secrets-engine/workplans/SECRETS-WP-0006-catalog-lane-adoption.md

id	type	title	domain	repo	status	flavor	owner	topic_slug	created	updated	state_hub_workstream_id
SECRETS-WP-0006	workplan	Adopt concrete OpenBao credential lanes from ops-warden	infotech	secrets-engine	active	implementation	codex	custodian	2026-08-21	2026-09-06	31f7f8ea-7f73-516c-8877-f03a13f1db82

SECRETS-WP-0006 - Adopt concrete OpenBao credential lanes from ops-warden

Goal

Move concrete, OpenBao-backed credential workflows from ops-warden's interim proxy into the secrets-engine catalog and operating surface without moving secret custody out of OpenBao or misassigning generic routing and identity capabilities to this repo.

The intake originates in ops-warden message cbd312f8-347e-44cc-933b-9712e2036646 after earlier requests on 2026-08-11 and 2026-08-15.

Scope decision

Accept these concrete OpenBao KV lanes for catalog admission and staged operation:

• issue-core-ingestion-api-key;
• reuse-surface-hub-write-token;
• openrouter-llm-connect;
• forgejo-admin-api-token;
• email-connect-transactional.

Do not create catalog entries for these generic or non-owned routes:

• openbao-api-key remains a generic credential-routing template. Concrete workload credentials beneath it may become catalog lanes, but the template is not itself a secret lane.
• key-cape-oidc-login remains owned by key-cape/Keycloak. secrets-engine may consume OIDC identity for OpenBao authentication, but it does not own login, MFA, or identity-token issuance.

The current implementation is generic at the catalog level for KV mount/path/fields, and secrets-engine exec supports exec-env plus the npm-specific npm-config adapter. The remaining delivery-mode names are not all exec adapters: read-check is verification, approle-login is auth-capability handoff. exec-file is implemented by exec; wrapped operator handoff is secrets-engine wrap, not an exec adapter.

Design constraints

• OpenBao remains the custody, policy, lease, and audit backend.
• No raw value, token, password, wrapped token, AppRole material, or accessor is written to Git, State Hub, chat, prompts, workplans, or normal logs.
• Catalog adoption does not by itself authorize production mutation or value access. Each production lane needs a resolved approval and a reviewed live apply/verification plan.
• Existing workload delivery must not be displaced. ESO/Kubernetes delivery and provider-side rotation remain owned by their current runtime and provider owners until an explicit migration is approved.
• High-risk lanes must retain exact consumer, field, rotation-owner, denial, and revocation metadata.
• The production stage role currently manages owner-scoped paths on the secret mount, while these lanes use the existing platform mount. Admission must not silently broaden the stage role or attempt to create that mount.

Confirm capability and ownership with ops-warden

id: SECRETS-WP-0006-T01
status: done
priority: high
state_hub_task_id: "94d54df8-4088-5475-992b-7fe838c7c7d7"

Completed 2026-08-21. Replied in the existing thread with State Hub message 7fb0c2ce-be41-4a1d-95b0-e2cdd97d5718, marked the inbound message read, and recorded decision ae676382-1826-4e04-aa4e-bb77990c7a0d. The reply accepted the five concrete KV lanes, declined the generic OpenBao route and key-cape login route, corrected the six-delivery-mode interpretation, and kept interim proxies in place pending per-lane verification.

Reply in the existing State Hub thread with the accepted five-lane scope, the two declined generic/non-owned routes, and the delivery-mode correction. Accept ops-warden's offer of a PR-shaped non-secret metadata contribution for the five concrete lanes.

Done when the reply is posted, the inbound message is marked read, and this decision is recorded as non-secret State Hub evidence.

Define admission contract for existing production lanes

id: SECRETS-WP-0006-T02
status: done
priority: high
state_hub_task_id: "1a04ee82-ff61-55bc-bae8-62e1229d9dcc"

Completed 2026-08-21. Added explicit mount_management, delivery_auth, and workload_delivery semantics, with the operating contract documented in docs/catalog-admission.md. Existing mounts and externally managed delivery auth now render non-mutating checks; apply cannot create or rewrite them. Existing workload delivery remains independent metadata, while an optional engine-managed AppRole is a separate approval-gated native delivery surface.

Define how a catalog entry represents a lane whose KV mount already exists and whose workload delivery is ESO/Kubernetes rather than a secrets-engine-created AppRole. Separate these concepts where needed:

• existing-mount versus engine-managed mount;
• workload delivery versus agent/operator exec delivery;
• catalog/verification metadata versus engine-managed consumer auth;
• provider-side rotation owner versus OpenBao value update workflow.

