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+---
+status: open
+opened: 2026-09-22
+located-in: []
+fixed-by:
+amended-design:
+---
+
+# 093 — The successor proxy cannot serve what the predecessor still serves
+
+## What was observed
+
+On the control-node, hours after it was adopted, 2026-09-22.
+
+Assigning the first web module to the adopted node was refused:
+
+```
+nothing provides "route", wanted by <module>
+```
+
+Every module that must be reachable by name requires a **route**, and the mesh has one provider of
+it: its own proxy. That proxy runs on the machine's own network and binds the two public ports
+directly. It declares no port mapping, so a node's `ports` setting cannot move it
+([ADR 0100](../../02-DECISIONS/0100-a-node-in-use-is-adopted-before-it-is-converged.md) moves a
+*published mapping*). The predecessor's proxy holds those ports and serves every public name on
+the machine. The two cannot run at once.
+
+So there is a circle:
+
+- a web module cannot be taken until the mesh's proxy runs;
+- the mesh's proxy cannot run until the predecessor's stops;
+- when the predecessor's stops, **every name it serves goes dark** — because the mesh's proxy
+  serves only what mesh modules contributed, and the predecessor's services are not modules yet.
+
+Adoption was built for exactly this shape and does not cover it. It keeps a **file** as it was and
+a **container** as it was, holding each until its module is taken. It has nothing to say about a
+service whose successor is *different software*: the predecessor's proxy and the mesh's read
+different configuration and share no container name, so there is nothing to hold — only something
+to replace, all at once, for every name at the same moment.
+
+## Why it matters beyond this instance
+
+The proxy is the first case, not the only one. Any provision with exactly one provider that owns a
+scarce machine-wide resource has this shape: a resolver on port 53, a mail relay on 25, a
+certificate authority. The migration's rule — one service at a time, each when its data has moved
+— holds only while the successor can stand beside the predecessor. Where it cannot, the mesh
+currently offers no way to take one step at a time.
+
+It also decides the migration's order. The runbook had the proxy last, as the tidy final cutover.
+It has to be first, because everything reachable by name waits on it.
+
+## Open questions
+
+- Should the mesh's proxy be able to serve routes it did not derive — a predecessor's names, given
+  to it as the operator's own configuration, each disappearing when the module that owns that name
+  contributes its route? That keeps the predecessor's configuration alive under the mesh's proxy,
+  which is what adoption promises everywhere else.
+- Or should a provision be satisfiable by an **adapter**: a module that provides `route` by writing
+  into the predecessor's proxy, so modules migrate one at a time while the predecessor still
+  serves, and the proxy itself is taken last?
+- What becomes of the certificates in either case? The predecessor holds them; the successor would
+  otherwise ask a public authority for every name at the moment of the cutover.
+- Is there a general rule here for "a requirement whose only provider owns a scarce port", or is
+  each such provision its own decision?