Tier 0's first slice, per novox/hq 03-DESIGN/01-to-be/05-the-node-host.md. It
applies nothing, connects to nothing, listens on nothing. 2.9 MB, static, no
dynamic dependencies: copy it onto a machine and run it is the whole install,
which is the property ADR 0041 rests on.
A capability is detected, never assumed. Every detector runs something that only
succeeds if the thing FUNCTIONS — the daemon is asked for its version, the
package database is queried, the firewall is asked to list a ruleset, which
needs the privilege as well as the tool. 04-ISSUES/007 is the fault this
prevents: a client on disk with its daemon down looks exactly like a working
runtime, and a node assigned work on that basis fails when the work arrives.
Every verdict carries the reason and the method. A capability reported absent
with no reason is the same fault in a new place: something nobody can act on.
Two bugs found by running rather than reasoning, both silent:
systemctl is-system-running exits non-zero for every state except `running` —
including `degraded`, which means units failed and the init is emphatically
there. Reading the exit code reported NO service manager on a machine whose init
it was. That is 007 in the mirror, and both directions place work wrongly. A
verdict now reads what a tool says about itself, not only how it exited.
And `mesh-host inventory --json` printed text: the standard library stops
parsing at the first non-flag argument, so the flag sat unread and the command
exited 0 having ignored what was asked. The parser now takes the subcommand off
the front, and a stray or mistyped argument is refused rather than dropped.
Detection deliberately does NOT follow ADR 0008. That rule governs applying
state, where a failed step means the machine is not what was asked for. A failed
probe is a finding — "absent, because the probe failed" — and aborting would
replace one legible absence with total ignorance of the rest.
25 tests: structure and logic with a fake runner, and the same detectors against
this machine, because a test that fakes the system under detection asserts only
that the fake behaves as expected.
