jschoubben
eab4598494
ADR 0016 makes a lab node a virtual machine, and its reasoning is fidelity: a node boots a stock image and runs the real install, so it has to be a real machine or the thing under test is not the thing that ships. That reasoning does not reach a router. Nothing under test runs on one, it holds no identity, the mesh never installs anything on it, and no assertion is ever made about its internals. It exists so packets behave the way they behave in the world, which is the definition of scenery. So a router is a system container. What it must reproduce is kernel behaviour — translation, connection tracking, filtering, forwarding — and a container has the same kernel. Verified before deciding rather than assumed. In a plain unprivileged container: ip_forward and ipv6 forwarding both settable, nftables masquerade accepted and listed back, and the conntrack timeouts that mapping_ttl depends on both writable. No privileged mode, no nesting, no capability grants. Rejected letting the hypervisor provide NAT, on a stronger ground than speed: it makes the lab provide what the declaration is supposed to own, and it cannot express a mapping that expires, a gateway that refuses to forward, or policy between siblings. The model would shrink to fit the tool. The distinction is now load-bearing and has to stay legible: node means something under test, scenery means something that makes the test real. If the mesh ever installs anything on a router, it has become a node and this record no longer covers it.
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.