flex-auth/examples/secrets-engine/policy_package.md

id	name	namespace	version	status	package	allow_ttl	actions	owner	fixtures	caring	activation	metadata
secrets-engine.catalog-lane.lifecycle	secrets-engine catalog-lane lifecycle authorization	secrets-engine:secret-catalog-lane	v1	ready	flexauth.secrets_engine.catalog_lane	15m	apply provision rotate verify handoff wrap exec deactivate suspend destroy compromise reactivate	team:platform-security	policy_fixtures.yaml	profile enforce canonical_roles organization_relations scopes planes capabilities exposure_modes conditions restrictions caring-0.4.0-rc2 false Operator ServiceProvider level id tenant Platform platform:secrets-engine tenant:platform Secret Policy Audit Create EditAny Execute Archive Restore View Audit Metadata DualApprovalRequired PrivilegeEscalationBlocked	mode local	source flex_auth_contract action_vocabulary examples/secrets-engine/policy_package.md protected-system-v0 docs/secrets-engine-action-vocabulary.md

secrets-engine catalog-lane lifecycle authorization

This package authorizes secrets-engine's gated CLI operations over a secret catalog lane. secrets-engine keeps custody of the secret material, the OpenBao objects, and the local delivery overlay; flex-auth decides whether a specific lifecycle operation is allowed now.

Opened by FLEX-DEC-2026-005 and carried by FLEX-WP-0021.

The vocabulary is theirs, not ours

The twelve action values below were delivered by secrets-engine (FLEX-WP-0021-T01, their docs/gated-actions.md), read out of cli.py rather than derived from the secrets-engine.lifecycle/v1 example vocabulary that this package replaces. FLEX-WP-0021-T01 made an inferred action a blocker rather than a default, and four of the twelve would have been inferred wrongly. They are recorded in ../../docs/secrets-engine-action-vocabulary.md.

The four that an inferred list would have gotten wrong are encoded here, not assumed — see "The four traps" below.

Correction, 2026-09-06 — the dual-control rule was written against an invented shape

The first published version of this rule required context.approval.status == "approved" and counted context.approval.approvals[].subject_id. Neither field exists. The claim's field is state (whose approved is not the operative value — valid is), and it carries no approver list at all. That rule was unsatisfiable: every live destroy would have denied dual_control_required no matter how good the approval was.

It failed closed, so it was never a hole. It was, however, a policy written against an invented shape rather than a published one — the same class of error approval-engine had flagged one message earlier, committed while flagging it. Recorded here rather than quietly rewritten. The rule now consumes valid_now from the published claim; see "Dual control on destroy".

The four traps

1. revoke is not an action. The CLI verb revoke gates as deactivate, which is also reached from lifecycle deactivate. There is no revoke value and one must not be added — test_revoke_is_not_an_action asserts it denies unknown_action.
2. destroy is defined but not reachable live. Its handler raises before the gate, so only --dry-run renders today. It stays in the vocabulary as the dual-control case; no live destroy Check arrives until SECRETS-WP-0007-T04 lands.
3. compromise and reactivate touch no OpenBao object. They mutate local overlay state only. They are gated because they change delivery posture, not because they write to the backend.
4. Seven CLI surfaces never reach the gate and must not appear here: plan, apply --dry-run, route, audit, catalog, decision inspect, and evidence. test_ungated_surfaces_are_not_actions asserts they deny.

On the fourth: apply is an action and apply --dry-run is not, but that distinction is invisible to flex-auth — both would arrive as apply. The PEP does not call the gate for a dry run, and that is the only thing keeping them apart. flex-auth cannot enforce it and does not pretend to.

Request shape

resource.type is secret-catalog-lane, resource.system is secrets-engine, and the catalog id is resource.id (FLEX-DEC-2026-005; secrets-engine implemented this in their commit 627810b). resource.attributes carries stage plus sorted fields, policy_targets, and auth_targets. fields is populated for provision, rotate, verify, and exec; the rest send an empty list rather than a guess.

