Files
hq/03-DESIGN/01-to-be
jschoubben 918dc04916 What this actually is, and three things that were assumed
Four things settled by talking them through, all of which had been true in
somebody's head and written nowhere.

It is not a mesh in the peer-to-peer sense and will not become one. 0001 now
says what it is instead: machines linked by a private network, one node holding
knowledge of all of them, modules as the way anything is built and delivered,
and agents hired onto nodes to do the work. The word describes what machines
can reach, not how they are governed. "Master" overstates it the other way --
nothing needs that node to keep running, only to change.

0006 gains the option that would make it a real mesh, recorded as considered
rather than rejected by silence: every node holding the whole inventory, a
replication process, an elected master with promotion on failure. What settles
it is not the complexity but that it still would not deliver the name, because
application databases are not replicated -- so a genuine peer-to-peer mesh
means becoming a replicated database system for every consumer's data too. That
is a larger product than the thing it would support.

Also in 0006: three central roles, not one. Losing the control plane costs
change, losing the broker costs being told anything, and losing the hub costs
nodes in different places reaching each other at all -- which is operation, not
administration. Whether they are one node is not decided.

And SSH access is identity's. It appeared three times as something that uses
the overlay and never as something the mesh provides, which reads as settled
when nothing decided it. Nobody else could: the mesh is the only thing that
knows which humans and agents exist and which nodes they may reach. Node to
node SSH stays out -- the host has no inbound control surface by decision, and
nodes reaching each other that way is a second control path through the back
door.

0007 gains the requirement underneath all of it. Reachability was recorded as a
fact to track and never as a thing some node must have. The broker's node and
the hub must be dialable by every node at a stable address, or nothing can join
and a disconnected node cannot return. A mesh entirely behind NAT cannot be
raised. That is a precondition and it belongs with the others.

The link staying on the underlay is also argued now rather than asserted. At
join time it is forced; afterwards it is a choice, and the reason is that a
repair channel carried over the thing being repaired is not one. Moving it onto
the overlay, with fallback, is recorded as open with what it would have to get
right -- a WireGuard interface has no link state to test, and a silent fallback
is this repository's recurring fault in a new place.

0010 says in one line what was the intention throughout: the module system is
the CI/CD. Not a pipeline beside the mesh. Build, test, publish and deploy are
one reconciliation seen at four points, which is why a thing that cannot be a
module cannot be delivered.
2026-08-29 13:01:36 +02:00
..

03-DESIGN / 01-to-be

The mesh being built toward. Every statement here traces to a record in 02-DECISIONS/; nothing arrives by drafting.

A document here describes an intention. What currently runs is in 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 How the decomposition gets built, in what order, and where a human must look ADR 0001
01-end-to-end-testing.md The lab: a real mesh a change can be run against before it reaches nodes ADR 0016, 0029
02-scenario-declaration.md What a scenario declares — the underlay, and what to place on it ADR 0016
03-scenario-lifecycle.md What happens to a scenario — raise, snapshot, restore, move, destroy ADR 0016
04-lab-installation.md Getting the lab onto a clean machine, and why it verifies capability rather than installation ADR 0010
05-the-node-host.md Tier 0 — the one thing installed by hand, and the only thing that changes a machine ADR 0005
06-the-control-plane.md Tier 2 — what the term means, and the test for what belongs in it ADR 0005
07-the-substrate.md Tier 1 — what the control plane consumes and cannot grant itself ADR 0004, 0048
08-connectivity.md One context in full — overlay, resolution, exposure, filtering, certificates ADR 0007, 0050, 0051, 0055
09-the-node-lifecycle.md How a machine becomes a node, stays one, and stops being one ADR 0004, 0051
10-delivery.md Modules, the three edges, and how a change becomes a running thing ADR 0010, 0064, 0065

Not yet written

  • The remaining six contexts. ADR 0006 settles the list at seven; connectivity is the first written in full (08) 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 0009 is superseded by ADR 0009: 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.