jschoubben
12f885ffc5
hq issue 091, measured 2026-09-22: 14 of 46 modules with containers fix the machine side of a published port in their own manifest -- a fact about one machine (which port HAL happened to publish it on) written into a definition meant for any node. ADR 0038 already says the mesh assigns the machine side and a module says only what it needs; the machinery already does it (internal/inventory/ports.go's PortFor, declaration.go's publishedOn rewrites a bare port automatically). These 14 just never complied. Fixed 11 of them -- stripped to the bare software port, letting assignment take over: de-spiegel, gitea, hello-web (the demo module), mailu, mssql, n8n, novox.be, only-office, photos, photos-eef, photos-filip. Left alone, the two defensible kinds the issue names: postgres/lavinmq/ distribution (foundation, genesis-rewritten per ADR 0100 -- the number in the manifest is a default, not a claim) and unifi (protocol/ device-discovery fixes the number; nothing else can find the controller). gitea was a live one, not just a tidiness fix: its manifest said 2222:22, but the actual adopted, running container is on 222. Harmless while held, but the next 'take' would have recreated it on the wrong port and broken SSH git access. Recorded 222 as novox's own setting for it (settings set gitea -node novox) so that doesn't happen.
mesh-catalog
The Novox Mesh catalogue. The modules the mesh builds, provisions and runs — as manifests, one
per module under modules/.
This is data, not a control-plane concern. The manifests describe what a module is: what it
provides, what it requires, the seats it claims, the resources the host applies for it. The
engine that reads them — parsing, eligibility resolution, sealing, declaration emission — lives
in the control plane (novox/mesh-controller, internal/catalogue), which consumes this repository
as a build source. The host (novox/mesh-host) applies the declarations the control plane emits.
Neither is here.
What a module is, and is not
A module is one thing the mesh can run, named once, described completely by its manifest. A
manifest names its image (pinned by digest), the resources the host owns for it (directories,
files, the container, the private network it joins), what it requires from a provider and what
it provides to consumers, and the sealed secrets it needs filled on the machine.
- Core mesh components are not modules. The node host, the foundation, the control-plane
contexts and the surfaces are the mesh itself; they ship as their own repositories
(
mesh-host,mesh-foundation,mesh-controller,mesh-surfaces,mesh-sdk), not from here. - Standalone applications are not here either. A larger application lives in its own repository with its manifest at the root, registered with the mesh as a build source (novox/hq ADR 0010). This repository holds the modules the mesh maintains as its shared catalogue; an application the mesh merely hosts keeps its manifest beside its own code.
So there is one home for the catalogue the mesh owns, and every application that runs on the mesh rather than being of it carries its own — both reach the pipeline the same way, as a registered source.
Layout
modules/<name>.json one manifest per module
Flat, because the catalogue's shape carries no meaning: a module is found by its name and described by its manifest, and what relates two modules — a shared seat, a claim, a provider/consumer edge — is data inside the manifests, not a directory the tree encodes (novox/hq, the domain-grouping question closed in favour of seats, claims and tags).
The manifest contract
The shape a manifest must satisfy is owned by the control plane's catalogue engine and is what
validates a manifest before a machine ever sees it — a stray key, a consumer contributing the
wrong provision field, an image that nothing builds. That validation belongs with this
repository and is being re-homed here from mesh-controller; until it is, the pipeline is the
gate — it builds each module and refuses a manifest it cannot resolve.
Where the reasoning lives
Design and decisions are in novox/hq:
02-DECISIONS/0002-everything-is-a-module.md— one unit, no second mechanism02-DECISIONS/0010-applications-live-in-their-own-repository.md— why applications are not here02-DECISIONS/0030-the-repository-structure.md— the repositories, and the open tier-4 question this repository answers03-DESIGN/00-as-is/10-module-catalogue.md— the catalogue's shape, and what it records