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The consolidation left a sparse sequence -- 1, 4, 6, 7, 9, 10, 12, 15, 16, 18, 19, 25, 34, 35, 36, 37, 40, 42, 44, 45, 48, 49, 58 -- where the gaps were only the archaeology of what used to be there. Renumbered contiguously. Renames run in ascending order, so every target number is already free and no two files ever collide. The reference rewrite is one simultaneous pass rather than a sequence of replacements. Numbers moved into slots other numbers were vacating -- the node host went 37 to 16 while the lab went 16 to 9 -- so replacing one at a time would have cascaded and silently pointed things at the wrong record. Seven plain-text references survived the merges as prose rather than links, naming records that no longer existed: the enrolment token, the link boundary, what a declaration is, reachability, the repository structure. Each mapped to the consolidated record that now holds it. Verified rather than assumed: every [ADR NNNN](path) link now has matching text and target, checked across the whole repository, and the checker passes. Frontmatter `consolidates:` lists dropped -- they named records that are gone, and each consolidated record already says in prose what it absorbed.
6.6 KiB
What a feature is, and what it splits into
Measured against origin/main of the code repository, 2026-08-26.
The operator wants the feature concept gone.
Research 006 left it open — "does feature
survive? The skeleton splits it in two and argues the conflation is what makes the delivery
pipeline hard to reason about."
This is what it actually is, and what it turns into.
What it is today
A feature is a kind of content a module can carry, detected from what its directory contains rather than declared. Twenty-one of them, each with a handler that owns its whole lifecycle:
configs dist-assets events hooks migrations migration-artifact npm npm-install
prerequisite-env prerequisite-packages prerequisite-provision provision-migrations
provision-seeds seeds service systemd tools verifiers verify vhost detect
Each moves through six stages: build, publish, install, configure, start, verify.
Finding — every handler implements every stage
The structural evidence, and it is not a style problem.
| handler | stages it implements |
|---|---|
configs |
build · configure · install · start · verify |
service |
build · configure · install · start · verify |
systemd |
build · configure · install · start · verify |
tools |
build · configure · install · start · verify |
vhost |
build · configure · install · start · verify |
migrations |
build · configure · install · start · verify |
npm |
build · publish · install · configure · start |
configs writes files onto a node. It has nothing to build, and it has a build stage.
npm publishes a package to a registry. It has nothing to start, and it has a start stage.
One interface spans build-time and apply-time, so every kind of content must implement both halves and most of them do nothing in one. That is the conflation, and the emptiness is what makes the pipeline hard to reason about: a stage that does nothing and a stage that failed to do anything look identical from outside.
What it splits into
The twenty-one are not one kind of thing. They are four, and they belong to different tiers.
Artifacts — built once per version, then published. npm, dist-assets,
migration-artifact. Nothing about a node is involved; the output is a thing that exists in a
registry. Tier 2, delivery.
Resources — desired state on a machine. configs, service, systemd, vhost, tools.
Applied, converged, idempotent — which is exactly what
ADR 0016
already describes and what the host already does. Tier 0.
Actions — run once, against something that is not this machine. migrations, seeds,
provision-migrations, provision-seeds, hooks. A migration runs against a database, and the
database may be on another node entirely. Neither an artifact nor node state, which is why they
sit awkwardly in a scheme built for both. Tier 2, and the operator wants seeds gone.
Checks — assertions, not changes. prerequisite-env, prerequisite-packages,
prerequisite-provision, verify, verifiers, detect. The prerequisites are requirements
in disguise — a module saying what must be true before it can be installed, which is precisely
what an edge in the graph says. The verifiers are the read-back the host already performs.
So the answer is: it splits, and the split is a tier boundary
feature is one word for four things spanning three tiers. That is why every handler
implements every stage, why half of them are empty, and why the pipeline is hard to reason
about.
Nothing replaces it, because it was never one concept:
| Was a feature | Becomes | Whose |
|---|---|---|
| npm, dist-assets, migration-artifact | an artifact | delivery |
| configs, service, systemd, vhost, tools | a resource in a declaration | the host |
| migrations, hooks | an action against something else | delivery |
| seeds | nothing — the operator wants them gone | — |
| prerequisite-* | an edge in the graph | the catalogue |
| verify, verifiers | the host's read-back | the host |
Tools are a facet, and their consumer is not a module
The most common content in the catalogue: 56 of 126 modules carry a tool surface, more than carry a service.
It survives the split, and it does not fit either half cleanly. A tool is not an artifact and not node state — it is a contract the mesh publishes on a module's behalf, and what consumes it is an agent, not another module.
That is a second audience, and the design has only described one. A module provides things
other modules require; a module also provides things agents call. Same word, different
consumer, different lifecycle — a tool appears when the module is assigned somewhere and
disappears when it is not, and nothing in the graph edges says so.
Whether that is one relation with two audiences or two relations is undecided, and it is the kind of question that is cheap now and expensive later.
What is lost, and should not be
Detection. Features are detected from the directory rather than declared, and the reason is good: a declared list and the directory it describes drift, and the directory is the one that is true. That property is worth keeping whatever the concept is called — a module that says it has migrations and has none, or has them and does not say so, is a fault nobody sees until it matters.
Under the split, detection still applies: what a module contains is read from what is there. What it requires, provides and excludes is declared, because none of that is visible in a directory.
That line is worth stating precisely, because it is the one the current design got right: content is detected, relationships are declared.
Open
- Is an action a resource? A migration is not node state and not an artifact. It could be a resource type the host applies with the target being a database rather than a machine — which would collapse the third category into the second, at the cost of the host reaching something that is not the machine it is on. That cost looks too high, but it has not been argued.
- Where do hooks go? They are arbitrary code a module runs at a stage — the escape hatch. A design with no escape hatch is either very good or has not met reality yet, and this one has not.
- What does the pipeline schedule, once features are gone? It currently schedules features. If the four categories have different lifecycles, the unit of work is different for each, and what the coordinator orchestrates needs naming.