Files
hq/03-DESIGN
jschoubben 2baf22ac43 A pair is a module and a provider, not two machines
Amends the credentials page, which said "every pair has its own
credential" and meant two machines. Built that way, it was wrong in a
way that only shows on a real node: a machine running several services
against one database server had one credential between them, so the
provider refused to plan at all and the consuming node quietly gave the
first module a credential and the rest nothing.

The page already argues the case against itself — one credential with
many holders is the first of the three faults it was written to remove.
It just drew the boundary at the machine.

Two modules on one node are as separate as two on different nodes, and
one login opening both is what this page exists to prevent. It is also
what makes withdrawal possible: one role per machine cannot say that
this module has lost its login and the others still have theirs.
2026-09-01 02:46:37 +02:00
..

03-DESIGN

The authoritative specification. Implementation is built against what is written here.

Two layers

Folder What it is
00-as-is/ The mesh that exists today. Shipped behaviour, described as it is — including behaviour nobody would choose again.
01-to-be/ The mesh being built toward. Every statement traceable to a record in 02-DECISIONS/.

They are never mixed. A statement about the future does not belong in an as-is document, and an as-is document is never edited to describe an intention.

When a to-be design ships, it does not move. Its as-is counterpart is written or updated, the to-be document's status becomes implemented, and both stand — one describing what runs, the other recording what was intended. Deleting the intention loses the reasoning, which is the expensive half.

Frontmatter

Every design document (not the READMEs) carries:

---
layer: as-is | to-be
status: designed | in-progress | implemented | abandoned
code: []                 # owning code repo(s), from 00-META/repos.md
updated: YYYY-MM-DD      # date of the last status change, not of text edits
decisions: []            # 02-DECISIONS/ records this document rests on
---

For an as-is document, status: implemented is the normal state — it describes something that runs — and code: names where that implementation lives.

Status changes when implementation state changes, never because design text was edited. An implemented claim must be defensible from the owning repository's main branch, not from intent. If it cannot be checked, it is in-progress.

Cross-cutting views are generated from this frontmatter by the hq-status skill and never written to disk.

What belongs here

Functional analysis, architectural description, and specification — prose and diagrams only, no code. A manifest field may be named; a manifest may not be pasted. A document enters the to-be layer only after the decision behind it is recorded in 02-DECISIONS/ and the research that produced it is closed.

Subfolders are encouraged where a layer grows enough to need them.