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hq/01-RESEARCH/005-domain-grouping/00-overview.md
T
jschoubben 9dc57b4712 Graduate 005; record what 0058 answered in 008
Continuing the sweep. Both were answered by records that did not cite them,
which is the same pattern 003 showed -- an effort stays active because the
decision that resolved it was reached from another direction.

005 graduates. Three of its four questions are answered: provider modules do
not group (0044), the ~50 modules that co-change with nothing stay as they are,
and 'group or leave' was never the right pair -- 0054 reframes it as authority
versus package. Worth noting the debt runs the other way too: this effort's
measurement, that reachability is the ONLY place modules genuinely co-change,
is what 0054 rests on and why connectivity is a context while nothing else
needed one.

Its fourth question moves rather than closes. Whether applications leave the
monorepo before or after they group is a sequencing question, so it belongs to
009-migration.

008 stays active, with its central question marked answered: the coordinator
converges nodes on a declaration rather than dispatching stages (0058). The
three-silo split survives with the third redefined. What 0058 explicitly does
NOT answer is how a change becomes a pipeline reliably -- detection is upstream
of everything it changed and remains the fragile input.
2026-08-28 01:40:02 +02:00

4.8 KiB

status, initiated, touches, became
status initiated touches became
graduated 2026-08-23
02-DECISIONS/0017-modules-outside-the-core-are-grouped-by-domain.md
03-DESIGN/00-as-is/10-module-catalogue.md
03-DESIGN/00-as-is/02-modules-and-manifests.md
02-DECISIONS/0044-a-module-declares-presence-instantiation-and-exclusion.md
02-DECISIONS/0054-things-that-change-together-share-an-authority.md

005 — Which domains the catalogue groups into

ADR 0017 settles that modules outside the platform core are grouped by domain rather than by single function, and deliberately does not settle the list. This effort settles the list — and, first, tests whether the premise survives measurement.

What is being investigated

Eighty-nine modules sit outside the platform core. The question is which of them belong together, and the method is evidence rather than intuition: which modules actually change together, measured across the full history of the code repository.

Why

The argument in ADR 0017 is that the catalogue's shape records what was installed rather than what anything is for — that four modules constituting "how a node is reachable" have no relationship the mesh can see, so a change to connectivity is made four times.

That argument is testable. If those modules genuinely change together, the grouping is justified by more than tidiness. If they do not, the premise needs revising before a list is drawn from it.

What it touches

The catalogue's shape, the manifest, and — for one candidate grouping — the provisioning reference itself, since a requirement names a provider module. Grouping providers would change what a consumer names.

Status

Measurement is done and is in analysis.md. It partly contradicts the premise, in a way that narrows the effort usefully:

  • Non-platform modules overwhelmingly change alone — 10% of commits touch more than one, and 50 of 89 never co-change with anything.
  • Two clusters do exist. One of them, reachability, holds up as a domain.
  • The other, the provisioned infrastructure providers, co-changes for a reason that argues against grouping rather than for it.

The remaining work is the list itself, for the modules where grouping is justified, plus the open questions below.

What it became

Closed 2026-08-28. Three of the four questions are answered, and by records that did not cite this effort — which is why it stayed open after being resolved.

Whether provider modules group at all — no. ADR 0044: there is no networking thing to install, there are concrete modules named individually. Folders assert relationships; edges record them. Provider stops being a category at the same time.

Whether "group or leave" is even the right pair of options — it was not, and that is the useful finding. ADR 0054 reframes it: things that change together share an authority, not a package. This effort's own measurement is what that record rests on — reachability being the only place modules genuinely co-change is why connectivity is a context and why nothing else needed one.

What to do with the ~50 modules that co-change with nothing — nothing. They are modules. Grouping is a tag and a query over the graph, neither of which anybody keeps true by hand.

What remains is a sequencing question, not a grouping one, and it moves rather than closes: whether applications leave the monorepo before or after they group is research 009's, because it is about how to get from here to there rather than about what the shape is.

Open (superseded by the above) questions

Question Why it is open
Whether provider modules group at all, and if so what a consumer's requirement names instead of a module. The provisioning reference is load-bearing; getting it wrong is expensive. Opinion and evidence in the analysis; not yet decided.
Whether applications group into domains now and leave the monorepo later as a unit, or leave first. Decided in principle — group first, then split — but the migration order has real cost either way.
What to do with the ~50 modules that co-change with nothing. The evidence gives no grouping signal for them at all. That may mean they are correctly sized already.
Whether "group or leave" is even the right pair of options. Research 006 finds a third fate — absorbed into the node host, ceasing to be a module at all — and argues it is the correct answer for the reachability cluster this effort measured. If so, the cluster this effort found is evidence for absorption rather than for grouping.