ADR-0001: QUIC transport for the Chimera mesh

Status

Accepted

Context

Nodes must exchange control frames (heartbeats, reclaim, ownership) and bulk payloads (CAS blocks, DSM pages, Wasm snapshots) without a central broker. TCP alone stalls control under bulk load; HTTP overlays add latency.

Decision

Use Quinn/QUIC as the primary mesh transport with TCP framed postcard as a reliable fallback. Classify streams as Control / Compute / Bulk so heartbeats are never starved by asset streaming.

Consequences

  • Self-signed TLS certs via rcgen for LAN/mesh demos (replace with pinned PKI for production).
  • ALPN chimera.
  • Postcard length-prefixed frames on both transports.