---
status: active
initiated: 2026-10-08
touches:
  - 02-DECISIONS/0262-a-preference-has-a-default-in-its-manifest-and-the-operators-own-value-has-none.md
  - 03-DESIGN/01-to-be/27-a-module-requires-the-mesh-resolves.md
  - the catalogue's module manifests
  - the media catalogue's module manifests
became: []
---

# 037 — The catalogue's hard-coded preferences

## What is investigated

[ADR 0262](../../02-DECISIONS/0262-a-preference-has-a-default-in-its-manifest-and-the-operators-own-value-has-none.md)
lets a manifest give a **preference** a default, which the mesh-wide settings and a node's settings
override. Before it, a value a person might want to tune per machine could only be written into a
module's file as a literal. This effort lists those literals in both catalogues: the value, where it
is, the key and default it would take as a preference, and why a person would change it.

## Why

The first case was the notifier's font size, which is less than half as tall on a laptop panel of
about 240 DPI as on a desktop monitor of about 110 DPI, while X is told 96 on both. The same is true of
every size, font and gap on the desktop, and of retention counts, timeouts and thresholds in the
services. A list says which modules to convert, in what order, and which values are shared between
modules and should keep one default.

## What it touches

The manifests of both catalogues, and through ADR 0262 the controller's `settings` verb, which lists
every declared preference. Nothing is changed here: each conversion is a change to its module, made on
the operator's yes.

## Documents

- [01 — the survey](01-the-survey.md): every candidate, by module, strongest first, with the modules
  that already take settings and those that have nothing to convert.