jschoubben
9ee0c63c7a
Written first as though the link were a thing to build. It is not. ADR 0001 already has it — every node connects outbound to a single broker, nothing ever connects to a node, each node declaring an exchange named for itself and consuming from its own queue. Already outbound-only, already per-node addressed, already the one channel everything arrives through. So this record is not proposing a channel. It proposes that the channel carry per-node identity instead of one shared credential. The same as-is records the fault it fixes, for the broker rather than the database: the broker's credential is mesh-wide, rotating it is a mesh-wide operation, and doing it wrong has taken the broker down. That reframes the overhead objection, which was fair against what the record said and not against what it means. Of six properties, four are already true, one is broker configuration — users, vhosts and per-queue permissions the broker already implements — and exactly one is new machinery: enrolment. Meanwhile 0037 subtracts, since a node under it holds no database credential at all. Three hand-carried shared secrets become one identity that grants only identity. Adds the option that was actually being weighed and was missing: accept the exposure as the cost of simplicity. Rejected because the simplicity IS the unfixability — the credential cannot be rotated precisely because everything holds the same one. And adds a requirement from the debugging objection, which was the strongest part of it: it must fail legibly. A boundary that refuses a node without saying why is worse than the password it replaced, because a wrong password at least announces itself. That is §5 applied to a security mechanism.
02-DECISIONS
Architecture decision records — the "why" trail behind the rules in
00-META and the specifications in 03-DESIGN.
Numbered 02 because a decision precedes the design it authorises. Research concludes,
the decision is recorded here, and only then is the design written. Following the folder
numbers walks the process in the order it happens.
One file per decision, numbered, never deleted. A superseded record has its status: changed
and gains a pointer to what replaced it — its text is never edited. The reasoning that was
rejected is the expensive half to rediscover.
The records run in the order the decisions were taken, oldest first.
Every decision is a record. There is no ledger and no index file — if a decision is worth
recording it is worth a record, and if it is not worth a record it is not recorded
(ADR 0026). A "decision" small enough to be one line is
almost always a rule, and a rule belongs in
00-META/how-we-build.md, where it is enforced and keeps the
incident that earned it.
Frontmatter
---
status: proposed | accepted | superseded
date: YYYY-MM-DD # when the decision was taken, not when it was written down
deciders: name
reconstructed: true|false # true when the record was written after the fact from evidence
superseded-by: # 02-DECISIONS/NNNN-....md, when status is superseded
extends: # 02-DECISIONS/NNNN-....md, when this record widens an earlier one
---
Body
# N. Title in plain language
## Context what was true, with evidence
## Considered Options numbered, each with why it was rejected
## Decision what was decided
## Consequences what follows, including what got harder
## References commits, pull requests, knowledge-base entries, prior art
State evidence, not assertion. "Zero of 124 modules declare brain as a dependency"
outranks "the dependency rule is not followed".
Reconstructed records
Records 0001–0014 were written on 2026-08-23, after the decisions they describe. Records 0015 onward were taken as records. Those
decisions were taken in implementation rather than in a document; the records state what was
decided and the evidence it was decided from, and each carries reconstructed: true and says
so in its first lines.
A reconstructed record is not a transcript. Where the deliberation is not recoverable, the options section states what the alternatives were and why the chosen one won on the evidence available — not a discussion that did not happen. Where a date is not establishable it says so rather than guessing.
Index
The index is generated, not maintained — run the hq-status skill, which reads the
frontmatter of every record. A hand-written index drifts from the folder it describes, and
this one had already done so after a single addition.