soul.demarkus.io/plans/universe-deployment.md/v13 draft reader meta

Plan: Universe Deployment

Ship the enterprise-grade deployment for demarkus. The deliverable is the deployment: a customer's ops team installs a Helm chart, runs a broker, runs an agent, and has a federated demarkus universe their org can use. Any company evaluating demarkus (their internal "POC") installs the same product an established customer runs in production. There is no separate "POC slice" — the slice mentality is rejected. We build it once, right, and customers trial the real thing.

Goal

Deliver a complete, supportable, production-grade Kubernetes deployment package for demarkus, including:

  1. A Helm chart for demarkus-server (one world).
  2. A Helm chart for demarkus-broker (OIDC token issuance + revocation).
  3. A Helm chart for demarkus-agent (hub aggregator, crawl-and-index).
  4. Reference topology examples (Argo CD ApplicationSet, Kustomize overlay).
  5. Backend-agnostic observability — structured slog emission + reference configs for Datadog, OTel Collector, Vector, Fluent Bit, Grafana Alloy.
  6. Customer-facing documentation — installation, security/threat model, operations, upgrade path, per-provider OIDC setup, observability recipes.
  7. A release pipeline producing images and chart releases consumable from GHCR.

The same artifacts power first-customer trial and steady-state operations.

Non-Goals (Phase 7+ territory)

  • Multi-replica worlds with shared storage (RWX / object backend).
  • Cross-cluster universe federation.
  • Operator with a World CRD.
  • Hosted / managed SaaS.
  • Non-markdown content.

Constraints

  • No core protocol/server changes. Period. Per prior precedent (Claude Code plugin, Obsidian plugin, feedback_plugin_scope.md). Observability is achieved by log derivation in a collector, not by adding /metrics or OTel SDK calls to the server. Note: in Slice A we promoted HashToken and the token-mint library to protocol/ (under protocol/auth.go and protocol/token/). These are additive helper relocations consumed by server + CLI + future broker; no wire-protocol or server behavior changed. Slice C.2 added protocol/token.ParseBytes in the same additive spirit — a read-side helper so the broker's drift sweeper can inspect a world's tokens.toml payload via the map shape rather than substring matching on serialized TOML.
  • Capability-based auth model is non-negotiable. The server never learns identity — only labels.
  • Markdown-only scope is non-negotiable.

Decisions (resolved during planning)

