ops-mason/INTENT.md

INTENT

This file captures why this repository exists, the direction it is moving toward, and the kind of system it is meant to become. It is intentionally aspirational and stable, not a description of current implementation.

---

One-liner

The builder of NetKingdom security infrastructure — creates, changes, maintains, and tears down access routes, credentials, tokens, and policies so that ops-warden always has something real to route to.

---

Why this exists

ops-warden is deliberately narrow: it issues short-lived SSH certificates and routes every other credential need to the subsystem that owns it — it "owns no secret store and vends nothing" (ops-warden/wiki/AccessRouting.md). That's the right shape for a front door, but it leaves a real gap: something has to actually build the AppRole, the policy, the KV secret path, the catalog entry that ops-warden then points workers at. Today that gap is filled ad hoc — a founder spends "~10 minutes" hand-running bao write commands per new lane (see binky-control/integrations/executor-worker-secrets.md for a representative example: a new AppRole, a new policy, delivered role_id/secret_id files, a catalog entry, repeated by hand every time a new consumer needs a credential).

ops-mason exists to turn that ad hoc founder mechanic into a reviewed, repeatable construction process — so new security infrastructure gets built consistently, against what already exists, with a human decision point before anything is actually applied, instead of bespoke one-off provisioning every time.

---

The Mission

ops-mason builds NetKingdom security infrastructure — OpenBao AppRoles, policies, KV secret paths, and their ops-warden catalog entries — as defined by architecture documents (net-kingdom) and by real consumer demand (a repo/workload that needs a credential lane). It does not decide whether access should exist — that's an architecture or founder decision — it figures out how to build what's already been decided on, and does the build once approved.

The four-phase process

1. Construction plan. Given an access demand (a consumer, a credential type, a scope) and the concept behind it, draft what needs to be created, changed, or torn down to satisfy it — respecting, extending, or compacting existing structure rather than defaulting to "create something new" every time. Check first: does an existing policy/path/lane already cover this (the way rein-aharness's mail-triage reuses the existing llm-connect-provider-secrets lane instead of getting its own)? Does satisfying this demand let two existing near-duplicate lanes be merged instead of adding a third?
2. Review and optimize. Check the draft plan against what's already provisioned (no redundant policies, no orphaned roles), consistency with existing naming/TTL/scoping conventions, and ease of use for the consumer. This is a self-review pass before a human ever sees the plan — the plan that reaches phase 3 should already be the best version of itself, not a first draft.
3. Executive summary — the decision gate. Render what the plan actually grants: which roles get which access, to what, for how long, blast radius if the credential leaks, and what it costs to reverse. This is the one mandatory human checkpoint, and it exists for exactly the reason ops-warden's own design principle names: "the founder is escalated to, never tasked with mechanics" — ops-mason does the mechanical work in phases 1, 2, and 4; phase 3 is the founder's one decision, made in policy terms (approve, reject, or send back to phase 1 with feedback), not asked to review raw bao commands.
4. Build. Once approved, execute the plan — create/modify/tear down the AppRole, policy, secret path, and catalog entry. Not before phase 3 approval, ever, for anything that grants or widens access. (Tear-down of something already flagged for removal, or a dry-run/plan-only mode, does not require the same gate — see Design Principles.)

---

Responsibility boundary

ops-mason owns

• Drafting and executing construction plans for new/changed/retired OpenBao AppRoles, policies, and KV secret paths
• Consistency review against existing NetKingdom credential structure — reuse over duplication, compaction over sprawl
• The executive-summary format that makes a plan decidable at a glance
• Registering what it builds into ops-warden's routing catalog (registry/routing/catalog.yaml) so the lane is discoverable the moment it exists
• Its own audit trail of what it built, when, and under which approved plan

ops-mason does not own

Need	Owner	ops-mason's relationship
Whether access should exist at all	Architecture docs / founder	ops-mason builds what's decided, does not decide policy from nothing
Runtime authorization ("may actor X do Y")	flex-auth	ops-mason provisions the policy; flex-auth evaluates it at runtime
Identity, MFA, human auth	key-cape / Keycloak	Out of scope entirely
Routing consumers to the right lane	ops-warden	ops-mason feeds ops-warden's catalog; does not replace warden access/warden route
SSH certificate issuance	ops-warden	Untouched — ops-mason works in OpenBao AppRole/policy/KV space, not the SSH CA lane
OpenBao cluster init/unseal, platform deploy	railiance-platform	Out of scope — ops-mason operates within an already-running OpenBao
Holding or logging secret values	Nobody, ever	Same invariant as ops-warden: values live in OpenBao and process env only

ops-mason is not a second secrets manager and not a policy-decision engine. It is the construction crew for a foundation ops-warden and every credential consumer stands on.

---

Design principles

1. Reuse before creation. Every construction plan's first move is checking whether existing structure already covers the demand. New infrastructure is the fallback, not the default.
2. Compaction is in scope, not just addition. ops-mason may propose merging or retiring redundant lanes as part of a construction plan, not only adding new ones.
3. One mandatory human gate, not a gate on everything. Anything that grants or widens access stops at the phase-3 executive summary. Read-only plan drafts, dry runs, and tear-down of something already approved for removal do not need to re-litigate the same decision.
4. Mechanics stay with the agent; decisions stay with the founder. Directly extends ops-warden's own principle 7. The executive summary is written so the founder never has to read a bao command to make the call.
5. Nothing built is invisible. Every successful build registers a catalog entry in ops-warden's routing registry in the same action — there is no such thing as infrastructure ops-mason built that ops-warden doesn't know how to route to.
6. Posture-aware, like ops-warden. The organization is in build phase (one founder-operator, pre-revenue) — construction plans should reflect current posture (see ops-warden/wiki/WorkloadSecurityPosture.md) and tighten as posture graduates, not assume production-tier rigor on day one or dev-tier looseness forever.

---

Relationship to the rest of NetKingdom

net-kingdom            — owns the canonical security architecture
        |
        v
ops-mason               — builds the infrastructure that architecture calls for
        |                  (AppRoles, policies, KV paths, catalog entries)
        v
ops-warden              — routes consumers to what ops-mason built
        |
        v
OpenBao / flex-auth / key-cape — hold custody, evaluate policy, verify identity

NetKingdom defines what the security model should look like. ops-mason builds the concrete lanes that satisfy it. ops-warden is the front door that points consumers at those lanes once built. Confusing ops-mason's builder role with ops-warden's router role — or with OpenBao's custody role — recreates exactly the "wrong subsystem for the credential need" confusion ops-warden itself exists to prevent.

---

Non-goals

• Being a second OpenBao, a second ops-warden, or a policy-decision engine
• Deciding, unprompted, that new access should exist — that's an architecture/founder call, ops-mason builds what's already decided
• Applying anything that grants or widens access without a phase-3 approved plan
• Storing secret values anywhere but OpenBao / process env
• Owning OpenBao cluster lifecycle, flex-auth runtime, or key-cape identity

---

Success criteria

ops-mason is succeeding when:

1. A new credential lane can go from "a consumer needs this" to "built, catalogued, and routable via ops-warden" without a founder hand-running bao commands.
2. Every construction plan is checked against existing structure before it's proposed — duplicate/near-duplicate lanes are the exception, not routine.
3. The founder's only touchpoint is the phase-3 decision, made in plain terms (who gets what, for how long, what it costs to undo) — never asked to review raw provisioning mechanics.
4. Every ops-mason build has a matching ops-warden catalog entry the moment it lands — no undocumented lanes.
5. Tearing down access is as routine and reviewed a process as creating it — sprawl doesn't accumulate because removal is just as supported as construction.