flex-auth/decisions/decisions.md

Decision records

FLEX-DEC-2026-001 — Assent to GH-DEC-2026-001: Engine framing, access-engine rename, authoring/evaluation split

id: FLEX-DEC-2026-001
kind: decision
title: 'Assent to GH-DEC-2026-001: Engine framing, access-engine rename, authoring/evaluation
  split'
status: resolved
origin: cross-repo
origin_ref: gate-house GH-DEC-2026-001
standard: net-kingdom/canon/standards/security-layer-model_v0.1.md
intake_ref: FLEX-IN-0001
owner: flex-auth
affects:
- flex-auth
- gate-house
- net-kingdom
- ops-warden
- secrets-engine
- zone-engine
requested_dispositions:
- assent
- revise
- reject
created: '2026-08-28T19:43:38.443788Z'
updated: '2026-08-28T19:44:29.505314Z'
rationale: 'Assent to all three items of GH-DEC-2026-001. Item 1: flex-auth is Engine-layer
  and the sole decision point; the INTENT reframe at fe46122 stands. flex-auth accepts
  one conformance debt of its own — DecisionProvenance carries no registry snapshot
  digest, so a decision turning on registry content is not replayable from its own
  provenance (standard section 6). Item 2: access-engine is the right name; execution
  is a separate governed migration, conditioned on renaming repository identity and
  runtime identity in separate revertible steps (the enforcing ops-warden pin binds
  tokens to the protected-system name flex-auth, and a single-step rename would 401
  every warden sign) and on FLEX-WP prefix ownership staying with the repository.
  Item 3: the authoring/evaluation split is accepted; gate-house authority ceilings
  must reach the decision as input claims or as rules in the versioned policy package
  so their application is reconstructable from the decision record — the same section
  6 test flex-auth applied to zone-engine and now to itself. FLEX-WP-0017-T03/T05
  stay wait: the design half is re-routed to gate-house, the durable storage half
  remains unowned and is raised as an engine gap.'
decided_by: flex-auth (reviewing side)
decided_at: '2026-08-28T19:44:29.505314Z'
state_hub_decision_id: "c990e442-77c2-4556-a40b-61f65eded10b"

Context

gate-house asked flex-auth, via FLEX-IN-0001, to assent to the three items ratified in GH-DEC-2026-001. The request follows the estate precedent that a boundary is drawn on review by the other side rather than asserted — the precedent flex-auth itself set when it reviewed a zone-engine draft and ruled that flex-auth is the policy decision point and stays the only one.

This record is flex-auth's answer. It is written from the reviewing side: the questions asked were not "is this flattering to flex-auth" but "does this hold against what flex-auth actually is, and does flex-auth actually conform".

Disposition

Assent to all three items, with one accepted conformance debt and two conditions on the rename. Nothing here revises or rejects any part of GH-DEC-2026-001.

Item 1 — Engine framing and the sole decision point: assent

flex-auth is Engine-layer under §3.3 and §4 of the standard. The defining property holds: the same authoritative input state yields the same result. The INTENT reframe is applied at fe46122 and is correct as written — "control plane" is dropped as Staff vocabulary, and the exclusive decision-point role of §6 is stated.

The generalization in §6 is the ruling flex-auth drew against zone-engine, applied to the estate. flex-auth cannot consistently hold that boundary against another repository and decline it as a general rule.

Accepted conformance debt — registry provenance. §6 states that compiled data determining an outcome is still deciding, and that provenance must remain reconstructable from the engine's decision. flex-auth does not fully satisfy this today. DecisionProvenance (pkg/api/canonical.go) carries the evaluator, mode, policy package, policy version, and a directory ETag — but no digest of the registry snapshot that supplied resource, subject, and relationship facts. A decision that turned on registry content therefore cannot be replayed from its own provenance.

flex-auth accepts this as its own gap rather than claiming conformance it does not have. It is the same argument flex-auth made to zone-engine — zone membership compiles into the registry snapshot, per-zone stance belongs in the versioned policy package, precisely because registry content is absent from decision provenance. The clean fix is to make registry content provenanced, and a workplan will carry it. Until it lands, the flex-auth position that outcome-determining content belongs in the versioned policy package stands unchanged, and stands for gate-house's inputs on the same terms (item 3).