Allow lifetime

allow_ttl: 15m, stated explicitly rather than inherited from the engine default. These decisions authorize live secret operations, so the window in which one may be relied on is a property worth writing down in the package where a reviewer sees it, not one to leave implicit.

Per FLEX-DEC-2026-004, that lifetime is authority to issue the operation, not authority to keep using anything the operation produced. A wrapped or delivered secret's own lifetime is secrets-engine's to bound.

Dual control on destroy

destroy is the one action that requires more than a known caller. It requires an approval-claim on context.approval, issued by approval-engine, whose valid_now is true.

That is the whole check, and the shape is approval-engine/schemas/approval_claim.schema.json — not a shape of flex-auth's devising. valid_now is a summary predicate: true only when the object is approved, inside its validity window, and not consumed, superseded, revoked, or expired. The distinct-approver threshold is folded into it, and reason_code: insufficient_approvers is how a claim that failed the threshold comes back.

flex-auth consumes the claim as an input claim and never mutates it (security-layer-model_v0.7 §9.4). Per FLEX-DEC-2026-006 the approval fact is approval-engine's step-1 artifact and this decision is step 2; the PEP validates across both.

What this package deliberately does not do

• It does not count approvers. The claim carries no approver list, and re-deriving the threshold here is exactly the duplication the step-1/step-2 split removes (GH-DEC-2026-005). The compensating property is reconstructability at the issuer under §9.6 — detection, not prevention — and it is approval-engine's, not ours.
• It does not re-derive validity, freshness, signature, or supersession. Those are approval-engine's to assert and the PEP's to verify against the live claim. A PDP re-deriving them from a caller-supplied blob would be inventing an authority it does not have.
• It does not compare binding.pdp_digest. That comparison is the whole binding mapping (see below), but the request digest is computed by the engine after policy evaluation, so a Rego rule cannot see it. It belongs in the PEP, which must require the value non-null and equal.

The binding mapping: pdp_digest is the answer, and there will be no table

Closed 2026-09-06. flex-auth asked approval-engine whether a published action/target mapping was worth having, and offered to co-author it. They declined, and were right to:

• The claim's binding.action and binding.target use approval-engine's vocabulary (secrets.kv.destroy, {"id": ..., "stage": ...}); this package's use ours (destroy, lane:...). A PIP asserting that one means the other would be authoring policy semantics over two vocabularies it does not own — the same layer boundary flex-auth invoked against its own composed object in FLEX-DEC-2026-006.
• The failure is asymmetric. A wrong mapping silently accepts a claim approved for a different action, which is strictly worse than no mapping.

binding.pdp_digest is the mapping, and it is stronger than a name table because it does not translate at all:

claim.binding.pdp_digest == decision.binding.request_digest

That compares the PDP's own digest to the PDP's own digest, in one vocabulary, with nobody asserting equivalence between two.

pdp_digest is now always present and may be null (approval-engine commit 6d0dfc8), so its absence is a stated fact rather than a missing key. A null means the approval was not issued against a PDP decision — it proves an approval exists, not that it was issued against the request being decided, and no vocabulary comparison recovers that.

The gate for destroy is therefore: pdp_digest non-null and equal. That check is the PEP's, not this package's, for the reason given above — the request digest is computed after policy evaluation and a Rego rule cannot see it. secrets-engine must refuse a null-pdp_digest claim on this lane before SECRETS-WP-0007-T04 makes destroy reachable.

Decision: one subject, so no action_not_granted branch

Decision (FLEX-WP-0021-T02, 2026-09-06): the denial ladder stops at unknown_subject plus dual_control_required.

secrets-engine named exactly one calling identity. With one subject holding all twelve actions, an action_not_granted branch could never fire. Following the precedent set in tenant-engine.write-api.mutate (FLEX-WP-0010-T02), a rule that cannot fail is worse than no rule: it reads to a later reviewer as though per-action grants were separately controlled when they are not.

dual_control_required is a real branch — it fires whenever destroy arrives without a satisfying claim, and the fixtures exercise both sides.

