# BEDS — Back End Data System
## Developer Wiki

Welcome to the BEDS developer wiki. This is a living document. It grows with the codebase and should be updated whenever a design decision is made, a pattern is established, or a component is implemented.

If you are reading this as a new contributor, start here and read in order. The origin story is not fluff — it explains *why* BEDS is built the way it is, and understanding the *why* is the difference between extending the framework correctly and breaking it subtly.

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## Table of Contents

### Foundation
- [Origin Story](01-origin-story.md) — Where BEDS came from and why it was built
- [Architecture Overview](02-architecture.md) — The full system design and its principles
- [The Four Nodes](03-nodes.md) — appServer, admin, segundo, tercero — roles and responsibilities

### Operations
- [IPL — Initial Program Load](04-ipl.md) — The bootstrap sequence, step by step, and why order matters
- [Configuration System](05-configuration.md) — Layered TOML, environment files, topology options
- [Modernization Roadmap](10-modernization-roadmap.md) — POC-first execution sequence and modernization requirements
- [Architecture Visual Brief](11-beds-architecture-visual-brief.md) — Leadership-facing architecture narrative and diagram prompts

### Messaging
- [Queue Topology](06-queue-topology.md) — AMQP exchanges, queues, routing keys, and the broker model

### Notes
- [Design Notes & Discussions](07-notes.md) — Spew/no-nazi-twitter concept, open questions, architecture discussions in progress

### Data
- [Template System](08-template-system.md) — REC and REL templates, the TLA convention, schema-as-contract
- [Event Lineage](09-event-lineage.md) — Compound event IDs, parent/child relationships, depth tracking

### Reference
- [Glossary](glossary.md) — Terms, abbreviations, and conventions used throughout BEDS

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## Contributing to This Wiki

- Write for the programmer who inherits this code after a two-week handoff with no knowledge transfer
- Document decisions, not just mechanics — *why* matters more than *what*
- Dated history entries belong in source code comments, not here — the wiki covers concepts, not changelogs
- When you change the system, update the wiki in the same commit