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.
The runtime knows no language: the build makes each served entrypoint executable. For a TypeScript
bundle that is <entry>.serve.mjs, which imports the entrypoint and serves what it registered over
MCP on stdio through the bundle's own SDK. The build records its launchers on the bundle, and the
composer names the launcher where a build wrote one and the entrypoint where it did not, so bundles
built before this keep serving until they are rebuilt.
build.artifacts[].env on a bundle: words and values written with ${dir:…} and ${port:…} only,
refused when a value carries any other reference (a secret's content, a binding) or names a word
the runtime sets for itself, and on any artifact that is not a bundle. Resolved per machine like a
container's environment and handed to the runtime as MESH_TOOL_ENV, module by module, in the unit
so a change restarts it. Every file and directory of the module a word names, or that holds one, is
owned by the account the runtime runs as where it says no owner, since a tool reads as that account.
Where node-tools is in a node's set, the declaration ends with one process: the runtime module's own
bundle, run from its one entrypoint by its language's interpreter, told in MESH_TOOL_MODULES every
<module>=<file> the machine's bundles load, where its credential is (the module's own broker secret
as this node places it), and — on a machine with an operator account — who the operator is, running
as that account so a tool that needs root can escalate as the operator would. Restarted when any
bundle it loads or the credential changes. A machine with no account runs it as root without the two
operator words; a machine without the runtime is sent nothing new.
A bundle says which of its entrypoints the runtime LOADS (`loads`), because one bundle may carry a
daemon beside its tools and importing the daemon into the runtime would start it there; absent, a
module declaring tools has every entrypoint loaded. And the TypeScript toolchain is rooted at the
module, so an entrypoint lands at the path it is named by — the runtime loading bundles by their
declared paths is what made the compiler's common-directory default visible.
The resolved manifest now carries what the build compiled — each bundle's source, digest, language
and entrypoints — because a tools bundle is named by no resource of the module's own: the node's
runtime loads it, and until this the mesh held no trace of the one artifact that runtime needs. A
repository manifest that writes `bundles` beside its build is refused: the mesh derives it.
Where the runtime module is in a node's set, every assigned module's bundle with entrypoints is
composed as an archive under the mesh's own directory, routed through the artifact store like any
image or archive the mesh built. A bundle without entrypoints is run rather than loaded and is
delivered by the process that runs it. A node without the runtime is sent exactly what it was.
fail2ban expands <HOST> into a named capture group, so a pattern naming it twice is a duplicate
group name: the daemon refuses its whole configuration and exits, and the machine keeps no bans at
all — for every jail, not the one at fault. Hit live on the control node the day the jails shipped.
A jail with no name, no pattern, or a name another of the module's jails took is refused too.
The lab raises machines on the virtualisation daemon, and a module may
mount a machine's socket only through the capability that grants it
(novox/hq ADR 0172). Also brings the resolver's tests to the setting
dnsmasq's listen addresses now come from, and to a module left out
rather than refused.
The nftables module's runtime mounts the file filtering.into names, to reload
the mesh's table; the mount check knew every other declaration of a path and
not this one, and the module's first build was refused for it.
The store's databases is not postgres's postgres_list_databases, and a holder may serve both. A
claim's serves names the seat's verbs the module implements for the role; absent, the module's own
tools must list every verb the seat promises, which is how a module named like its seat says they
are one and the same. Registration refuses a claim naming a verb the seat never promised, and the
credential's claims carry the claim's own verbs to the runtime.
For every module on every machine the controller composes what that instance serves — its machine's
address always, the module's plain address in a queue when it is alone or its definition says its
instances are interchangeable — the verbs of the seats it holds at the seats' subjects, where its
events land, and what it may reach, resolved the same way for the modules it invokes. Published
beside the node's declaration on `mesh.assignment.<node>.<module>`, last per subject in a stream
that allows direct reads, and the account may read exactly its own. Composed from the same records
the bus's accounts are, so what a runtime serves and what its account may are one composition.
`instances: interchangeable` is the one fact a definition states for it.
The shape issued is the shape the mesh already had, so nothing moves when the membership arrives;
the runtime that reads it instead of deriving it is the next piece.
An offer may say `"credential": {"own": "<secret>"}`: the provider's own secret is the credential
every consumer of that provision receives, in the shape of a pair credential. The vault keeps one
value, sealed to the provider, to every consumer that holds the provision and to the operator, all
under one generation stamp; a consumer binding later, or `secret rotate` on the provider's secret,
makes a fresh value and seals it to every holder in one act, and the rotate command sends every
holding machine together. An accepted value is sealed to the consumers of the moment and never
remade: a consumer binding after it is refused with the way out (ADR 0113). The named own secret
must say how it is taken (issue 180), so the provider's start applies the file.
A need carries the shared secret's name from either side of the machine boundary; the plan mints a
consumer's copy from the provider's value. Registered manifests keep their bytes.
`secret rotate <node> <module> <name>` makes the secret anew the way the first mint did, seals it
to the machine and the operator, and sends the machine, so the module starts again on the new value
— said in the log with who asked and when, never the value. Only for a secret whose definition says
`"taken": "at-start"`: an own secret is now a path, or {path, taken}, and a definition that says
nothing of how a secret is taken is refused with the word to write, because a credential rotated
under software that never reads it again is worse than one left alone (issue 179). `applied` is
refused by name until the staged form ADR 0114 decided is built; a value given to the mesh is
refused as ADR 0113 says. `rotate` is a verb on the controller's seat with two shapes — a pair
credential by provision, an own secret by machine, module and name — so the console can ask.
Registered manifests keep their bytes: a path alone is written back as a path.
A definition names no host path (ADR 0112); an adopted machine keeps its
data where the predecessor put it. Two settings, validated like endpoints:
places: {<directory id>: <path> | {path, owner}}
accesses: {<access id>: <path>}
An access may now be declared by id (`{"id": "series", "mode": "read-write"}`)
and named in mounts, env and content as ${access:<id>}; the assignment
says where it is on this node, and an access nobody placed is refused by
name. A definition still carrying a path keeps it as the default the
assignment replaces. A placed directory takes the assignment's owner
where it says one. Resolved in composition, so the host receives paths
and owners exactly as before.
InstallationProblems judges every value the mesh acts on for a name under a public top-level domain
or a public address, with prose, the world's registries, resolvers and certificate authorities
exempt, and a name a resource means on purpose declared with its reason (names-on-purpose). Run by
module check and a catalogue-wide test, not yet at registration, while the declared list shrinks.
${setting:<key>} fills a file from the assignment's settings and is refused when nothing set it.
A build context may live on the git seat; the request carries the seat's clone base (novox/hq ADR
0112, ADR 0155, issues 122 and 134).
A seat's protocol lives in the store (migration 0047; seeded additively), a served verb carries its
description and schema, holding a mesh seat requires serving its verbs, a node-scoped seat's tool
carries the node, and the control plane serves status, nodes, node, modules, seats, builds, plan,
assign, unassign, push, build and tools on its seat by running the same commands (novox/hq ADR 0132,
ADR 0154, design 33). A grant of * reaches a role's tools; seat:<seat>.<verb> grants one.
invokes: a manifest word that becomes exactly the publish grant a person's account gets (ADR 0152),
derived by the same composition; refused at parse when it names no tool. module check <file|dir>...
runs what registration runs with no store, for a manifest in any repository (hq issue 148).
jochen
jschoubben
mesh-admin