Revisit when a second calling identity is registered against system: "secrets-engine", or when secrets-engine splits its CLI identity by lane or stage. Adding the branch then is additive to this package: no consumer change and no request-shape change.

Rules

import future.keywords.contains
import future.keywords.if
import future.keywords.in

valid_actions := {
  "apply",
  "provision",
  "rotate",
  "verify",
  "handoff",
  "wrap",
  "exec",
  "deactivate",
  "suspend",
  "destroy",
  "compromise",
  "reactivate",
}

dual_control_actions := {"destroy"}

known_subjects := {"secrets-engine"}

decision := {"effect": "allow", "reason": "catalog_lane_policy_matched"} if {
  allowed
} else := {"effect": "deny", "reason": first_denial} if {
  true
}

well_formed if {
  input.resource.system == "secrets-engine"
  input.resource.type == "secret-catalog-lane"
  input.action in valid_actions
  input.subject.type == "service"
  input.subject.id in known_subjects
}

allowed if {
  well_formed
  not input.action in dual_control_actions
}

allowed if {
  well_formed
  input.action in dual_control_actions
  dual_control_satisfied
}

dual_control_satisfied if {
  claim := input.context.approval
  claim.kind == "approval-claim"
  claim.issuer == "approval-engine"
  claim.valid_now == true
}

default first_denial := "no_matching_rule"

first_denial := "wrong_system" if {
  input.resource.system != "secrets-engine"
} else := "wrong_resource_type" if {
  input.resource.type != "secret-catalog-lane"
} else := "unknown_action" if {
  not input.action in valid_actions
} else := "wrong_subject_type" if {
  input.subject.type != "service"
} else := "unknown_subject" if {
  not input.subject.id in known_subjects
} else := "dual_control_required" if {
  input.action in dual_control_actions
}

Tests

package flexauth.secrets_engine.catalog_lane_test

import future.keywords.every
import future.keywords.if
import future.keywords.in
import data.flexauth.secrets_engine.catalog_lane

lane(action) := {
  "id": "check:secrets-engine",
  "tenant": "tenant:platform",
  "subject": {"id": "secrets-engine", "type": "service"},
  "action": action,
  "resource": {
    "id": "lane:glas-primary",
    "type": "secret-catalog-lane",
    "system": "secrets-engine",
    "attributes": {"stage": "prod", "fields": [], "policy_targets": [], "auth_targets": []}
  },
  "context": {}
}

# A complete approval-claim, matching every required field of
# approval-engine/schemas/approval_claim.schema.json. Partial claims in a
# fixture are how a consumer learns the wrong shape.
valid_claim := {
  "schema_version": "0.1",
  "kind": "approval-claim",
  "issuer": "approval-engine",
  "approval_id": "3d1c0a8e-6b7f-4c21-9a0e-1f2b3c4d5e6f",
  "state": "valid",
  "valid_now": true,
  "consumed": false,
  "binding": {
    "action": "secrets.kv.destroy",
    "target": {"id": "lane-openbao-root", "stage": "prod"},
    "actor": "agt-secrets-engine",
    "principal": "bernd",
    "purpose": "rotate-exposed-key",
    "digest": "sha256:3f3f3f3f3f3f3f3f3f3f3f3f3f3f3f3f3f3f3f3f3f3f3f3f3f3f3f3f3f3f3f3f",
    "pdp_digest": "sha256:570d112890586d3cbf00c0e81c85ae7806f40f00afa1a2c0a23fd5e077a27f56"
  },
  "freshness": {
    "observed_at": "2026-09-06T12:00:00+00:00",
    "ttl_seconds": 30,
    "not_after": "2026-09-06T12:00:30+00:00"
  },
  "validity": {
    "not_before": "2026-09-06T11:00:00+00:00",
    "expires_at": "2026-09-06T15:00:00+00:00"
  },
  "reason_code": "ok"
}

destroy_with(claim) := object.union(lane("destroy"), {"context": {"approval": claim}})

approved_destroy := destroy_with(valid_claim)

test_apply_allowed if {
  catalog_lane.decision.effect == "allow" with input as lane("apply")
}

