jschoubben
5e83ac2c22
Jochen: a normal application has 3-5 ADRs, maybe 10 for a large one, and we are at 65. Fair, and the cause is mine -- I recorded every FINDING as a decision rather than every fork in the road. Two merges, both cases where one decision had been split across many records because it was taken over several days rather than at once. 0019 absorbs ten records about how this repository works: what it is and that it is public, the folder flow, the two design layers, the issue front door, status in frontmatter, playbooks, the naming rule, the product name. Those were never ten decisions -- they were one, seen from ten angles as the repository took shape. 0016 absorbs the five about the lab: a node is a virtual machine, a router is scenery, a scenario declares the underlay, a scenario is a closed address space, and the two scenario classes. Same pattern -- one design, split by the order it was worked out in. The consolidated 0019 also raises the bar for what earns a record, since that is what produced 65: a record is warranted when there is a genuine fork -- a direction reversed, an alternative that will be proposed again, something contested. A finding is not a decision, and a bug is certainly not. Everything else belongs in the design document where the reasoning is actually read. The checker earned its place here. Deleting nine records left 13 dangling links across the repository and it named every one, including in AGENTS.md. Nothing was found by reading. Remaining clusters worth the same treatment: the host (8 records), delivery (5), modules (6), connectivity (4), substrate and control plane (4). That would be 52 down to roughly 30.
03-DESIGN / 00-as-is
The mesh as it stands. These documents describe what runs, including the parts nobody would choose again — an as-is layer that only records the good decisions is a brochure.
They are written from the implementation and from the operational record, not from intent. Where the two disagree, the implementation wins and the disagreement is stated.
| Document | Covers |
|---|---|
00-overview.md |
The whole in one pass — what a node is, what a module is, how work reaches it |
01-mesh-and-transport.md |
The mesh database, the broker, discovery, and how a call reaches another node |
02-modules-and-manifests.md |
The module, the manifest, and features as the unit of work |
03-provisioning.md |
Declared requirements, provisioners, credentials, and cross-node grants |
04-delivery.md |
Push to running: the three silos, levels, and what a green pipeline proves |
05-runtime-and-installation.md |
The node runtime, its modes, and how a node comes into being |
06-configuration-and-secrets.md |
Managed files, value resolution, and where secrets live |
07-knowledge.md |
The two knowledge stores, and what each is for |
08-agents-and-work.md |
Agents as employees, tasks, workflows, and the meeting model |
09-interfaces-and-observability.md |
How the mesh is reached and watched — tools, board, proxy, health, thoughts |
10-module-catalogue.md |
The catalogue's shape, and what its shape says |
11-the-lab.md |
The lab — the first piece of the new shape that exists, and what it does not yet do |
What these documents are not
They are not a runbook. Operational procedure — how to fix one occurrence of something — lives in the knowledge base, which is indexed on symptoms and is the right place to search when something is broken.
They are not exhaustive. A subsystem is described to the depth at which its design is visible; below that is code.