Files
hq/03-DESIGN
jochen 858e5413fa
mesh/merge-gate pass: the change touches no module of the mesh's graph
mesh/repo-check pass: its merge-check.sh passed
mesh/delivery superseded: a newer head of the same pull request
Issue 356: the operator's command ran a stale engine, and a hand-over had no channel
The engine on every node's PATH was the one a person copied at installation, a build behind every delivery; and the way out of issue 339 was a terminal act at the machine, which ADR 0272 and the operator's rule of the same day make impossible to type. The record, located in the engine, the controller and the catalogue's check, with the fixes' pull requests; ADR 0272 gains the rule as a dated insight: the operator types one command, nox, and every text addressed to the operator names a nox line. words.py now refuses a daemon's line, with --list lines for the catalogue's copy; the lifecycle and the operator's-machine designs and issue 343's quotations are reworded.
2026-10-09 18:36:58 +02:00
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03-DESIGN

The authoritative specification. Implementation is built against what is written here.

Two layers

Folder What it is
00-as-is/ The mesh that exists today. Shipped behaviour, described as it is — including behaviour nobody would choose again.
01-to-be/ The mesh being built toward. Every statement traceable to a record in 02-DECISIONS/.

They are never mixed. A statement about the future does not belong in an as-is document, and an as-is document is never edited to describe an intention.

When a to-be design ships, it does not move. Its as-is counterpart is written or updated, the to-be document's status becomes implemented, and both stand — one describing what runs, the other recording what was intended. Deleting the intention loses the reasoning, which is the expensive half.

Frontmatter

Every design document (not the READMEs) carries:

---
layer: as-is | to-be
status: designed | in-progress | implemented | abandoned
code: []                 # owning code repo(s), from 00-META/repos.md
updated: YYYY-MM-DD      # date of the last status change, not of text edits
decisions: []            # 02-DECISIONS/ records this document rests on
---

For an as-is document, status: implemented is the normal state — it describes something that runs — and code: names where that implementation lives.

Status changes when implementation state changes, never because design text was edited. An implemented claim must be defensible from the owning repository's main branch, not from intent. If it cannot be checked, it is in-progress.

Cross-cutting views are generated from this frontmatter by the hq-status skill and never written to disk.

What belongs here

Functional analysis, architectural description, and specification — prose and diagrams only, no code. A manifest field may be named; a manifest may not be pasted. A document enters the to-be layer only after the decision behind it is recorded in 02-DECISIONS/ and the research that produced it is closed.

Subfolders are encouraged where a layer grows enough to need them.