test_provision_allowed if {
  catalog_lane.decision.effect == "allow" with input as lane("provision")
}

test_rotate_allowed if {
  catalog_lane.decision.effect == "allow" with input as lane("rotate")
}

test_verify_allowed if {
  catalog_lane.decision.effect == "allow" with input as lane("verify")
}

test_handoff_allowed if {
  catalog_lane.decision.effect == "allow" with input as lane("handoff")
}

test_wrap_allowed if {
  catalog_lane.decision.effect == "allow" with input as lane("wrap")
}

test_exec_allowed if {
  catalog_lane.decision.effect == "allow" with input as lane("exec")
}

test_deactivate_allowed if {
  catalog_lane.decision.effect == "allow" with input as lane("deactivate")
}

test_suspend_allowed if {
  catalog_lane.decision.effect == "allow" with input as lane("suspend")
}

test_compromise_allowed if {
  catalog_lane.decision.effect == "allow" with input as lane("compromise")
}

test_reactivate_allowed if {
  catalog_lane.decision.effect == "allow" with input as lane("reactivate")
}

test_destroy_with_dual_control_allowed if {
  catalog_lane.decision.effect == "allow" with input as approved_destroy
}

test_destroy_without_claim_denied if {
  catalog_lane.decision.reason == "dual_control_required" with input as lane("destroy")
}

test_destroy_insufficient_approvers_denied if {
  catalog_lane.decision.reason == "dual_control_required" with input as destroy_with(
    object.union(valid_claim, {"state": "requested", "valid_now": false, "reason_code": "insufficient_approvers"})
  )
}

test_destroy_consumed_claim_denied if {
  catalog_lane.decision.reason == "dual_control_required" with input as destroy_with(
    object.union(valid_claim, {"state": "consumed", "valid_now": false, "consumed": true, "reason_code": "consumed"})
  )
}

test_destroy_revoked_claim_denied if {
  catalog_lane.decision.reason == "dual_control_required" with input as destroy_with(
    object.union(valid_claim, {"state": "revoked", "valid_now": false, "reason_code": "revoked"})
  )
}

test_destroy_approved_but_not_valid_now_denied if {
  catalog_lane.decision.reason == "dual_control_required" with input as destroy_with(
    object.union(valid_claim, {"state": "approved", "valid_now": false, "reason_code": "not_yet_valid"})
  )
}

test_destroy_foreign_issuer_denied if {
  catalog_lane.decision.reason == "dual_control_required" with input as destroy_with(
    object.union(valid_claim, {"issuer": "some-other-engine"})
  )
}

test_destroy_wrong_kind_denied if {
  catalog_lane.decision.reason == "dual_control_required" with input as destroy_with(
    object.union(valid_claim, {"kind": "action-authorization"})
  )
}

test_revoke_is_not_an_action if {
  catalog_lane.decision.reason == "unknown_action" with input as lane("revoke")
}

test_ungated_surfaces_are_not_actions if {
  every surface in ["plan", "route", "audit", "catalog", "decision", "evidence", "inspect"] {
    catalog_lane.decision.reason == "unknown_action" with input as lane(surface)
  }
}

test_unknown_subject_denied if {
  catalog_lane.decision.reason == "unknown_subject" with input as object.union(
    lane("rotate"),
    {"subject": {"id": "some-other-service", "type": "service"}}
  )
}

test_wrong_subject_type_denied if {
  catalog_lane.decision.reason == "wrong_subject_type" with input as object.union(
    lane("rotate"),
    {"subject": {"id": "secrets-engine", "type": "human"}}
  )
}

test_wrong_system_denied if {
  catalog_lane.decision.reason == "wrong_system" with input as object.union(
    lane("rotate"),
    {"resource": {"id": "lane:glas-primary", "type": "secret-catalog-lane", "system": "some-other-system"}}
  )
}

test_wrong_resource_type_denied if {
  catalog_lane.decision.reason == "wrong_resource_type" with input as object.union(
    lane("rotate"),
    {"resource": {"id": "lane:glas-primary", "type": "secret", "system": "secrets-engine"}}
  )
}