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702efca6bb
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.
02-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 |
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.