Acceptance:

• Dry-run cannot propose creating or broadening the shared platform mount.
• A lane can retain its existing workload auth/delivery while optionally exposing an approved exec-time adapter.
• The production stage role is not broadened by implication.

Review and import the five catalog entries

id: SECRETS-WP-0006-T03
status: done
priority: high
state_hub_task_id: "b595f38e-bb31-513b-bc73-796cec76a2aa"

Completed 2026-08-21. The offered contribution did not arrive, so drafted all five entries from ops-warden playbooks and the authoritative railiance-platform CCRs, then requested line-by-line review in message ceace632-2332-46d8-a2b3-1714fbfa7e2c. Ops-warden confirmed the mounts, paths, field sets, CCR references, consumers, lifecycle owners, existing workload delivery, proposed exact-path AppRole surface, both route rejections, and the delivery-mode correction in messages 26df37c5-2756-49b8-8f9c-c1bb2bab1b4b and 3f875d90-6f88-4f44-961b-6f6fbd15b01d. The follow-up retracted the only apparent metadata concern: REUSE_SURFACE_FORGEJO_WEBHOOK_SECRET is explicitly present in CCR-2026-0005, so both reuse-surface and issue-core remain correctly classified high. Interim proxy ownership remains unchanged until T05.

Review ops-warden's proposed entries line by line against the schema, canonical security boundary, live route metadata, and owning workload documentation. Correct field lists, mount/path, consumers, delivery modes, approval references, rotation owners, and negative checks before merging.

Acceptance:

• All five files contain non-secret metadata only.
• Generic openbao-api-key and key-cape-oidc-login entries are absent.
• Each entry names an exact lane rather than a provider-wide wildcard.
• Each high-risk lane has explicit rotation and deactivation expectations.

Implement guards and offline verification

id: SECRETS-WP-0006-T04
status: done
priority: high
state_hub_task_id: "b2ca67ec-48e0-5f85-b4d8-94eb601206c5"

Completed 2026-08-21: implemented non-mutating existing-mount/auth planning and apply behavior, workload-delivery validation, exact field guards for exec and verification, safe policy/role overrides, route guidance, and focused tests. All five admitted entries load and render kv-mount-check plus an exact-path policy and bounded AppRole plan. Generic/wildcard entries and undeclared fields are negatively covered. Privileged provision, verify, exec, handoff, and live revoke operations now fail closed without a resolved approval. Full verification passes 82 tests.

Implement only the schema/planning/delivery changes required by the admitted entries. Add tests for shared existing mounts, auth/delivery separation, multi-field selection, exact exec-env injection, and rejection of wildcard or generic provider-wide entries.

Acceptance:

• The complete catalog loads and validates.
• Each admitted lane renders a non-mutating guarded plan.
• Negative tests prove no wildcard path, broad policy, undeclared field, or unsupported delivery mode is accepted.
• uv run pytest and git diff --check pass.

Stage live apply and verification

id: SECRETS-WP-0006-T05
status: wait
priority: high
state_hub_task_id: "fb103f1e-2ff7-5de5-9a2c-191a19c43542"

Progress 2026-09-03. Re-rendered guarded plans on the post-hardening engine. Every admitted lane is still kv-mount-check + exact-path read policy + bounded AppRole. First live candidate is openrouter-llm-connect (narrowest consumer/field set). Procedure: docs/native-lane-cutover.md. Coordinated: railiance-platform 0190c9b3 (AppRole-only apply, no KV/ESO mutation), ops-warden c2c01262 (keep all five proxies), llm-connect 6f9b460a (ESO stays theirs). Live apply still wait on T04 serving plus a canonical action=apply approval and scoped attended authority. CCR-2026-0003 remains provenance, not that approval. Proxies stay until T06 per lane.

Readiness update 2026-08-21: rendered non-mutating production dry-runs for all five lanes. Every plan checks the externally managed platform mount without mutation, writes one exact-path read policy, and proposes the reviewed bounded AppRole (15-minute token TTL, 30-minute maximum TTL, 15-minute single-use Secret ID, and eight token uses). OpenBao is reachable and unsealed, but route status remains ready: false: the original CCR references approve the existing workload lanes and are not resolvable State Hub approvals for the new native AppRoles. This session also has no production OpenBao token or bootstrap file. Requested per-lane approval references and scoped attended/apply authority from railiance-platform in message 3db3da86-2f3f-4301-8be6-74b507ea66a0. No value was read and no OpenBao mutation was attempted.

