Part of Stem. Sources: the Seed Resources board of 6 and 7 October 2026, and the Stem specification of 8 October 2026. Status is one of answered, leaning, open. "Answered" means the specification takes a position; it does not mean the team has decided.

Resources and nodes

Question	Stem answer	Status	Where
Can a resource's state be expressed by named roots or head blobs?	Yes. The head Node blobs of a node, by the fold, give the state target.	answered	Resources and nodes
Do we need generations?	No. Node ids are never reused, and `prev` orders Node blobs causally.	answered	Node
Is there a unified way to know which root dominates?	Yes: drop Node blobs superseded through `prev`, then merge concurrent heads by target kind, with a state target beating a concurrent tombstone or redirect.	answered	Resources and nodes
Is "resource maps to a set of blobs" enough, or must it be more dynamic?	Enough for sync and access; facts and links carry the dynamic view.	leaning	The runtime model
How should node ids be derived?	Decided (Eric, 2026-10-08): the id is the CID of the creating Node blob, which carries no `id`; later blobs name it, as a Change names its genesis. The mutable URL is `hm://<owner>/<nodeId>`.	answered	Node id
Should a migrated node's id be the earliest Ref's CID or the genesis Change's CID?	Stem's position: the Ref, because a Change has no space or placement.	leaning	Migration
Do conversations produce named roots; are comments resources or triples?	Comments are resources: unnamed nodes in the author's space with `target` access. The triple view is the `target` link the handler emits.	answered	Comment kind
Which merge rule applies when two Snapshots of one node are concurrent?	Both are heads; the next Snapshot lists both in `prev`. Whether a kind may declare an automatic merge (for example field-wise last-writer for contacts) is open.	open	Snapshot
Are cross-space parents needed?	Stem forbids them: a parent is always in the node's space. Whether a shared folder across two spaces is wanted is open.	open	Space
Snapshots versus full history for documents?	Unchanged from the roadmap: open, awaiting the custom CRDT. A Change may already dep on a Snapshot so either outcome fits.	open	State
What about pretty paths?	Derived from names, never identity; resolution order fixed; redirects are a Node target.	answered	Path
Does the sidebar hierarchy depend on paths, or is it separate?	It is the placement tree, which is separate from identity and from authority.	answered	Placement

Links

Question	Stem answer	Status	Where
Can we express everything with named links plus a weight?	Yes: nine link kinds, each with fixed flags; the flags are the weight.	answered	Links
Do we need weights if peers speak the same link types?	No; flags are derived from the kind.	answered	Link kind
What is the ontology of links that we need?	The nine kinds on the Links page; extending the union is how new ones arrive.	leaning	Links
Can we express everything as a blob link?	A link targets a blob or a node reference; a deterministic permanode per node is not needed because node ids are stable.	answered	Link
Is it useful to have multiple labels for one physical blob?	Yes, later; not in this specification.	leaning	Links
Should the dual CID problem (BLAKE2b daemon, SHA-256 clients) be fixed by canonicalising advertised CIDs?	Open; Stem keeps HM24's multihash pre-check and notes the team's codec canonicalisation plan.	open	The sync protocol

Authority and privacy

Question	Stem answer	Status	Where
What are the access domains: spaces, groups, group per document?	Readers are computed per node from grants, inheritance and targets; groups are permanodes; no fixed domains.	answered	Readers
Do comments need their own grants?	No by default: a comment's readers are the target's readers through `target` access. A commenter who wants a narrower audience sets `own` and grants. Whether the daemon should auto-emit a grant to make this uniform is open.	leaning	Comment kind
How does a bearer audience work over peer sync?	It does not: a bearer cannot authenticate a connection. Bearer grants are honoured on HTTP reads only, where the secret is presented per request.	answered	Audience
Encryption and the `sync` level?	Reserved. `sync` is granted to sites today and behaves as `read` for delivery. The Grant has no key slot yet; adding one is additive.	open	Access level
How does `expires` interact with offline peers?	Each peer applies its own clock at evaluation; an expired grant stays in the graph so a peer coming online late computes the same live set as everyone else once its clock passes the time. Clock skew between peers can make them disagree briefly.	leaning	Grant
Should admin reach exclude principals the owner has revoked, to end revocation ping-pong faster?	Open; Stem keeps the Keyline rule.	open	Authority graph
What happens to a revoked writer's already-received blobs?	Kept but unapplied: they fall out of the fold and can come back if authority is restored.	answered	Worked cases
Should indexed metadata be authoritative and signed, or peer-derived?	Both, kept distinct: every fact carries `signed` or `derived`.	answered	Fact

