Files
hq/01-RESEARCH/001-module-domain-decomposition/00-overview.md
T
jschoubben f05e4a0dce Follow papa-hq's research convention; the mesh links nothing
Research efforts move from status.md to 00-overview.md with active /
graduated / abandoned, matching papa-hq so the two repositories read the
same way. Playbooks, skills, README and the ledger follow.

Reverses yesterday's withdrawal of the symlink note in GENESIS. The note
was right and the withdrawal was wrong: the intent is that the mesh
creates no symlinks at all, so a founding document listing "symlinks, not
copies" as a design principle does point the opposite way from where this
is going, and that is a contradiction rather than a stale detail.

ADR 0018 records the position, proposed. ADR 0011 stays as it is — it is
the historical decision and the incident behind it is why anyone believes
either record — and is superseded in intent, not edited. Its one
editorial line, which called the wider reading false, is corrected to
state what is actually true: centralising who may link narrowed the
incident class without closing it, because a link the installer makes
resolves exactly like one made by hand.

The argument that kept linking was staleness. ADR 0004 removed it: every
managed file is already derived and reconciled, so a copy is the natural
form and a pointer into source is the shape the mesh's own model forbids
everywhere else. What is not settled, and is marked open, is how
staleness gets detected — which is the decision that makes or breaks it.
2026-08-23 09:29:09 +02:00

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Markdown

---
status: active
initiated: 2026-08-22
touches: [02-DESIGN/00-as-is/02-modules-and-manifests.md, 02-DESIGN/00-as-is/10-module-catalogue.md, 02-DESIGN/01-to-be/00-work-breakdown.md]
became: [adr/0015-mesh-brokers-nodes-host-agents-think.md]
---
# 001 — Module domain decomposition
- **Initiated by:** jochen, 2026-08-22
- **Areas touched:** every `hal/*` and `noxflow/*` module; the pipeline's dependency
graph; the knowledge base; agent identity and credentials.
## Summary
HAL has 124 modules. That number is not a maintenance problem in itself — it is the
**symptom of missing bounded contexts**. Modules are split not because they model
different domains, but because splitting is the only lever the platform offers:
- no way to run one daemon on one node without making it a module
(`hal/claude-licences` — one daemon, single-node)
- no way to expose two of a kind from one module
- no namespace separating the mesh from the software it runs
This effort establishes the **current state**, the **ideal state**, and the sequence
between them.
## Trigger
A night of debugging that produced four fixes and one conclusion. Every fault was a
boundary fault:
- Per-agent Claude credentials had to be written by the *noxflow runtime*, because
`agents.claude_account` is in noxflow's database — even though agent identity is a
mesh concept and node identity already lives in the mesh registry.
- Whether `hal/brain` may depend on noxflow took three attempts to answer, twice
wrongly, because the ownership boundary was never stated.
- Authoritative documentation existed in `mesh_docs` and was not found, while a
proposal in repo markdown was invisible to search entirely.
## Decisions taken (2026-08-22)
| Question | Decision |
|---|---|
| What should noxflow become? | Decompose into `hal/*` modules; noxflow returns to tasks/workflows |
| Who owns agent identity? | `hal/agents` — a mesh concept, alongside nodes |
| Where do third-party apps live? | Out of this repo. They run *on* the mesh; they are not *of* it |
| Knowledge structure | Modelled on `papa-hq`; implementation choice left open |
## Open questions
Tracked in [`analysis.md`](analysis.md) under "Open questions".