key-cape/workplans/KEY-WP-0028-browser-client-field-validation.md
tegwick 1dc11b8448 Record live custody admission and re-verify the new rule against it
Read-only inspection shows KEY-WP-0013-T02's custody gate has moved since
yesterday: both approval clients are registered in sso/keycape-config, both
secrets exist in the namespace and are wired into the pod, and the image is
pinned to the digest T06 published. The live issuer passes every conformance
check that needs no credential.

That does not establish the claim contract. Subject, tenant, roles, scopes,
lifetime and excess-scope denial are what keycape verify-client proves, and it
needs the client secret in the environment. Reading either secret is client-side
retrieval, which the provisioning packet records as not admitted, so that run is
an attended operator action. T02 now waits on the run, not on custody.

Also re-verified the KEY-WP-0028 rule against the deployed config, after a peer
noted it fails closed at startup with a rollout imminent. The three browser
clients there carry neither serviceSubject nor roles; the three service clients
carry both legitimately. Kept as errors rather than warnings on that evidence.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01NV9oijZukGyGbRQGGKnK4P

Assistant: claude-code
Assistant-Model: opus
Assistant-Process: 713576@bnt-lap001
Assistant-Session: 384c511d-9bce-4cb8-a676-2aef6c0c8df6
2026-09-09 14:44:38 +02:00

3.3 KiB

id type title domain repo status owner topic_slug created updated state_hub_workstream_id
KEY-WP-0028 workplan Reject service-identity fields that a browser client silently ignores infotech key-cape finished claude browser-client-field-validation 2026-09-09 2026-09-09 6d0cb4fd-17da-5466-8011-5ade1ac46171

serviceSubject and roles are read only on the client_credentials path. On a browser client they are accepted at startup and then ignored: the subject and roles come from the directory user. A registration that looks effective and is not fails later, somewhere else, as a downstream rejection rather than as a registration defect.

tokenLifetime was already rejected this way for non-service clients, so the rule exists — it was just incomplete.

Reject the ignored fields

id: KEY-WP-0028-T01
status: done
priority: medium
state_hub_task_id: "e4bce8c7-0e60-55e8-ad32-a3a0c4e46044"

Config validation now rejects serviceSubject and roles on any client that does not use client_credentials, naming where the value actually comes from. Nothing in config/dev-config.yaml, the example fixture or the live deployment sets either field on a browser client, so this breaks no existing configuration — checked against all three rather than assumed.

Re-verified against sso/keycape-config on 2026-09-09, after a peer raised that this validation fails closed at startup and a rollout is imminent, so a stray field would surface as KeyCape failing to boot. The deployed config now holds six clients: demo-app, netkingdom-bootstrap-console and openbao-admin are browser clients carrying neither field, while rapp-qonto-client, secrets-engine-approval and approval-engine-operator carry both legitimately on the client_credentials path. The rule rejects none of them. Kept as errors rather than downgraded to warnings on that evidence: a warning for a field that does nothing is the state this change exists to end.

tenant is deliberately excluded from the rule, and a test pins that. A browser client may declare a tenant; humanTenant resolves it against the directory and refuses issuance when the two disagree (KEY-WP-0013-T05). An earlier version of this change rejected tenant too, which would have made that feature unusable.

Correction

id: KEY-WP-0028-T02
status: done
priority: medium
state_hub_task_id: "5ab951f8-2f9c-522c-b6ea-7f6d572cd618"

This work started from KEY-WP-0013-T05's blocker paragraph, which described a human token as unable to carry tenant:platform. That was true when written and had already been fixed in a concurrent session by the time this task began; the paragraph was read as current state rather than as a dated record.

Two consequences, both corrected within the session:

  • the tenant rejection was removed before it was committed, and a test now asserts a browser client carrying tenant: tenant:platform validates cleanly;
  • a hub decision (0145ab57) recording the tenant question as open and unimplemented was withdrawn with a rationale pointing at the implementation. Nothing was built on it.

The lesson worth keeping: in a repository where several sessions work at once, blocker prose ages faster than the code it describes. Re-read the source before acting on a workplan's description of it.