jochen
96ba664cb4
The operator could not read a settings proposal on the phone: its values were masked ("+ shares:
media=‹path›"), a how-to paragraph followed the fingerprint, and nothing was formatted.
messenger: an ask may carry its explanation whole (asks.Ask.Whole); the router shows it in
place of the explanation only on a kind the controller issued as verified-sender and that was
given the ask's answers, and holds it to the secret rule alone (CheckSecret): a path or an
address is what the operator approves, a secret's shape leaves the mesh nowhere and refuses the
ask as a whole. Everywhere else, and for every condition, the explanation under the content rule
stands. An ask's own message offers Details when the ask says what Details shows
(asks.Ask.Details): the fingerprint and where to read the proposal whole. The expiry line reads
"Expires <when>: <what then>".
telegram: every message is sent in HTML, formatted and never reworded: the title bold, a key
line or a fingerprint in monospace, the chosen line bold, and every '<', '>' and '&' escaped
first. What a tap is compared by stays the plain words, which is what Telegram gives back.
claude-code: an instruction proposal's ask has the same shape — what is asked, the text, who
proposed it and when; the fingerprint and the how-to are the Details answer's; where the sender
is proven, a line with a path or an address is shown, one shaped like a secret is not.
Takes mesh-sdk go at the commit that adds Whole and Details to an ask.
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