Files
hq/04-ISSUES/006-hq-is-not-indexed-into-the-knowledge-base/00-report.md
T
jschoubben 333356cff3 Order the records the way the system is learned
Jochen asked whether the order made sense. It did not -- it followed when
things happened to be decided, which after consolidation is fictional anyway
since record 5 alone folds decisions taken across a week.

Concretely wrong before: the domain statement sat at 8, after five engineering
rules; the constitution was scattered across 5, 12 and 17; the tiers landed at
15, 16, 21 and 22 with process records in between.

Now it walks: what the mesh is (1-3), its tiers from the bottom up (4-8), what
runs on them and how it gets there (9-10), how it is built (11-16), how it is
checked (17-18), how we work (19-23).

Two things made this safe rather than free. It is a permutation, not a
compaction, so the renames go through temporary names -- otherwise two files
want one slot and one is lost. And the reference rewrite is a single
simultaneous pass, because almost every number moved into a slot another number
was vacating; replacing one at a time would have cascaded and pointed things at
the wrong record while still resolving.

Verified: 284 [ADR NNNN](path) links across the repository, all with matching
text and target.

The ordering principle is now stated in 19 rather than left implicit -- the
repository already said "the numbering is the flow" about its folders, and
there was no reason for the records to be the exception.
2026-08-28 23:30:42 +02:00

91 lines
4.3 KiB
Markdown

---
status: open
opened: 2026-08-23
located-in: [hal, hq]
fixed-by:
amended-design:
---
# 006 — This repository is not indexed into the knowledge base, and the claim that it is holds up a decision
## Symptom
[`README.md`](../../README.md) states, as the answer to the objection against creating this
repository:
> These documents are still indexed into the knowledge base, so `recall_search` returns them
> beside everything else. One source, many surfaces — which was always the actual requirement.
Searching the knowledge base for this repository's content returns nothing.
## Evidence
Verified 2026-08-23, two searches against the mesh's operational memory:
| Query | Result |
|---|---|
| The full title of a decision record in this repository | No results |
| A distinctive phrase from the decision ledger | No results |
No entry, no partial match, no stale copy. The indexing does not exist and appears never to
have existed.
## Why this is an issue and not a task
The claim is **load-bearing**. Decision 27 separates HQ into its own repository, and the
objection it answers was that a fourth knowledge system repeats the mistake the mesh's
knowledge consolidation was created to fix. The recorded answer is *"indexing, not location"* —
that the split is safe **because** these documents remain searchable alongside everything else.
Without the indexing, the objection stands unanswered and this repository is precisely the
fourth knowledge system it was argued not to be. Either the indexing is built, or decision 27's
reasoning is amended to something that is true.
It is also, exactly, the failure this repository names in its own rules: a document stating a
rule about the mesh must say how the rule is checked. This one stated a mechanism and nobody
checked it — including in the same commit that wrote the rule.
## Open questions
- Where would the indexing run? The operational memory is written through a mesh capability;
is this a periodic sync of a repository into it, or a search surface that reads the
repository directly?
- Which store — the flat symptom-indexed memory, the structured archive, or both? They have
different lifecycles ([`03-DESIGN/00-as-is/07-knowledge.md`](../../03-DESIGN/00-as-is/07-knowledge.md)),
and this content is governed rather than incidental.
- Public repository, private mesh: the sync direction must not become a path for mesh-specific
content to arrive **into** these documents.
## Proposed direction — Nox is the search
*Added 2026-08-23.* Rather than syncing these documents into the knowledge base, **Nox
([ADR 0019](../../02-DECISIONS/0019-how-this-repository-works.md)) works from within this
repository and holds its knowledge directly.** Retrieval becomes an agent reading the source,
not a copy living in a second store.
This is a better answer than the one the README originally promised, on three counts:
- **No sync, so no drift.** The failure mode of a derived copy — the enforced copy winning
while the reasoned one quietly stops being true — cannot occur when there is no copy.
- **It dissolves the original objection properly.** The argument against a separate repository
was that it adds a fourth knowledge *system*. An agent with read access adds no store at all.
- **It is always current**, including for uncommitted work in progress.
**But it changes the promise, and that is worth stating rather than glossing.** ADR 0019's
answer was that these documents would be returned *beside everything else* in a symptom search.
An agent that must be **asked** is reachable; it is not surfacing. The two differ in exactly
the case the operational memory is designed for: someone debugging an error who has no reason
to think HQ knows anything about it.
So the open question narrows to one thing:
> When a symptom is searched and the answer happens to live in a design document or a decision
> record here, does the searcher find it without already suspecting it exists?
If Nox is the only path, the answer is no, and the reasoning in ADR 0019 needs amending rather
than satisfying. If Nox also contributes what it knows to a symptom search — or the search
consults Nox — the answer is yes and the original promise holds.
That is a design question for Nox, not a defect in this repository, and it should be settled
before ADR 0019 is treated as answered.