The calls the controller serves are kept on the bus with their answers,
and calls answers anyone who may call its seat. A token is the one-time
right to become a machine of the mesh, so the token verb's answer is kept
as withheld (novox/hq ADR 0169).
token issue --overlay-key records the key the machine made, binds the
token to it, gives the machine its address and makes it a peer of the
hub, pushing the hub before the token is shown. The token carries the
hub's tunnel and the bus at its holder's address on the private network,
and enrolment refuses any other key (novox/hq ADR 0169). The bus is no
longer public, so a machine outside the mesh can join only this way; a
token without a key is still what the machine running the bus joins its
own mesh with. Also a token verb, which says it replaces running the
command by hand and adding a peer to the hub with wg.
mesh/merge-gate pass: builds build-agent, mesh-controller, route-proxy → ace, g14, novox, shanks; no bus step; every machine composes with the change as it…
Two incidents had one shape: a change took effect that nobody saw first (hq issues 241, 304).
Three guards, each silent when nothing is at stake:
- settings show [--history], and a set that answers each key it adds, changes and removes, and
refuses a removal unless --replace; the replaced or cleared layer is kept in settings_history,
in the same transaction as the write (migration 0078).
- every send keeps a summary of what it sent (no file content), plan <node> --diff compares with
it, and push with no machine is refused unless --all.
- a push that would give a running container's mount another host directory holds that machine,
naming the module, mount and both directories, until push <node> --move <module>; a named push's
cascade is held the same way.
Rebased onto main and fitted to it: the hold runs before the push says what it recreates, a whole
push still says so first and leaves machines waiting for a gate, the verb's push with no machine is
still --behind and a push still needs why. The verbs take plan diff, settings replace and history,
and push move beside a machine, each refused where it cannot take effect.
mesh/merge-gate pass: builds build-agent, mesh-controller, route-proxy → ace, g14, novox, shanks; no bus step; every machine composes with the change as it…
R292: two drills recorded through hand-act record want no healer.
R298: the delivery seat's holder holds it before and after it serves checks,
so neither repository has to merge first.
mesh/merge-gate pass: builds build-agent, mesh-controller, route-proxy → ace, g14, novox, shanks; no bus step; every machine composes with the change as it…
A recorded build moves only by a person's push (ADR 0242), so that push is
the word its upgrade policy asks for; S15 counted it as a repair and wanted a
healer for split-dns, words and uplink-verbs. The push now reads what it
carries before it is recorded and says so in its kind, and the ten pushes of
2026-10-07 are named so their three warnings clear on the next tick.
mesh/merge-gate pass: builds build-agent, mesh-controller, route-proxy → ace, g14, novox, shanks; no bus step; every machine composes with the change as it…
mesh/delivery held for a person: merged, and the controller opened no walk for it within 10m0s — nothing it holds follows that branch, or the merge was…
mesh-lab's merge-check.sh runs in the TypeScript toolchain, which holds no Go
compiler, so its replays register was never compiled before a merge and a
broken one would have merged green. A script now declares a further part with
'# mesh-check-also: <toolchain> <script>'; the build seat runs it in that
toolchain's own container, and mesh/repo-check passes only when every part does.
mesh/merge-gate pass: builds build-agent, mesh-controller, route-proxy → ace, g14, novox, shanks; no bus step; every machine composes with the change as it…
A machine with a VPN client that writes /etc/resolv.conf needs its domains
routed to the VPN's servers while every other name still goes to the mesh's
resolvers. node-resolver's holder does that on the machine, owns the resolver
file there, and serves routes, route and unroute. The uplink's holder steps
back from the file only where the resolver is held; every other machine
composes as before.
mesh/merge-gate pass: builds build-agent, mesh-controller, route-proxy → ace, g14, novox, shanks; no bus step; every machine composes with the change as it…
A seat's verb names the shell commands it is the mesh's way to do, and a module says it for its own
tools in its manifest; the tools verb and module list --json carry both, for the mesh MCP server's
search, the agent's instructions and the guard on its shell.
mesh/merge-gate pass: builds build-agent, mesh-controller, route-proxy → ace, g14, novox, shanks; no bus step; every machine composes with the change as it…
What a machine resolves through and over which links had no tool: the
resolver file and its writer, and each link with its routes and resolvers,
are now verbs of node-uplink, the same whatever manages the network. Marked
optional (Verb.Optional), so today's holders still hold the seat until both
serve them; read back from the store's row they stay optional.
mesh/merge-gate pass: builds build-agent, mesh-controller, route-proxy → ace, g14, novox, shanks; no bus step; every machine composes with the change as it…
failed was required, so the controller refused the systemd module running
today and the module serving it was refused by the controller running
today: neither could land first. It is now optional (Verb.Optional, #117).
