chsh` is the `user` shape, enabling a unit is the `service`
+  shape, rebuilding boot images is a verb of the boot seat when that seat is written.
+- A gap, recorded: the `package` shape drives the distribution's package manager and nothing
+  outside its repositories. The login manager in use is such a package; it waits on an official
+  package or a decision the host does not yet have.
+
+## 6. The order of the build
+
+1. **The operator account on every node** — `mesh-controller node` with the login name; empty on
+   all four today. Nothing home-scoped composes before it.
+2. **The node tools runtime** — mesh-host supervises it; mesh-tools serves bundles from memberships
+   and reloads; mesh-controller composes the bundle into the declaration and the memberships to one
+   runtime per node; the catalogue renames the console. Proven when the packet-filter verbs answer
+   from it and its container is gone.
+3. **`zsh`**, the first environment module: seat, `user` shape, home files, `execute`. Proven on a
+   server first, then every node.
+4. **`systemd`** and user scope: the host's field, the seat seeded, the module. Proven by the
+   desktop's reload watcher declared `scope: user` on a workstation.
+5. **The login manager**, system scope, once its package is installable; then the display server,
+   the window manager, and the rest of the graphical stack, each seat its own record.
+6. **Settings** for the theme knobs, after the settings record ships and issue 168 closes.
+
+## How it is checked
+
+| Claim | Checked by |
+|---|---|
+| A module with a package, home files, a seat and a bundle resolves and composes on a node with an account, and is refused on one without | the controller's composition tests |
+| One runtime per node serves every assigned module's tools; a per-module tool container no longer exists | the runtime's tests; `docker ps` on a converged machine |
+| A user-scoped unit is applied as the account | the host's tests |
+| A node's difference from a module's default is visible as a setting with a source or a kept region | `mesh-controller.settings`; the host's write-into tests |
+| The same manifests assign to a server and a workstation; the graphical ones are refused on the server by name | the resolver's tests and the live mesh |
+
+## References
+
+- [Research 018](../../01-RESEARCH/018-the-operators-machine-as-modules/00-overview.md)
+- [To-be 29](29-a-node-has-operator-accounts.md) — the account and the home; this design is the
+  family its §2 names, beyond `~/.ssh`.
+- [To-be 33](33-the-tools-the-mesh-answers.md), [to-be 34](34-the-console.md) — the tools and
+  the console, amended by ADR 0175.
+- [To-be 05](05-the-node-host.md) — the host's vocabulary, widened by ADR 0177.
@@ -0,0 +1,193 @@
+---
+layer: to-be
+status: in-progress
+code: [mesh-tools, mesh-controller, mesh-host, mesh-catalog]
+updated: 2026-10-02
+decisions:
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0175-one-tool-runtime-per-node-serves-every-modules-tools-on-the-host-side.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0173-the-operators-machine-is-the-meshs-and-a-module-is-what-it-declares.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0174-a-node-varies-a-module-through-settings-and-kept-regions-never-an-edit.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0176-the-login-shell-is-a-node-seat-and-execute-is-its-contract.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0177-a-unit-may-be-user-scoped-and-the-service-manager-is-a-node-seat.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0160-the-mesh-issues-an-assignments-subjects-and-a-runtime-serves-what-it-is-issued.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0149-the-live-mesh-is-the-test-bed.md
+---
+
+# 38. Building the operator's machine
+
+**The work of [design 37](37-the-operators-machine.md), broken into packages small enough that each
+ends at something a person can see run, in the order their dependencies allow.** Design 37 is the
+authority on *what* is built; this document holds only the packages, their order, their sizes and
+their proofs, and is wrong the moment it disagrees with 37 rather than the other way round. It is
+the shape [design 28](28-building-the-bus.md) gave the bus work, applied here.
+
+## How this is built, and where it is run
+
+**On the live mesh, by the operator's decision.** Every package is written with unit tests and
+committed on one branch per repository; its proof runs on the four machines, not in the lab.
+[ADR 0149](../../02-DECISIONS/0149-the-live-mesh-is-the-test-bed.md) already says the live mesh is
+the test bed; the operator's words on 2026-10-02 were *skip the lab, it is not too bad if something
+is broken*. The cost accepted: a package that breaks the runtime breaks every tool on a node until
+the next push, and the controller's own verbs stay reachable through the controller seat whatever
+happens to a node's runtime — which is the one thing that must hold, and does by construction
+([ADR 0154](../../02-DECISIONS/0154-the-meshs-own-verbs-are-the-controller-seats-tools.md)).