Item 2 — The flex-auth → access-engine rename: assent to the name, not yet to execution

access-engine is the right name. The rejection of auth-engine is correct — key-cape owns authentication, and auth- preserves exactly the ambiguity the rename exists to remove. The §8 lane/rule demarcation is an acceptable cost and flex-auth adopts it: ops-warden and ops-mason own access lanes, flex-auth owns access rules.

flex-auth agrees the rename is a separate governed migration and does not treat GH-DEC-2026-001 as authorizing it. Two conditions, from the consumer side rather than the documentary side:

1. Repository identity and runtime identity must be renamed in separate, independently revertible steps, repository first. The name flex-auth is not only a repo slug: it is a deployed service, an in-cluster DNS name, a chart and image name, and — since FLEX-WP-0016 moved the ops-warden pin to callerAuth.mode: enforce — a protected-system identifier that inbound tokens are bound to. A single-step rename would make every warden sign a 401, including the certificate the ops-bridge tunnels depend on. This is the same dependency shape that caused ops-warden's ADR-0006 to defer policy.enabled permanently.
2. FLEX-WP prefix ownership stays with the repository across the rename. Existing FLEX-WP-0001..0018 identifiers are referenced by State Hub records, by consumer repositories, and by decision provenance in shipped audit records. They are not renamed retroactively; whether new work takes a new prefix is a question for the migration record, not for this assent.

The migration also touches State Hub identifiers, ops-warden's routing tables, zone-engine's boundary text, and secrets-engine integrations, as GH-DEC-2026-001 states. flex-auth will not begin any of it under this record.

Item 3 — The authoring/evaluation split: assent, with the §6 test applied symmetrically

The split is correct and flex-auth gives up the authoring half willingly: gate-house owns the doctrine, the invariants, the authority ceilings, the operating modes, and the authority context; flex-auth owns evaluation exclusively plus the policy-as-code mechanism; policy content stays with the protected system's owner.

flex-auth draws one boundary back, which is the §6 test applied to gate-house's inputs on the same terms flex-auth applies it to zone-engine and to itself:

An authority ceiling that determines an outcome must reach the decision as either an input claim on the request or a rule in the versioned policy package — and its application must be reconstructable from the decision record. A ceiling that resolves an outcome before evaluation runs has decided early, and gate-house is Staff, where §6 forbids a decision point.

Concretely: gate-house authors the ceiling; flex-auth renders it. The principal /actor/runtime triple, the mandate, and the operating mode arrive as input claims and appear in the decision binding. Where a ceiling constrains an outcome, it is expressed in the versioned policy package so that the policy version in provenance identifies the ceiling that applied. This is not a restriction on gate-house's authorship; it is what keeps the authorship auditable at decision time.

Effect on FLEX-WP-0017. The split resolves the overlap and re-routes the design half of the blocked work: gate-house designs the approval contract, flex-auth validates approvals at decision time. It does not unblock FLEX-WP-0017-T03 — the durable approval object, authenticated approval entries, and atomic supersession still need an owner for storage and lifecycle, which is neither gate-house's (Staff holds no state another layer depends on at runtime, §3.4) nor flex-auth's (flex-auth does not own the organizational approval lifecycle). T03 and T05 stay wait, with the design half now addressed to gate-house. That unowned half is flagged to gate-house as an engine gap under §5, not solved locally.

Consequences

• The standard's §11 blocker "flex-auth reframed as an Engine … not yet assented" is answered for flex-auth. kings-guard and ops-warden assent remains outstanding and is not flex-auth's to give.
• INTENT.md records the assent and the registry-provenance debt.
• A workplan will carry the registry snapshot digest into DecisionProvenance.
• The rename is not started, and must not start before a migration record exists that satisfies the two conditions above.