Two things kept either change from reaching a mesh whose seat rows already
exist: re-seeding added a verb but never an argument to one, and the
console refuses an argument the row does not name, so the journal window
would stay unreachable; and the optional mark is never stored, so a verb
seeded into a row came back required. A row's verb now gains the arguments
the binary names, and the working set takes the optional mark from the
compiled seat, which also keeps mesh-delivery's checks optional once seeded.
mesh/merge-gate pass: builds build-agent, mesh-controller, route-proxy → ace, g14, novox, shanks; no bus step; every machine composes with the change as it…
What the mesh's checks said of a pull request had no verb: the verdict was read from this
controller's journal. mesh-delivery answers it as checks. A verb added to a mesh seat whose holder
lives in another repository deadlocked: this controller would refuse the holder that does not serve
it, the one before it the holder that does, and every catalogue check between the two would fail on
mesh-delivery. So a verb can be marked optional — served or not, the holder holds — until every
holder serves it.
mesh/merge-gate pass: builds build-agent, mesh-controller, route-proxy → ace, g14, novox, shanks; no bus step; every machine composes with the change as it…
mesh/merge-gate pass: builds build-agent, mesh-controller, route-proxy → ace, g14, novox, shanks; no bus step; every machine composes with the change as it…
A plan's gated send for mail carried postgres's and mongodb's new builds
(policy record) to the control node and the anchor on 2026-10-07: a send
composes the machine's whole declaration from the builds the mesh holds,
and the gate only ever looked at modules that roll out. Every send but a
person's push now composes a recorded module from the manifest of the build
the machine was last sent and records that it still carries it; the bus
step moves the bus alone. And each move a gated send carries says how many
of the module's containers it recreates, and whether with a new image or
only their declaration.
mesh/merge-gate pass: builds build-agent, mesh-controller, route-proxy → ace, g14, novox, shanks; no bus step; every machine composes with the change as it…
An incident is read for the minutes it happened in, and the seat's journal
verb could only give a unit's last lines: reading the controller's journal
around the control node's mail being recreated had no tool, and a person
reached for a shell. The verb now takes since, until, priority and a
fixed-string match, which its holder validates and redacts.
failed was the systemd module's own tool; on the seat, whatever holds the
role answers it and every machine is asked the same way. Its claimant in
mesh-catalog serves it on the branch of the same name.
mesh/merge-gate pass: builds build-agent, mesh-controller, route-proxy → ace, g14, novox, shanks; no bus step; every machine composes with the change as it…
A VPN client rewrote the laptop's resolver file and nothing said so. The
engine now states its machine's networking; the controller keeps it with
the machine's health (migration 0077) and raises the rewrite as its own
finding naming the writer, the machine's own faults as machine.<m>.network,
and what several machines cannot reach once, there. The gate waits on a
rewrite it did not make rather than putting back a good build.
mesh/merge-gate pass: builds build-agent, mesh-controller, route-proxy → ace, g14, novox, shanks; no bus step; every machine composes with the change as it…
mesh/delivery held for a person: merged, and the controller opened no walk for it within 10m0s — nothing it holds follows that branch, or the merge was…
A module could say nothing about what ready means for what it runs, so a web
application with its port open and its requests hanging passed everything for
eleven hours (issue 145). A long-running resource now carries `health` — the
image's own check adopted by name, http, tcp, exec, unit or a module's own tool,
with its timing — refused near its author when it names a port or an address,
an endpoint the module does not declare, a tool it does not serve, a tool check
alone, or a timing outside the record's bounds. It is composed with the endpoint
as the port this machine published it on, and sent only to a node-engine whose
statement says it reads it: an older one would refuse the whole declaration.