+
+Each package names what proves it. A package that cannot name its proof is divided until it can.
+
+## What exists already, measured
+
+Counted 2026-10-02 in the four repositories, non-test source. The point of the count is the same
+as design 28's: nothing here is new ground; every package reshapes something standing.
+
+| Piece | Today | Size | Becomes |
+|---|---|---|---|
+| the tool runtime | TypeScript: loads `MESH_TOOL_MODULES`, serves one module's tools and its claimed seats' verbs; `serve` is the console | ~1 700 lines over six files | loads every assigned module's bundle; `serve` is node tools |
+| the host's `process` shape | Go: fetch a bundle by digest, unpack under the mesh's daemons directory, write the unit, run it | 343 lines | **unchanged** — the runtime is one such process |
+| the host's `archive` shape | Go: fetch and unpack an artifact at a path | 185 lines | **unchanged** — a module's tools bundle is one such archive |
+| the controller's bus principals | Go: one principal per module per node, grants from what it declares | 132 lines | gains one principal per node for the runtime |
+| the controller's memberships | Go: one per assignment, the subjects a runtime serves | 143 lines | **unchanged** in shape; the runtime reads several |
+| the controller's declaration composer | Go, one file | 2 053 lines | gains the runtime's process, the bundles' archives, two env words |
+| the catalogue | 35 manifests build a per-module tool container on the runtime's base image | — | none do; the runtime is a module of its own |
+
+**Two measurements decide the shape.** The host needs no change: a `process` and an `archive` are
+what the runtime and a bundle are, and both are applied today. And the runtime already does
+nine-tenths of the job — the loop over entrypoints, the seat verbs, the membership subscription —
+for one module; the work is to let it do the same for a list.
+
+## The order the work allows
+
+```
+WP1  the runtime serves many modules            (mesh-tools)        ──┐
+WP2  the controller composes one runtime a node (mesh-controller)   ──┤ independent, test-proven
+                                                                      │
+WP3  the runtime is a module; the console is its serving mode (mesh-tools, mesh-catalog)
+                                                                      │
+WP4  the first holder moves: the packet filter  (mesh-catalog)      ── the live proof
+                                                                      │
+WP5  the shell, on a server                      (mesh-catalog)      ── the first environment module live
+WP6  the service manager, on a workstation       (mesh-host #72, mesh-catalog)
+                                                                      │
+WP7  the login manager, the display server, the window manager …     ── one record per seat, after this document
+WP8  settings for the theme knobs                                    ── after issue 168 closes
+```
+
+WP1 and WP2 touch different repositories and meet only at the membership's shape, which neither
+changes; they are built in parallel. WP3 needs both. WP4 is the first time anything on a machine
+changes, and it is the proof of the whole. WP5 and WP6 are the first environment modules; the
+packages after them are design 37 §4's candidates and are not broken down here, because each
+begins with a decision record this document cannot anticipate.
+
+## WP1 — The runtime serves many modules
+
+*mesh-tools. About a day.*
+
+**What changes.** `serve` takes a list of modules to serve, each with its entrypoints, rather than
+one module and one credential. The runtime reads one membership per module from the subjects
+[ADR 0160](../../02-DECISIONS/0160-the-mesh-issues-an-assignments-subjects-and-a-runtime-serves-what-it-is-issued.md)
+derives for each, and serves each module's tools on that module's subjects and each held seat's
+verbs on the seat's. The filter that drops a registration under any name but the one module goes;
+what remains is the rule that a registration under a seat's name is served only where some module
+the runtime serves claims that seat. A bundle that throws on import is named in the log and in
+what `tools` answers, and the others serve. The runtime reads `MESH_OPERATOR_ACCOUNT` and
+`MESH_OPERATOR_HOME` and hands them to every tool's environment.
+
+**What does not change.** The SDK. The broker client. The MCP surface. A module's tool code.
+
+**Proof.** The runtime's test against a real bus: three bundles, one of which throws on import;
+five tools and two seat verbs answer on their subjects; `tools` names the failed bundle; a
+membership republished mid-run re-subscribes without a restart.
+
+## WP2 — The controller composes one runtime per node
+
+*mesh-controller. Two to three days; the largest package.*
+
+**What changes**, in four pieces, each its own commit:
+
+1. **A node principal.** Beside one principal per module per node, one per node of kind
+   `node-tools`: its serving grants are the union of every assigned module's tool subjects and every
+   held seat's verbs on that node, its invoking grant is `*`, and it consumes nothing. The
+   per-module memberships are composed as today; nothing else on the bus learns a new shape.
