mosquitto_ctrl's dynsec subcommands exit 0 even when they fail — a "Client not found", an "already exists", a "Connection error: Not authorized", an "Unable to connect" all return status 0 and report the failure only as a line of text (verified live against 2.0.11). ctl() trusted the exit code, so clientExists()'s getClient probe never threw and always returned true; createScopedClient therefore took the setClientPassword branch, never ran createClient, and the consumer's client never landed in the dynsec store — while the provisioner logged it as provisioned. That is the assigned-catalogue-mqtt failure. ctl() now scans the combined stdout/stderr for the tool's error markers and raises a match as the failure it is. Surfacing those errors exposed two calls that only "worked" by being swallowed: addRoleACL re-run reports "already exists" (now ignored like createRole), and addClientRole re-run reports a bare "Internal error" that cannot be told from a real fault — so the binding is checked with clientHasRole and only added when absent. Fresh provision, idempotent re-provision, password rotation, bad admin auth and unreachable broker all verified against a live broker. Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01LrgweAeERJYBg88c5cKDzF
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 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