audit-core/workplans/AUDIT-WP-0008-tenancy-posture-alignment.md

id	type	title	domain	repo	status	owner	topic_slug	created	updated	depends_on	state_hub_workstream_id
AUDIT-WP-0008	workplan	Tenancy posture declaration and read-path enforcement	infotech	audit-core	ready	claude	railiance	2026-08-17	2026-08-17	AUDIT-WP-0007	84c01552-4c65-45fd-bf6c-7daab0ecc9b6

AUDIT-WP-0008 — Tenancy posture declaration and read-path enforcement

Goal

Answer the rapp-postgres review request against NetKingdom Tenancy Posture v0.1, declare an accurate posture vector, and close the one gap the assessment exposed in running code.

Canonical framework: net-kingdom/canon/standards/tenancy-posture_v0.1.md (rendered copy in policy-nexus/build/tenancy-posture.html).

Assessment — what the ladders say about us

rapp-postgres guessed audit-core I2 A3 E2 P1 R1, and §5 carries that guess as a worked example. Three of the five are too high.

Axis	Guess	Actual	Why
I	2	1	Senders hold static bearer tokens (audit_core/senders.py); the tenant arrives in the request body (audit_core/ingestion.py:379) and is checked against an allowlist bound to the credential. No IdP, no verified claim. §4.1 names this case explicitly: I1 absorbs "the tenant is taken from the request rather than from a verified token".
A	3	2	No flex-auth call exists anywhere in the repo. Authorization is a single local boundary — permits_source, permits_tenant, may_write, may_read. That is the definition of A2.
E	2	1	The write path is E2-shaped. The read path applies no tenant filter at all. See below.
P	1	1	platform-pg, database per consumer. Correct.
R	1	1	No backupRetentionDays in rapp-postgres/consumers/audit-core.yaml; platform default 30 days applies. Correct.

The I-axis correction is not a defect. The credential→tenant allowlist is a real control; it is simply an A-axis control sitting where a reader would expect an I-axis one. Decision 3.1 doing its job on its first live use.

The E-axis finding

_read (audit_core/ingestion.py:226-272) gates on identity.may_read and nothing else. permits_tenant is never called on the read path. A credential with may_read: true can read any tenant's events through /v1/events?correlation_id=, /v1/events/<id>, /v1/dead-letters and /v1/secret-findings.

Exposure today is bounded: the production sender user-engine carries may_read: false, and the read surface is ClusterIP behind a default-deny NetworkPolicy. But bounded-by-deployment is not enforced-by-code, and under §6 declaring E2 on that basis would be the overclaim the framework exists to prohibit. E1 is the honest reading until T04 lands.

This also corrects the premise of the review request. rapp-postgres wrote "you are at E2, and E3 is more urgent for you than for anyone else". E3 is indeed the right target for a service holding audit evidence, but §4.3 requires the E2 evidence artifact alongside any E3 claim — so the first move is reaching E2, not adopting RLS.

Positions to take

On the retention ceiling (their question 1)

The 365-day ceiling is not wrong for us. Keep it.

The ADR-0002 context line — "audit-core holds audit evidence and may need years" — is right about the requirement and wrong about the mechanism. Physical backup retention is not where multi-year audit custody belongs. It is already routed: data/capability/audit-core-operational.json records data.archive as an unmet requirement with a separate owner and an explicitly different bucket and lifecycle from Barman.

Consequences we accept and want stated back:

• audit-core declares nothing above the 30-day platform default. We therefore do not extend any co-resident's erasure horizon, now or under this plan.
• Multi-year retention is an archive procurement question, not a WAL-window question. Raising the ceiling would buy us nothing and cost every co-resident volume against 20Gi.
• Service class batch is correct. No correction wanted. Co-residency with latency-critical tenant-engine is right to be reported under §8.3.3.

Ask of rapp-postgres: amend the ADR-0002 opening context to point at archive rather than at backup retention, so the two statements agree.

This position is conditional, and the condition is dated. Routing multi-year custody to data.archive is correct mechanically and unfunded practically: the capability case records it as unmet, with no booked cost and no procurement owner in motion. Taking this position without a date would read as "audit-core is fine", and audit-core is not fine — it is correctly routed and unresourced.

Escalation: reviewed 2026-12-31. If no data.archive provision is procured by then, audit-core reopens placement. §4.5 makes retention a placement trigger, and P2 — a dedicated cluster with an independent window — becomes the fallback worth arguing for. P2 still does not deliver WORM, so it is a worse answer than archive; it is named here so the fallback exists rather than being improvised under pressure. Recorded now so the review has something to fire against.