+2. **Bundle delivery.** For every assigned module whose build produced a `bundle`, the node's
+   declaration gains an `archive` placed under a directory the controller derives, so the host
+   fetches and unpacks it as it does any artifact. The bundle's digest is what the build recorded.
+3. **The runtime's process.** One `process` per node running the runtime from its own bundle
+   (WP3), `MESH_TOOL_MODULES` composed from the unpacked entrypoints, `MESH_OPERATOR_ACCOUNT` and
+   `MESH_OPERATOR_HOME` from the account fact, `restart-on` naming every bundle so a push that
+   changes one restarts it. A node with no account composes the runtime without the two words.
+4. **The gate.** A manifest declaring `tools` and a container built on the runtime's base image is
+   refused at registration once the runtime module is registered, naming this record. It is the
+   mechanism that keeps the old pattern from returning by habit.
+
+**Proof.** Composition tests: a node with three assigned modules, one holding a seat, yields one
+process, three archives, one node principal whose grants are the union, and the same three
+memberships as before. The gate's test: the packet-filter manifest as it is today is refused once
+the runtime is registered.
+
+## WP3 — The runtime is a module, and the console is its serving mode
+
+*mesh-tools and mesh-catalog. A day.*
+
+**What changes.** mesh-tools gains a `bundle` artifact of itself beside its images, and its manifest
+becomes the `node-tools` module: a package for the interpreter, the loopback listener the console
+declared, `invokes: *`, and nothing else — the process is the controller's to compose (WP2). In the
+catalogue, `mesh-console` is retired as a module and `node-tools` assigned where it was. The
+runtime's `serve` keeps answering MCP on loopback; the person's end of it keeps the name *console*
+([glossary](../../00-META/glossary.md)).
+
+**Proof.** On every node: the console's container is gone, `node-tools` runs as a unit the host
+wrote, `tools/list` on loopback answers as before, and the controller's verbs answer through it.
+This is the first live step, and it is reversible by re-assigning `mesh-console`.
+
+## WP4 — The first holder moves: the packet filter
+
+*mesh-catalog. Half a day. The live proof of ADR 0175.*
+
+**What changes.** The nftables module drops its container, its `NET_ADMIN` and its runtime
+artifact; its tools bundle stays and its claim stays. Its `remove` and `reload` escalate inside the
+tool where they need root, which they have, since the runtime runs as the node's account.
+
+**Proof.** `node-packet-filter.rules@<node>`, `reload` and `remove` answer from the runtime on all
+four machines; `docker ps` shows no `mesh-nftables`; `status` is well. Then the fail2ban holder
+proposed in an open change follows the same way when it lands.
+
+## WP5 — The shell, on a server first
+
+*mesh-catalog #224, already written. Half a day to assign and prove.*
+
+**Order.** Assign `zsh` to one server; push; `login-shell.execute@<server> command="uptime"`
+answers; the account's login shell reads zsh; its `~/.zshrc` carries the mesh's block with the
+operator's lines around it. Then the other three nodes. The two things the manifest cannot say
+— the `user` shape applying only where the seat is held, and a second shell module installed
+beside the holder — are the first follow-up record after this document.
+
+## WP6 — The service manager, on a workstation
+
+*mesh-host #72 merged first; mesh-catalog #224. Half a day.*
+
+**Order.** Merge the host's user-scope change and let it roll. Assign `systemd` everywhere;
+`node-service-manager.units@<node> scope=user` answers on a workstation. Then the first user-scoped
+unit the mesh sends: the window manager's reload watcher, declared `scope: user` by the window
+manager module when WP7 writes it — until then, the host's change is proven by its tests and by
+the verb answering.
+
+## What is deliberately not here
+
+- **The graphical stack's seats** (WP7). Each begins with a record naming its holders and verbs,
+  and the first graphical module asks the resolver a question this document cannot answer for it:
+  whether a held seat gates another's assignment.
+- **Settings for the theme knobs** (WP8). Blocked on the settings record proposed in an open change
+  and on [issue 168](../../04-ISSUES/168-a-setting-reaches-every-file-and-contribution/00-report.md).
+- **Reload without restart.** WP2 restarts the runtime on a bundle change; a reload that keeps the
+  other modules' tools up during one module's change is a refinement for after WP4 proves the
+  simple form.
+- **Lingering.** A user-scoped unit answers only while the account's manager runs; declaring
+  lingering for the account is a field on the `user` shape, decided when a server first needs a
+  user unit.
