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hq/03-DESIGN/01-to-be/README.md
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jschoubben 2204b01909 Design the node lifecycle end to end
The host was described as a component and never as something that runs for
years on a machine somebody else also uses. 09 covers every state a machine can
be in and every transition between them.

Four states: unmanaged, hosted, enrolled, disconnected. Only the last two are
nodes, and they are the same node in two situations. `hosted` -- the host
installed but never told which mesh it belongs to -- had no name before and is
where a machine sits between the two adoption commands.

Things that were unclear and now are not:

The first node walks the same path in an unusual order: reconcile from the
bundle, the control plane it just raised issues a token, enrol against it. Its
specialness lasts two commands. A side effect worth having -- enrolment is
exercised on node one, rather than being written and first used on node two.

Enrolment reports profile and inventory BEFORE the control plane decides
anything. The profile is the input to that decision, not a diagnostic; the
control plane cannot decide what a machine should run without knowing what it
can run.

Rebooting mid-apply is safe by construction. The store records each resource
after it worked, so a host that dies half way through comes back and applies
the rest. The rule that stops the host lying about what it did also makes it
crash-safe.

Retiring splits in two. Graceful is a final empty declaration. A node that is
gone will reconcile its last declaration forever -- the honest consequence of
making disconnection ordinary. The answer is not to make the host expire but
that the node holds nothing that outlives revocation: every grant is a per-node
credential revoked at the provider. A lost node keeps running and stops being
able to reach anything. Said plainly rather than implying the mesh can switch a
machine off, which it cannot and should not.

Losing the store is quiet and permanent, so it gets its own section. The host
re-enrols and re-applies fine; what does not come back is removal, because
resources it no longer has a record of become unowned and sit there
indefinitely.

Also corrects 0057, which said the mesh must not upgrade the host at all. That
conflated two acts. Replacing the binary is safe -- Unix keeps the running
inode. Stopping the unit is not. So the host may apply a package naming itself,
and restarts by finishing its apply and exiting cleanly, letting the supervisor
start it on the new binary. It never asks the service manager to restart it.
That makes a fleet-wide host upgrade an ordinary declaration, which the first
draft gave up on.

0057 remains proposed.
2026-08-27 21:16:44 +02:00

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# 03-DESIGN / 01-to-be
The mesh being built toward. Every statement here traces to a record in
[`02-DECISIONS/`](../../02-DECISIONS/); nothing arrives by drafting.
A document here describes an intention. What currently runs is in
[`00-as-is/`](../00-as-is/), and the two are never merged — when something ships, the as-is
document is written and this one's status becomes `implemented`.
| Document | Covers | Rests on |
|---|---|---|
| [`00-work-breakdown.md`](00-work-breakdown.md) | How the decomposition gets built, in what order, and where a human must look | [ADR 0015](../../02-DECISIONS/0015-mesh-brokers-nodes-host-agents-think.md) |
| [`01-end-to-end-testing.md`](01-end-to-end-testing.md) | The lab: a real mesh a change can be run against before it reaches nodes | [ADR 0016](../../02-DECISIONS/0016-a-lab-node-is-a-virtual-machine.md), [0029](../../02-DECISIONS/0029-the-labs-first-scenario-has-no-pipeline.md) |
| [`02-scenario-declaration.md`](02-scenario-declaration.md) | What a scenario declares — the underlay, and what to place on it | [ADR 0031](../../02-DECISIONS/0031-the-lab-provides-the-underlay.md) |
| [`03-scenario-lifecycle.md`](03-scenario-lifecycle.md) | What happens to a scenario — raise, snapshot, restore, move, destroy | [ADR 0032](../../02-DECISIONS/0032-a-scenario-is-an-isolated-address-space.md) |
| [`04-lab-installation.md`](04-lab-installation.md) | Getting the lab onto a clean machine, and why it verifies capability rather than installation | [ADR 0008](../../02-DECISIONS/0008-a-failed-step-fails-the-job.md) |
| [`05-the-node-host.md`](05-the-node-host.md) | Tier 0 — the one thing installed by hand, and the only thing that changes a machine | [ADR 0037](../../02-DECISIONS/0037-the-host-applies-it-does-not-decide.md) |
| [`06-the-control-plane.md`](06-the-control-plane.md) | Tier 2 — what the term means, and the test for what belongs in it | [ADR 0037](../../02-DECISIONS/0037-the-host-applies-it-does-not-decide.md) |
| [`07-the-substrate.md`](07-the-substrate.md) | Tier 1 — what the control plane consumes and cannot grant itself | [ADR 0038](../../02-DECISIONS/0038-a-node-joins-by-linking-first.md), [0048](../../02-DECISIONS/0048-the-substrate-is-named.md) |
| [`08-connectivity.md`](08-connectivity.md) | One context in full — overlay, resolution, exposure, filtering, certificates | [ADR 0049](../../02-DECISIONS/0049-a-route-is-a-grant.md), [0050](../../02-DECISIONS/0050-reachability-is-a-property-of-the-address.md), [0051](../../02-DECISIONS/0051-the-enrolment-token-carries-the-mesh.md), [0055](../../02-DECISIONS/0055-the-control-plane-is-the-node-coordinating-contexts.md) |
| [`09-the-node-lifecycle.md`](09-the-node-lifecycle.md) | How a machine becomes a node, stays one, and stops being one | [ADR 0038](../../02-DECISIONS/0038-a-node-joins-by-linking-first.md), [0051](../../02-DECISIONS/0051-the-enrolment-token-carries-the-mesh.md) |
## Not yet written
- **The remaining six contexts.**
[ADR 0055](../../02-DECISIONS/0055-the-control-plane-is-the-node-coordinating-contexts.md)
settles the list at seven; `connectivity` is the first written in full
([`08`](08-connectivity.md)) and the other six do not exist yet. The work breakdown says in
what order they are needed.
- ~~**Domain grouping outside the core.**~~ **Not needed.**
[ADR 0017](../../02-DECISIONS/0017-modules-outside-the-core-are-grouped-by-domain.md) is
superseded by [ADR 0044](../../02-DECISIONS/0044-a-module-declares-presence-instantiation-and-exclusion.md):
there is no domain module to group into, so there is no domain list to settle. Relationships
are edges, and grouping is a tag and a query.