Hardening dependency 2026-08-23: SECRETS-WP-0007 now owns the engine-level provisioning, lifecycle, approval-binding, delivery-session, verification, and evidence gaps found during scope assessment. T05 must not provision or revoke the existing shared paths through the current commands. Native live adoption resumes through SECRETS-WP-0007-T07 after its T01-T06 safety gates; this task continues to own the per-lane production evidence and acceptance outcome.

For each lane, obtain the required decision/operator approval before any live OpenBao policy, auth-role, provisioning, rotation, or delivery change. Start with metadata/capability-safe checks and preserve the current ops-warden proxy until native positive and negative verification succeeds.

Acceptance per lane:

• Approval is resolved and linked.
• Existing workload delivery remains healthy.
• Positive access and unrelated-consumer denial are proven without reading a value into evidence.
• Rollback/revocation steps are recorded.

Reconcile routing ownership and retire interim proxies

id: SECRETS-WP-0006-T06
status: wait
priority: medium
state_hub_task_id: "1431edae-5791-5892-8c4b-829419b537d2"

After a lane is natively ready, update the ops-warden delegation register and safe next action for that lane. Retire interim proxy operation lane by lane, not as a seven-lane batch.

Acceptance:

• Native readiness is evidenced before the proxy is retired.
• ops-warden remains the routing front door and does not vend non-SSH secrets.
• The generic OpenBao route and key-cape login route retain their correct owners.

Discrepancy report 2026-09-06 (ops-warden fc898979, WARDEN-WP-0037-T01). ops-warden reports the authoritative whynot-design npm concrete pointer as platform/workloads/coulomb/whynot-design/npm-publish, field NPM_AUTH_TOKEN, endpoint https://forgejo.coulomb.social/api/packages/coulomb/npm/. Reviewed here without any OpenBao read or mutation:

• Endpoint agrees. catalog/whynot-design-npm-publish.yaml already carries the Forgejo registry in delivery_config.npm.registry.
• The field claim is a category error, not a repo defect. NPM_AUTH_TOKEN is the resolved injection env var from publication_policy.resolve (default template, repo-clamped while netkingdom is maturity-build), not a KV field name. The declared KV field is npm_token. docs/whynot-design-real-publish-closeout.md lists both rows separately. Renaming the catalog field to NPM_AUTH_TOKEN would break the proven pilot lane.
• The path claim is credible and unresolved here. docs/hardening-backlog.md already records the value against both whynot-design-npm-publish and platform/workloads/coulomb/whynot-design/npm-publish, and every other admitted lane uses the platform/workloads/... convention. Which location is authoritative for reads is custody state owned by railiance-platform; this repo cannot confirm it without lane read authority, and production live commands remain fail-closed pending SECRETS-WP-0007-T04.

The catalog mount/path is therefore left unchanged pending a custody-side confirmation from railiance-platform. Rewriting a proven production lane pointer from an inbox claim is exactly the unverified custody mutation this task must not make. ready: false observed by ops-warden is the expected fail-closed result and is not evidence of a wrong path.

Next: obtain from railiance-platform a non-secret confirmation of which KV location backs this lane. If the platform path is authoritative, the catalog mount/path move is a reviewed lane change carrying its own approval, and the declared field stays npm_token unless custody says otherwise.

Asked 2026-09-07 (hub message 546403e4 to railiance-platform). The question is narrowed to the path alone, since the endpoint agrees and the NPM_AUTH_TOKEN claim was resolved here as a category error rather than a discrepancy. Also asked whether the current secret/... location still exists if the platform path is authoritative — a stale duplicate holding a real token is worth knowing about independently of this lane. Flagged to them that ops-warden's ready: false is our expected fail-closed posture and must not be read as corroborating the platform path. Awaiting reply; the catalog is unchanged.

Exit criteria

• The five concrete OpenBao lanes have reviewed catalog entries and guarded offline plans.
• Live ownership moves only for lanes that pass approved positive/negative verification.
• The two generic/non-owned routes are not mislabeled as secrets-engine lanes.
• No secret material is recorded in repository or coordination evidence.

Native OpenRouter handoff from SECRETS-WP-0010 — 2026-09-16

SECRETS-WP-0010-T03 completed the exact read-only key-check recipient: native apply and verify, distinct human-approved CAS consumption for all three actions, OpenRouter GET /api/v1/key HTTP 200, unrelated identity/path denials, explicit revoked-token HTTP 403, and unchanged llm-connect/ESO health. Evidence: docs/evidence/2026-09-16-t03-completion.json. No inference was performed. This supplies one lane's evidence; this workplan retains its existing broader live adoption tasks. SECRETS-WP-0006-T05/T06 own other-lane acceptance and routing/proxy retirement; SECRETS-WP-0007-T04/T07 retain general native readiness. Do not reuse the consumed approvals or treat the temporary key-check overlay as approval for a radar trial recipient. IR-WP-0005 owns radar delivery acceptance; IR-WP-0006 owns the outstanding USD 0.023712 billing reservation.