Also taken now: R1 → R2. R2 needs only that retention be declared per dataset rather than inherited silently, and that the erasure horizon be published. That is an explicit backupRetentionDays: 30 in the consumer declaration plus the horizon rendered in our operator surface — a change of hours, not a future target. Deferring it as a "target" would have been the framework's own §8.1 failure: a value in a file nobody re-reads.

On erasure versus audit (their question 11)

Yes to the fact/payload split — retain the fact of an event, encrypt its personal payload per subject, shred the key. But that resolution does not survive contact with our integrity design as built, in two ways the framework does not currently capture.

One: it is not retrofittable. _record_hash (audit_core/postgres_backend.py:583) is SHA-256 over the canonical JSON of the cleartext record, and that hash is what the chain commits to. Encrypting a payload after the fact severs the binding between payload_hash and the stored record. Shreddability has to be built as encrypt-then-hash at accept time, with the chain committing to ciphertext. Retrofitting it onto existing events is not possible without rewriting the chain, which is the one thing AUDIT-WP-0007 was built to make detectable.

Two, and sharper: the retained hash is a confirmation oracle. A SHA-256 over a canonical record whose fields are low-entropy (event type, actor, tenant, subject, timestamp) lets anyone holding the hash guess the payload, hash the guess, and confirm a match. Destroying the key does not make the content unrecoverable while that hash survives. Crypto-shredding does not reach R4 under this design. It needs the integrity commitment to be an HMAC under a per-subject key that dies with the key, or a per-record salt destroyed with it.

This is a genuine gap in §4.5, not just a fact about us: the key-destroyed route treats key destruction as sufficient without requiring that no retained commitment reveal the erased content. Recommend §4.5 gain that condition.

Our position: audit-core targets R2, not R4. Verified erasure of audit evidence is a design tension we record rather than resolve, and a "R4 everywhere" fleet target must exempt this service explicitly.

The exemption rests on a legal basis nobody in this estate has confirmed, and that must be said out loud rather than assumed. Declining to build erasure means that if an Article 17 request arrives naming a data subject in the audit trail, audit-core has no mechanism and must rely on audit evidence being exempt — legal obligation, or legitimate interest in fraud and security investigation. Those grounds are ordinary and widely relied on. They are also a legal conclusion, and this repo is not competent to reach one. Nothing in INTENT, SCOPE or the capability case records anyone having reached it either.

This workplan therefore routes the question rather than absorbing it: the position is "we do not build erasure, on a legal basis we have named and not validated", and the validation is somebody else's to own. An unnamed dependency here is the difference between a recorded tension and an unnoticed liability — and an audit service discovering in the middle of a regulator's question that its exemption was assumed is the specific failure worth spending a paragraph to avoid.

Framework review findings

Sent under §20.2 — the framework is validated by whether it can describe us.

Outcome, 2026-08-17: all five were adopted in draft-7, alongside reviews from railiance-platform and flex-auth. Finding 1 became Decision 5.2 (declare per path, quote the minimum), finding 2 became 13.1a (the floor needs a reason, not an artifact), finding 3 became Decision 9.2 (consumer-facing credentials are named in), finding 4 became Decision 4.5.3 (key destruction is not sufficient alone; the confirmation-oracle defect is recorded as general, with audit-core exempted from R4), and the §5 worked example now reads I1 A2 E1 P1 R1 self-reported. Draft-7 also added Decision 5.4, which relocates the vector to tenancy.yaml in the repo root — see T01.

Two of these now bind us rather than only the framework: 9.2 makes our static ingest tokens a declarable gap, and 5.5 requires a provider block. Both are in tenancy.yaml. T06 is therefore reduced to confirming receipt and correcting the one line draft-7 still has stale about us (E, once T05 lands).

Draft-7's own status section still carries "Every correction so far was found by research or by relocation, not by review" and "Reviewed by nobody yet", three paragraphs below a list of eleven review-driven changes. Stale lines, worth flagging in T06 — a document about not overclaiming should not under-report its own review history.

1. The E ladder cannot express asymmetric enforcement. Our write path is E2 and our read path is E1. §4.3 assumes one level per service. This will recur estate-wide, since most services enforce harder on write than on read, and with no rule everyone will declare their best path.

   Neither obvious fix is right alone. A bare minimum across paths is safe to publish but destroys information: a service at E3-write/E1-read declares identically to one at E1/E1, though the first is materially further along. Bare per-path declaration (E: {write: 3, read: 1}) keeps the signal and invites exactly the selective quoting §6 exists to stop — "our write path is E3" is a sentence someone will say.

