The lab comes first, and its first scenario has no pipeline #4

2026-08-23T19:57:28Z

jschoubben commented

2026-08-23 19:57:28 +00:00

The lab was designed around a module under test, where a scenario is a complete mesh — forge, coordinator, cascade, verify. That is unusable for building the new mesh: all four are tier 2 and do not exist yet.

And research 009 had the sequence backwards. It put the lab at phase B, verifying tiers already built. But tier 0 is the component that takes over a machine's packages, services and network — it cannot be developed against a machine anyone needs. The lab has to exist before the thing it will test.

ADR 0029 splits scenarios into two classes:

	Bootstrap	Full
Contains	VMs, the host binary, a pinned bundle	a complete mesh
Verdict from	what the host reports about what it reconciled	a pipeline result ending in verify
Exists to	develop the mesh	test what runs on it

The first is a strict subset of the second — same virtualisation, networking and lifecycle, stopping before a control plane exists — so the second is reached by addition, not rework.

The consequence worth having: raising a node from nothing stops being the least-exercised path in the system and becomes the inner development loop.

It also settles the runner's two jobs — scenario lifecycle immediately, assertion execution later.

Corrects a stale claim found while amending: the design argued scenarios were affordable with system containers and would not be with VMs. ADR 0016 superseded that reasoning; the text hadn't followed.

Issue 007 — the lab's very first requirement is installed and unusable. The virtualisation package is present and explicitly installed; both units disabled, operator in no group, client reports the server unreachable. Not issue 001 again: that's an install failing while reporting success. This is an install succeeding when success was not the point. A package is files; a capability is a running service and an identity permitted to reach it — and the module model has no vocabulary for the second.

The lab was designed around *a module under test*, where a scenario is a complete mesh — forge, coordinator, cascade, verify. That is unusable for building the new mesh: all four are tier 2 and do not exist yet. And research 009 had the sequence backwards. It put the lab at phase B, verifying tiers already built. But tier 0 is the component that takes over a machine's packages, services and network — it cannot be developed against a machine anyone needs. **The lab has to exist before the thing it will test.** **ADR 0029** splits scenarios into two classes: | | Bootstrap | Full | |---|---|---| | Contains | VMs, the host binary, a pinned bundle | a complete mesh | | Verdict from | what the host reports about what it reconciled | a pipeline result ending in verify | | Exists to | **develop the mesh** | **test what runs on it** | The first is a strict subset of the second — same virtualisation, networking and lifecycle, stopping before a control plane exists — so the second is reached by *addition*, not rework. The consequence worth having: **raising a node from nothing stops being the least-exercised path in the system and becomes the inner development loop.** It also settles the runner's two jobs — scenario lifecycle immediately, assertion execution later. **Corrects a stale claim** found while amending: the design argued scenarios were affordable with system containers and would not be with VMs. ADR 0016 superseded that reasoning; the text hadn't followed. **Issue 007** — the lab's very first requirement is installed and unusable. The virtualisation package is present and explicitly installed; both units disabled, operator in no group, client reports the server unreachable. Not issue 001 again: that's an install *failing* while reporting success. This is an install *succeeding* when success was not the point. A package is files; a capability is a running service and an identity permitted to reach it — and the module model has no vocabulary for the second.

jschoubben referenced this issue from a commit

2026-08-23 20:24:15 +00:00

Merge pull request 'The lab comes first, and its first scenario has no pipeline' (#4) from design/lab-bootstrap-scenario into main

jschoubben closed this pull request

2026-08-23 20:24:16 +00:00

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Reference: novox/hq#4