jschoubben
c0b35652d0
papa-hq reads 01 research -> 03 decision -> 02 design. The order is a scar, not a choice: 02-DESIGN existed from its initial commit, and when adr/ was finally promoted on 2026-07-13 it took the next free number rather than its place in the sequence. By then design was too settled to renumber. hal-hq was three commits old, so it is not. adr/ becomes 02-DECISIONS and 02-DESIGN becomes 03-DESIGN, and following the folder numbers now walks the process in the order it happens: research produces a decision, the decision authorises a design. 00-GENESIS becomes 00-META, matching papa's rename from the same restructure. Every path reference rewritten across documents, frontmatter, playbooks and skills. All links resolve; all 58 frontmatter blocks parse and their path fields still point at files that exist.
79 lines
3.4 KiB
Markdown
79 lines
3.4 KiB
Markdown
---
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layer: as-is
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status: implemented
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code: [hal]
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updated: 2026-08-23
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decisions: []
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---
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# Knowledge
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The mesh keeps two knowledge stores. They are not redundant, and knowing which is which is the
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difference between finding an answer in one search and rediscovering it over several hours.
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## The operational memory
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A store of operational notes, written and read by whoever — human or agent — is working. Each
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note is a slug and a body: how something works, what went wrong, what the fix was, what
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assumption turned out to be false.
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It is indexed on **symptoms**. The entry someone needs is usually titled after the error they
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are staring at, which is why the standing instruction is to search the literal error text
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before forming a hypothesis rather than after one fails.
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Its content is overwhelmingly the record of previous debugging: a large body of
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troubleshooting entries, module conventions, and standing notes about work that is open. It is
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the mesh's institutional memory of *what has already gone wrong*.
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The cost of skipping it is documented in the mesh's own record: entries have been rediscovered
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from scratch, over hours, in sessions where the search was skipped because the trail felt
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confident. It fires hardest on familiar ground, not unfamiliar ground.
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## The structured archive
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A second store, structured rather than flat: spaces, pages, revisions, tiers, and full-text
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search. Where the operational memory is a note, this is a document with an owner and a
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lifecycle.
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Content is promoted through tiers — private, then team, then platform — with a librarian agent
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owning approval and promotion at the boundary. Proposals to edit are reviewed rather than
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applied.
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This is where the mesh's **governed** documents live, including the constitution injected into
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design sessions ([ADR 0009](../../02-DECISIONS/0009-the-mesh-is-governed-by-a-constitution.md)).
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## Why both
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The distinction is by lifecycle, not by subject.
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| Operational memory | Structured archive |
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| Written the moment something is learned | Written deliberately, reviewed |
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| Flat, symptom-indexed | Structured, tiered, owned |
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| Anyone writes; nothing approves | Promotion is approved |
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| Truth is "this happened" | Truth is "this is agreed" |
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Collapsing them would cost one of the two properties: either every hard-won note waits for
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review, or governed documents can be changed by anyone mid-incident.
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## Where this repository sits
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This repository is a third thing, and the objection was raised when it was created: a fourth
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knowledge system repeats the mistake the split was made to fix.
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The answer given was **indexing, not location** — that these documents are indexed into the
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knowledge base so that a symptom search returns them alongside everything else. One source,
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many surfaces.
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**That indexing does not currently exist.** A search for this repository's content returns
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nothing. The claim is load-bearing for the decision to separate the repository at all, and
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until it is true, this repository is exactly the fourth knowledge system the objection
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described. Recorded here rather than in the ledger, because it is a statement about how the
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mesh's knowledge actually works today.
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## The librarian
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A single agent owns the archive's approvals and promotions. Its approval capabilities have at
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times not been reachable as tools, which does not affect the operational memory but does mean
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promotion stops silently — the store keeps accepting proposals that nothing can approve.
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