Files
hq/04-ISSUES
jochen a11da86591 ADR 0108: a route carries the policy applied to a request
Issue 116 found the mesh's proxy applies nothing to a request — host lookup, forward. Against
what the replaced ingress actually relies on, four capabilities are missing: authentication
(three dependents, each gating an admin surface with no login of its own), refusal scoped to a
path (one, a live incident mitigation), path-scoped routing with priority, and redirect.

Policy goes on the route rather than beside it. A proxy-side settings layer keyed by route name
would keep the grant literally clean, but then "what protects this route" is answered from two
files nothing keeps in step — and a route's protection is part of what a route is.

The set is closed at those four, so a fifth is an amendment and each addition is earned by a
dependent that exists. An open middleware surface was rejected: it recreates what is being
replaced, and narrowing one later is far harder than widening a closed one.

Where policy needs a credential the declaration names a secret and never carries the value,
which keeps the existing secret machinery the only thing holding credentials. Inlining a hash
was rejected as the first credential in a declaration — a precedent easier to set than withdraw.

This re-keys the routing table by host and path with priority, which follows from the decision
rather than being a separate one: two of the four need one host routed more than one way. Equal
priorities must resolve identically every time or the proxy stops being reproducible.

The record says how it is checked, including the negative case that rots quietly — a
declaration carrying a credential value rather than a reference must be refused, so the
rejected option cannot return by accident.

08-connectivity §3 names the record and gains the subsection; issue 116 gains amended-design.
2026-09-25 13:48:18 +02:00
..

04-ISSUES

The front door for "something is wrong" at the level of the mesh's design or governance. Diagnosis happens here, where the whole mesh is in view; the fix lands in the owning code repository.

What belongs here

Belongs here Belongs in the knowledge base
The design permits a failure to be silent How to fix one occurrence of it
A documented rule is enforced by nothing A command that works around it
A stated invariant is false in practice A node-specific quirk
The owner is unknown and finding it needs the whole mesh in view Symptom → fix, once the answer is known

The knowledge base already holds the operational record and is indexed on symptoms. This folder is not a second copy of it. An issue here is a question HQ must answer; an entry there is an incident someone must clear. An issue whose answer is a general lesson belongs in both.

Structure

NNN-short-name/
  00-report.md      the symptom as observed, with the evidence; status in frontmatter
  01-diagnosis.md   the investigation trail, dated, including what was ruled out

Frontmatter, on 00-report.md

---
status: open | diagnosing | located | resolved | wontfix
opened: YYYY-MM-DD
located-in: []       # owning repo(s) or module(s), filled by diagnosis
fixed-by:            # pull request or commit reference, filled at resolution
amended-design:      # design doc path, when the root cause was a design gap
---

Rules

  • Anyone may open an issue. No localisation is required to report one.
  • The full flow is playbook 00-META/process/03-issues.md.
  • Closed issues are never deleted — they are the mesh's symptom-to-component memory.
  • wontfix is legitimate and requires a sentence saying why.