   Recommend both, with the relationship stated: declare per path, quote the minimum. The posture vector's E is the minimum across paths; the per-path breakdown sits beside it and is where improvement is tracked. One sentence in §4.3, and it is the only version that keeps honesty and signal at once.

2. §13.1 collides with the ladder floor. "A level is claimed only with its evidence artifact present", but §13's table has no artifact for I0, I1, A0, A1, E0, E1, R0 or R1. §5's own worked example of a conformant absorbed repo — I1 A1 E1 P0 R0 — cannot satisfy 13.1 on any axis. Either declaration alone is the evidence at the floor rungs, or 13.1 binds only above them. Small, but it makes the framework's flagship example non-conformant against its own rule.

3. §9.1 omits consumer-facing credentials. Decision 9.1 bans static long-lived credentials for database access above E0, and we comply — leases re-read at connection time, audit_core/credentials.py. But our ingest credentials are static long-lived bearer tokens rotated by publishing a second token alongside the first. §9 promotes leased credentials to "a tenancy control"; the same argument applies with more force to the credential that actually carries the tenant claim. The omission reads as accidental. Name consumer-facing credentials in scope, or say deliberately that they are not.

4. §4.5 key-destroyed route — add the condition in "On erasure versus audit" above: no retained integrity commitment may reveal the erased content.

5. §5 worked example — correct audit-core to I1 A2 E1 P1 R1, and revise its note. "Both E3 and R2 are urgent targets" is half right: E3 is, R2 is nearly vacuous for us while the real requirement sits in data.archive.

Nothing here asks the framework to change shape. Four of five axes described us without strain, and the one that did not (E) failed in a way that found a real defect in our code. That is the framework working.

Non-goals

• E3 / row-level security is not in this plan. ADR-0003 publishes the contract and it is the right target, but it is blocked behind reaching E2 (§4.3) and needs the EXPLAIN comparison first. Declared as target with a recorded gap in T01, not built here.

  The target carries a date: 2027-03-31. The framework says services whose cross-tenant exposure would be a reportable breach SHOULD target E3, and no service on platform-pg fits that description better than this one. Every quarter spent at E2-with-a-target is a quarter of stated, unclosed risk, and an undated target is what §8.1 calls documentation rather than control. If the date slips it slips as a decision, which is the whole point of §12.

• No per-subject encryption is built. T03 records a position; it does not commit to an implementation.

• No adversarial evidence facility is built here. §19.3 gave that a home in whitehat-security. T05 coordinates, it does not volunteer.

Sequencing

T04 runs before T01. Task ids are hub-registered and not renumbered; the execution order is T02 → T04 → T01 → T03 → T05 → T06.

The reason is narrow. A posture vector published in the repo is a canon-shaped artifact that outlives the fortnight it takes to fix the read path, and E1 on an audit service is a sentence that will be quoted back long after it stopped being true. Fixing first means the declaration is E2 on both paths from its first commit, and the E1 interval never enters the permanent record.

This is emphatically not withholding the finding. T02 goes first precisely so the correction reaches rapp-postgres immediately: their guess of E2 is live in canon now, and it is wrong now. A message correcting the record is the fast instrument; a published vector is the durable one. Deferring the durable artifact by two weeks while the fast one goes out today is sequencing. Delaying both would be concealment, and §6 would be right to call it that.

Tasks

id: AUDIT-WP-0008-T01
status: done
priority: high
state_hub_task_id: "65f3109a-fa98-459a-9e59-d7ac211bd2bc"

Publish the posture vector. Rewritten against draft-7, which landed after this task was written and moved the target: Decision 5.4 fixes the location at tenancy.yaml in the repo root, not docs/tenancy-posture.yaml, and fixes the schema — current, target, reviewed, gap, placement_exceptions, service_class, per-path detail (5.2), and a provider block (5.5). Delivered at that path and in that shape. Cross-linked from SCOPE.md and docs/interface-card.yaml.

Declared I1 A2 E1 P1 R1, and E is quoted at 1 on purpose. T04 put the E2 mechanism on both paths, but §13.2 says a passing CI run is not E2 evidence: the E2 artifact is adversarial, compares separate tenant contexts, and carries a review date rather than a green build. Our cross-tenant tests are mechanical. Under §13.1 the level is therefore not claimable until T05 produces the artifact, so the vector declares 1 with the mechanism recorded in paths.E and the reason in gap.E. Claiming E2 off unit tests would be the overclaim §6 prohibits — and refusing exactly that kind of reasoning is what found the read-path defect in the first place.

