Files
hq/04-ISSUES/004-certificate-issuance-targets-production/00-report.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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Markdown

---
status: open
opened: 2026-08-22
located-in: []
fixed-by:
amended-design:
---
# 004 — Certificate issuance always targets the authority's production endpoint
## Symptom
The reverse proxy sets no staging endpoint for its certificate resolver. Issuance therefore
goes to the public authority's production endpoint in every case, including experiments.
## Why this matters
Production issuance is rate-limited per domain and per account. Every certificate experiment on
a real node consumes quota that is not replenished quickly, and exhausting it is not
recoverable by retrying — it removes the ability to issue a certificate anyone actually needs.
The consequence lands hardest on exactly the work most likely to iterate: standing up a new
node, changing how names resolve, or testing the lab's certificate authority split
([ADR 0016](../../adr/0016-a-lab-node-is-a-virtual-machine.md)).
## Evidence
- The resolver configuration declares no staging endpoint.
- Observed 2026-08-22.
## Open questions
- Should the endpoint be a node property — production for nodes serving real traffic, staging
everywhere else — rather than a fixed proxy setting?
- The lab issues its own certificates and so does not consume public quota at all. Does that
make this a problem only for experiments run outside the lab, and therefore an argument for
running them inside it?