2026-09-21 answered: the exec front door reads the ungoverned legacy path

ops-warden (abf27efc) and railiance-platform (RPF-WP-0035-T07, 09b719fe) asked the same location-only question. Answered from this repository's own code and catalog, with no OpenBao read and no value of any kind.

secrets-engine exec --catalog whynot-design-npm-publish reads secret/coulomb/whynot-design/npm/publish. That is the legacy, ungoverned duplicate, not the governed lane.

Derivation, which is short because there is no indirection to hide in:

• catalog/whynot-design-npm-publish.yaml declares mount: secret and path: coulomb/whynot-design/npm/publish.
• exec_with_secret delegates the read to _fetch_value in src/secrets_engine/exec_delivery.py, which issues kv get -format=json {entry.mount}/{entry.path} inside the lane's AppRole session. The path is the catalog pointer, concatenated, with no override, fallback, alias, or environment substitution anywhere on the exec path.
• publication_policy.resolve and delivery_config.npm decide the injected env-var name and the npm registry. Neither touches the KV location. Nothing in routing.py, safe_paths.py, or the policy layer rewrites mount or path.

So railiance-platform's straightforward reading was the right one. The proven 2026-07-03 @whynot/design pilot published by reading the legacy duplicate, and the lowercase npm_token field this repository has consistently reported is the field there — which is why it never appeared at the governed path and why nobody's record was wrong. ops-warden's NPM_AUTH_TOKEN and this repository's npm_token were each correct about the location each side was describing.

The consequence is the one ops-warden named and it should be stated plainly rather than softened: ops-warden's routing catalog lists secrets-engine as exec_owner and routes callers here as the primary front door, so that front door currently points at a path no CCR covers, and CCR-2026-0001's acceptance evidence describes a path its consumer does not use. That is a real governance gap, not a bookkeeping mismatch.

Not answerable here, and not attempted: whether the two locations hold the same value. That is a value comparison. This repository will not read, fetch, fingerprint, or compare either value, and has not. It is custody's question and needs no answer from us to proceed with the path move.

What it would take to move to the governed path

The move is a reviewed production lane change, not an edit. In order:

1. Custody confirms the governed lane is consumable by this lane's identity. platform/workloads/coulomb/whynot-design/npm-publish under CCR-2026-0001 grants read to the workload policy; the AppRole this engine's delivery session assumes must be admitted on platform/data/... and platform/metadata/... of exactly that path. Without that, the edit produces a lane that denies on read.
2. Reconcile the field name in the same change. The catalog declares npm_token; the governed path was enumerated by railiance-platform on 2026-09-10 as holding exactly one field, NPM_AUTH_TOKEN. Moving the path without moving fields: produces field 'npm_token' absent in lane from _fetch_value. The injected env var is separately resolved and stays NPM_AUTH_TOKEN while netkingdom is maturity-build; after the move the KV field name and the injected env-var name coincide, which is a coincidence and must be annotated as one so the category error corrected on 2026-09-09 is not reintroduced.
3. Carry an approval. The lane's approval.model is decision; this is a production lane pointer change and takes its own approved decision, not the existing e6381a56 pilot decision.
4. Re-verify positive and negative. The lane's declared expectations — the approved consumer reads the field, an unrelated identity is denied — must be re-run against the governed path before the old pointer is abandoned.
5. Update the derived records: docs/whynot-design-real-publish-closeout.md pointer table, docs/hardening-backlog.md (which already names both locations), and docs/cli.md.
6. Only then is destruction of the duplicate safe. RPF-WP-0035-T07 holds destruction pending this confirmation, correctly. The confirmation it was waiting for is now given, and it is the unwelcome one: the duplicate is the live consumer path, so it must not be destroyed or wrapped until this lane has moved and re-verified. Destroying it today breaks production publish.

Note also scripts/demo-e2e.sh:66, which grants a policy on secret/data/prod/coulomb/whynot-design/npm — a third, demo-only spelling under a prod/ prefix. It is a throwaway demo fixture and not a consumer lane, but it should be renamed away from prod when the lane moves so it cannot be mistaken for a fourth location.

SECRETS-WP-0006-T06 stays wait: this answer unblocks the question, not the lane change, which needs custody's step 1 and its own approval.