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A session as a licence consumer needed no change either: the two sessions are two modules, so the existing (node, module) binding already names them apart. 14-model-access.md's "a step toward it and not it" is true of a worker and not of a session, and the difference is that there is one session per node rather than many per machine. Records what stays open: the worker half of that gap is real and unaffected, and belongs with 0003, which is unbuilt. Two tasks in a row that were already possible. Both were written from the design rather than from the code — the review's own finding arriving in the plan it produced. The remaining Phase 1 items should be checked against the code before being started rather than after.
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layer, status, code, updated, decisions
| layer | status | code | updated | decisions | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| to-be | in-progress |
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2026-08-31 |
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14 — Model access
ADR 0024 decided it and listed four things the mesh did not have. Written 2026-08-31, when two of them were built. The other two are still gaps and are still written as gaps — the record's own warning is that pretending otherwise is how a plan becomes a surprise.
What was built
A licence is a record, and the first provision no machine answers. Everything else the mesh brokers is answered by something running on a node. A hosted model is on nobody's machine and is reached over the public internet, so the rule that refuses two ends sharing no private network — correct everywhere else — must not apply to it. A machine on no private network at all can hold a licence, and that is not a special case to remember: it falls out of the answer not being a machine.
The name is the operator's. The personal account, the organisation's account. Those are names a person uses, and the mesh uses them too, because the whole point is saying which one a consumer uses — and an anonymous credential hanging off a provider cannot be said. Many to many, so deliberately not a claim: two machines sharing an account is the ordinary case rather than a collision.
One provision name for all of them. A module requires model-access, never anthropic. A
module that named a provider could not be moved onto a model the mesh runs itself without editing
it — and moving it is the point.
A model in a machine's own set answers it locally, and no record is consulted. That is what makes the mesh's own model an ordinary answer rather than a parallel arrangement.
Accept: taking a value the mesh did not make
Every other credential here the mesh generated, sealed to both ends and discarded. An API key arrives from a person, and the missing verb was accept: take a value, seal it to each holder, discard the plaintext. A mesh that kept operator-supplied keys readably is the arrangement this project measured and rejected.
It seals to the holders that exist at that moment, and this has a consequence that must be said out loud rather than discovered:
A consumer put on a licence after the key was supplied has no key, and the mesh cannot make one — it discarded the only copy.
So that state is reported at every point a person could meet it: when the consumer is put on the
licence, in licence list, and — decisively — the declaration is refused rather than written
without the file. A machine that resolves cleanly and receives nothing fails later, somewhere that
names neither the licence nor the mesh.
A key is read from a file or standard input, never an argument. A key on a command line is a key in shell history and in every process listing taken while it ran. It is never echoed back: what is stored is unreadable by whoever holds it, the control plane included, and printing it would put the one copy that matters on a terminal.
Refusing is felt, and that is the design working
ADR 0024 predicted it: a mesh holding three ways to reach a model refuses every consumer that has not said which — which is correct and is a great deal of saying-which the first time.
It is correct, and correct is not the same as usable. So the refusal names the candidates and the exact command. The difference between a mesh that refuses helpfully and one that merely refuses is whether anybody can act on it without going and reading something else.
Still gaps
Unchanged from ADR 0024, and deliberately not half-built:
A consumer that is not a machine. This worker uses that licence is a binding to an agent, not to a node. What is delivered still lands on a machine; what is chosen is chosen per agent, and the provisions model has no consumer identity other than a node. What exists today is per module per machine, which is a step toward it and is not it.
2026-08-31: this gap now has named consumers rather than hypothetical ones.
ADR 0026 puts two sessions on the
control-plane node — the node's own and the mesh's — each bound in its own right. See
15-the-agent-session.md.
And for sessions the gap is already closed, which was not obvious. A binding is per module per
machine, and this document called that a step toward it and not it — reasoning that a machine
cannot name an agent. It cannot; but the two sessions are two modules, because they are the
same mechanism started in different context roots and a context root is what a module delivers.
So (node, module) tells them apart, and asking for a licence per session needed no new consumer
identity. Checked rather than argued: two sessions on one machine hold different licences, each is
given its own key, and releasing one leaves the other.
What is still open is the rest of the gap, and it is the harder half. A worker is not one
per machine — many can run on one, from one module — so (node, module) cannot name them apart
and this reasoning does not extend to them. That belongs with
ADR 0003, which is unbuilt, and it
is the reason this section stays open rather than being struck out.
Switching is a reaction, not a declaration. A licence that hits its limit and must be swapped is a response to something observed. Expressing it as a declaration would make the declaration mean whatever is working right now, which is not a thing anybody declared. It belongs with observability, changing a binding — and the binding is then declared as usual. Saying this plainly is what stops the declaration language growing a conditional, and nothing built here grew one.
How it is checked
In the lab, on real machines, in the order a person would meet it: a consumer is refused with both candidates named; put on one and still refused because no key exists; the key is given on standard input and not echoed; the public half arrives saying it came from a record rather than a machine; the key arrives readable only by that machine — and it is nowhere in the control plane's own database, nor in anything that crossed the broker.