Every check the mesh had was right about the world it was given and none was given
the mesh's: a real machine's name made an identity too long (263), the node-engine
refused what the catalogue check passed (236). The controller now composes what a
check needs - every machine under a pseudonym of its name's length, its roles,
system, builds, capabilities, assignments, pins, settings and how its declaration
composes; every seat, module and source; the bus, store and node-engine versions it
runs - with no secret, no address and no name, and keeps it in the artifact store
as facts:latest when it moved, or daily. The replaced snapshot's manifest is let go
of, so the nightly collector takes it. S14 raises facts-stale past two days.
Two planned bus upgrades raised healer-wanted, though ADR 0236 never lets
the mesh roll the bus. Instead of naming one more cause, the hand-act
verbs are one table saying which record a person's decision (retire
approve/reject, cleanup delete, bus upgrade, upgrade release-backlog, and
secret rotate after a leak); S15 and `hand-acts` skip those, push and the
other repairs keep counting. Conditions already open for them clear on the
next tick.
The merge of mesh-catalog 7f99fb4a rebuilt 103 modules with the build agent in tier 0, and ADR
0236 recorded it as "a change to the build agent rebuilds most of the catalogue". The agent had
not changed: modules/showcase/index.ts had. showcase is the catalogue's reference module, held
by no machine, and its manifest was not in the merge, so whatTheMergeTouched read the file as
shared code and rebuilt everything built from the repository (88 came out byte-identical). The
agent stood first only because everything is built by it.
Whether a directory is a module is a fact of the repository at the merge commit, so the forge's
announcer now says it: module_dirs, the changed files' directories holding a module.json there,
with module_dirs_said. A changed file inside one is that module's business; only a file in no
such directory is shared. An announcer that does not say keeps the old rule. `plans` what-if
takes the same list as module-dirs.
And a regression for the open question: nothing depends on the build agent except by being
built by it, and built-by never widens a plan, so a change to the agent - manifest or program -
rebuilds the agent alone; what moved beside it is ordered after it.
A send carries the machine's whole declaration, so at the switch to roll the next send of
anything would have carried the old default's backlog, unjudged, to every machine. A gated
send now carries and judges everything waiting on its machine; every other send is refused
or leaves the machine; a release plan walks what waits one machine at a time, the control
node last, and one that fails holds the next until a person releases it.
A plan's send to the bus's machine for another module carried the bus's new build and
restarted it under every machine with nobody asking (2026-10-06). The guard is in the one
send everything uses; only the bus step passes it. A rebuild that made the same artifacts
is no move.
A build that reported applied was sent everywhere; one that then did nothing, served
no tools or broke its machine's word reached every machine. Now the first machine is
judged by the component's health (the core's definitions, as doctor probes H-*, or a
module's own) three times over two minutes within ten; a failing gate puts the previous
build back there once, marks the build, and says it as a condition and an event.
Upgrades roll out by default; the bus is a planned step; a module deleted at its
source is not built (the public-acme plan failure).
D2 raised a resolver urgent on one query that timed out while its machine was
loaded, and its summary carried the resolver's address and socket text, so the
operator channel withheld the whole alert.
- D2 asks every question up to three times, all at once; a resolver that
answers nothing is held for the next run and raised urgent when two runs
in a row find it silent. A wrong answer is still raised at once.
- Findings a single look can be wrong about carry Confirm: raised on the
second look in a row, kept while open, never cleared-and-reraised. Used by
D2 silence, D3 (also asks discovery twice), D6 behind, D9, D13 unmeasured,
probe-failed of the doctor, and blind watchdog rows.
- Probe seat asks (D8, D13) are asked again when the bus brought no answer.
- Summaries name machines and say things in words; addresses, paths,
domains and raw errors move to the evidence (D2, D5, D8, D9, D13, S12).
- internal/outward mirrors the messenger's content rule, allowing the mesh's
machine names; the keeper rewords a summary that would be withheld and keeps
it whole in the evidence; a TestMain lint fails the suite on any raised or
linted finding that would be withheld.
