jschoubben
b4904fec7e
The lab was designed around a module under test, with a scenario being a complete mesh — forge, coordinator, cascade, verify. That is unusable for building the new mesh, because all four are tier 2 and do not exist yet. And research 009 had the sequence backwards. It placed the lab at phase B as verification of tiers already built, but tier 0 is the component that takes over a machine's packages, services and network. It cannot be developed against a machine anyone needs. The lab has to exist before the thing it will test. ADR 0029 splits scenarios into two classes. The bootstrap scenario is virtual machines, the host binary and a pinned bundle, with the verdict coming from what the host reports about the state it reconciled. The full scenario is the designed one. The first is a strict subset of the second — same virtualisation, same networking, same lifecycle, stopping before a control plane exists — so the second is reached by addition rather than rework. The consequence worth having: raising a node from nothing stops being the least-exercised path in the system and becomes the inner development loop. It also settles the runner's two jobs. Scenario lifecycle is needed immediately, because something must materialise and reset a mesh before anything can be written against it. Assertion execution waits for the full scenario. Corrects a stale claim in the design while amending it: it argued scenarios were affordable with system containers and would not be with virtual machines. ADR 0016 superseded that reasoning and the text had not followed. Issue 007: the lab's first requirement is installed and unusable. The virtualisation package is present and explicitly installed; both units are disabled, the operator is in no group, and the client reports the server unreachable. Not issue 001 again — that is an install failing while reporting success. This is an install succeeding when success was not the point. A package is files; a capability is a running service and an identity permitted to reach it, and the module model has no vocabulary for the second.
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.