jschoubben
36d342f176
Every manifest in the system being replaced was read and every key counted, then set against what the new one can express. Three findings worth more than the table. **The most-used key was already covered and I expected a gap.** Depending on another module — 65 manifests, the commonest thing any of them says — is a requirement naming a module, which already means that module rather than anything providing the name. **The largest real gap is tool servers: 56 modules, over half.** A module can already run one; what is missing is anything saying it offers tools. That is plausibly a provision rather than new vocabulary, which would need nothing added — not yet decided, and recorded as undecided. **The gap most worth closing is health, at seven modules.** The mesh knows a container is running, which is not whether it answers, and this project has paid for that distinction twice. An action with a verify is exactly the right shape and may not arrive over the link, so a module cannot declare one. Two things are missing deliberately and say so: stage hooks, because the link may not carry an action and a module needing setup ships a program; and flavours, retired in favour of claims. Config merging is missing and should stay missing. A mechanism that understands TOML gets asked for YAML, then INI, which is how the thing being replaced became unholdable. Also records what the survey found that is not about coverage: manifests that had stopped matching what was actually brokered, one fact derived in two places giving two answers, and a live listing returning credentials in plaintext.
03-DESIGN
The authoritative specification. Implementation is built against what is written here.
Two layers
| Folder | What it is |
|---|---|
00-as-is/ |
The mesh that exists today. Shipped behaviour, described as it is — including behaviour nobody would choose again. |
01-to-be/ |
The mesh being built toward. Every statement traceable to a record in 02-DECISIONS/. |
They are never mixed. A statement about the future does not belong in an as-is document, and an as-is document is never edited to describe an intention.
When a to-be design ships, it does not move. Its as-is counterpart is written or updated,
the to-be document's status becomes implemented, and both stand — one describing what runs,
the other recording what was intended. Deleting the intention loses the reasoning, which is
the expensive half.
Frontmatter
Every design document (not the READMEs) carries:
---
layer: as-is | to-be
status: designed | in-progress | implemented | abandoned
code: [] # owning code repo(s), from 00-META/repos.md
updated: YYYY-MM-DD # date of the last status change, not of text edits
decisions: [] # 02-DECISIONS/ records this document rests on
---
For an as-is document, status: implemented is the normal state — it describes something that
runs — and code: names where that implementation lives.
Status changes when implementation state changes, never because design text was edited. An
implemented claim must be defensible from the owning repository's main branch, not from
intent. If it cannot be checked, it is in-progress.
Cross-cutting views are generated from this frontmatter by the hq-status skill and never
written to disk.
What belongs here
Functional analysis, architectural description, and specification — prose and diagrams
only, no code. A manifest field may be named; a manifest may not be pasted. A document
enters the to-be layer only after the decision behind it is recorded in 02-DECISIONS/
and the research that produced it is closed.
Subfolders are encouraged where a layer grows enough to need them.