FLEX-DEC-2026-002 — Review of security layer model v0.4: assent with findings, one rule contested

id: FLEX-DEC-2026-002
kind: decision
title: 'Review of security layer model v0.4: assent with findings, one rule contested'
status: resolved
origin: cross-repo
origin_ref: net-kingdom security-layer-model_v0.4
standard: net-kingdom/canon/standards/security-layer-model_v0.4.md
intake_ref: FLEX-IN-0002
owner: flex-auth
affects:
- flex-auth
- gate-house
- net-kingdom
- ops-warden
- approval-engine
- maturity-engine
requested_dispositions:
- assent
- revise
- reject
created: '2026-08-29T00:41:21.171665Z'
updated: '2026-08-29T00:42:13.009799Z'
rationale: 'Assent to security-layer-model v0.4, with one rule contested and two capability
  assignments not accepted as assented. Section 9.3 conflicts with shipped assented
  behavior: it rules engine-unreachability fallback into the engine, where it cannot
  live, and collides with ops-warden ADR-0009''s per-zone consumer PEP map. Section
  13 names access-engine as intended owner of containment (accept as proposed owner
  only, pending per 9.2) and of authentication/assurance evidence (declined as stated;
  the identity layer and audit-core own that). Three consistency defects: frontmatter
  status proposed contradicts section 14 ''accepted''; the adoption count reads seven
  of fifteen with remaining eight against sixteen estate-authored repositories and
  nine listed; section 14 says three repositories above a table of four. FLEX-IN-0002
  answered: the approval boundary unblocks T03 design, T05 additionally needs the
  approval claim bound to the NewDecisionBinding request digest and a named owner
  and ordering for single consumption; the maturity claim route is practical as a
  request claim but not as registry content until the self-declared provenance digest
  gap closes.'
decided_by: flex-auth (reviewing side)
decided_at: '2026-08-29T00:42:13.009799Z'

Context

FLEX-IN-0002 asked flex-auth to review v0.3. By the time of review the current text is v0.4 (plus the in-place §11 amendment at 2aaf46c), which supersedes v0.3. This record reviews v0.4 and answers the two questions FLEX-IN-0002 put.

Three versions have landed since FLEX-DEC-2026-001, which answered v0.1.

Disposition

Assent to v0.4, with one rule contested, two capability assignments not accepted as assented, and three consistency defects. Nothing here blocks adoption; §9.3 needs correction before it is relied on.

What v0.4 gets right, from flex-auth's side

§6.2 adopts flex-auth's boundary from FLEX-DEC-2026-001 in substance and binds gate-house on the same terms. §9.4 upholds the self-dealing objection: the evaluator does not own the object it evaluates, access-engine consumes approvals as input claims and never mutates them. §13 attributes the registry-snapshot digest gap to flex-auth as self-declared, which is correct. §9.5's guardrail — a maturity level MUST NOT gate a decision directly — is §6.1 applied to a new engine, and flex-auth endorses it.

Contested — §9.3 conflicts with shipped, assented behavior

"The deterministic fail to reduced authority default is access-engine's, applied when it cannot reach its own inputs."

Two different failure cases are conflated:

1. access-engine is reachable but cannot reach its own inputs. The fallback is flex-auth's, it is deterministic, and §9.3 is right. flex-auth accepts it.
2. access-engine is not reachable at all. The engine applies nothing, because it is not running. Whatever happens next is the consumer's behavior, necessarily. flex-auth has held since 2026-08-19 that fail-open is not expressible by a PDP at all — not as a preference, but because there is no evaluator in the path to express it.

§9.3 as written rules case 2 into the engine, where it cannot live. It also collides with shipped behavior in a repository that has assented to this standard: ops-warden ADR-0009 (accepted 2026-08-22, superseding ADR-0006) retires the global policy.enabled and policy.fail_closed and replaces them with a total per-zone map in the consumer PEP — fails open for z0-experimental, z1-operational, z2-protected, z2-continuity and unknown; fails closed for z3-critical. That map is a Staff-layer degraded-mode fallback, and it is the correct design: the alternative makes flex-auth a hard dependency of every warden sign, including the SSH certificate the ops-bridge tunnel carrying the policy call depends on.

