Files
hq/00-META/process/00-overview.md
T
jschoubben 93a1231e00 Retire the HAL name where it points forward
Skills take the hq- prefix: they are HQ process workflows, not mesh
workflows, and HQ is company-scoped now. hq-new-research, hq-graduate,
hq-new-issue, hq-diagnose, hq-amend-design, hq-handoff,
hq-sync-constitution, hq-status.

Forward-looking prose becomes Novox Mesh or simply the mesh — the root
README, AGENTS.md, the 00-META README, the mission's module example, and
one to-be document that addressed 'someone working on HAL'.

Three categories deliberately keep HAL, per ADR 0027:

The monorepo is still called hal on the forge. repos.md, every code: field
and every located-in: field name a repository that exists under that name,
and renaming them in prose would make them false.

The as-is layer and the research that measured it describe the system that
runs, and that system is called HAL. 124 modules, 9 daemons, a dead
containerised node — those are observations, not intentions.

Records 0001-0026 are immutable. A record says what was decided when it
was decided, and no record is edited for a name.

Also repoints ADR 0022's link at the renamed skill — a path fix, which the
immutability rule permits, not a change of meaning.
2026-08-23 21:26:09 +02:00

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Markdown

# Process — overview
How work moves through HQ, and who may do what. Every other document in this folder is a
playbook: trigger, who runs it, steps, outputs. Engineers and agents follow the same
playbooks; agents must not act outside them.
## The audiences
| Audience | Contract |
|---|---|
| **Engineers** | Read and write everything. HQ is the single source of truth for mission, research, design, decisions and issue diagnosis. |
| **Agents** | The same rights as engineers, exercised through these playbooks. |
| **Anyone else** | This repository is public and written for them, but it is not a support channel. Nothing here identifies the mesh it describes. |
## The knowledge flow
```
idea ──► 01-RESEARCH ──► decision (02-DECISIONS/) ──► 03-DESIGN/01-to-be ──► built (code repo)
│ │ │
│ │ └─► 03-DESIGN/00-as-is once shipped
│ └────► abandoned (recorded, kept)
└─(small/obvious, still recorded in 02-DECISIONS)──────────► 03-DESIGN directly
symptom ──► 04-ISSUES ──► diagnosis ──► code-repo fix and/or design amendment
how-we-build.md ──► constitution sync ──► knowledge base ──► injected into design meetings
```
## The two design layers
`03-DESIGN` holds two layers that are never mixed:
| Layer | What it is | Changes when |
|---|---|---|
| `00-as-is/` | The mesh that exists today. Describes shipped behaviour, including behaviour nobody would choose again. | Something ships, or an as-is claim is found to be wrong. |
| `01-to-be/` | The mesh being built toward. Every statement traceable to a record in `02-DECISIONS/`. | A decision is taken or amended. |
A to-be document that ships does not move. Its as-is counterpart is written or updated, the
to-be document's frontmatter goes to `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.
## The playbooks
| # | Playbook | Trigger |
|---|---|---|
| [01](01-research.md) | Research | An idea worth investigating before committing to design |
| [02](02-graduation.md) | Graduation & design change | Research concludes, or a design must change |
| [03](03-issues.md) | Issues | Something is wrong — often with the owner unknown |
| [04](04-build-handoff.md) | Build handoff | A design is ready to be built |
| [05](05-constitution-sync.md) | Constitution sync | `how-we-build.md` changed a rule the mesh enforces |
## Status lives in frontmatter
Research overviews, design docs, issue reports and decision records each carry their status as
YAML frontmatter (schemas in the section READMEs and playbooks). There are **no central status
files** and no decision ledger. **Every decision is a record in
[`02-DECISIONS`](../../02-DECISIONS/)** — if it is worth recording it is worth a record, and if
it is not worth a record it is not recorded. Cross-cutting views, the decision index included,
are generated on demand by the `hq-status` skill and never written to disk.