hq/04-ISSUES/117-a-modules-own-code-is-a-container-and-a-process/01-diagnosis.md

# Diagnosis — 117

## Which trees were searched, 2026-09-25

Named first, because [issue 113](../113-the-object-stores-images-were-withdrawn-upstream/01-diagnosis.md)
is the record of reporting absence in one repository as absence in the mesh.

| Searched | At |
|---|---|
| `mesh-host`, `mesh-catalog`, `mesh-tools`, `mesh-sdk`, `mesh-controller` | `main`, fresh shallow clones |
| `hq` | `main`, and the two branches named under finding 7 |

**Not searched:** the private migration repository; the open pull requests on the catalogue and
the controller; any branch of a code repository other than `main`. A statement below about "the
catalogue" is a statement about its `main`.

## The report's central question is answered: the shape exists

`mesh-host` `internal/declaration/declaration.go` defines `TypeProcess Type = "process"`.
`internal/apply/process.go` applies it — it writes the unit, writes the timer for a scheduled one,
and gates what follows a run-once one. It has tests of its own in both packages. The resource
carries a bundle `source` with a `digest`, a `run` argv, `env` and `env-file`, a `user`,
`restart-on`, and the `run-once` and `schedule` modifiers.

So the report's alternative — "if ADR 0047 is right, two proposed documents and a worked manifest
describe a resource type that does not exist" — is **disproven**. It exists, it is implemented, it
is tested, and the host's vocabulary is now **twelve** shapes rather than the nine
[ADR 0029](../../02-DECISIONS/0029-a-network-is-a-shape-because-an-action-cannot-be-undone.md)
counted.

## The enforcement ADR 0029 asked for is intact, and it recorded this gap rather than closing it

ADR 0029 said "the vocabulary is nine, and the count moves with a record. The test that asserts it
names this one." That test exists — `internal/declaration/declaration_test.go` asserts the count is
twelve and fails with the reason rather than a number. Above the assertion, a paragraph per
addition names what made it one:

| shape | the test names |
|---|---|
| `network`, ninth | ADR 0029 |
| `access`, tenth | ADR 0051 |
| **the eleventh** | **`03-DESIGN/01-to-be/18-building-a-module.md`** — a design document, `status: proposed` |
| `opening`, twelfth | ADR 0100 |

The eleventh is this one. The test still calls it `daemon`, the code calls it `TypeProcess`, and
its paragraph is the only one that names a design document where the others name a decision.
Independently: in `declaration.go`, `TypeProcess` is the **only** shape in the vocabulary whose doc
comment cites no ADR — `network` cites 0029, `access` 0051, `opening` 0100, `user` and the refusal
of `action` cite 0005.

**So ADR 0029's mechanism worked exactly as designed and was not enough.** It requires every
addition to name something. It does not require that something to be a decision, and the one
addition that named a proposed design document instead is the one this issue is about.

### A correction to this trail, recorded because it was one grep from being a finding

The first search here was for `len(Vocabulary())` and found nothing, and the working conclusion for
two steps was that no count assertion existed any more — which would have been written up as "the
mechanism ADR 0029 relied on is gone." It is not gone. The test binds the slice to a local variable
first, so the assertion reads `len(speaks) != 12`. The claim was wrong, it was caught by reading the
file rather than by grepping it, and the shape of the error is the same one issue 113 recorded: a
negative search result read as a fact about the world.

## The argument the report asked for already exists, in a test comment

The report asked why a container rather than a supervised process, and said the reasoning was not
written down. It is — in `declaration_test.go`, as the eleventh shape's paragraph:

> Running code of one's own meant a `container` and therefore an image; running a script meant a
> `service` and a unit somebody else had to install. One intent — run this and keep it running —
> expressed two unrelated ways, with the hosting chosen before anything could be declared. […] It
> is a full-host shape rather than a portable one: it needs a process supervisor to install into.
> It does NOT need a container runtime, which is the point — only software that genuinely needs
> isolation asks for a container.

That is a decision's Context and Consequences, in a Go comment, in another repository. Nothing in
`02-DECISIONS/` contains it. `TypeProcess`'s own doc comment adds the rest — that three modes beat
three kinds, and that a first draft added a `daemon` for the long-running case alone.

## The catalogue is containers, and the one exception is the reference module

71 modules on `main`. Counting the `type` of every declared resource:

| `container` | `process` |
|---|---|
| 115 | **3** |

All three `process` resources are in **one** module: `showcase` — the module
[`20-writing-a-module.md`](../../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/20-writing-a-module.md) is a worked guide for.

### And in that module, the tools do not run

`showcase` declares its migrate, server and reporting steps as `process`. Its fourth resource, the
one for tools, is a **`container`** — and its image is the module's `helper` artifact, which the
same manifest declares as `kind: upstream` from a bare distribution base. Its command is
`sleep infinity`. It mounts the broker credential and sets the variable naming it, and runs nothing.

Meanwhile the module's `code` bundle declares six entrypoints. Three are run by the three `process`
resources. The tools entrypoint and the provisioner entrypoint are **run by no resource in the
manifest.**

Two consequences worth stating separately:

- **The worked guide does not match the module it documents.** The guide shows four `process`
  resources, the fourth being `{"id": "tools", "type": "process"}`. The module has three and a
  container.
- **This is the condition ADR 0047 was written to end, in a new shape.** That record's Context says
  the conversion "produced tools and events that, as it stands, never execute," and its first
  Consequence is that they become runnable. In the reference module they do not execute again —
  not for want of a runtime this time, but because nothing declares one that runs them.

