ops-warden/history/2026-08-11-delegation-surface-assessment.md

Delegation surface assessment — 2026-08-11

Trigger: founder directive — ops-warden should work with, but never replace or duplicate, secrets-engine, tenant-engine, user-engine and other NetKingdom components. Covering an unfilled gap is acceptable if the gap stays visible, gets filled with proper governance, and ops-warden then delegates.

Method: enumerate registry/routing/catalog.yaml by execution mode; check wiki/AccessRouting.md and wiki/playbooks/catalog-lane-promotion.md for existing interim/delegation doctrine; compare against SCOPE/INTENT claims.

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1. Execution surface (24 catalog entries)

Mode	Count	Entries
warden_executes: true — ops-warden's own authority	1	ssh-cert-host-access
exec_owner: set — delegated, route-primary/proxy-fallback	2	whynot-design-npm-publish (secrets-engine), ops-warden-warden-sign-token (railiance-platform broker)
exec_capable proxy, no exec_owner	11	openbao-api-key, key-cape-oidc-login, issue-core-ingestion-api-key, reuse-surface-hub-write-token, openrouter-llm-connect, railiance-backup-offsite-lane, forgejo-admin-api-token, binky-company-email-imap, binky-qonto-api, rapp-qonto-keycape-client, agent-harness-forgejo-deploy
route-only pointer	10	remainder

Finding. The delegation primitive exists, is proven in production, and is used by 2 of 24 lanes. Eleven lanes have ops-warden as the de facto front door with no record of who should own it instead.

2. The doctrine is not written down

• wiki/AccessRouting.md — the canonical "what ops-warden answers" page — contains no mention of secrets-engine and no section on interim positions. A worker or agent reading it cannot tell that warden access proxying a workload secret is a stopgap rather than the design.
• wiki/playbooks/catalog-lane-promotion.md gates draft→active on the lane working (zero placeholders, resolvable, tests green). It never asks whether ops-warden should be the one executing it.
• The delegation intent for whynot-design-npm-publish lives in WP-0019 prose and SCOPE; the machine-readable expression (exec_owner) was a by-product, not a policy applied catalog-wide.

Consequence: an absorbed need is indistinguishable from a designed one. Ownership drift is invisible by construction, which is exactly the failure mode the directive targets.

3. Drafted classification of the eleven

Not authoritative — architecture judgement belongs to the founder (WP-0030 T02).

Lane	Draft reading	Intended owner / blocker
key-cape-oidc-login	Permanent	Login is key-cape's; the proxy is caller convenience, not custody
openbao-api-key	Permanent (by design)	Generic escape hatch for any OpenBao path; a catch-all, not a lane
binky-company-email-imap	Interim	tenant-engine — WP-0028 defined the tenant custody pattern; no tenant front door executes it
binky-qonto-api	Interim	tenant-engine — same
rapp-qonto-keycape-client	Interim	tenant-engine / key-cape — tenant workload client credential
issue-core-ingestion-api-key	Interim	secrets-engine — same shape WP-0019 closed for npm publish
openrouter-llm-connect	Interim	secrets-engine — high-risk provider key
reuse-surface-hub-write-token	Interim	secrets-engine
railiance-backup-offsite-lane	Interim	secrets-engine / railiance-platform
forgejo-admin-api-token	Interim	secrets-engine
agent-harness-forgejo-deploy	Interim	secrets-engine

No lane names user-engine as owner. It appears only as a consumer inside coulomb-social-runtime-env (route-only, owned by railiance-platform), whose rotation guidance points at the OpenBao path user-engine/user-engine-runtime for USER_ENGINE_PROXY_SECRET. So a user-engine runtime secret exists and is routed, but user-engine fronts nothing itself. Whether it should own that lane is worth confirming rather than assuming either way.

4. Secondary finding — SCOPE drift

SCOPE.md "Where we are" was dated 2026-07-01 and stated "Active work: none open in ops-warden after WP-0022/0023." Six workplans have shipped since (WP-0024–0026, WP-0028, WP-0029 finished; WP-0027 sits in backlog), adding warden plan, warden desk, warden taint, warden rotate-guide, experiential memory, the tenant custody pattern, and the build-phase organization posture axis. SCOPE understated the repo by roughly six weeks of work. Corrected in this pass.

5. Recommendation

WARDEN-WP-0030 — record delegation: (mode / intended_owner / blocked_on) on every entry, expose warden route gaps, gate promotion on the ownership question, and publish the resulting interim register to the owner repos. Absence of a delegation block should read as interim, owner unknown — a question — never as settled ownership.

The measure of success is not fewer proxies. It is that no proxy exists without an answer to "who should own this front door, and what is missing?"