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hq/00-META/repos.md
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jschoubben 50d61398b6 ADR 0044 — what the SDK holds, and what it refuses
Supersedes ADR 0030's 'types, not behaviour' line for mesh-sdk. The
boundary is change-frequency, not kind: the SDK holds the stable spine
(tool-serving harness, messaging/event framework, contracts, core
primitives) and refuses per-module clients, per-module tool code, and
anything volatile — because those are what turned hal/sdk into constant
maintenance and made every edit rebuild every module.

States the rule (frequent AND cascading is the disease), why the root
cause was intra-module feature-sharing leaking into inter-module
coupling, and where per-module shared code lives instead (in the
module — a shared file, or a module-local sdk for the few large ones).
Updates repos.md's canonical mesh-sdk description to match; leaves 0030
untouched (immutable).

Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01LrgweAeERJYBg88c5cKDzF
2026-09-03 21:41:08 +02:00

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4.2 KiB
Markdown

---
status: canonical
updated: 2026-08-23
---
# The Novox repositories
The map of where implementation lives. Humans use it for orientation; agents use it for issue
triage (playbook [`process/03-issues.md`](process/03-issues.md)). The `code:` frontmatter
field in design documents points at entries here.
Repository *names* are recorded; hosts, URLs and owners are not — this repository is public,
and a forge address is an operational detail (see [`README`](../README.md)).
| Repository | Owns |
|---|---|
| `hal` | The monorepo — the node runtime, the module catalogue, the delivery machinery, and the bootstrap scripts. Every core module lives here. |
| `hq` | This repository, under the company organisation — mission, research, design, decisions, issue diagnosis. Company-scoped ([ADR 0028](../02-DECISIONS/0028-hq-is-company-scoped.md)); the mesh is its first product. The source of truth for *why*. Carries no implementation. |
| *(one per application)* | Every standalone application, site or side-project gets its own repository, with `module.yml` at the root. Registered with the mesh as a build source; built and deployed by the same pipeline as anything in the monorepo. |
## What the mesh becomes
[ADR 0030](../02-DECISIONS/0030-the-repository-structure.md) records the repositories the
monorepo decomposes into. **`mesh-lab` and `mesh-host` exist so far** — the lab is built first
([ADR 0029](../02-DECISIONS/0029-the-labs-first-scenario-has-no-pipeline.md)); the rest are the
target, not the present.
| Repository | Tier | Holds |
|---|---|---|
| `mesh-host` | 0 | **exists.** The node host — one statically linked binary, requiring nothing present ([ADR 0041](../02-DECISIONS/0041-the-host-depends-on-nothing.md)) |
| `mesh-substrate` | 1 | the four pinned services, as declarations |
| `mesh-control` | 2 | the control plane and its contexts |
| `mesh-surfaces` | 3 | tools, web, cli |
| `mesh-sdk` | — | the stable spine modules build against — the tool-serving harness, the messaging/event framework, the contracts and core primitives. Holds nothing per-module and nothing volatile ([ADR 0044](../02-DECISIONS/0044-what-the-sdk-holds-and-refuses.md)). |
| `mesh-lab` | — | **exists.** The lab — scenario lifecycle, networking, placement. Ships to nobody; runs on a workstation. |
Tier 4's shape is open, and deliberately so: see ADR 0030 and
[research 005](../01-RESEARCH/005-domain-grouping/00-overview.md).
## What lives where inside the monorepo
Named by role, because the layout is itself part of the as-is design — see
[`03-DESIGN/00-as-is/`](../03-DESIGN/00-as-is/).
| Area | Holds |
|---|---|
| Module catalogue | One directory per module, each with a manifest. Core modules sit under the mesh's own namespace; everything else at the top level. |
| Node runtime | The daemon and interactive runtime that every node runs. |
| Bootstrap scripts | First-node initialisation, joining an existing mesh, and node rescue. |
| Shared library | The SDK every module builds against. |
| Pipeline test harness | End-to-end coverage of the delivery pipeline. Currently unbuildable — see [`04-ISSUES/005`](../04-ISSUES/005-pipeline-test-harness-unbuildable/00-report.md). |
## Why applications do not live in the monorepo
A standalone application in the monorepo is a convention violation, and reviewers reject it.
The reasoning is recorded in [`02-DECISIONS/0010`](../02-DECISIONS/0010-applications-live-in-their-own-repository.md):
the mesh installs, provisions for, and ships an application through exactly the same machinery
whether or not its source sits beside the mesh's own — so co-location buys nothing and costs
the monorepo's review cadence.
## There is no npm workspace
Each module is a standalone package that consumes its dependencies from the private registry,
not from a sibling directory. The workspace was removed after it caused build-versus-development
divergence — a workspace member importing another resolved to local unbuilt source in the
pipeline and to a published version in development. Recorded in
[`02-DECISIONS/0007`](../02-DECISIONS/0007-no-npm-workspace.md).
Consequence, and it is a real one: a cross-package change is two steps — publish, then consume
— and a repository-wide `npm install` does not exist.