Files
hq/01-RESEARCH/README.md
T
jschoubben 702efca6bb Base layer: the mesh as it is, under the mesh as it should be
HQ held only the to-be. Every reader had to already know the system the
decisions were about, and an as-is claim had nowhere to live except inside
an intention.

Adds 02-DESIGN/00-as-is — eleven documents written from the implementation
and the operational record, not from intent, including the parts nobody
would choose again. The two existing designs move under 01-to-be. Layers
are declared in frontmatter and never mix: a design that ships does not
move, its as-is counterpart is written, and both stand.

Back-fills adr/0001-0014 for decisions taken in implementation and never
recorded — the broker, the module abstraction, the mesh database, managed
files, provisioning, migrations, the workspace removal, failing loudly,
the constitution, application placement, linking, the employee model, the
artifact, the three silos. Each marked reconstructed, dated from the
history, and citing the evidence it was recovered from. The two existing
records renumber to 0015 and 0016 so the ledger runs oldest first;
0017 extends 0015 to modules outside the core, principle only — the
domain list is deliberately not invented here.

how-we-build.md becomes the source of the mesh constitution, with a sync
playbook, so the enforced copy stops being the only one that is true.

Process becomes explicit: five playbooks, eight thin skills that defer to
them, a repository map, and AGENTS.md with CLAUDE.md as its include.

The five Observations become 04-ISSUES 001-005 where they can be owned and
closed. 006 is new and uncomfortable: HQ is not indexed into the knowledge
base. That claim is what decision 27 rests on, it was never checked, and
the README now says so instead of repeating it.

Also corrects the ADR index into something generated, the "02-DESIGN is
empty" claim, the VISION.md pointer that did not survive the repo split,
and a note asserting the symlink rule was contradicted — it was a
misreading; the rule forbids hand-made links, the installer links by design.
2026-08-23 03:08:26 +02:00

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# 01-RESEARCH
Investigations that have not yet hardened into design.
## Structure
Each effort lives in `NNN-descriptive-name/` and **must** contain `status.md`, carrying its
state in YAML frontmatter and a prose summary below it:
```yaml
---
status: ongoing | graduated | abandoned
initiated: YYYY-MM-DD
touches: [] # design docs, subsystems or areas the effort bears on
became: [] # required when status is terminal — what it turned into
---
```
The prose says what is being investigated, why, and what it touches. It does not restate the
status — status lives in one place, and two places is one too many.
Further documents in the same folder hold the work itself: notes, evidence, option analyses,
draft designs.
## Lifecycle
| status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| `ongoing` | Investigation in progress. |
| `graduated` | Checked against `00-GENESIS`, decided in `adr/`, and specified in `02-DESIGN` — see `became:`. |
| `abandoned` | Stopped or superseded. Nothing is deleted. |
An effort graduates by producing a decision record **and** a `02-DESIGN` entry. It is abandoned
in place — never deleted. What was rejected, and why, is the more expensive half to
rediscover.
Starting and closing efforts is playbook territory:
[`00-GENESIS/process/01-research.md`](../00-GENESIS/process/01-research.md) and
[`02-graduation.md`](../00-GENESIS/process/02-graduation.md).
## Rules
- Markdown only. Do not skip or reuse a sequence number.
- **Evidence, not assertion.** An effort that measured nothing has not finished.
- Research describes real observations but **never identifies the mesh it observed**. The shape
of a finding survives anonymisation intact.