tegwick
f75db59a8c
secrets-engine delivered the action vocabulary T01 asked for: twelve actions read out of cli.py, not the example vocabulary. The gate earned its keep -- four would have been inferred wrongly, and revoke, the obvious thirteenth, does not exist as an action at all. It gates as deactivate, which is also reached from lifecycle deactivate. docs/secrets-engine-action-vocabulary.md records the list and the four traps. examples/secrets-engine/ carries the package, both manifests, a loadable registry snapshot, 26 fixtures, five check requests, and a README. validate -kind policy is valid with 22/22 Rego tests and 26/26 fixtures. allow_ttl is 15m, stated in the package rather than inherited from the engine default: these decisions authorize live secret operations, so the reliance window belongs where a reviewer sees it. Per FLEX-DEC-2026-004 it is authority to issue, not authority to keep using what the operation produced. destroy is the dual-control case, gated on a context.approval claim marked approved with two distinct approvers, repeated entries counting once. flex-auth checks what the claim says and deliberately does not re-derive its temporal validity, signature, or supersession -- those are approval-engine's to assert and the PEP's to verify against the live claim, per the split accepted in FLEX-DEC-2026-006. It stays in the package though its handler raises before the gate, so the rule is reviewed and fixtured before SECRETS-WP-0007-T04 opens the path. Following the FLEX-WP-0010-T02 precedent the denial ladder has no action_not_granted branch: one subject holding all twelve actions could never reach it, and a rule that cannot fail reads as control that is not there. Registering a second calling identity is the revisit trigger. Not deployed. No flex-auth-secrets-engine pin exists yet (T04), so their policy pin stays unset and fail-closed until T05. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com> Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01JTbVXpEiXA7mNJVpDnEPcB Assistant: claude-code Assistant-Model: opus Assistant-Process: 412054@bnt-lap001 Assistant-Session: 3968fae1-8d59-4209-9bd6-c22594b8ab19
4.1 KiB
secrets-engine action vocabulary
Status: published
Date: 2026-09-06
Workplan: FLEX-WP-0021-T01
Source: secrets-engine docs/gated-actions.md, read out of their cli.py
Package: secrets-engine.catalog-lane.lifecycle v1
(examples/secrets-engine/policy_package.md)
FLEX-WP-0021-T01 required secrets-engine to name this list rather than
letting flex-auth derive it, and made an inferred action a blocker rather than
a default. That was not ceremony: four of the twelve would have been inferred
wrongly, and one action that looks obvious does not exist at all.
The example vocabulary secrets-engine.lifecycle/v1 this replaces is not
this list and was never published (FLEX-DEC-2026-005).
Request shape
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
resource.type |
secret-catalog-lane |
resource.system |
secrets-engine |
resource.id |
the catalog id |
resource.attributes.stage |
deployment stage |
resource.attributes.fields |
sorted; populated for provision, rotate, verify, exec; empty list otherwise |
resource.attributes.policy_targets / auth_targets |
sorted |
context.approval |
approval claim; required for destroy only |
Empty lists are sent rather than omitted or guessed.
The twelve actions
| Action | Reaches OpenBao | Notes |
|---|---|---|
apply |
yes | apply --dry-run does not reach the gate |
provision |
yes | carries fields |
rotate |
yes | carries fields |
verify |
yes | carries fields |
handoff |
yes | |
wrap |
yes | |
exec |
yes | carries fields |
deactivate |
yes | also the gate for the CLI verb revoke |
suspend |
yes | |
destroy |
yes | dual control; not reachable live yet |
compromise |
no | local delivery overlay only |
reactivate |
no | local delivery overlay only |
Four things an inferred list gets wrong
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. The package asserts this
(test_revoke_is_not_an_action → unknown_action).
2. destroy is defined but not reachable live. Its handler raises before
the gate, so only --dry-run renders. It stays in the vocabulary as the
dual-control case; no live destroy Check arrives until
SECRETS-WP-0007-T04 lands. Keeping it in the package now means the rule is
reviewed and fixtured before the path opens rather than in the same change
that opens it.
3. compromise and reactivate touch no OpenBao object. They mutate local
delivery-overlay state only. They are gated because they change delivery
posture, not because they write to the backend — a distinction worth recording,
because a reviewer looking for backend writes would otherwise read their
presence as a mistake.
4. Seven CLI surfaces never reach the gate and must not appear in the
package: plan, apply --dry-run, route, audit, catalog,
decision inspect, and evidence.
apply --dry-run is the one flex-auth cannot enforce. apply is an action and
apply --dry-run is not, but both would arrive as apply — the distinction is
invisible to the PDP. What keeps them apart is that the PEP does not call the
gate for a dry run. flex-auth records the limit rather than implying a control
it does not have.
Dual control on destroy
destroy requires context.approval marked approved with at least two
distinct approver subject ids. Repeated entries from one subject count once.
flex-auth consumes that 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 the decision is step 2; the PEP
validates across both. This package checks that the claim says approved with
distinct approvers. It does not re-derive the claim's temporal validity,
signature, or supersession state — those belong to approval-engine to assert
and to the PEP 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.