jschoubben
cf9357e8e9
What the mesh is, what it is becoming, and why. Implementation lives in the code repositories; the reasoning lives here. 00-GENESIS mission, engineering context, effect, and the rules that hold 01-RESEARCH investigations, before they harden into design 02-DESIGN the authoritative specification adr numbered decisions — what was chosen, and what was rejected DECISIONS.md the ledger: every decision, in the order it was taken Written for a reader who is not its author and has no access to the mesh it describes. Addresses use the documentation ranges of RFC 5737 and RFC 1918; nodes are named by role. Single initial commit by intent. The prior history came from a private repository and carried operational detail — a routable address identified as a VPN hub, real domain names, a hosting provider — which sanitising a tip commit would not have removed from the log.
00-GENESIS
The northern star. What HAL is, the environment it runs in, and what changes when it works. Every research effort and design decision is checked against this folder.
| File | Purpose |
|---|---|
mission.md |
Vision, mission, and the values that decide arguments |
context.md |
The environment — conditions, not aspirations |
effect.md |
What is different when the work is done |
how-we-build.md |
Rules that hold across the mesh, each one earned |
Rules
- Markdown only.
- Stable by nature. Changes here reflect a genuine shift in intent, not iteration.
- Research and design must be traceable back to what is written here.
Note on VISION.md
The repository root carries VISION.md, an architecture overview predating this folder.
It is a useful description of how the mesh works and should be folded into
02-DESIGN, not here — GENESIS answers why.
It has also drifted: it lists "Symlinks, not copies" as a key design principle, while the operating rules forbid creating symlinks at all after one caused production data loss. A founding document contradicting a hard rule is precisely the failure this folder exists to prevent.