Files
hq/03-DESIGN
jschoubben c557f99cba Record what testing podman actually showed
0060 said the container runtime was a separate decision. It is now made, and
the reasoning is worth keeping because it is the opposite answer to the same
question one paragraph earlier.

Abstracting service managers is lossy -- systemd and OpenRC are different
models and LoadState has no equivalent. Container runtimes converged on one CLI
deliberately, so almost nothing is lost: checked against podman 6.1.0, run,
rm -f and docker's own template syntax for state and labels all work unchanged.
Only the probe differs. So: a two-entry lookup, not an interface.

The difference that is NOT in the CLI is the one that would have shipped
silently. Podman accepts --restart unless-stopped, records it, and has no
daemon to act on it -- containers do not return after a reboot unless
podman-restart.service is enabled, which by default it is not. Every command
reports success and the effect does not happen.

That belongs in the declaration rather than the host: a node using podman is
told to enable the unit. Which is what made the service shape's missing 'boot'
field visible, and it is now built.
2026-08-27 23:59:05 +02:00
..
2026-08-25 01:55:52 +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.