+
+## How this list is kept true
+
+Each package's proof is run on the live mesh when the package is finished and its line here gains
+the date and the commit, the way [ADR 0170](../../02-DECISIONS/0170-the-firewall-seat-serves-its-verbs.md)
+carries *built and proven live*. A package whose proof fails is not reworded; the failure is
+recorded under it and the package stays open. When WP6 is proven, design 37's status moves to
+`implemented` for what it covers and this document's to the same.
@@ -0,0 +1,170 @@
+---
+layer: to-be
+status: designed
+code: []
+updated: 2026-10-02
+decisions:
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0183-the-anthropic-licence-manager-is-a-module-and-hands-tokens-to-the-agent-over-the-bus.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0024-model-access-is-a-provision.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0050-model-access-is-vendor-agnostic.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0054-model-usage-is-recorded-at-two-grains.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0113-the-vault-makes-every-secret.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0126-a-module-declares-its-own-seats.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0132-a-seat-carries-the-tools-its-holder-must-serve.md
+  - 02-DECISIONS/0159-a-tool-call-names-the-machine-and-a-holder-serves-its-seats-verbs.md
+---
+
+# 39 — The Anthropic licence manager
+
+**One module knows every Anthropic licence the mesh has, keeps each alive, decides which consumer gets
+which, and hands every node's agent its token over the bus.**
+[ADR 0183](../../02-DECISIONS/0183-the-anthropic-licence-manager-is-a-module-and-hands-tokens-to-the-agent-over-the-bus.md)
+decides it; this is the shape. It is the successor of the predecessor's manager module, built from what
+that module learned the hard way, and the counterpart of [36 — The operator's agent on a machine](36-the-operators-agent-on-a-machine.md),
+which is the consumer on every node.
+
+## 1. What it is
+
+A module, `claude-licence-manager`, holding the mesh-scoped seat **`anthropic-licence-manager`**. One
+holder, on the node the operator assigns it to — the control node is the natural one, and nothing in the
+definition says so. It requires a database for its own store and the bus; it claims the seat; it serves
+the seat's verbs. It has no port, no route, no file under anyone's home.
+
+Its store holds four things:
+
+| table | holds |
+|---|---|
+| **licences** | name, kind (`subscription` or `api-key`), the account's identity (id, address, organisation) once adopted, the grant encrypted at rest, when the access token expires, when the refresh token expires, consecutive failures, the refresh lease, when a person was last notified |
+| **bindings** | one row per consumer: kind (`node-agent`, `node-session`, `worker`), its key (the node, or the node and the worker), the licence, or *inherit* |
+| **usage** | the vendor's readings per licence per period, raw beside normalised ([ADR 0054](../../02-DECISIONS/0054-model-usage-is-recorded-at-two-grains.md)) |
+| **audit** | every switch, adoption, refusal and drift, with who asked |
+
+**The grants are encrypted with a key the vault made for the manager** — its one `secret` requirement.
+The vault keeps that key; the manager keeps the grants. That is ADR 0050's carve-out, one module, one
+node, the long-lived grants only.
+
+## 2. The licences it manages today
+
+Two subscription accounts and one API key. They differ in kind and the manager treats them so:
+
+| kind | what the grant is | refresh | what a node is handed | how the agent uses it |
+|---|---|---|---|---|
+| `subscription` | an OAuth grant: an access token that lives hours and a refresh token that lives weeks | the manager rotates it, alone | the access token only | written into the agent's credentials file by the agent module, as the operator |
+| `api-key` | a key the operator obtained from the vendor | none; a new key is a new adoption | the key | served to the agent through its key-helper setting; nothing is written under the home |
+
+## 3. Keeping a grant alive
+
+Carried from the predecessor, where each rule was earned by an incident:
+
+- **One rotation source.** Only this module calls the vendor's token endpoint. An OAuth refresh is
+  presumed to rotate the refresh token, so a second refresher presenting the old one would kill the
+  grant; whether that presumption holds is to be measured in the lab, and the design is safe either way.
+- **A lease per licence**, taken in the store before the row is read. A duplicate run sees the token its
+  predecessor just wrote, finds hours of life on it, and does nothing.
+- **An expiry floor and a cadence.** Within an hour of expiry a refresh must happen; otherwise a grant is
+  rotated once it is older than a declared setting, so a node that misses one rotation still holds hours
+  of life and a broken refresh surfaces in minutes rather than the next morning.
