Files
hq/03-DESIGN
jschoubben 4f6b9f0ca5
mesh/delivery merged: source.main moved to novox/hq@6cd965b3cdf6
mesh/check being carried to 4f6b9f0ca5ff on 6cd965b3cdf6 | from e7ac664afff7
Designs 25, 51: bound the race retry to a settled heard after the pull started
A retry on any settled ever heard would apply again on every failure; the
pull's start bounds it to one retry per settled, kept in memory. The seat and
holder beside a routed image are outside a container's digest, so naming
them replaces nothing, and the verdicts gap case is named.

Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01JG73KJNrH5EgFXMKKYSrig
2026-11-04 02:16:03 +01:00
..

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 decision record in the knowledge base (ADR 0290).

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: []            # the decision records this document rests on, each "ADR NNNN"
---

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 the knowledge base and the research that produced it is closed.

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