Kyle Isom
162afc44d5
- MCNS/MCP status: Planned → Implemented (both deployed on rift) - Add mcp/, mcns/, mcdoc/ to project map and repo structure - Fix MCNS description from CoreDNS precursor to custom Go DNS server - Fix versions: MCR v1.1.0, MCDSL v1.1.0, MCIAS v1.7.0 - Update mcdsl adoption status (metacrypt now migrated) - Fix engineering-standards: Go 1.25 builder, proto v1 conventions - Update PLATFORM_EVOLUTION gap #8 (MCNS API exists) - Migrate all module path references from kyle/ to mc/ org - Fix diagrams: MCP Slave → MCP Agent, Docker → Podman Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
109 lines
6.2 KiB
Markdown
109 lines
6.2 KiB
Markdown
# Metacircular Dynamics
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Metacircular Dynamics is a self-hosted personal infrastructure platform. The
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name comes from the tradition of metacircular evaluators in Lisp — a system
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defined in terms of itself — by way of SICP and Common Lisp projects that
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preceded this work. The infrastructure is metacircular in the same sense: the
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platform manages, secures, and hosts its own services.
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Every component is self-hosted, every dependency is controlled, and the entire
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stack is operable by one person. No cloud providers, no third-party auth, no
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external databases. The platform is designed for a small number of machines — a
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personal homelab or a handful of VPSes — not for hyperscale.
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All services are written in Go and follow shared
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[engineering standards](engineering-standards.md). Full platform documentation
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lives in [docs/metacircular.md](docs/metacircular.md).
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## Components
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| Component | Purpose | Status |
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|-----------|---------|--------|
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| **MCIAS** | Identity and access — the root of trust. SSO, token issuance, role management, login policy. Every other service delegates auth here. | Implemented |
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| **Metacrypt** | Cryptographic services — PKI/CA, transit encryption, encrypted secret storage behind a seal/unseal barrier. Issues TLS certificates for the platform. | Implemented |
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| **MCR** | Container registry — OCI-compliant image storage with MCIAS auth and policy-controlled push/pull. | Implemented |
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| **MC-Proxy** | Node ingress — TLS proxy and router. L4 passthrough or L7 terminating (per-route), PROXY protocol, firewall with rate limiting and GeoIP. | Implemented |
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| **MCNS** | Networking — authoritative DNS for internal platform zones, upstream forwarding. | Implemented |
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| **MCP** | Control plane — operator-driven deployment, service registry, data transfer, master/agent container lifecycle. | Implemented |
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| **MCDoc** | Documentation server — renders markdown from Gitea, serves public docs. | In progress |
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Shared library: **MCDSL** — standard library for all services (auth, db,
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config, TLS server, CSRF, snapshots).
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Supporting tool: **MCAT** — lightweight web app for testing MCIAS login
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policies.
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## Architecture
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```
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MCIAS (standalone — the root of trust)
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├── Metacrypt (auth via MCIAS; provides certs to all services)
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├── MCR (auth via MCIAS; stores images pulled by MCP)
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├── MCNS (auth via MCIAS; provides DNS for the platform)
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├── MCP (auth via MCIAS; orchestrates everything; owns service registry)
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└── MC-Proxy (pre-auth; routes traffic to services behind it)
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```
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Each machine is an **MC Node**. On every node, **MC-Proxy** accepts outside
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connections and routes by TLS SNI — either relaying raw TCP (L4) or
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terminating TLS and reverse proxying HTTP/2 (L7), per-route. **MCP Agent** on
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each node receives commands from **MCP Master** (which runs on the operator's
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workstation) and manages containers via the local runtime. Core infrastructure
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(MCIAS, Metacrypt, MCR) runs on nodes like any other workload.
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```
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┌──────────────────┐ ┌──────────────┐
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│ Core Infra │ │ MCP Master │
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│ (e.g. MCIAS) │ │ │
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└────────┬─────────┘ └──────┬───────┘
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│ │ C2
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Outside ┌─────────────▼─────────────────────▼──────────┐
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Client ────▶│ MC Node │
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│ ┌───────────┐ │
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│ │ MC-Proxy │──┬──────┬──────┐ │
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│ └───────────┘ │ │ │ │
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│ ┌───▼┐ ┌──▼─┐ ┌─▼──┐ ┌─────┐ │
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│ │ α │ │ β │ │ γ │ │ MCP │ │
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│ └────┘ └────┘ └────┘ │Agent│ │
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│ └──┬──┘ │
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│ ┌────▼───┐│
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│ │Container│
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│ │Runtime │
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│ └────────┘│
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└──────────────────────────────────────────────┘
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```
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## Design Principles
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- **Sovereignty** — self-hosted end to end; no SaaS dependencies
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- **Simplicity** — SQLite over Postgres, stdlib testing, pure Go, htmx, single binaries
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- **Consistency** — every service follows identical patterns (layout, config, auth, deployment)
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- **Security as structure** — default deny, TLS 1.3 minimum, interceptor-map auth, encrypted-at-rest secrets
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- **Design before code** — ARCHITECTURE.md is the spec, written before implementation
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## Tech Stack
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Go 1.25+, SQLite (modernc.org/sqlite), chi router, gRPC + protobuf, htmx +
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Go html/template, golangci-lint v2, Ed25519/Argon2id/AES-256-GCM, TLS 1.3,
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container-first deployment (Docker + systemd).
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## Repository Structure
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This root repository is a workspace container. Each subdirectory is a separate
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Git repo with its own `CLAUDE.md`, `ARCHITECTURE.md`, `Makefile`, and `go.mod`:
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```
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metacircular/
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├── mcias/ Identity and Access Service
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├── metacrypt/ Cryptographic service engine
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├── mcr/ Container registry
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├── mc-proxy/ TLS proxy and router
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├── mcp/ Control plane (master/agent)
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├── mcns/ DNS server
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├── mcat/ Login policy tester
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├── mcdsl/ Standard library (shared packages)
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├── mcdoc/ Documentation server
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├── ca/ PKI infrastructure (dev/test, not source code)
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└── docs/ Platform-wide documentation
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```
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