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 / 01-to-be
The mesh being built toward. Every statement here traces to a record in
02-DECISIONS/; nothing arrives by drafting.
A document here describes an intention. What currently runs is in
00-as-is/, and the two are never merged — when something ships, the as-is
document is written and this one's status becomes implemented.
| Document | Covers | Rests on |
|---|---|---|
00-work-breakdown.md |
How the decomposition gets built, in what order, and where a human must look | ADR 0015 |
01-end-to-end-testing.md |
The lab: a real mesh a change can be run against before it reaches nodes | ADR 0016, 0029 |
02-scenario-declaration.md |
What a scenario declares — the underlay, and what to place on it | ADR 0031 |
03-scenario-lifecycle.md |
What happens to a scenario — raise, snapshot, restore, move, destroy | ADR 0032 |
04-lab-installation.md |
Getting the lab onto a clean machine, and why it verifies capability rather than installation | ADR 0008 |
Not yet written
- The eight bounded contexts. ADR 0015 decides the decomposition; the per-context specifications do not exist yet. The work breakdown says in what order they are needed.
- Domain grouping outside the core. ADR 0017 settles the principle and explicitly does not settle the domain list. That is a research effort, not a design document, until it concludes.