The engine is granted its own machine's instance of each health tool. `module
check` warns of every long-running resource without `health`, counts them for
the catalogue, and refuses them from 2026-11-18. A check's findings stay out of
a condition's summary. The node-engine's validator is vendored at its Phase B
commit, so what is composed is judged by the words the engine takes.
mesh/merge-gate pass: builds build-agent, mesh-controller, route-proxy → ace, g14, novox, shanks; no bus step; every machine composes with the change as it…
Two ADR 0240 drills recorded with hand-act record --cause drill raised
mesh.hand-acts.drill.healer-wanted. hand-act drill (seat verb drill) records
them as a person's decision; hand-act record now refuses the cause, so the
two recorded before it clear on the next tick and a repair cannot pass for a
drill by the word it gives.
mesh/merge-gate pass: builds build-agent, mesh-controller, route-proxy → ace, g14, novox, shanks; no bus step; every machine composes with the change as it…
The witness moves a running build aside into a directory the controller's user
cannot enter, then deletes it; a verb exec'd from os.Executable() in that window
failed with permission denied. /proc/self/exe stays valid while the process lives.
A verb that still cannot start, or arrives while the controller stops, is refused
with link.ErrHandingOver and marked retry: handing-over.
The gate judged a module by what the mesh saw from outside, so a container that
crash-looped after it applied passed it. Each machine's node-engine now states
the health of every long-running resource it runs; the controller keeps the
newest statement per machine, raises module.<module>.<machine>.unhealthy on the
second statement in a row, clears it on the first that does not say it, and the
gate passes a module only when every long-running resource of it is stated
healthy since the send. An engine that states nothing is judged as before.
mesh/merge-gate pass: builds build-agent, mesh-controller, route-proxy → ace, g14, novox, shanks; no bus step; every machine composes with the change as it…
An ask redelivered after the build agent stopped mid-check (the rollout it was checking updated it)
found its own throwaway store under its name, and the check said it could not run (mesh-controller#105,
build-1791331512096605198).
mesh/merge-gate pass: builds build-agent, mesh-controller, route-proxy → ace, g14, novox, shanks; no bus step; every machine composes with the change as it…
A check asked by the controller before its own build of the issue 285 fix was registered was judged by
the controller the mesh ran then, which passed 0 of 4 composing. The judge is the running controller by
design, so the rule is read where the verdict is taken too: from the machines the verdict lists.
mesh/merge-gate error: builds build-agent, mesh-controller, route-proxy → ace, g14, novox, shanks; no bus step; the check could not run: a throwaway postgr…
mesh/repo-check error: the check could not run: a throwaway postgres:17-alpine could not be raised: docker run --label mesh.build=build-1791331512096605198…
The snapshot promises no address, and every module's repository, reads and sources carried the URL the
mesh clones from. A check matches repositories by owner and name, so nothing it reads is lost (novox/hq
issue 288).
mesh/merge-gate pass: builds build-agent, mesh-controller, route-proxy → ace, g14, novox, shanks; no bus step; every machine composes with the change as it…
The gate composed 0 of 4 machines with the change and without, and passed every change: the store it
raised held each module's bus credential but no account for it (issue 203's refusal), no outward links
(so no filter could be composed), and refused settings the mesh holds. Now the account is minted with
its credential, the facts carry each machine's outward links (a stand-in for an older snapshot), the
mesh's layers are kept as held, and a withheld path keeps a path's shape. A machine the mesh composes
that the gate cannot raise makes the verdict an error, never a pass; the verdict alone is on stdout.
A merge-check.sh that passed on an agent's machine failed on the build seat: a newer gofmt, siblings at
a feature branch, another user. `mesh-controller check-here` runs builder.Check with the ask the
controller would make, from facts that now name the toolchains and the refs cloned beside; a failed
script is said by what failed. (novox/hq issues 282, 283)
mesh/merge-gate pass: builds build-agent, mesh-controller, route-proxy → ace, g14, novox, shanks; no bus step; every machine composes with the change as it…
mesh/repo-check fail: its merge-check.sh failed: FAIL
A walk mesh-delivery never lets go waited for ever with nothing open: S16
says it at 30 minutes, urgent at 4 hours, naming plans go. Phase B: probe
D14 reads the delivery owner's stalled and raises delivery.<id>.stalled,
and H2 takes the table's transition through its close.
While the mesh-delivery seat has a holder on record, a merge that moves no
core module opens its walk and asks nothing until mesh-delivery or a person
says go; nothing of it is registered before its turn, so no other send
carries it. The controller keeps the planner, the gate, sending and the
walk, and gains the verbs the owner asks with: delivery-plan, -order,
-check (a group composed as one future state), deliver, delivery-stop,
delivery-walks; every walk kept is said as plan-moved.
