55 lines
3.3 KiB
Markdown
55 lines
3.3 KiB
Markdown
# 00-META
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The **northern star**. What the mesh is, the environment it runs in, and what changes when it
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works — plus the engineering practice that holds across everything Novox builds. 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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| [`glossary.md`](glossary.md) | One name per thing — the authority on vocabulary, and the words that were retired |
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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, but for the checks and one drawn overview of the playbooks (`process/playbooks.html`).
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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 0010).
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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 0012) — 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 0012.
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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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