203. GitHub Pages is a signed bootstrap anchor for the mesh, never its signalling channel
Context
On 2026-10-16 the owner asked whether Pages can serve as serverless discovery. Pages is static and cannot accept writes; the GitHub API is rate limited and unsuited to heartbeats.
Decision
Pages carries a signed manifest of hub identities and public reachability hints, with the trust root delivered independently, canonical serialisation, a monotonic sequence and an expiry; a node falls back to its last valid copy. Discovery is hierarchical (existing mesh, local cache and multicast, the manifest, rendezvous) tried in parallel with bounded attempts. Once linked a node needs Pages for nothing.
Alternatives rejected
- Pages plus GitHub API polling as signalling
- A custom rendezvous server as the only path
- A fixed try-one-to-five order
Consequences
I3188; private addresses never enter the manifest (I3176).
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:c282#2