Plexuses

A plexus is a full app — the vocabulary has always said so ("full app with backend, frontend and DB"). What was missing is that a plexus is exported, not served. It is compiled to a distributable file the way vite builds for production, and that compile is the whole point of the format.

make dist                 # compile the plexus UIs for standalone
make dist sample          # for a named room

Output is one index.html per plexus under gen/<room>/plexuses/<name>/, carrying its theme, its data and its diagrams inline. No server, no node, no network. Zip it, mail it, double-click it.

make build runs the same step as part of a room build. make dist exists for the loop where the UI is what you are working on — rebuilding a whole room to see a CSS change is a slow way to iterate.

The constraint that shapes it

It has to open from a double-clicked file on a machine with no egress. That is the state a regulated Windows box is usually in, and it rules out three things a normal web app does:

Ruled out	Because
`fetch("bundle.json")`	`file://` treats every sibling file as cross-origin
`<link href="/theme.css">`	an absolute path assumes a server at the root
a webfont `@import`	a blocked stylesheet is a stall, not a fallback

So the data is a JS object, the theme is inlined at compile time, and the fonts are stacks. The test that matters is opening the output with the network off and seeing zero failed requests — everything else is cosmetic.

Declaring one

A room opts in through cfg/<room>/data/plexuses.json, the same shape and the same place as its sibling data/*.json files:

{ "items": [ { "name": "bundle" } ] }

A room may override anything the plexus declares — most usefully the theme:

{ "items": [ { "name": "bundle", "theme": "mcrn" } ] }

Writing one

soleprint/artery/plexuses/<name>/
  plexus.json      identity, theme, the data the page renders
  app/index.html   the template

build.py fills these placeholders and writes one file:

Placeholder	Becomes
`%%THEME_CSS%%`	tokens plus every theme, so the switcher has something to switch to
`%%BUNDLE%%`	`plexus.json` as a JS object
`%%GRAPH%%`	a rendered SVG from `docs/graphs/`, inlined
`%%TITLE%%` `%%DESCRIPTION%%` `%%DEFAULT_THEME%%` `%%BUILT%%`	from the manifest

Anything else in app/ is copied alongside, for a plexus that outgrows one file.

The bundle plexus

The one that ships. It answers "what does a rig installation have at its disposal" — tools, cabinets, veins, themes — and embeds the system diagram.

Because the SVG is inlined rather than <img>-linked, the theme switch recolours the diagram too: graphviz writes class="node accent" into the SVG, and CSS outranks the presentation attributes it bakes in. Switching to lucid turns both the page and the diagram into something printable, which is the demonstration the format exists for.

Not the same as rig's bundle

Two artifacts, both called bundle, generated by different repos:

	soleprint	rig
Command	`make dist`	`make manifest` in `sample-rig`
Artifact	`plexuses/<name>/index.html`	`generated/<slug>.yaml`
Needs	nothing	kind + MetalLB
Answers	what shipped, on any machine	whether this cluster install is sound

Complementary. One proves the environment, the other travels.

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