Proposed correction: §9.3 should rule the input-degradation fallback into the engine and state that engine-unreachability residue is the consumer's, bounded by a requirement that the consumer's stance be declared per zone and auditable — which ADR-0009 already satisfies. The sentence "engine-unavailable is not grounds for a Staff break-glass path" is sound and should be kept: a bypass path around a reachable engine is a second decision point. A consumer choosing its own behavior when there is no engine to ask is not.

Not accepted as assented — two capability assignments

v0.4's frontmatter lists flex-auth FLEX-DEC-2026-001 under assented_by, and §14 presents it as adoption of the current text. That record answered v0.1. Since then §13 names access-engine as intended owner of two capabilities flex-auth has never reviewed:

Gap row	Position
Containment surface → access-engine + runtime engines	Plausible and consistent with §8's posture asymmetry — rendering reduced authority is what a PDP does. Not yet reviewed, and §9.2 marks it pending anyway. Record it as proposed owner, not owner.
Authentication / assurance evidence → user-engine, access-engine	Declined as stated. flex-auth consumes assurance claims as input and never re-defines them; INTENT.md is explicit that the identity layer owns authentication. Evidence of authentication belongs to the identity layer and audit-core. flex-auth owns evidence of the decision, which it already emits.

An intended_owner in a gap register is a proposal to the named repository, not an assignment to it — §2 keeps what a repository owns in that repository's own INTENT.md. flex-auth suggests §13 gain a column distinguishing a proposed owner from an assented one, so the register does not accumulate silent assignments the way §14's assent row nearly did.

Consistency defects

1. Frontmatter status: proposed contradicts §14 "Status is accepted." Material, because §2 makes this standard the authority for layer assignment. The change log records v0.2 as accepted and v0.3/v0.4 as proposed, so §14 appears to be a carryover.
2. §14's adoption count does not add up. "seven of fifteen" and "the remaining eight" against a §4 catalog of 17 rows, 16 of them estate-authored (OpenBao excepted by §11's own who-must-declare rule). Seven declared plus the nine repositories actually listed is sixteen. Should read seven of sixteen and the remaining nine.
3. §14 says "All three repositories whose boundaries moved" above a table of four. audit-core is the fourth.

Answers to FLEX-IN-0002

(1) Is the boundary enough to unblock FLEX-WP-0017 T03/T05 design? Yes for T03. Not quite for T05, which needs two things specified in approval-engine's contract first:

• Claim shape must bind to the request digest flex-auth already computes. The approval claim should carry the approval id plus the digest of the action it approves, computed over the same canonical binding as NewDecisionBinding (FLEX-WP-0017-T01). Otherwise "approved" and "approved for this exact request" are not distinguishable at decision time, and T05's wrong-action/lane/stage/targets proofs have nothing to compare against.
• Single consumption needs an owner and an ordering. flex-auth never mutates approvals, so consumption is approval-engine's. But the decision precedes the action, and the action precedes consumption — so an allow rendered against an approval that is then never consumed, or consumed twice by a racing caller, is a gap neither engine closes alone. Naming who marks consumed and at what point relative to the decision belongs in the contract before T05, not after.

(2) Is the maturity claim route practical from where flex-auth sits? Yes, with one caveat that is flex-auth's own fault rather than maturity-engine's. A level reaching flex-auth as a request claim is practical today and lands in the decision binding. A level reaching flex-auth as registry content is not reconstructable, because DecisionProvenance carries no registry-snapshot digest — the gap flex-auth self-declared in §13. Until that closes, maturity levels should arrive as request claims or versioned policy rules, never compiled into the registry snapshot. This is the same constraint flex-auth placed on zone stance, for the same reason.

Consequences

• FLEX-IN-0002 is closed; the assessment covers v0.4 rather than v0.3.
• flex-auth's assent now attaches to v0.4 for §§1–8, §9.1–9.2, §9.4–9.6, and §§10–16, and to §9.3 only in its input-degradation half.
• FLEX-WP-0017 T03/T05 stay wait on approval-engine, with the two contract items above raised as prerequisites for T05.
• SCOPE.md cites ops-warden ADR-0006 as current; it is superseded by ADR-0009. Correcting that is flex-auth's own housekeeping.