Files
hq/02-DECISIONS
jschoubben ba0d01788e 0062: a host may be episodic; 0060's Android gap closed
0060 named the gap and did not close it: everywhere else an init runs the
launcher at boot, and Android grants neither an init to register with nor
anything worth supervising, because a supervisor would be killed alongside what
it supervises.

Closed by narrowing what is required rather than building something. A host is
resident or episodic, and both are hosts. Being killed by the platform is
disconnection, which 0036 already made ordinary -- and every mechanism an
episodic host needs already exists because it was built for laptops that close.

A partial host can join a mesh and cannot be the first node, since every
bootstrap step is a shape it refuses. Its bundle says so.

Two consequences that are easy to miss: last-heard-from means much less on an
episodic host, so a healthy phone reads as a dead server unless the reader
knows which kind it is; and a declaration may take a long time to land, which
makes 0058's outstanding-versus-failed distinction load-bearing.

Still open, and in that order: what an Android node is FOR, and only then how
it is started.
2026-08-28 01:24:07 +02:00
..

02-DECISIONS

Architecture decision records — the "why" trail behind the rules in 00-META and the specifications in 03-DESIGN.

Numbered 02 because a decision precedes the design it authorises. Research concludes, the decision is recorded here, and only then is the design written. Following the folder numbers walks the process in the order it happens.

One file per decision, numbered, never deleted. A superseded record has its status: changed and gains a pointer to what replaced it — its text is never edited. The reasoning that was rejected is the expensive half to rediscover.

The records run in the order the decisions were taken, oldest first.

Every decision is a record. There is no ledger and no index file — if a decision is worth recording it is worth a record, and if it is not worth a record it is not recorded (ADR 0026). A "decision" small enough to be one line is almost always a rule, and a rule belongs in 00-META/how-we-build.md, where it is enforced and keeps the incident that earned it.

Frontmatter

---
status: proposed | accepted | superseded
date: YYYY-MM-DD          # when the decision was taken, not when it was written down
deciders: name
reconstructed: true|false # true when the record was written after the fact from evidence
superseded-by:            # 02-DECISIONS/NNNN-....md, when status is superseded
extends:                  # 02-DECISIONS/NNNN-....md, when this record widens an earlier one
---

Body

# N. Title in plain language

## Context            what was true, with evidence
## Considered Options numbered, each with why it was rejected
## Decision           what was decided
## Consequences       what follows, including what got harder
## References         commits, pull requests, knowledge-base entries, prior art

State evidence, not assertion. "Zero of 124 modules declare brain as a dependency" outranks "the dependency rule is not followed".

Reconstructed records

Records 0001–0014 were written on 2026-08-23, after the decisions they describe. Records 0015 onward were taken as records. Those decisions were taken in implementation rather than in a document; the records state what was decided and the evidence it was decided from, and each carries reconstructed: true and says so in its first lines.

A reconstructed record is not a transcript. Where the deliberation is not recoverable, the options section states what the alternatives were and why the chosen one won on the evidence available — not a discussion that did not happen. Where a date is not establishable it says so rather than guessing.

Index

The index is generated, not maintained — run the hq-status skill, which reads the frontmatter of every record. A hand-written index drifts from the folder it describes, and this one had already done so after a single addition.