A session is current, attached, announced and useful before it changes anything

majordomus://rule/project.a-session-joins-the-cluster-before-it-works@1active coordinationmeshprocess

it references

Nothing. This object declares no reference.

referenced by

put_in_force adr-0226

Rationale

On 2026-10-13 a session spent three hours as the only worker of a repository that had nineteen. Its checkout was ninety commits behind the trunk, two releases had been tagged without it, it had never announced itself, and the cluster's open asks to everybody went unanswered while it looked for work of its own. The prose that would have prevented all of it was in CLAUDE.md and was read. See ADR 0226 for the account and the decision.

Required behaviour

Current. Run a bounded fetch and compare with the remote trunk before you build on the checkout. Report how many commits you are behind and the newest release tag. "Up to date" is a claim about a fetch you just made; a hook line from the start of the session is not one. An unreachable remote is unverified.
Attached. If majordomus_* tools are unavailable, say so at once, on the board and to the person, and continue on the CLI. A silent fall-back is how a session becomes invisible.
Announced. Open a session on the live server (majordomus mesh session open, or majordomus_announce) with your intent, and claim the paths and the identifiers — an ADR number, a case number, an issue id — before you write them (project.work-is-claimed-before-it-is-built). Re-announce after a reconnect: an announcement belongs to a connection.
Useful. Read the board (majordomus mesh peers, mesh state --full) before you choose work. Asks to all, review requests with no answer and tasks no peer holds come before work you invented. Take one, or write on the board why none is yours. Where a derive is routed to another machine, route yours there; do not build on a host that is not the lane.

Verification

Advisory until the capability that derives the four facts lands (ADR 0226). Then this rule is raised to blocking as version 2, start, check, finish and the commit and push hooks refuse a change from a session that is not announced or is behind the trunk by more than the policy's bound, and the case numbered 3010 (a_session_joins_the_cluster, under test/cases) proves the refusals and the unreachable-remote case.

Where this comes from

canonical file: .ai/repo/rules/project/a-session-joins-the-cluster-before-it-works.v1.md
identity: project.a-session-joins-the-cluster-before-it-works@1
also served as: MCP resource majordomus://rule/project.a-session-joins-the-cluster-before-it-works@1 · majordomus entity show rule/project-a-session-joins-the-cluster-before-it-works-1 · GET /api/v1/entity?uri=majordomus://rule/project.a-session-joins-the-cluster-before-it-works@1
in the Cockpit: /cockpit/objects/rule/project-a-session-joins-the-cluster-before-it-works-1

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