Sync

Question	Stem answer	Status	Where
Can set reconciliation be efficient over graphs of links instead of flat sets?	Each scope set is a flat set derived from the graph; reconciliation stays flat.	answered	Scope set
Prolly trees versus flat RBSR per scope?	Open. Stem specifies flat RBSR per scope with per-peer filtering. A Prolly tree per node could replace the maintained scope index later without a wire change if items stay `(ts, cid)`.	open	The sync protocol
How to partition so there are no access gaps?	Filter the scope set by the requester's readers before fingerprinting; no partitions are needed.	answered	Scope set
Could a Prolly root be a resource that a node points to?	Not specified; nothing prevents a kind whose snapshot is an index.	open	Kind
How can a client query for multiple roots, like an entire space?	A scope with depth `subtree`, and facts over it.	answered	Scope
Should the "inodes" project land before blob accounting?	Yes; blob access is keyed by node.	answered	Privacy
Sync relations instead of links?	Peers sync blobs; relations (facts, links) are derived locally with provenance.	answered	The runtime model
How does a fresh install find a space's authority peers without a gateway?	Open; a signed provider record per space is sketched.	open	Authority peer
Should Reconcile become bidirectional so the responder also learns what it lacks?	Open; Offer covers the common case.	open	Reconcile

Agents

Question	Stem answer	Status	Where
How can we model agents and notifications with this?	Agents, sessions and triggers as resources of new kinds; notifications as derived facts in a personal scope.	sketched	Agents and notifications
Could the notification set be a Prolly tree, and who owns it?	The account owns it; a Snapshot resource with audience `key` of the account is enough for now.	leaning	Agents and notifications

Raised on other pages

Every question marked "Open:" inline on a Stem page, collected here so that this page stays the single register. Status is open unless the row says otherwise.

Question	Where
whether an agent's key should be allowed to hold `admin` over its own sessions so it can grant a collaborator read access to one, or whether only the owner should	Agents and notifications
whether notifications derived from public content should be computed by the account's site rather than a dedicated notification server, now that a site is an authority peer with a `sync` grant	Agents and notifications
whether `write` holders should be allowed to delegate `read` (share a document they can edit) without being admins	Authority
the bound on group nesting depth, and whether a group may be owned by another group	Authority
whether `expires` should also be allowed on Node blobs (time-limited publications) or stay a grant-only field	Authority
whether admin reach should exclude principals whose membership was revoked by the owner specifically, to shorten this exchange	Authority graph
a provider record keyed by space, signed by an authority peer, so that a fresh install can find a space's site without a gateway	Authority peer
whether a sub-space, a child node with its own key, is ever needed; Stem does not define one	Space
whether and when the daemon publishes Snapshots of documents to shorten histories (the custom CRDT discussion in the roadmap)	Document
whether a kind change should ever re-evaluate existing nodes, or whether a changed descriptor must be a new kind	Kind
whether `admin` on root should include the root's own state	Space
whether `embed` should be retained with its source when the embedding document is pinned (so that a pinned page renders offline), as a policy option rather than a flag	Links
labels beyond CIDs, above	Links
the exact `prev` ordering of migrated Refs when two Refs for one path share a generation but differ in genesis, which today coexist as parallel rows and resolve by highest generation	From HM24 to Stem
whether migrated path-scoped WRITER grants should be dropped outright (the roadmap's "trashed") rather than kept as `write` on one node	From HM24 to Stem
whether derived grants and Snapshots should be re-signed by the owner (step 4) and, if so, whether the app does it silently or asks	From HM24 to Stem
how the two CID hashes for identical bytes (BLAKE2b in the daemon, SHA-256 in the SDK) should be unified when Node heads are compared, since a migrated Ref may name either	From HM24 to Stem
comments on a migrated document whose path was redirected before migration	From HM24 to Stem
whether a client should offer to leave a redirect by default on every rename, or only when the old path has known inbound links	Placement
whether a Node blob should be allowed to name a parent in another space to express "mounted" content, or whether redirects are enough	Placement
the retention period of the disclosure ledger, and whether public serves are logged at all or only counted	Privacy
whether `readers` audiences may cross spaces (a grant in Alice's space naming the readers of a node in Bob's space)	Privacy
the exact shape of the encryption layer	Privacy
should a kind be allowed to declare an automatic merge for concurrent Snapshots, and in what language? The core kinds do not need it	Resources and nodes
whether the client should require a writer to acknowledge concurrent placement before publishing a merging Node blob, or merge silently with the lowest-CID rule	Resources and nodes
whether the id should instead be derived so that an account can keep several policies	RPC: SetPolicy
whether derived index records for migrated HM24 blobs should be materialised as real signed blobs by the owner's device once it comes online, so that a Stem-only peer can hold a migrated space without the HM24 originals	The runtime model
how a daemon learns about a Kind descriptor it has never seen (a third-party kind)	The runtime model
what d2 should do with blobs it fetched for B between coming online and reloading the policy; the lean is to keep them until the next collection pass	Worked cases
the retention window and whether a site should refuse to collect anything it ever served	The sync protocol