jschoubben
87f464cc5f
The substrate's store and the postgres module are the same thing. They were two rows only while the substrate was a different KIND of thing — a store raised from a bundle cannot provide postgres-database, so anything wanting a database needed a second server. It is visible on any mesh built today: mesh-store and postgres, two containers, the same image. Which name survives is settled by the naming rule. Where a consumer speaks a protocol the interface is the protocol, and "database" is not a capability. The control plane's own queries use distinct on and on conflict, so the coupling is to postgres and a "store" module would advertise a swap that fails the first time anyone tries it. The broker collapses the same way with a different outcome: amqp IS a protocol that several implementations speak, so amqp is a legitimate provision and lavinmq is one provider of it. So adopting the substrate is not only an upgrade path — it is two rows of a mesh's module list becoming one, twice. And it leaves nothing that is a specialty after the pivot, which is the claim the whole design rests on and is not true today for exactly those two. Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01D6qtiYU3P9jk3pnAXyAFyx
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.