mesh/merge-gate head 79a3396340a7 merged into trunk 454a3db69a1e — pass: builds build-agent, mesh-controller → ace, g14, novox, shanks; no bus step; every …
A controller older than optional requirements reads `requires` as names, and Inventory.Catalogue
stops at the first manifest it cannot read: the long form stored inside `requires` would have left
a rollback below this controller composing no machine. Stored, `requires` stays plain and the
optional names sit in `optional-requires`, a key an older controller sets aside, leaving out only
the module carrying it. A refusal of a hard requirement now names a module that wants it hard.
Making every soft dependency a provision made it hard: a mesh without influxdb could not assign
grafana, and one with influxdb in its catalogue would install it for grafana. A requirement may now
be written {"name": ..., "optional": true}. It resolves as a hard one when a provider is assigned or
reachable, and is otherwise absent: never refused, nothing installed for it. Its binding, credential
and only-when-bound files are left out, its ${bound:...|default:...} placeholders take their
defaults, the module check refuses one that could render empty, and plan and node list it unbound.
mesh/merge-gate pass: builds build-agent, mesh-controller → ace, g14, novox, shanks; no bus step; every machine composes with the change as it did without …
Every key of a module's layers merged into every mergeable file it owns:
the mesh's own words, a key meant for a ${setting:} in another file, a
key for a second configuration file. A module could not own two
configurable files. A file now names its keys in takes-settings and
takes only those; a key no file names is stray where it is set; a
module that declares a setting names the keys of every mergeable file,
and one that declares none keeps today's form (ADR 0164 §15).
A media manager runs as the puid/pgid its assignment sets per node, but a
declared directory's owner was literal, so a folder the app must write was
refused on a machine whose identity was not the image's default. A
directory's owner now takes ${setting:<key>} (user, or user:group), filled
at composition and refused unless the value is a whole number, and the
module check refuses any other shape or a key the module asks for nowhere
else.
mesh/merge-gate pass: builds build-agent, mesh-controller → ace, g14, novox, shanks; no bus step; every machine composes with the change as it did without …
Reading a file, searching one, listing a directory, the owner and mode of each
component of a path and looking up an account had no mesh tool, so they went
through the login shell's execute as the operator's account. node-reads is a
node seat with six verbs, each saying the commands it replaces. Its holder must
run as an account of its own (ADR 0310 §3), and its own runtime is given
MESH_SECRET_PLACES: the directory of every module's own secret, every credential
file and grant directory, the vault's directories and the sealed-secret keep,
so it refuses them by name before any read (§5).
mesh/merge-gate pass: builds build-agent, mesh-controller → ace, g14, novox, shanks; no bus step; every machine composes with the change as it did without …
The url was skipped by the installation check, so an installation's host or
an address passed; it is judged whole now, the vendor's host declared in the
artifact's names-on-purpose, and an address or a reserved name as the host
is refused. Only the version's dotted-quad reading is skipped. The unpack
caps its entries, drains xz before waiting for it, reads a pax global
header and a nested within's parents, and a redirect off https is not
followed.
A mail client's release is about 80 MB per version, too large to keep in a
repository at every upgrade, and an add-on whose licence forbids copying it
to third parties may not be in a repository at all. An archive artifact may
now name url, sha256 and version (and file or within) instead of from: the
build seat fetches it once, refuses it when its digest is not the pin's and
names both, keeps it in its workspace under the digest (a vendor that serves
only its newest version cannot break a later build of the same pin), and
packs it like any archive, so a node gets the mesh's own archive by digest
and never asks the vendor. The build seat's image carries xz, which Go's
standard library does not read. The installation check takes the vendor's
address and version of such a pin for the world's, as a registry is an
image's.
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 → ace, g14, novox, shanks; no bus step; every machine composes with the change as it did without …
A token a media server got from its vendor reached its consumers only as a value the mesh minted, which
the server refused, or as a copy typed by hand. An offer may now say its software issues the credential;
the new issued verb carries no value and asks the provider's tool, in the controller's own name, for the
value sealed to one call, then seals it to every pair that does not hold it yet.
