jschoubben a73cb8a2f8 The catalogue, as a module that owns the module graph
It links module-versions to each other and knows nothing about nodes; which
machine runs what stays the control plane's (novox/hq ADR 0070, 0072). Keeping
them apart is what lets the control plane carry on composing declarations while
this is down.

The builder announces what it built, this places it in the graph and announces
what that means, and the control plane hooks the meaning rather than the build
output. A rebuild producing the commit already current is registered and is not
an upgrade — announcing it would ripple outward forever through modules that did
not change.

Ordering is not computed. Modules stale and waiting on nothing that is itself
stale are announced as buildable; the rest stay stale and appear once whatever
they were waiting for is registered, so a chain and a diamond need no special
handling and nothing holds a plan.

Four tools over the graph: what this mesh holds, one module in full, what a
change to a module reaches, and what must be rebuilt and why. The edges are
derived from builds rather than declared, so they cannot drift from what the code
actually uses.

Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01D6qtiYU3P9jk3pnAXyAFyx
2026-09-12 23:16:05 +02:00

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-control, 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 substrate, the control-plane contexts and the surfaces are the mesh itself; they ship as their own repositories (mesh-host, mesh-substrate, mesh-control, 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-control; 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 mechanism
  • 02-DECISIONS/0010-applications-live-in-their-own-repository.md — why applications are not here
  • 02-DECISIONS/0030-the-repository-structure.md — the repositories, and the open tier-4 question this repository answers
  • 03-DESIGN/00-as-is/10-module-catalogue.md — the catalogue's shape, and what it records
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Novox Mesh — the catalogue. Module manifests the mesh builds, provisions and runs. Data, not a control-plane concern.
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