+- **Failure is counted and escalated once.** Consecutive failures are recorded; past a threshold a
+  notification is emitted, and at most once a day while it stays broken — the predecessor sent one alarm
+  411 times in 35 hours and the incident went unnoticed inside its own alarm.
+- **A refresh token's own expiry is warned about three days ahead**, because the only remedy is a person
+  logging in again.
+- **The vendor's reason is logged**, never only the status code: a malformed request and a revoked grant
+  both answer 400, and the predecessor built three concurrency fixes for a bug that was a wrong client id.
+
+## 4. Handing a token to a node
+
+Every node that runs the agent module registers that module's public key with the seat when it first
+runs. From then on:
+
+- **On rotation**, the manager calls `claude-code.apply@<node>` on every node bound to the rotated
+  licence, with the new token sealed to that node's module key. The module answers *applied*, or
+  *refused* and why, and the manager records it.
+- **On a switch**, the same call with the other licence's token, and the binding is the authority: the
+  module applies a bind without comparing expiries, because across two licences the numbers are
+  unrelated.
+- **On a pull** — the module starting, or finding its token near expiry — the module calls the seat's
+  `current` verb for its binding and is answered sealed the same way.
+- **Never as an event.** What the manager emits names the licence and the outcome and carries no token.
+
+A node whose module has not registered a key cannot be handed a token, and the manager says so by name
+rather than falling silent. A node whose module refuses — a wrong identity, a stale grant within one
+lineage — is recorded as drift and reported.
+
+## 5. Who gets which licence
+
+Three consumer kinds, the predecessor's touchpoints with their fallbacks:
+
+| consumer | bound by | falls back to | if the bound licence cannot be served |
+|---|---|---|---|
+| **the node's interactive agent** | the node | nothing: an unbound node has no licence and the agent says so | keeps the last token, which expires within hours; a notification is emitted |
+| **the mesh's session on a node** | the node, for that session | the node's agent licence | refused |
+| **a worker** | the worker | the node's session licence, then the node's | refused: a worker never borrows a person's account |
+
+**One agent directory per machine, shared by every interactive session**, so a node's binding is the
+licence of all its sessions at once. A worker is a consumer of its own because it runs from a home of its
+own, with its own agent directory and credentials file, which the agent module on that node writes for
+it as it writes the operator's — the predecessor ran its agents exactly so.
+
+**Binding is a person's act through the seat's verbs**, listed by the console: `bind`, `switch`,
+`release`. **Exhaustion is observed, not acted on**: usage is read every few minutes, a crossing of a
+declared threshold in the five-hour window is notified once per crossing, and moving a consumer is the
+operator's call. Switching remains a reaction, not a declaration
+([ADR 0024](../../02-DECISIONS/0024-model-access-is-a-provision.md)), and an automated policy — move to the
+least-used licence, stay off a dying one — is designed later if wanted, on the readings this module
+already keeps.
+
+## 6. Adopting a grant
+
+A licence enters the mesh one of two ways, and the token never passes through a prompt, a terminal or an
+argument:
+
+- **From a node's login.** A person logs in on a node, as they always have. The agent module there reads
+  the account's identity from the agent's own state file, and offers the full grant to the seat sealed
+  to the manager's key. The manager adopts it into the licence the node is bound to **only if the
+  identity matches** that licence's recorded account; a licence not yet identified is identified by its
+  first adoption; a mismatch is refused and notified, because the predecessor once filed one account's
+  grant into another's row this way.
+- **An API key** is delivered to the manager by the operator through the seat's `adopt` verb from a file
+  on the manager's node, never as an argument.
+
+## 7. What it emits and serves
+
+**Events**, no secret in any: `licence.rotated`, `licence.switched`, `licence.adopted`,
+`licence.failing`, `licence.refused`, `usage.read` — the audit logger records them all.
+
+**The seat's verbs**, the contract every future holder must serve: `licences` (each with kind,
+identity, expiry, failures, who is bound), `bindings`, `bind`, `switch`, `release`, `refresh` (now, one
+or all), `usage` (current and history), `adopt`, `register` (a node's module key), `current` (a
+consumer's token, sealed, asked by the consumer's module).
+
+## 8. Settings
+
+The refresh cadence; the usage threshold; the notification cooldown. Each declared with a default, so
+one definition serves and one mesh may differ.
