How a public query is supposed to work

Three planes. One of them is allowed to answer you.

The data plane is the Libertas ExaForge II cluster plus the mesh nodes. That is where a record is hashed, sealed, and replicated. The control plane is Nexus OS: trust zones, role checks, and session assurance, so only an authorized steward can write. This site is the presentation plane — a read-only gateway in front of the mesh.

01 · Data plane

ExaForge and the mesh

Libertas ExaForge II, published at the Alliance's York, South Carolina campus, is the prototype cluster. Blobs are content-addressed — the papers write the path as /blobs/<algorithm>/<digest> — on erasure-coded storage, with cold tiers for what must not be rewritten. Mesh nodes keep further copies. A seal should survive one machine, one campus, and one bad week.

The hive papers also name a compute plane behind that same door: sandboxed execution, attested builds, and an attestation registry that anchors a Merkle root per epoch. Those roots are how inclusion is proved. This gateway copies the public abstracts for epoch 48. It does not call the cluster, and it does not draw the peer graph.

02 · Control plane

Nexus OS

Nexus OS is the nervous system on the cluster, not a login on this page. A write is a steward session: a role in the right trust zone, a check that the session is still the session it claims to be, and a short-lived key. Treasury stewards do not sit as arbiters. The Arbiter bench can hold a bundle. It cannot pretend an abstract was never published.

Zone PPresentation. This room. No steward credential lives here.
Zone SSteward session. The only door that can propose a write.
Zone CSeal writers. Hash, content-address, replicate.
Zone WCold retention and legal hold. Not a public query.

03 · Presentation plane · you are here

The gateway

Think of a reading room in front of a library you are not allowed to wander. The gateway serves search over clearnet or Tor. Both transports hit the same sanitized index. Neither transport is a tunnel to a node.

Published alias, not a mesh address: pbasanitizedindexgatereadonlynotameshnodeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.onion

MonX, on this plane, is a price for a heavier query or an archival bundle. The schedule is itself a sealed abstract. Spending it does not buy a write, a revoke, or a look at the replica map.

A public query may return

Seal id, class, and the cleared summary
Origin date, seal time, epoch, and custody label
Steward pseudonym and role, never a host
Content digest, and — when cleared — an inclusion proof
A replica floor. A count, not a map

A public query may not return

Node addresses, rack positions, or peer lists
Whether a miss means the raw ledger is empty
The unredacted vault payload
A steward session, or any write
Live power, temperature, or which machine answered

Epoch 48 index root 6b3d7c6c…5267c1. Leaf order is seal id, ascending. Parent digests are SHA-256 of the left hex text joined to the right hex text.