Running part of it on purpose

Status: Accepted · Audience: Operator · Area: N — Companion

---

Purpose

B1 gives the operator a vocabulary for “I only need part of this”. A form is the noun they use — library serves what exists, hunt searches and grabs, full is the lot — and the services that start are whatever those forms expand to, intersected with what the operator actually configured.

This page is what that looks like on a screen small enough to show a count and not much else.

The failure to avoid is a number. Six services of eighteen is not a stack that is four-fifths broken; it is a stack doing exactly what somebody asked for. A surface that renders a partial stack as degraded — an amber badge, a completion figure, twelve things listed as absent — is wrong about the product in the way that is hardest to argue with, because it looks like diligence.

Behaviour

A partial stack is an intent, not a shortfall

What is running is shown as the forms that were asked for and the services those expand to. Both layers are needed: services alone lose why any of them is there, and forms alone lose what is actually up.

Nothing missing from an active form’s expansion is reported as missing. A service nobody asked for is not absent — it was never wanted.

A service that was filtered out says so, and says why

A form’s profile set is intersected with what the operator configured, so lemonfiber up dl on a Usenet-only machine starts SABnzbd and does not attempt Gluetun with credentials that do not exist.

On a phone, did not start and was filtered out because you have no torrent credentials arrive as the same silence and mean entirely different things. One is a fault to chase; the other is the feature working. The reason travels, or the operator goes looking for a problem that is not there.

What a form would do is shown before it does it

A form is introspectable: the profiles it expands to, the services that would start, which would be filtered and why, and roughly what it would cost to run. That is a rehearsal, and it is labelled as one — never phrased as though those services had started.

A service the form holds that is already running is shown as already running, not as one the start would bring up. Otherwise the screen right after a start says everything is running above a list saying each of those services would start. Where the stack could not read what is running, the app says that once, above a list that still says what would start (N18-R10, B1-R21).

The footprint is an estimate the stack declares, not a measurement of what is running. Shown as the second, it is a number the operator will believe and act on.

Forms compose, and the same service is not counted twice

Several active forms can include one service, and it starts once. The app shows it once, and names every form that asked for it — because why is this running has as many answers as there are forms claiming it, and removing one of them does not necessarily stop it.

The vocabulary is the stack’s, not the app’s

Forms are data in the stack’s manifest rather than code, so they can be added or changed without a release of anything. An app holding its own list would be a second copy that goes out of date silently — and the first thing the operator would notice is a form of their own that the app does not believe exists.

The app shows what is running; it does not decide it

Starting and stopping is the operator’s, through N2, and nothing here starts a form because a screen was opened or a threshold was crossed.

Requirements

Notes

N18-R2 is the row the rest of the page is arranged around, and it is a prohibition rather than a feature because the failure it names is one a well-meaning surface arrives at on its own. Every instinct a dashboard has — show progress, show completeness, flag what is absent — produces it.