## The harness has no per-module boundary, and nothing refuses a second module

This is where ADR 0047's isolation argument is load-bearing, so it was checked rather than assumed.

- `mesh-sdk` `src/tools/index.ts`: `serveTools` iterates `collectTools()` over a module-level
  registration array and serves **every registered module's** tools over the **one** `broker` it
  was handed.
- `mesh-tools` `src/main.ts`: the modules to load come from one variable as a **comma-separated
  list**, and the runtime sets its module and node identity from the **single** credential.
- `mesh-sdk` `src/events/index.ts`: an emitted event's `x-source` is stamped from that single
  module identity.

Put together: load two modules into one runtime and everything the second emits is attributed to
the first, because there is one credential and the identity comes from it. That is precisely the
failure ADR 0047 predicted — "able to emit as any of them" — reached by a different route, since
the credential is correct and there is only one of it for two modules. **Nothing in either
repository refuses the second module**, and no test asserts that a runtime serves one.

### Ruled out, in fairness to the implementation

- **The serving key conforms.** ADR 0047 replaced a single `tools.invoke` dispatch with a per-tool
  key, and the SDK does that: a tool is served on `<module>.<tool>` with the account scoped
  `serve.<module>.*`. The superseded `tools.invoke` survives only in **prose** — the doc comment
  directly above the conforming code, and the `mesh-tools` README, which also describes the runtime
  as per-node. The code is ahead of its own documentation.
- **The credential shape conforms.** The sealed per-module credential file is preferred in code, and
  the plain URL is documented as the bootstrap case before a module has an account — not the
  ordinary path.

So the account is the right shape and the key is the right shape. It is the **process boundary**
that is declared nowhere and enforced by nothing.

## An unmerged report already asks the narrow version of this

Branch `issue/113-controller-container-or-process`, one commit, 2026-09-24, adds a report titled
**"Should the controller run as a container, or as a process the host supervises directly?"** with
`located-in: [mesh-controller module.json, mesh-host internal/apply]`. Its observation is that the
controller is declared a `container` with `network: host` — so container network isolation, the
property that resource type usually buys, is not in use — and it asks what `type: container` buys
that `type: process` would not.

It was unmerged and numbered 113, which is taken. A sibling branch,
`issue/113-record-the-repin-and-fold-114`, is why `114` was free.

**That report and this one are the instance and the general condition**, and they do not conflict:
it asks about one module that is not a code-carrying sidecar at all, and reaches the same question
from the opposite end. So it lands in this change as
[issue 114](../114-should-the-controller-be-a-container-or-a-process/00-report.md), its commit and
authorship intact, with a section pointing here — rather than being folded in and losing the
`network: host` observation, which is its own and is not reproduced above.

This diagnosis answers its first open question. The host's `process` shape does support what
[ADR 0005](../../02-DECISIONS/0005-the-node-host.md) describes for the host's own launcher — the
unit, the timer, restart, and run-to-completion gating are implemented and tested — so that report
does not need host-side work before it can be decided.

## What is located, and what is not

**Located — and it is not a code defect.** The implementation and the design layer agree with each
other; the **decision record is what is missing**, and the accepted record that occupies its place
says the other thing. ADR 0047 is `accepted`, cited by the module protocol, and unsuperseded, while
the host it describes has had a purpose-built shape for a module's own code since the eleventh
vocabulary entry.

| Owner | What is theirs |
|---|---|
| `hq` | the missing record for the `process` shape; ADR 0047 left standing; the worked guide that does not match the module |
| `mesh-catalog modules/showcase` | tools and provisioner entrypoints that no resource runs; a tools container that sleeps |
| `mesh-sdk src/tools/index.ts` | several modules served over one credential, unrefused and untested; a doc comment describing a superseded dispatch |
| `mesh-tools` | a README describing a per-node multi-module runtime the code no longer prefers |

**Not located, and deliberately open:** whether `process` or `container` is *right* for a module's
own code. This diagnosis establishes that the question was answered in practice and never recorded
— not which answer is correct. The arguments on both sides now exist in writing; they exist in a
test comment and a proposed design document, and one of them contradicts an accepted decision.

## What would close it

1. A decision record for the `process` shape, carrying the argument currently in
   `declaration_test.go`, and saying what becomes of ADR 0047 — superseded in whole, or in the part
   that names a container.
2. `18-building-a-module.md` and `20-writing-a-module.md` naming that record in `decisions:`, and
   the worked manifest agreeing with the module.
3. The eleventh shape's paragraph in the vocabulary test naming a decision, like the other three.
4. **How the rule is checked, since a rule states how it is checked:** every shape in the host's
   vocabulary names a decision, asserted where the count is already asserted — which turns "no
   design without a decision" into something stronger than "no design without *a* decision" for
   the one vocabulary where each entry is a security decision.
5. Whether a runtime may serve more than one module answered either way, and asserted — a refusal
   if not, a test that two modules' events keep their own source if so.