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 issue tracker's history lasts seven days on the events stream and its
bucket fills toward a cap with no warning (issues 501, 502). A module may
now declare `logs`; the controller creates each as a stream on the bus
(create-or-update, never deleted or recreated, reported when undeclared),
issues it to the owner's assignments in their membership, grants the
runtime exactly the append and direct-read subjects, and raises a
condition when any module's bucket or log reaches 75% of its cap, cleared
below 70%.
mesh/merge-gate pass: builds build-agent, mesh-controller → ace, g14, novox, shanks; no bus step; every machine composes with the change as it did without …
mesh/merge-gate pass: builds build-agent, mesh-controller → ace, g14, novox, shanks; no bus step; every machine composes with the change as it did without …
A module waiting for the operator's secret failed its first-node gate, held
every later walk and was said as 'nothing for you to do'. The node-engine's
new waiting state is checked against the manifest and the secrets given,
read by the gate as a wait for a person, and raised as needs-operator naming
the act. A secret family gives each part its own one-line secret, which the
mesh never makes, so the desk prompt can take each password.
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 merge to the controller's repository moved the route proxy and the build
seat's holder whatever it changed, because nothing said which files their
builds read. A build of a trunk commit now says its build source per
repository: a Go program's import closure, an archive's directory, an
image's recipe and the package it names in the new 'compiles' field. That
image is built from its build source alone, so a recipe reading past it
fails by name, and its fingerprint is over what it was handed.
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…
Third review of mesh-catalog #147. A setting anywhere else in a unit's name could make the unit another
unit or another kind; it is now refused where the manifest is read. A value beginning with '-' would be
read by systemctl as an option, and a long one is no pool's 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…
An unplaceable line of a left-out module, such as an access nobody placed, failed the whole machine's
declaration. Say it among what could not be placed instead, never copy the definition's path past a
placement that does not read, and accept a removal only when the decoder is past 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 module left out for an unknown key inside an entry lost its whole manifest, so every consumer of what
it provides was refused and its data stopped being copied. Read past only the unknown key, keep its
backup lines, and say in the condition what stops.
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 key dropped silently ran a module without what its manifest says, and a key inside a block still
failed the whole catalogue. Judge a key by what it is about, and narrow the listing to one machine.
A strict read of the stored catalogue fails every plan and send once a manifest uses a field an older
controller lacks; registration stays strict. A node named default lost its layer to the name check.
Judge the operator's keys by whole words, and scan a default under any key.
Without a default, a running module could never gain a setting: the file asking for it
failed to compose until set, and the key was refused as stray until a file asked for it.
Defaults sit under the mesh's and the node's settings, never merge into a JSON file, are
refused for the operator's own values, and settings shows each value's source.
A module adding a battery to the bar had to write i3status-rust's TOML, so a second
bar could not take its place. node-bar now receives a bar-neutral block: the
contributor says what it shows, the holder renders it with its own template, places
every bar and place once, and a contribution may name a capability the machine must
report. The block is offered: the power module runs on servers without a bar.
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 covered: a later merge that contains it was delivered: novox/mesh-controller@6faf701656fe (merged as c714d077 into main, walk plan-17914198…
The key-value-buckets record took 0201 on main while this waited to merge.
Only the comments citing the derived-value work move; this repository's other
0201 citations are the buckets record's own and stay.
(cherry picked from commit 75b2676d32)
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…
mesh/delivery covered: a later merge that contains it was delivered: novox/mesh-controller@4291fee68e95 (merged as a5a132ac into main, walk plan-17913907…
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
The one global 20-character bound made every consumer pay an object
store's key length, even for provisions that keep no name, and a single
overflow refused the provider's whole declaration. An offer now states
its own bound (identity: {max, in} or false); unsaid, a provider told its
consumers keeps 20 and one told nothing keeps none. module check judges
every identity on the longest machine name before merge, and a provider
leaves an overflowing consumer out of its grants and composes, with the
consumer named by push, plan and status (ADR 0225).
- mesh-dns-resolver: a mesh seat delivering wildcard-resolution, so every node's resolver
configuration resolves to its one holder; node-dns-resolver kept until nothing claims it.
- ${bound:<provision>:address}: the providing machine's private address, for the one consumer
that cannot use a name — a machine's resolver configuration.
- zone: a module declares the zone it answers and the listen that answers it; the controller
settles it per node, refuses duplicates and shadowing, and hands the resolver .Zones to forward.
- node-hosts-file: a node seat whose holder owns /etc/hosts, with entries/add/remove.
The resolver tests follow the catalogue: no runtime dns (containers copy the machine's resolvers),
live-restore held by resolv-conf, resolv.conf naming the resolver by address then a public one.
