Scopes

Scopes are how Rind separates concerns. It’s the Branching of realms itself, They are attached to Metadata pages and where everything lives.

Addressing

Every unit is addressed as group:name@scope. The @scope suffix picks which metadata namespace the unit lives in.

example.toml ─── group = "example"
   └── [[service]] name = "web_ser" ───> example:web_ser@static

The default scope is "static". it’s implicit and usually omitted:

Expression	Resolves to
example:web_ser	example:web_ser@static
example:web_ser@static	(same, explicit)
example:web_ser@makano	A different scope entirely

The Static Scope

"static" is the built-in scope, loaded at boot from the system units directory (/etc/rind/units/ or RIND_UNITS_DIR). It holds all system-level units and is always present, you can’t create or destroy it. Built-in definitions like rind:user_session and rind:boot are added only to the static scope.

Dynamic Scopes

Scopes other than "static" are dynamic, created at runtime via IPC or by the user orchestrator. Each dynamic scope has its own:

• Units directory: where unit files live (defaults to the system dir)
• Metadata registry: separate from the static scope, same unit types
• Facet persistence: state stored at {persistence_root}/{scope}/state.bin
• Lifetime: can be tied to a facet state via lifetime_state

# example: per-user scope "makano" with its own units
# Created via: rind scope create makano --attr user=makano
# Loads units from a user-specific directory

Scope Attributes

Scopes can have attributes that define how internal components such as Services behave. As an example, a scope with the attribute "user" will have all services inside of it as that user by default.

See also: Units, Users, Persistence, Boot, Orchestrators, Runtimes