# mesh-lab

The lab: a disposable Novox Mesh on one machine.

It ships to nobody. It runs on a workstation, raises virtual machines, puts things inside
them, and throws them away.

## Why it exists first

The node host takes over a machine's packages, services and network. It cannot be developed
against a machine anyone needs — so the place to develop it has to exist before it does.

That makes this repository **phase 0** of the migration, ahead of every tier it will later
test.

## Two classes of scenario

|  | **Bootstrap** | **Full** |
|---|---|---|
| Contains | virtual machines, the node host, a pinned substrate bundle | a complete mesh: forge, control plane, delivery, modules |
| Verdict from | what the host reports about the state it reconciled | a pipeline result ending in verify |
| Exercises | tiers 0 and 1 | tier 2 and above, and modules |
| Exists to | **develop the mesh** | **test what runs on it** |

The bootstrap scenario is a **strict subset** — same virtualisation, same networking, same
lifecycle, stopping before a control plane exists. The full scenario is reached by putting more
inside the machines, not by building a second thing.

**Bootstrap is what gets built here first.** Nothing in this repository requires a forge, a
coordinator or a pipeline to be useful.

## Shape

```
scenarios/     declarations of a mesh to raise
lifecycle/     create · snapshot · reset · destroy
network/       segments and addressing
place/         getting a binary onto a machine
```

Of the two jobs a runner might hold, **scenario lifecycle comes first** — something must
materialise and reset a mesh before anything can be written against it. **Assertion execution
comes later**, with the full scenario.

## Rules

- **Nothing new drives delivery.** A full scenario runs the real pipeline against a mesh named
  by the request. A second delivery path would be blind to exactly the faults worth catching.
- **A scenario starts from nothing, every time.** Adopting a machine that already exists is out
  of scope — that is what makes a scenario a fixture rather than a snapshot.
- **The real topology is one scenario among many**, not the baseline. Anything only testable
  against the shape the mesh happens to have is a gap in the vocabulary.

## Where the reasoning lives

Design and decisions are in [`novox/hq`](https://git.novox.be/novox/hq), not here:

- `03-DESIGN/01-to-be/01-end-to-end-testing.md` — the design
- `02-DECISIONS/0016-a-lab-node-is-a-virtual-machine.md` — a lab node is a virtual machine
- `02-DECISIONS/0029-the-labs-first-scenario-has-no-pipeline.md` — two scenario classes, and why this is first
- `02-DECISIONS/0030-the-repository-structure.md` — why this is its own repository

This repository carries implementation. It does not carry decisions.