jschoubben 62e2aa7708 Build and run are two images, from one recipe
A module's recipe starts from this image and invokes the compiler out of it, so
the compiler had to be here. The same image was also what every module ran in,
so every running container on every machine carried a compiler it would never
invoke: 23 of the 28 MB of libraries. An earlier attempt to prune the build
tools produced a smaller image that nothing could be built on, and the comment
defending their return made a workaround look like a decision.

One recipe, because the two must agree about the operating system, the language
version and the library, and two files drift.
2026-09-14 01:57:05 +02:00

mesh-tools

The Novox Mesh tool runtime — the per-node process that makes a module's tools actually serve.

A module ships its tools (built on @novox/mesh-sdk); this runtime is what loads them and puts them on the mesh. It:

  1. connects the mesh broker (novox/hq ADR 0001) — a concrete AMQP implementation of the sdk's Broker contract;
  2. imports the assigned modules' compiled tool entrypoints, each of which registers its tools as it loads;
  3. serves them through the sdk's serveTools harness, answering tools.invoke over the broker.

Everything hard — dispatch, collection, duplicate-name safety — is the sdk's. This is the thin wrapper that binds the broker and loads the modules. Keeping the AMQP client here, out of the sdk, is deliberate: a broker-client change never rebuilds a module (ADR 0039).

Running it

MESH_BROKER_URL     amqp://…              the mesh broker
MESH_TOOL_MODULES   /a/tools/index.js,…   the assigned modules' compiled tool entrypoints

node dist/main.js, or the container (Dockerfile). On a node the host resolves both variables and starts it like any other supervised workload.

Verified

npm test stands up LavinMQ (the mesh's broker) and proves the whole path over real AMQP: the runtime serves a registered tool, a separate connection invokes it by name and gets the result, and an unknown tool is refused over the wire.

S
Description
Novox Mesh — the tool runtime. Binds the mesh broker (AMQP) and serves the assigned modules' tools through the sdk harness.
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