coulomb/approval-engine
4
0
Fork 0
Code Issues Pull requests Projects Releases Packages Wiki Activity Actions

Say what the tenant check is, and what view_hash is not

Browse source 
gate-house (GH-DEC-2026-013) was right that our wording implied a fact
about the person. The tenant comparison is store isolation — does this
caller belong to the store this engine serves — and a registration-
supplied claim satisfies that while satisfying no doctrine about the
approver's own membership. Exact equality cannot see the difference, so
state it, and note that provenance gets recorded on the entry the way v4
records principal_type once the claim carries it.

Answer informed-decision's R3 in the claim contract: view_hash and
binding.digest answer different questions and must not be merged. Three
hashes, three questions. Recommend their binding document carry our
digest rather than re-canonicalize the same five fields, so the act has
one canonicalization and a mismatch is detectable.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01HyybaE7DUXrWYrhbnESCTe

Assistant: claude-code
Assistant-Model: opus
Assistant-Process: 1275879@bnt-lap001
Assistant-Session: eb464208-f821-41b2-bc5a-a6c33d92a8ad
This commit is contained in:
tegwick 2026-09-10 07:56:28 +02:00
parent 849c75bb09
commit 62233c7c52
3 changed files with 89 additions and 0 deletions
Download patch file Download diff file Expand all files Collapse all files

32
docs/approval-claim.md
View file

@ -79,6 +79,38 @@ change that JSON and therefore the digest. A decision rendered against
approval A for request R cannot be replayed for request R' if the consumer
compares digests.
### What this digest is not — answering `INFD-IN-0001` R3
`informed-decision` asked whether its `view_hash` and this digest are the same
hash, since both are described as canonicalizing a binding. **They are not, and
they must not be merged.** Three hashes, three questions:
| Hash | Preimage | Answers |
| --- | --- | --- |
| `binding.digest` (here) | five fields: `action`, `actor`, `principal`, `purpose`, `target` | *which act* is approved |
| `binding.pdp_digest` | the PDP's own `NewDecisionBinding` digest, recorded at issue | *which decision request* this approval corresponds to |
| `view_hash` (`informed-decision`) | a canonicalized binding document additionally covering brief, packet, highlights, locale and UI release | *what a person was shown* when they bound themselves |
The overlap is only that all three canonicalize *something*. This engine's
digest deliberately covers five fields and no more: it exists so that
wrong-action, wrong-target and wrong-scope are distinguishable, and it has no
opinion about presentation, which does not exist for a machine-to-machine
approval. Widening it to cover a brief or a locale would change the digest of
an act whose act did not change.
This repository already keeps two digests apart for exactly this reason rather
than as a matter of taste — `binding.digest` and `pdp_digest` answer different
questions and are stored separately precisely so that a reader cannot infer one
property from the other. A third hash answering a third question is the same
pattern, not a duplication of it.
**The recommended relationship, which avoids two canonicalizations of one act:**
`view_hash`'s binding document should *carry this digest as a field* rather than
re-canonicalize `action`/`actor`/`principal`/`purpose`/`target` itself. Then
there is exactly one canonicalization of the act, computed here, referenced by
the presentation hash — and a mismatch is detectable rather than being two
independently correct answers about the same approval.
### Mapping from a flex-auth CheckRequest
| Claim binding | CheckRequest |

24
docs/caller-authentication.md
View file

@ -8,6 +8,30 @@ mode is explicit, file-backed, and refused with `--production`.
The verified `tenant` must exactly match the service's configured store tenant;
cross-tenant reads and mutations are rejected before object lookup.
**This check is store isolation, and it is not a statement about the person.**
It answers "does this caller belong to the store this engine serves", not "is
this human a member of the platform zone". `GH-DEC-2026-013` rules that a
key-cape human tenant claim may be supplied by the client registration rather
than asserted by the directory, and forbids a consumer treating the two as
equivalent for a decision turning on a fact about the person. Exact string
equality cannot see that difference — a string that matches exactly matches
whoever asserted it — so the difference is stated here instead.
Consequences this engine accepts deliberately:
- A registration-supplied tenant **is** admissible for admission to this store.
Admission means "arrived through a channel the platform registered", the
approver client is static and deployment-owned, and dynamic client
registration is excluded from key-cape by design.
- A registration-supplied tenant is **not** admissible for any doctrine that
turns on the approver's own membership — "an approver must be a member of the
platform zone" is a fact about the person, and this claim cannot carry it.
No such doctrine exists today; if `gate-house` issues one, it needs a
directory-sourced claim and this check does not become that claim by matching.
- When key-cape emits provenance alongside the tenant, this engine records it on
the approver entry the way schema v4 records `principal_type` — an evidence
reader should not have to infer provenance from a string that cannot carry it.
| Route | Required scope |
|---|---|
| create approval | `approval:create` |

33
workplans/APPROVAL-WP-0002-production-readiness-and-consumer-adoption.md
View file

@ -204,6 +204,39 @@ a service bind legible, but legibility is not permission, and the should-it
question remains gate-house's. `secrets-engine-approval` is unaffected: it has a
real presenter and is the client that unblocks T05. T01 stays `progress`.
2026-09-10: three inbound items, all answered; one is a live blocker on the
human client and it is not ours to fix. (i) `key-cape` reports that a human
access token **cannot carry `tenant:platform` today**: `effectiveTenant(user)`
resolves the claim from the directory record, `domain.User.Tenant` is populated
by no adapter, and every human token falls back to `tenant:coulomb`; the
per-client `tenant` field is read only on the client-credentials path. Our exact
equality would refuse such a token, surfacing as a rejected approval rather than
a registration defect. We answered **(2) registration-bound**, matching decision
`5ed3fb35-eca9-413a-82b9-95171ba85bf6` and symmetric with the service clients,
and only because registrations are static, deployment-owned, and dynamic client
registration is excluded by design. (ii) `gate-house` `GH-DEC-2026-013` names
the consequence of exactly that: a registration-supplied tenant is the client's
say-so, not the directory's, and exact matching cannot see the difference — the
same shape as our own `pdp_digest` finding one layer down. They were right that
our wording implied a fact about the person. `docs/caller-authentication.md` now
states that the check is **store isolation** and not membership, that a
registration-supplied tenant is admissible for admission but **not** for any
future doctrine turning on the approver's own membership, and that provenance
will be recorded on the entry the way v4 records `principal_type` once the claim
carries it. (iii) `informed-decision` R3, answered in `docs/approval-claim.md`:
`view_hash` and `binding.digest` are **not** the same hash and must not be
merged. Three hashes, three questions — which act (five fields), which decision
request (`pdp_digest`), what a person was shown (`view_hash`). Recommended that
their binding document *carry* our digest as a field rather than re-canonicalize
the same five fields, so the estate has one canonicalization of the act with a
detectable mismatch instead of two independently correct answers. Also accepted
from key-cape: `approval:read` added to the human client, and a documented
`assurance` shape (`level`/`methods`/`mfa`/`source`/`at`) — with `at` fixed to
carry the original authentication instant through session reuse, which matters
here because this engine stores that object verbatim as the only downstream
record that MFA happened. T01 stays `progress`; the human client cannot be
registered until the tenant source is settled by its owner.
## Harden durable storage and migrations
```task