secrets: maps a requirement to several files under local names. Each local name is
its own need, its own pair credential (the pair is keyed on it: migration 0027),
its own file on the consumer, its own holder at the provider (the identity with the
local name after it) and rotates apart from the others. The plain shape is
unchanged and every existing row is the credential it was (novox/hq 04-ISSUES/069,
ADR 0094).
The broker settings take a _FILE twin like the store connections; the
catalogue engine refuses a secret placeholder in a container's env and a
secret-carrying env-file unless the container says why with
secrets-in-environment, which stays in the catalogue and never reaches the
machine.
The provider-seal-key gate: on a node with two modules requiring the same provision (baserow
and letta both consuming postgres), sealedFor matched a need by provision NAME alone, so a
file's ${secret:X} placeholder took whichever consumer's sealed credential came last in
r.Needs -- the OTHER module's password. baserow was handed letta's password and could not
authenticate. The secrets:-map delivery path already guards this (For == m.Module, novox/hq
04-ISSUES/022); the ${secret:...} placeholder path did not. Added the same guard.
Also dedups the contributions file: when provider and consumer are co-located, grantsFor
enumerates the same-node consumer, so a consumer was emitted twice into the provider's
receives file (once full with its grant, once partial). The m.Contributes loop now skips a
(provision, module) the grants loop already carried; non-grant contributions (routes) still emit.
Regression test added: two consumers of one provision each get their own credential. Proven
end-to-end on a two-node lab install (mesh-lab assigned-two-node-db): baserow and letta on one
node, substrate on another, each authenticates with its own minted password.
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01LrgweAeERJYBg88c5cKDzF
I wrote that a test asserts the control plane's placeholder expression
and the host's still agree. None does, and none in this repository could
— a unit test here can only assert what this repository already
believes.
That is precisely the thing this project refuses to tolerate: a stated
rule with no way to check it, which costs more than no rule because
people believe it. Written by me, today, in the same file that closes a
gap of the same kind.
What actually proves it is the lab, and the comment now says so.
The gap that stopped keycloak and gitea from starting. A granted
credential arrives as a file whose entire content is the password, which
is what a program reading a password file wants — and most programs do
not read one. They read KEY=value, or a JSON document with the token at
an attribute inside it. A module in that position could be handed the
bare value or nothing, and both are useless.
The host has been able to do this all along: content with ${secret:name}
in it, sealed values beside it, substitution on the machine, which is
the only place both halves exist. Nothing filled the values in, so the
hole could be written and never closed and the host refused the file.
That refusal was correct and the feature was unreachable.
A module reaches its own secrets and the credentials it was granted —
both things it wrote in its own manifest — and nothing else. Naming
another module's is refused: two modules on one machine are as separate
as two on different machines, and letting one read the other's
credential by guessing a name would end that to save writing a file.
Filling runs after settings, which is the whole reason it sits where it
does. A setting is how a placeholder gets into a JSON document in the
first place — the desktop client that reads its token from an attribute,
not an environment variable. Before the merge that file's content is
"{}" and asks for nothing.
Tested through Declaration rather than through the helper. Three times
in this repository a test asserted on a helper while the code calling it
was wrong, and each time the injected fault stayed silent. Three faults
injected here — the call removed, the call moved before settings, and
the module boundary widened — each caught by the test meant for it.
jschoubben