The night's backup of the bus takes each stream through JetStream's snapshot
API, run by the nats module under its own account. The module holding
mesh-broker is composed that account: stream names and info, the snapshot
request, its flow-control acks, its own inbox — no write, which the writers
table checks. A bus module declaring anything else to say on the bus is
refused by module check rather than silently granted nothing. The genesis
user list is unchanged: the controller's grants are.
Between assign and push a module's own secrets are not made yet; D1 composed
without making them and raised an urgent 'nothing can be sent' that the next
push resolved silently. D1 now composes as the push would (Foreseeing): a
secret the push makes gets a stand-in and is named, one the push is refused on
is refused with the push's words. Waiting is said only past 30 minutes, as a
warning. D3 and D13 expect a holder only once its machine was sent it and
reported or had ten minutes to.
A walk over a large library every hour loads the array that protects it. An item now says how it
is measured — a bounded daily walk, a dataset's counters, or its top level only — and a size that
is a lower bound is kept as such and never read as a shrink.
A module's data section says what it keeps and how precious it is; the backup holder's lines,
binding stickiness, retirement on unassign and D13's conditions follow from it, so issue 273's
empty replacement is said and an unassigned module's data is remembered, not forgotten.
grantsFor granted every consumer a pair credential from the provider was
ever made for, so a consumer pinned back to its own store was still asked
of the store it left, which then never retired it. A credential whose
consumer's resolution binds it elsewhere is now withdrawn like one nobody
asks for, kept on record for the login the provider keeps, and said on
plan and push.
Issue 258's fix let a mesh seat's holder elsewhere answer before this machine's own provider. Right
for the resolver, which any provider answers alike; for the store's seat it re-bound every database
consumer on a machine running its own store to the holder on another, each was given a fresh, empty
database there, and nothing said so for twenty hours.
- An offer says whether it keeps its consumers' data (`keeps-consumer-data`); unsaid, a provider
that grants each consumer a credential does. For such a provision the seat's holder no longer
overrules a provider beside the consumer; a pin still does.
- Where each such consumer was sent is recorded (migration 0071). A resolution that would bind it
elsewhere keeps the recorded provider and says the move; one whose provider is gone is refused,
never answered by another.
- A push says a kept move and raises it as an urgent condition at once; the self-check's D12 raises
it every run, with a pinned move not yet sent as a warning and any unasked move as urgent.
networking required mesh-wireguard and nothing else; machines are assigned the network directly.
module forget refuses a provided module, so a retired one is removed at start once no machine has it.
Guard route-proxy's public account directory against a reissue.
Approving a retirement and deleting what was retired are a person's act by
design (hq ADR 0230); counted by S15 they would ask for a healer that must not
exist.
A provider that cannot disable keeps the consumer reachable until a person
deletes it (hq ADR 0230); the listing and the approval say so instead of
claiming access was disabled.
A provider now waits for a person before retiring more than three consumers
or half of what it holds, and deletes only when asked. The controller is that
person's way in: it keeps waiting and rejected sets as conditions, answers them
with retire approve|reject, lists and deletes retired consumers through the
provider's own tools on its machine, records each act in the hand-act log, and
probes for anything retired longer than thirty days (D11).
Research 031 counted the repairs people made by hand: a push to unstick a
plan waiting on a report, a controller restarted to make an object again, a
plan closed, a consumer re-made from now. Each was the ordinary path taken
again by someone who noticed. The healer registry makes each a registered
response to one condition kind, with a budget, a settle and its event:
- H1 sent-not-reported: ask the machine's node-engine to report again
(mesh.node.<n>.ask.report); if it does not report what it was sent, send
it again, never moving a build a policy or a plan holds back
- H2 stalled: close a plan whose wait is superseded or finished
- H3 holder-silent / consumer-lost: the send's own assertion of the bus's
objects (issue 208's note)
- H4 consumer-behind: consumer-reset, only for a consumer the stream table
marks resettable (the controller's own events consumer)
- H5 is the identity provider's own repair (ADR 0224 §5), registered only
Success is the observation clearing the condition, never the healer; a spent
budget hands the condition to the operator, urgent, with what was tried, and
no healer touches it again. Every act is begun in the store before it is made
(migration 0070), kept in the condition's tried as "healer Hn" and said as
the seat event healer-acted; a heal is never a hand act. More than twelve acts
in an hour stop every healer until an hour after the last, said urgently.
