Core features are modules

Context

The engine is the foundation the rest of the panel builds on, and the module system is its extension mechanism, open to first-party and third-party modules alike.

Some functionality is low-level framework machinery that everything else depends on. Other features are more complex: they typically combine several components, and many of them are configuration-heavy or user-facing.

Decision

The engine holds base framework functionality, the low-level parts that everything else depends on. Features that combine several components, especially configuration-heavy or user-facing ones, are modules, built on the same module system available to third parties. Auth and servers are modules.

Alternatives

No other arrangement was weighed.

Consequences

Easier:

• The engine will stay limited to the low-level parts that everything else depends on.

Harder:

• Engine components will provide mechanism without meaning, leaving the meaning to modules. Sessions will store what auth puts in them and give it no meaning, and long-lived re-authentication will belong to auth rather than to sessions.

Constrained:

• First-party features will ship as bundled modules: inside the binary, with manifests declared in code and a core flag set.
• Core will be ambiguous as a name, since core features are themselves modules.

Sources

• Brainstorming session, date not recalled, not publicly available and first written down on 2026-09-13: the reasoning for the decision.
• Issue #35, Engine - Modules, original text of 2026-06-01 in its edit history: the first written record of the decision. It is both created and decided, because the date of the brainstorming session is not recalled. It also names permissions as a module; whether permissions will be a module of its own is not settled.
• Issue #36, Engine - Modules - Discovery and Manifest, 2026-06-02: bundled modules with manifests declared in code and a core flag.
• Issue #67, Engine - Sessions, 2026-08-22: sessions giving what auth stores no meaning, and re-authentication belonging to auth, taken from the sessions design rather than anticipated.
• Issue #70, Engine - Container - Module scopes, 2026-09-03: Core rejected as an attribute name for being ambiguous when core features are modules, taken from that design rather than anticipated.