One commit, one plan: a commit off the trunk — a pull request's head, a branch built by
hand, a rebuild or replay of one — is for checking. The build seat reads from its clone
which branches hold the commit, and the controller records and never registers a build
whose commit is not on the branch the module follows (the repository's default for a
new one), so nothing off the trunk can be sent.
A pull request's check now carries its change plan, computed by the planner: what a
merge would build in which order, what each machine would receive, and what is not an
ordinary send — the bus step, a module waiting for a person, a provider's consumers.
touchedBy is now the only mapping of changed files onto modules — touched, added, and
read by no build — and reachOfMerge the planner's whole answer with the dependency walk.
The merge handler, the plan what-if, the merge gate's width and composition, and a pull
request's check all ask it, so planning and gating cannot disagree. The gate composes
the definitions of the modules a merge would rebuild or add, not every one in the tree,
and the check says the dependents a merge would build after them.
The builder reads a module's own directory (the repository for one built from its root)
and a repository its recipe packages, nothing else. A file in no module's directory was
read as shared code and rebuilt everything built from the repository: 103 modules for a
merge-check.sh added at the catalogue's root. It now touches nothing, in the merge
handler, the release planner and the pull request's check alike, and the gate says so.
de-spiegel's and link2pay's manifests already fail the module check on main; without
comparing against the base branch every pull request touching them would fail the gate
for a fault none of them made. The gate's own rule: what was already so is said.
Every pull request the forge announces is mapped onto the mesh's module graph by the
merge handler's rule (issue 278): touching a module — or adding one — runs the gate
(mesh/merge-gate), its judge chosen by the graph (the controller judges itself, the
node-engine by its validator); a repository of the mesh that touches none runs only its
own merge-check.sh (mesh/repo-check), a warning when it has none. Nothing is left pending:
a repository outside the mesh touching nothing is told so as a pass.
The gate moves out of the per-repository scripts into the build seat, so a script is the
repository's own tests and declares its toolchain (go or typescript). The controller's
manifest names every verb of its seat again (ADR 0132), held by a test.
mesh/merge-gate error: the check could not run: a throwaway postgres:17-alpine could not be raised: docker run --label mesh.build=build-1791318263948250337…
mesh/merge-gate error: the check could not run: a throwaway postgres:17-alpine could not be raised: docker run --label mesh.build=build-1791317509716888018…
An image is not byte-reproducible, so ADR 0236's 'same artifacts is no move'
never held for one: a catalogue merge that did not touch the bus rebuilt it,
and every send to the control node waited for a planned bus upgrade.
The builder now records a source fingerprint per build (module tree, context
trees, bases and toolchains by digest). A rebuild with the fingerprint of the
build it repeats is registered with that build's artifacts, handed to modules
standing on it, holds no push, demands no bus step, and a plan sends and
gates nothing for it. Identical artifacts remain a second way to be no move.
The live tests reached one shared bus and assert, read and remove the mesh's own objects by
their fixed names, so packages run in parallel deleted what each other read and the suite
passed only one package at a time; a red suite read as noise. internal/testbus starts a server
per test, linked in at the nats-server release go.mod pins, and a test holds that pin to the
catalogue's bus image and to the facts snapshot's bus when there is one, so the tests never run
a bus the mesh does not. The waiter test read a timing (the most connections held at one look)
and now reads the state it means (the fewest held across the wait). make check runs the packages
in parallel under the race detector, with a timeout.
Every check the mesh had ran after a merge, on a machine: a manifest the node-engine refused
(236), an identity a real machine's name made too long (263). merge-gate raises the mesh as the
facts snapshot says it is and the mesh with the change, each in a throwaway store through the
controller's own records, composes every machine twice and validates it with the node-engine's
validator, and fails what the change breaks, naming the machine's roles and the module - plus a
manifest the judging controller cannot read, a consumer left out of its grant, a module removed
while a machine runs it, a new module the node-engine would refuse; it warns on a wide rebuild.
The forge's new head of a pull request becomes a check the controller asks of the build seat:
the head and, beside it, the controller the mesh runs, the catalogue, the host and the lab; a
throwaway store and bus of the versions the mesh runs; the repository's merge-check.sh in the
mesh's Go toolchain with no container runtime socket; then mesh-lab's replays. The verdict is
said as checked, an error never a pass, and nothing is recorded or registered.
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.
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.
jochen
jschoubben
mesh-admin