+
+## How it is checked
+
+| Check | Defends |
+|---|---|
+| two refresh runs started together rotate one grant once; the second does nothing and says so | ADR 0183, one rotation source |
+| every event the manager emits is free of any token; the hand-over opens only with the receiving module's key | ADR 0183, to-be 32 §10 |
+| a worker bound to a dead licence is refused, never answered with another licence's token | ADR 0183, the fallbacks |
+| a grant offered with a mismatching identity is refused and one notification emitted | ADR 0183, attribution |
+| a failing licence notifies once, and once a day after, not once per tick | §3 |
+| the console lists the seat's verbs and `switch` changes a workstation's token end to end | ADR 0132, the exit of the build |
+
+## What this does not settle
+
+- An automated switch on exhaustion (§5).
+- Whether an OAuth refresh token is single-use; the lab measures it, and §3 holds either way.
+- How the mesh's own session and a worker read their token on a node once those exist
+  ([to-be 15](15-the-agent-session.md), [ADR 0003](../../02-DECISIONS/0003-agents-are-persistent-employees.md)):
+  the agent module on that node is their local source, and the reading is theirs to design.
+
+## References
+
+- [ADR 0183](../../02-DECISIONS/0183-the-anthropic-licence-manager-is-a-module-and-hands-tokens-to-the-agent-over-the-bus.md) — the decision
+- [36 — The operator's agent on a machine](36-the-operators-agent-on-a-machine.md) — the consumer on every node
+- [14 — Model access](14-model-access.md) — the vendor-blind provision this sits beside
+- the predecessor's `claude-licences` module: the lease, the floor, the cadence, the cooldown, the identity guard — read 2026-10-02
@@ -41,6 +41,8 @@ document is written and this one's status becomes `implemented`.
 | [`29-a-node-has-operator-accounts.md`](29-a-node-has-operator-accounts.md) | **In progress.** A node has an operator account and a resource may live under its home — built in the controller; the ssh-client module, the SSH CA, the `~/.ssh` boundary and user-scoped services are not. The account fact still wants its decision record | [ADR 0112](../../02-DECISIONS/0112-a-module-definition-names-no-node-mesh-or-path.md), [ADR 0051](../../02-DECISIONS/0051-shared-data-is-the-operators.md) |

 | [`32-what-a-module-declares.md`](32-what-a-module-declares.md) | **Proposed.** What a module declares and what the bus derives from it: three namespaces, subjects from local names, queues never declared, the five relationships, and the build-publish-deploy lifecycle on one bus | [ADR 0126](../../02-DECISIONS/0126-a-module-declares-its-own-seats.md), [ADR 0127](../../02-DECISIONS/0127-amqp-is-a-provision-not-the-bus.md), superseded by [ADR 0131](../../02-DECISIONS/0131-everything-on-the-mesh-speaks-to-the-broker-seat.md) (superseding [ADR 0125](../../02-DECISIONS/0125-the-bus-is-the-only-broker.md)), [ADR 0041](../../02-DECISIONS/0041-events-are-a-relationship.md) |
+| [`37-the-operators-machine.md`](37-the-operators-machine.md) | **In progress.** Every configurable thing on a node is a module, the home included; one default per module varied by settings or kept regions; roles a machine has once as seats with tool contracts; one tool runtime per node on the host side | [ADR 0173](../../02-DECISIONS/0173-the-operators-machine-is-the-meshs-and-a-module-is-what-it-declares.md), [0174](../../02-DECISIONS/0174-a-node-varies-a-module-through-settings-and-kept-regions-never-an-edit.md), [0175](../../02-DECISIONS/0175-one-tool-runtime-per-node-serves-every-modules-tools-on-the-host-side.md), [0176](../../02-DECISIONS/0176-the-login-shell-is-a-node-seat-and-execute-is-its-contract.md), [0177](../../02-DECISIONS/0177-a-unit-may-be-user-scoped-and-the-service-manager-is-a-node-seat.md) |
+| [`38-building-the-operators-machine.md`](38-building-the-operators-machine.md) | **In progress.** The work of design 37 as packages: the runtime serves many modules, the controller composes one per node, the console becomes its serving mode, the packet filter moves first, then the shell and the service manager — tested on the live mesh by the operator's decision | [ADR 0175](../../02-DECISIONS/0175-one-tool-runtime-per-node-serves-every-modules-tools-on-the-host-side.md), [0160](../../02-DECISIONS/0160-the-mesh-issues-an-assignments-subjects-and-a-runtime-serves-what-it-is-issued.md), [0149](../../02-DECISIONS/0149-the-live-mesh-is-the-test-bed.md) |

 ## Not yet written