jschoubben
bea052753e
Stage 2 could not start without it. Three constraints already bound the shape and between them they decide most of it. JSON, because the standard library carries it and carries no YAML, and a YAML declaration would put a third-party parser inside the one binary whose whole argument is that it needs nothing — to gain authoring comfort in a document generated by a machine and read by a machine. An ordered list, because ordering is a DECISION. A host deriving order from declared dependencies would be deciding the thing most likely to differ between what the control plane intended and what the machine does. The control plane knows what depends on what; it says so by saying when. Unknown is refused, never skipped — an unknown version, type or field refuses the whole declaration. A host that skipped what it did not understand would apply most of a declaration and report success, which is 04-ISSUES/003 with the declaration on the other side of the wire. Complete for what the host OWNS, and only that. It removes what it previously applied and is no longer declared, which it knows from the store rather than by inference, and never removes what it did not create — a converger that treats 'not declared' as 'must not exist' deletes what the mesh never put there. Two consequences arriving earlier than the build order suggested: the store is load-bearing at stage 2, because nothing can be removed without knowing what was applied. And a closed address space bounds the first vocabulary to what needs no network, because a scenario has no route to a package repository.
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 A superseded record has its status: changed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.