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.
54 lines
3.1 KiB
Markdown
54 lines
3.1 KiB
Markdown
# 00-META
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The **northern star**. What HAL is, the environment it runs in, and what changes when it
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works. Every research effort and design decision is checked against this folder.
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| File / folder | Purpose |
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|------|---------|
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| [`mission.md`](mission.md) | Vision, mission, and the values that decide arguments |
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| [`context.md`](context.md) | The environment — conditions, not aspirations |
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| [`effect.md`](effect.md) | What is different when the work is done |
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| [`how-we-build.md`](how-we-build.md) | The rules that hold across the mesh, each one earned. **The source of the mesh constitution** — the governed page the mesh injects into design sessions is derived from it. |
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| [`repos.md`](repos.md) | Where implementation lives, and what each repository owns |
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| [`process/`](process/) | The playbooks — how work moves through this repository, for engineers and agents alike |
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## Rules
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- Markdown only.
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- **Stable by nature.** Changes here reflect a genuine shift in intent, not iteration. The one
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exception is `how-we-build.md`, which changes whenever a rule is earned — and only through
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its amendment process.
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- Research and design must be traceable back to what is written here.
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- **Instance-agnostic.** These documents describe the mesh as a concept. No machine names, no
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counts, no topology.
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## On the architecture overview in the code repository
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The code repository carries an architecture overview predating this folder. It is a useful
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description of *how* the mesh works, and its content now lives — anonymised and checked against
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the implementation — in [`03-DESIGN/00-as-is/`](../03-DESIGN/00-as-is/). GENESIS answers *why*;
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that document answered *how*, which is the design layer's job.
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It had also drifted from the implementation in ways worth recording, since both were found by
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comparing it against the code rather than by anyone noticing:
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- It described the pipeline as having a separate builder process and a build stage that
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packages. Neither was true after 2026-08-04; the documents stayed stale until 2026-08-06
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([ADR 0014](../02-DECISIONS/0014-build-publish-and-deploy-are-three-silos.md)).
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- It listed the mesh as spanning a fixed number of named machines, which is exactly the
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content this repository cannot carry.
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It also lists **"symlinks, not copies" as a key design principle**, and that is a genuine
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contradiction rather than a stale detail. The mesh's stated intent is that it creates no
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symlinks at all — the rule is not merely "only the installer may link", and a founding document
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elevating linking to a principle points the opposite way from where this is going.
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What exists today is that the installer owns and reconciles every link
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([ADR 0011](../02-DECISIONS/0011-the-installer-owns-linking.md)) — an as-is fact, recorded in
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[`03-DESIGN/00-as-is/05-runtime-and-installation.md`](../03-DESIGN/00-as-is/05-runtime-and-installation.md).
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Centralising who may link narrowed the incident class; it did not close it. The intent is to
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remove the mechanism, recorded as [ADR 0018](../02-DECISIONS/0018-the-mesh-creates-no-symlinks.md).
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A founding document contradicting the direction of travel is precisely the failure this folder
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exists to prevent.
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