R stays at 1: R2 needs backupRetentionDays: 30 in rapp-postgres/consumers/audit-core.yaml, requested in T02. That file is theirs, so R2 is not ours to declare unilaterally. The erasure horizon is already published on /readyz as recoverable_days.

Two additions draft-7 forced that the original task did not anticipate:

• A credentials gap under Decision 9.2. Our own finding was adopted as a rule, and it binds us: ingest credentials are static long-lived bearer tokens. Declared as a stated gap with no dated remedy rather than a silent exclusion. Asking for the rule and then exempting ourselves from it was not available.
• A provides block under Decision 5.5. audit-core provisions operations.audit, so it declares what it makes reachable for a sender's trail — E2 now, E3 pending ADR-0003, E4 and R4 unreachable. A sender needing a structural cross-tenant guarantee cannot get it here and should be told so rather than sold E2 in E4's language (§11.4).

id: AUDIT-WP-0008-T02
status: done
priority: high
state_hub_task_id: "224a12c0-d646-4c7f-9215-120e1ede4691"

Reply to rapp-postgres message 56b77e20-0152-4e09-8f76-99640269063b. Runs first. Carries four things: the retention position (ceiling stays 365, audit-core declares nothing above the 30-day default, multi-year routes to data.archive) with the 2026-12-31 escalation date and the P2 fallback named; the request for an explicit backupRetentionDays: 30 in consumers/audit-core.yaml to take us to R2; the ADR-0002 context amendment; and batch confirmed.

It also corrects their posture guess immediately — I1 A2 E1 P1 R1, not I2 A3 E2 P1 R1, with the read-path defect stated plainly and T04 named as the fix in flight. Their E2 guess is live in canon and wrong today; the correction does not wait on T01. Mark the message read on send.

id: AUDIT-WP-0008-T03
status: todo
priority: high
state_hub_task_id: "0003954e-5033-457f-b9aa-97efdefe9beb"

Answer question 11 in docs/erasure-and-audit.md: the fact/payload split, the encrypt-then-hash constraint, the confirmation-oracle finding, and the R2-not-R4 target. Record as an audit-core position; send the §4.5 condition to NetKingdom as a framework amendment.

Name the legal dependency explicitly and route it. The document must state that declining to build erasure rests on audit evidence being exempt under legal obligation or legitimate interest, that this is a legal conclusion, and that no one in the estate is recorded as having reached it. Route that question to the-custodian for an owner rather than closing it here — audit-core is not competent to answer it and should not appear to have. The position is publishable with the dependency open; it is not publishable with the dependency hidden.

id: AUDIT-WP-0008-T04
status: done
priority: high
state_hub_task_id: "e4440db3-6eb0-49f6-9aa9-930db8be9d18"

Bind the read path to permitted tenants. permits_tenant governs read as it governs write, at the same choke point: tenant-scope /v1/events, /v1/events/<id>, /v1/dead-letters and /v1/secret-findings. Decide and record how an operator identity holding tenants: ["*"] is distinguished from a scoped reader. Tests for cross-tenant read refusal. Update docs/interface-card.yaml and the operator runbook. Raises E to 2 on both paths; update T01's declaration.

id: AUDIT-WP-0008-T05
status: todo
priority: medium
state_hub_task_id: "30b56b30-e7eb-4873-aa7c-f4a3bf2fcb24"

Produce the §13 E2 evidence artifact — adversarial, with a review date: an identity bound to tenant A demonstrably cannot read tenant B. Coordinate with whitehat-security (WHITEHAT-WP-0001) on whether this is theirs to run or ours to write and theirs to review. Record the review cadence as the exposure window per §19.3.

id: AUDIT-WP-0008-T06
status: todo
priority: medium
state_hub_task_id: "ed58ca37-755b-4284-b1ac-2a02baaceb21"

Send the five framework review findings to net-kingdom (owner of the canon path) and policy-nexus (owner of the rendered copy), as a §20.2 review response rather than as objections.

Done when

• docs/tenancy-posture.yaml declares an accurate vector with targets, per-path E breakdown, and dated gaps.
• Read path enforces tenant scope, with a test that fails if it regresses.
• rapp-postgres has the retention answer, the corrected posture guess, and the question 11 answer.
• NetKingdom has the five framework findings.
• The §5 worked example for audit-core is corrected upstream.
• Two dates are recorded and monitored per §8.1 rather than merely written: data.archive review 2026-12-31, E3 target 2027-03-31.
• The erasure legal question has an owner outside audit-core.