Architectural Boundary Review

This document provides an initial review of the architectural boundaries within the foundation project, focusing on the lib/foundation and lib/mabeam directories. Clear architectural boundaries are crucial for maintainability, testability, and scalability, preventing tight coupling and facilitating independent development.

1. High-Level Observations

• lib/foundation: Appears to be the core library, containing fundamental building blocks and services. It includes modules for processes, services, infrastructure components (like rate limiters, circuit breakers), and coordination primitives.
• lib/mabeam: Seems to be a higher-level application or domain-specific library, potentially building upon foundation. It contains modules related to agents, economics, coordination, and communication.

2. Potential Areas of Concern and Coupling

Based on the module names and previous audit findings (e.g., GenServer.call usage), several areas suggest potential boundary issues or tight coupling:

• mabeam’s Reliance on foundation: It’s expected that mabeam would depend on foundation. The concern arises if mabeam reaches deeply into foundation’s internal implementations rather than interacting through well-defined public interfaces. This can lead to mabeam being brittle to changes in foundation.

• Centralized Registries/Managers: Modules like ProcessRegistry (in foundation) and AgentRegistry (in mabeam) are critical. If these become central points of synchronous interaction (GenServer.call), they can become bottlenecks and create tight coupling across various parts of the system that rely on them.

• Cross-Domain Logic: There might be instances where logic that conceptually belongs to mabeam (e.g., specific agent behaviors or economic calculations) is implemented within foundation, or vice-versa. This blurs boundaries and makes it harder to reason about responsibilities.

• Implicit Dependencies: Beyond explicit module imports, there can be implicit dependencies through shared data structures, message formats, or global configurations. These are harder to detect but can lead to unexpected coupling.

3. Recommendations for Improving Architectural Boundaries

To establish and maintain clearer architectural boundaries, consider the following:

1. Define Clear Public APIs: For each major component or “bounded context” (e.g., Foundation.ProcessRegistry, Mabeam.Agent), explicitly define its public API. All external interactions should go through this API, preventing direct access to internal implementation details.

2. Minimize Synchronous Communication Across Boundaries: While GenServer.call is sometimes necessary, excessive use across architectural boundaries can lead to serialization and tight coupling. Favor asynchronous communication (GenServer.cast, events, message queues) where possible, especially for long-running operations or when immediate responses are not strictly required.

3. Use Callbacks and Behaviors: For extensibility and reduced coupling, define Elixir behaviors (interfaces) that components must implement. This allows for dependency inversion, where higher-level modules depend on abstractions rather than concrete implementations.

4. Strategic Use of Contexts: Adopt the “Contexts” pattern (common in Elixir) to group related modules and define their public interfaces. This helps in organizing code and enforcing boundaries.

5. Dependency Analysis Tools: Utilize tools (e.g., mix xref) to analyze module dependencies regularly. This can help visualize the dependency graph and identify unexpected or circular dependencies that indicate boundary violations.

6. Documentation of Boundaries: Explicitly document the architectural boundaries, the responsibilities of each component, and how they are intended to interact. This serves as a guide for developers and helps maintain consistency.

By proactively addressing these points, the project can achieve a more modular, resilient, and maintainable architecture. This will also make it easier to introduce new features, refactor existing components, and scale the system effectively.