jochen
eadf301f9f
The operator would not read the Telegram ask for ADR 0343: thirty plain lines, every clause on one, no bold, no summary. A settings proposal was the same wall of text, its values masked so the approval was blind. - messenger: an ask's message is the asker's headline and explanation alone; who asked and when, what each answer does, the expiry, where else it is answered and the asker's Details travel as the message's note (asks.Message.Note). Answered, the message is one line, "You chose Approve at 16:06 on Telegram · <headline>". An explanation that does not read at a glance (asks.Glance) is shown and logged. On a kind that proves who answers, an ask's values are shown whole (asks.Ask.Whole), held to the secret rule alone (from the earlier work on issue 383, #178). - telegram: every message in HTML, never reworded: the title bold, a key line monospace, the note apart in a collapsed blockquote; markup escaped. A tap is compared by its words, whitespace aside, and a message shown before is still compared by the digest it was kept under. - desk-channel: the note follows the body. - mesh-knowledge: a record that needs the operator carries a brief (headline, summary, at most three points), the 30th per-record rule; its ask shows the brief and never the clauses. An ask made before is composed again as it was asked (form), so its warrant still holds. - claude-code: an instructions proposal's explanation is one summary line (the proposer's, or the module's), its text in the Details; a question's context is at most 300 characters and its recommendation one point. Older proposals and questions keep their form. The SDK is pinned at mesh-sdk 9588871 (fix/639-an-ask-reads-at-a-glance), which adds Message.Note and asks.Glance.
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