Each contribution grain was a manifest field and a renderer of its own; a module now contributes
to any seat with a kind that seat receives, the holder places it with
${contribution:<seat>:<kind>}, and the contribution depends on the seat. node-hotkeys is the
first new seat to receive (triggers); the display session receives window-manager config.
Seed the eleven node seats with the verbs they start with. A provision may
have the machine's reach: a requirement for it resolves only to a provider
in the node's own set, is never pulled in, and is refused naming who could.
A shell contribution's for gains xinitrc and xresources, placed only by the
holder of node-display-server.
A module contributes environment variables, PATH entries and shell code in named slots;
the holder of the matching seat places them with ${environment:posix|systemd} and
${shell:<shell>:<slot>}. Rendered in module order with a naming line per contribution,
PATH entries added only when missing, machine facts resolved first. A variable two
modules set, or a placeholder outside its seat's holder, is refused at parse (the
catalogue check) and at composition. Filled after every other placeholder pass, so no
scanner ever reads a shell's own ${...}.
The bundles refactor took ADR 0188 on main, so this work's record is 0201 and
every comment citing it moves with it. Main also took migration 0055 (an
older build never replaces a newer), so the store's collected-artifacts table
is 0056 — a number two migrations share is a schema nobody can trust.
make check passes except TestTheResolverIsToldEveryMachineOnTheNetworkAndToldAgainWhenOneLeaves,
which fails on main too and now for two stacked reasons (hq issues 203 and 202).
A manifest names the state it keeps (state) and reads (reads); the controller
asserts a key-value bucket per name on every raise, grants owners write and
readers read (measured against a running server), issues each assignment its
buckets in the membership, and reports buckets nothing declares without
removing them.
The mesh names what may go from its own build records — a digest it did not
record making is never named, which is what keeps the sweep away from the
images genesis pushed. An artifact stays because a definition the mesh holds
names it, or because it belongs to one of the five most recent successful
builds of its module.
internal/artifacts asks the store to let go of one; internal/inventory
decides and remembers (migration 0055); the sweep runs after a build the mesh
recorded, which is when both the bytes and the keep set moved. Never fatal to
a build.
And the manifest side of while-stopped, refused from the definition alone:
no schedule, run-once, a container the module does not declare, itself.
${consumer:as} and ${consumer:as:dns} in a serves block are filled per
consumer at resolution, and the one filled value reaches both ends: the
consumer's binding and its ${bound:...} substitutions, and the provider's
contributions entry as `derived`. A fact or alphabet the mesh does not have
is refused at parse; a consumer whose own file already holds the derived
value is refused at resolution, naming the placeholder to write instead.
The controller is to be declared as a Go bundle run by a process instead of
an image (novox/hq issue 213, ADR 0188 §1, §3). The composer could not
express that honestly yet:
- a module declaring tools had every bundle served by the node's runtime,
so the controller's own binary would have been launched a second time as
an MCP child; a bundle one of the module's resources runs is now served
only when it says `loads`
- a module's accounts went after the mesh-computed files, so secrets owned
by the account a process runs as were refused on the first apply; a
module's `user` resources now go first
- `prepares` derived its step only from a container; a process is now
prepared by the same program with `prepare` as a run-once process
- a process may say what it `replaces` (a resource of its module it no
longer declares), prefixed as the host records it, so the host keeps the
old one running until the process is (needs mesh-host's `replaces`)
This lands before the controller's manifest uses any of it: the running
controller composes its own declaration, so the code that fills the new
shape must be live first.
Every served bundle is its own process now, so each carries its own copy of what it imports: after
the compile and the launchers, the toolchain image's esbuild bundles every entrypoint in place and
every launcher under its own name into one ES module file, the SDK inlined, require provided to
inlined CommonJS, the launcher's shebang kept and its mode 0755. The toolchain's node_modules is
copied only for packages an artifact names external. An image without the bundler is refused by
name. Issue 212: build.on already passes a published package by its exact version and plans the
toolchain after it; tests say so.
The composer delivers a bundle when the runtime loads from it, a resource names it, or it is the
runtime; one reached by none of them was built, recorded and pushed as success and was simply
absent. Seven modules' tools went missing that way. Refused at registration, naming the field that
would deliver it.
A compiled bundle records the binary it is (BinaryOf, shared by the builder and the composer), and
the node's runtime, when it is one, is run as ./<binary> from its own unpacked bundle rather than by
an interpreter and an entrypoint.
jochen
mesh-admin
jschoubben