---
status: accepted
date: 2026-08-23
deciders: jochen
reconstructed: false
---

# 30. The repository structure, and the rule that names them

## Context

The tiers are settled ([research 006](../01-RESEARCH/006-mesh-from-scratch/code-skeleton.md))
and the product is named ([ADR 0027](0027-the-product-is-novox-mesh.md)), but the repositories
themselves were only ever sketched in research. Two consequences had already appeared.

[ADR 0029](0029-the-labs-first-scenario-has-no-pipeline.md) makes the lab phase 0 of the entire
migration and **could not say where it lives**, because no record named a repository.

And the research contradicted an accepted record: it listed `mesh-hq` for this repository, while
[ADR 0028](0028-hq-is-company-scoped.md) had decided `novox/hq` and explicitly rejected that
name. A design resting on research is a design resting on something that can change without a
decision.

There is also an implied naming rule that has never been written down. ADR 0027 says
repository names take `mesh`; ADR 0028 gives this repository no prefix at all. Both are right,
for a reason neither states.

## Considered options

Only the naming rule had genuine alternatives; the tier repositories follow from the tiers.

1. **No prefix — `novox/host`, `novox/control`.** The organisation already says Novox, so the
   prefix reads as stutter. Rejected once it was established that Novox delivers more than the
   mesh: with several products the prefix is not stutter, it is the product namespace doing
   real work, and the forge has no nested groups to do it instead.
2. **An organisation per product — `novox-mesh/host`.** Puts the product boundary where the
   forge's only real grouping primitive lives, so permissions and teams attach to it. Rejected
   for now as premature: no per-product access boundary exists yet, and it costs `novox-`
   repeated across every organisation.
3. **Product-prefixed repositories in the company organisation.** Chosen.

## Decision

**The naming rule:** a repository that belongs to a product carries that product's prefix. A
repository that is company-scoped does not.

That is why this one is `hq` and the mesh's are `mesh-*`. Both records were already correct;
the rule connecting them is stated here.

**The repositories:**

| Repository | Tier | Holds |
|---|---|---|
| `novox/mesh-host` | 0 | the node host — the one binary installed by hand |
| `novox/mesh-substrate` | 1 | the four pinned services, as declarations |
| `novox/mesh-control` | 2 | the control plane and its contexts |
| `novox/mesh-surfaces` | 3 | tools, web, cli — thin, no logic |
| `novox/mesh-sdk` | — | contracts shared across tiers: types, not behaviour |
| `novox/mesh-lab` | — | the lab: scenario lifecycle, networking, placement |
| `novox/hq` | — | this repository. Company-scoped ([ADR 0028](0028-hq-is-company-scoped.md)) |

**The lab is its own repository.** Its lifecycle differs from everything else in the list: it
is never shipped to a node, it outlives any single tier, and it drives virtualisation on a
workstation — which nothing else in the mesh does. Putting it inside the host would couple
development tooling to a shipped component; putting it inside the control plane would make the
bootstrap scenario depend on a tier that does not exist when it is needed.

**Tier 4 is deliberately not decided here.** Whether the catalogue is one repository, one per
domain, or one per application remains open from
[ADR 0015](0015-mesh-brokers-nodes-host-agents-think.md) and is blocked on
[research 005](../01-RESEARCH/005-domain-grouping/00-overview.md): how many repositories hold
domains cannot be answered before what the domains are. Recording the gap is the point —
`mesh-catalog` appears in the research sketch and is **not** decided by this record.

## Consequences

- [ADR 0029](0029-the-labs-first-scenario-has-no-pipeline.md) can name its target. Phase 0 has
  a home, which was the immediate blocker.
- The research sketch stops being load-bearing. It remains what it is — a sketch — and the
  design layer can now cite a record instead.
- **Seven repositories where there is currently one**, for a mesh that today lives in a single
  monorepo. That is the cost, and it is not small: seven release cadences, seven sets of
  dependencies, and cross-repository changes that were previously one commit. The offsetting
  argument is the tier rule — a boundary that only points downward is enforceable across
  repositories and merely conventional inside one.
- The prefix will read as redundant for as long as the mesh is the only product with
  repositories. That is accepted deliberately: the alternative is renaming everything at the
  moment a second product appears, which is the class of migration this project is trying to
  stop performing.
- Nothing is created yet. This records what the repositories *are*; creating them is part of
  phase 0 and after.

## References

- [ADR 0027](0027-the-product-is-novox-mesh.md) — the product name the prefix comes from.
- [ADR 0028](0028-hq-is-company-scoped.md) — why this repository has no prefix.
- [ADR 0029](0029-the-labs-first-scenario-has-no-pipeline.md) — the lab, and why it is first.
- [Research 006](../01-RESEARCH/006-mesh-from-scratch/code-skeleton.md) — the tiers, and the
  sketch this supersedes as a source.