Only the lease holder heals.
S15 is live: a cause repaired by hand twice in a fortnight raises
healer-wanted, naming the healer that was not enough where one exists. D6's
far-behind finding has its own kind, consumer-behind. Nodes are granted the
question; the controller's grant gains healer-acted (genesis lock in
mesh-host). `healers` lists the registry, the acts and the brake; status
counts the week's heals.
Two controllers could both act (issue 204), a reconcile's report could
overtake the apply after it and the digest decided (issue 267), and a grant
could make a second writer of a machine's report.
- The lease (internal/lease, ADR 0229): mesh-controller_lease key `holder`,
15 s age, renewed every 5 s by compare-and-set; the epoch is the revision
it was taken at. The gate is the clock (stops 3 s before expiry); a refused
renewal is a loss and the process exits; a holder that stops gives it back.
serve takes it before asserting the bus. Epochs kept in the store
(migration 0068 controller_epoch) as a floor: a bucket raised from nothing
is compacted past it. Unleased (no epoch, S12 urgent) only when nobody
holds it and the bus will not let it be written. A shell command acts
under the holder's epoch, or its own lease when none.
- Declarations carry `epoch` inside the signed envelope, only to a machine
whose latest account carried a report_sequence (mesh-host #35); would-send
is composed with the epoch last sent. Allot and the send both pass the gate.
- Reports: contract in internal/link/order.go (epoch, sequence,
report_sequence, older_than, refused_older). Accounts kept by epoch, then
sequence, then report sequence; older refused, counted; unordered reports
keep the digest rule. Plans by compare-and-set on a revision, with epoch.
Conditions and calls carry the epoch and are not written off the lease.
- S12 and S13 (naming the writer by epoch) watched, D5 run; reset of the
bucket said. Writers table compiled in and enforced in PermissionsFor; the
controller no longer publishes mesh.control.>. A contract per consumed
kind, and the empty-on-error lint over the repository.
- mesh-host pinned to its main with the epoch in the validator (D1 validates
the envelope as sent).
Needs mesh-host's genesis lock with the lease grant (mesh-host PR) for
TestTheInstallersFirstUserListIsWhatTheControllerWouldCompose.
A given own secret the module reads at start is held by nobody but that
module, so the mesh need not read it to replace it: secret rotate now
works on it, and a value given through secret accept is replaced on its
own after the module's first good start under the mesh. Only a value an
outside party issues (own-secrets "issued-by": "outside") or one the
module applies stays as given, refused with the reason.
A module or seat holder assigned after the controller started was sent
its declaration and found nothing to bind: messenger on novox
("consumer novox_messenger not found", 2026-10-06) and every first
build-agent holder (2026-10-03). assertBusObjects ran only in the start
raise; a push ensured a module's consumer only when a bus credential was
minted, which a module carried by the runtime never is.
The send's grant now runs the same derivation (assertOnSend) before the
memberships, on every push, cascade, plan send and rotation. A failure
is said in the send's output and raised as bus.objects.unasserted, which
the next send that asserts everything clears; the send itself goes on,
because the objects are the mesh's and holding every machine back for
one would turn one fault into all. Module consumers are each tried and
every failure named. The start raise stays as it was.
Live on 2026-10-06, two of the first self-check's findings were its own:
- D8 asked every machine's node-intrusion-prevention.banned, and the
controller's grant did not name the subject: the bus refused it 24 times
and D8 timed out after thirty seconds instead of saying so. The verbs the
self-check asks are named in broker.VerbsTheSelfCheckAsks and granted
(mesh.seat.<seat>.tool.<verb>.*); each probe declares the seat verbs it
calls, askSeatTool refuses an undeclared one, and a test over the
registry fails a probe whose question the controller is not granted.
AskSeatTool now returns a refused publish at once ("the bus refused…")
instead of waiting out its timeout; D8 asks the machines in parallel.
- D10 read every machine as behind right after a push: a node-engine says
its version as the directory it is delivered into, the archive's digest
(31045596c83a, catalogue versionOf), and D10 compared that with the
build's commit (1545b00a). It now compares with the versions the
registered build is delivered as, and a hand-placed engine's commit.
