Files
hq/03-DESIGN
jochen d159bfa36a
mesh/merge-gate pass: the change touches no module of the mesh's graph
mesh/repo-check pass: its merge-check.sh passed
mesh/delivery delivered
ADR 0276: merges are assembled in a rolling window, and each batch is delivered by one walk
Two catalogue merges 18 s apart opened two walks; the second superseded the
first and nothing gave it its word for 58 minutes (issue 362). The operator
decided that merges are collected in a rolling merge window (90 s, at most
10 min) and each batch is walked once, one commit per repository (the later
one of a repository, which contains the earlier), one walk at a time; the
walk-to-delivery bookkeeping is repaired too and every wait has a condition.
Amends to-be 47 and 10, adds merge window and batch to the glossary, and
corrects the issue's account of the S16 condition.
2026-10-10 12:39:13 +02:00
..

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.