jschoubben
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.
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status, date, deciders, reconstructed
| status | date | deciders | reconstructed |
|---|---|---|---|
| accepted | 2026-04-03 | jochen | true |
4. Managed files are generated onto nodes and never edited there
Reconstructed after the fact from the evidence cited below.
Context
ADR 0003 put every binding in the mesh database. But the things that consume those bindings — environment files, service definitions, daemon configuration, firewall rules — are files on a node's disk, because that is what the software reading them requires.
So the same value exists twice: authoritatively in the database, and materialised in a file. Any edit to the file is a change to a copy. Before this decision, environment values could be pushed from a node back into the database, which made the direction ambiguous in both directions at once.
Considered options
- Bidirectional sync — a node's edits flow back to the database. Rejected, and removed. Two writers and no arbiter: whichever synced last wins, and neither is authority.
- Files are authoritative; the database is a cache of them. Rejected — it inverts ADR 0003 and returns to state that cannot be reconciled across nodes.
- Strictly one-directional: the database is written, files are generated. Chosen.
Decision
Every managed file is derived. A synchroniser regenerates it from the mesh database whenever the underlying values change. The write path is the mesh tool that owns the value; the file is an output.
This applies to generated environment files, service definitions, managed configuration, and anything else a synchroniser lists as its own.
An edit to a managed file survives until the next synchronisation and is then overwritten, without a warning, taking whatever it was fixing with it.
Consequences
- A file edited on a node is a bug with a delay on it. This is now one of the mesh's core values, and it is a consequence of this decision rather than a stance taken independently.
- To change a value you must know which tool owns it. That is a real cost, paid every time, and the reason the mesh provides a way to ask whether a given file is managed.
- Debugging by editing a file no longer works, and fails in the most confusing way available: it works, and then stops working later for no locally visible reason.
- Recovery is cheap. A node's entire managed surface can be regenerated from the database.
- Values resolve by precedence — database override, then existing file value, then generated, then manifest default — which means an unset override does not clobber a generated password. The subtlety is real and has caused its own confusion.
References
Extract hal/env-sync module, remove syncEnvToDb, 2026-04-03 — the commit that removed the node-to-database direction.- Knowledge base:
conventions/no-direct-file-mutation,provisioning(resolution priority). - Regeneration gaps:
troubleshooting/changed-manifest-default-not-rerendered,troubleshooting/config-removed-from-manifest-not-pruned.