The controller imports mesh-host/validate through a replace onto the forge
that holds it, and every build — the build agent's go build in a fresh
toolchain container, the Dockerfile's go mod download — would have fetched
it through the public proxy and checksum database at build time: a merge
breaking main on the network, the class Phase 1 removes. vendor/ is
committed; go builds from it with nothing fetched, and refuses to build
when it and go.mod disagree, so a pin moved without go mod vendor fails at
once. The Dockerfile copies vendor/ and builds with GOPROXY=off.
Every one of the 48 core failures of research 031 was found by a person
looking; the mesh's answers carried the fact for whoever asked and told
nobody.
- The condition store (to-be 45 §2): mesh-controller_conditions, one key
per open condition, written by compare-and-set so a person's silence
and the watchdogs never lose each other's word; every transition kept
ninety days in mesh-controller_condition-history and said as the
seat's events condition-raised / condition-changed / condition-cleared
(the condition at the top level, with event, at, change, why, show),
offered again while the bus is away. Raised and cleared by observation
only; a clearing reopened within ten minutes is the same condition with
its count up, its silence kept. Verbs: conditions, conditions show,
conditions silence (a hand act, at most a week), conditions history.
- ADR 0224's provider standing is the first kind, provider-failing, held
by the provider's events; the provider_standing table is no longer read
or written (left in place: dropping it is the operator's word).
- status leads with the open conditions, urgent first, and says all well
only with none open; conditions it cannot read are said and not well.
- The signals table compiled in, one watchdog loop over it every 30s: S1
heartbeat (3 intervals, asleep machines excepted, control node urgent
after 30 min), S2 report after a send, S3 plan tier, S4 event loop deaf,
S5 merge not acted, S6 ask lost, S7 call hung, S8 provider silent, S9
advisories, S10 self-check silent, S11 node tools silent, S13 stale
refusals; S12, S14, S15 deferred with their reasons. A row that cannot
see raises probe-failed and clears nothing. A test generated from the
table suppresses each signal inside and past its bound.
- The bus's advisories (maximum deliveries, a mesh consumer deleted) and
the controller's own slow consumer and refused subjects, said in the
mesh's words.
- doctor: the probe registry D1-D10 (D5 deferred) and DW, every five
minutes, each in thirty seconds; a probe that cannot run is never a
pass. D1 validates with mesh-host's own validator. Every run ends with
the doctor-heartbeat event mesh-watcher listens for.
- The controller is granted its new buckets, events, the two advisories
and $SRV.INFO; the node tools their tools-alive heartbeat. The streams
and consumers the controller asserts and the ones D6/D7 expect are one
derivation.
A cancel writes the ask's id into the seat's cancelled set before deleting
the ask, and a write is a publish to the bucket's subject, which the
controller was not granted: against a server holding exactly the
controller's composed list, every cancel timed out.
A controller restart lost every call's outcome, `status` composed the mesh
while its caller waited (18.6s live on 2026-10-06, past the 10s window), a
repair by hand left no trace, and the core's bounds had nothing measured to
be set from.
- calls: kept in the controller's bucket mesh-controller_calls (last 1000 or
14 days, answers bounded to 64 KiB), read by id across a restart; a
controller starting marks a stopped one's running calls abandoned; each
call names its caller from the inbox its answer goes to.
- status: the serving controller composes it at start, after news from a
machine, a build or an acting verb, and every minute; the verb answers the
last composition at once with when and how long it took. Composing resolves
each machine once instead of twice.
- hand-act log in mesh-controller_hand-acts: push (required through the seat),
plans stop/close, broker consumer-reset and the new hand-act record take
--why/--cause/--condition; `hand-acts` lists them and repeated causes;
status counts the week's.
- durations (migration 0066): apply (send to first report), heartbeat gap,
plan tier and build, recorded as heard; `durations` summarises them.
- the controller's seat row takes this binary's definition of its own verbs,
so the console no longer judges calls against an older build's schema.
- the controller is granted its two buckets' subjects.
jochen
mesh-admin