The mesh routes work to an identity, never an address, and selects among proven transports instead of implementing NAT traversal

majordomus://adr/adr-0202proposed mesh-runtimechatgpt-project

it references

put_in_force adr-0050
put_in_force adr-0067
put_in_force docs/MESH.md (document)
put_in_force an-authorised-node-connects-from-anywhere (intent)
put_in_force I3176
put_in_force I3187
put_in_force I3189
put_in_force I3190
put_in_force I3198
put_in_force an-authorised-node-connects-from-anywhere
put_in_force mesh-connectivity
put_in_force project.mesh-is-observation-not-authority@1

referenced by

Nothing in the layer names it. Backlinks are derived, so an empty list is an answer rather than an omission.

202. The mesh routes work to an identity, never an address, and selects among proven transports instead of implementing NAT traversal

Context

Between 10-12 and 10-18 the owner asked four times to make discovery work across NAT, with 'fast-flux', mothership, hole punching, STUN/TURN and WebRTC ideas. Master has multicast and directly-reachable rendezvous hubs and states 'no NAT traversal'.

Decision

A peer is a stable cryptographic identity; endpoint candidates are expiring observations with source and confidence; DNS is a discovery projection, never identity. The logical network (identity, capability, intent) is separate from the physical (address, NAT, relay). Majordomus owns the contracts and the choice: it integrates proven transports and relays, chooses by measured success among authenticated candidates with hysteresis, starts relay-first and upgrades to direct, and never re-implements ICE. Rendezvous, relay and gateway are roles a trusted peer holds, not fixed servers. The phrase 'fast flux' names nothing in code or docs. DHT, coordinator election and custom consensus wait for a measured need.

Alternatives rejected

Literal DNS fast-flux or double-flux
A custom NAT traversal stack or own ICE
Address-based task dispatch
A fixed mothership server
DHT first

Consequences

mesh-connectivity (I3187..I3190); deferred past v1.0.0-alpha.1 by Operation Convergence.

Sources

Promoted on 2026-10-18 from the owner's ChatGPT project (workspace chatgpt-majordomus, issue I3100). The owner has not accepted it; it is proposed for the owner's decision.

chatgpt-majordomus:c237#4
chatgpt-majordomus:c279#2
chatgpt-majordomus:c279#4
chatgpt-majordomus:c279#7
chatgpt-majordomus:c279#10
chatgpt-majordomus:c282#3
chatgpt-majordomus:c282#5

Where this comes from

canonical file: .ai/repo/adrs/0202-the-mesh-routes-work-to-an-identity-never-an-address-and-selects.md
identity: adr-0202
also served as: MCP resource majordomus://adr/adr-0202 · majordomus entity show adr/adr-0202 · GET /api/v1/entity?uri=majordomus://adr/adr-0202
in the Cockpit: /cockpit/objects/adr/adr-0202

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