  • Health probes use exec, not HTTP. Both charts ship liveness/readiness exec probes that invoke the demarkus CLI fetching /.well-known/agent-manifest.md (always public per /architecture.md). No core change. Same pattern as redis-cli ping / pg_isready.
  • UDP port is a values knob. Default 6309, override via server.udpPort. Documented option: switch to 443 for VPN/middlebox-hostile networks (Cloudflare Warp Zero Trust, corp firewalls that filter non-standard UDP). Protocol default stays 6309.
  • Wildcard TLS via cert-manager DNS-01. Single *.<root> cert covers all worlds + broker hostnames. HTTP-01 cannot work for worlds (no HTTP); DNS-01 is the standard path for QUIC services.
  • DNS topology. One A record per world + one for the broker, all under the same wildcard zone. Each world exposed by Service: LoadBalancer protocol: UDP; broker by standard Ingress (HTTPS).
  • Hub aggregator is the existing demarkus-agent at client/cmd/demarkus-agent/. Already implements crawl + daemon subcommands with TOML config, multi-worker crawl, per-host token auth, per-server + aggregated index publishing. Verified end-to-end on 2026-05-11. Phase 5 is no longer a blocking prerequisite.
  • demarkus-agent lives in client/cmd/, not tools/. It's a protocol client (uses fedcrawl, fetch, tokens, links), not a utility. Memory rule sharpened: client/cmd/ = protocol clients (CLI, TUI, MCP, agent); tools/ = utilities (broker, future sync/ops binaries).
  • Token-mint library lives at protocol/token/, not tools/internal/token/ (revised mid-Slice-A after CodeRabbit review). protocol/ is reachable by both server/ (where demarkus-token CLI lives) and tools/ (where the broker will live), which tools/internal/ was not. protocol/ already owns the HashToken byte-shape contract, so it's the natural home for the on-disk token primitives that must round-trip identically across CLI mints and broker mints.
  • demarkus-token CLI stays at server/cmd/demarkus-token/ for now (rewired to import protocol/token). Moving the binary to tools/ was deferred to a follow-up that splits the release pipeline (server release currently ships demarkus-token; tools has no release cadence yet). Same applies to demarkus-publish — still at server/cmd/demarkus-publish/, deferred because hoisting it requires also hoisting server/internal/store/ out of internal-package scope.
  • Multi-OIDC. Broker speaks generic OIDC, not Google-specific. Provider behind a Verifier interface. Google validated first; Okta, Entra ID, Auth0 follow with config only.
  • Workload Identity (GKE) as a broker option. Values flag annotates the broker ServiceAccount with the GSA mapping. Off by default; on for GKE customers wanting no static SA keys. Not applicable to world servers.
  • Broker is HA. Multi-replica with resourceVersion optimistic concurrency on Secret writes, retry on conflict.
  • Observability is log-derived, backend-agnostic. demarkus already emits structured slog. Charts ship Datadog autodiscovery annotations + reference configs for OTel Collector, Vector, Fluent Bit, Grafana Alloy. Customer's SRE picks the agent/backend. Latency histograms deferred — depends on what current slog includes per request; revisit during trials if needed.
  • Backup/DR is documented, not built. The chart deliberately does not run backup CronJobs. Operations doc covers Velero, VolumeSnapshot, and demarkus-agent sync as DR options.
  • Image hosting: ghcr.io/latebit-io/{demarkus-server,demarkus-broker,demarkus-agent}.
  • Chart registry: OCI charts in GHCR.
  • Cosign signing: deferred to backlog. Half-day CI add when wanted.
  • Groups-claim case sensitivity (revised mid-Slice-C.1 after CodeRabbit back-and-forth). Group names match case-insensitively: AllowConfig.Groups is lowercased+trimmed at config load (same as Domains and Emails) and groupsMatch lowercases the claim's groups before compare. The validated IdP set (Google, Okta, Entra ID, Auth0) enforces case-insensitive group-name uniqueness, so distinct case-variant groups can't exist; a case-sensitive compare would silently fail when an operator writes "Engineering" but the IdP emits "engineering" after upstream normalization. Keycloak with deliberately distinct case-variant groups is out of scope; revisit if a customer asks. Domains and emails get the same lowercase-at-load + plain == treatment for symmetry.
  • Sweeper interval capped at 24h (Slice C.2). The defaultToken.expiresAfter typical is 24h; a sweep interval longer than that would let expired tokens linger past their ExpiresAt for up to a whole sweep cycle, defeating the short-lived-tokens identity-lifecycle model (§Revocation §3). validate() rejects with sweeper.interval must be <= 24h. Lease-election timings (15s lease / 10s renew / 2s retry) intentionally not exposed in YAML — the client-go defaults match our failover budget and adding knobs invites misconfiguration. Revisit if a customer needs sub-15s failover.
  • sweeper.disabled rather than sweeper.enabled (Slice C.2). YAML zero-value (false) is the production-safe default so an operator who omits the block gets the sweeper running. Naming the field positively (Enabled) would have made omission silently disable the janitor — exactly the wrong default for multi-replica deployments where expired tokens accumulate forever without it.
  • Rotate is re-login semantics, not refresh (Slice C.3). POST /tokens/:label/rotate re-runs worldAllows(world.Allow, claims) on every call, so a user removed from the world's allowlist between mint and rotate can NOT extend access via rotation. The bearer ID-token verification at the HTTP layer already proves the IdP identity is still active; the per-world predicate re-check catches in-org permission changes (group removed, domain renamed, email taken off carve-out). Picked over rotation-as-refresh because rotation extends the lifetime — without re-auth, a user whose IdP account stayed live could rotate forever even after losing world-scope authorization.
  • Rotate scope vs. lifetime asymmetry (Slice C.3). Scope (paths + operations) stays frozen to the issuance record on rotate: operator narrowing of DefaultToken.Paths between mint and rotate does NOT shrink the rotated token's reach, because the user shouldn't be surprised by reduced access mid-session — they re-login to pick up new scope. Lifetime resets to now + DefaultToken.ExpiresAfter from the operator's CURRENT config: operator tightening of expiry DOES apply on rotate, because shorter lifetimes are an explicit security-tightening lever and rotation must not bypass it. The asymmetry is intentional and pinned by TestRotateLabelPreservesIssuanceScope + TestRotateLabelLifetimeUpdatesToCurrentConfig.
  • Rotate sequence: mint new, then revoke old (Slice C.3). On revoke failure the new token is returned anyway with a wrapped soft error; the sweeper retires the orphan old label on expiry (or via drift if an operator hand-cleans). Picked over revoke-then-mint because that alternative leaves the user with no token if mint then fails, forcing a full re-login — worse UX than a brief two-valid-tokens window for the same user. Mirrors the Slice B partial-mint convention: (MintResult{Label:""}, err) for hard failures, (MintResult{non-empty}, err) for soft partial success.
  • Middleware-not-handler auth + rate limit (Slice C.4). The three authed /tokens routes go through requireAuth → subjectRateLimit → handler; /auth/login goes through ipRateLimit → authLogin; /auth/callback, /healthz, /readyz stay middleware-free. The old per-handler s.authenticate(w, r) was extracted into the requireAuth middleware that stashes verified Claims on r.Context() via a typed key; handlers read claims via claimsFromCtx. The alternative — keeping auth in handlers and adding rate-limit inside each one — would either double-verify the bearer (one verify for the limit key, one in the handler) or hide the limiter inside each handler, opaque to the route-registration block. Middleware composition keeps the per-route policy visible in Routes().
  • One shared subject bucket across the three /tokens routes (Slice C.4). subjectRateLimit keys on hashSubject(claims.Subject) and the same registry covers GET /tokens, DELETE /tokens/:label, and POST /tokens/:label/rotate. Picked over three per-route buckets so a misbehaving client cannot multiply effective throughput by fanning out (3 routes × 10/min would give 30/min effective rather than the operator-intended 10/min). Pinned by TestRateLimitTokensSharedBucketAcrossRoutes.
  • Reserve() + Cancel() on denial, not Allow() (Slice C.4). Functional equivalence — neither pattern consumes budget on denial — but Reserve().Delay() gives the precise wait time, which we surface as Retry-After with a 1s minimum floor. (Retry-After: 0 reads as "retry immediately" to aggressive clients and would defeat the limiter.) Pinned by TestRateLimitRegistryDenialDoesNotConsumeBudget (50 denials in a tight loop, then 150ms regen window allows the 51st request) and the Retry-After assertions on the integration 429 tests.
  • trustForwardedFor: false default in the binary (Slice C.4). The broker behind an Ingress sees the controller's IP in r.RemoteAddr, so the per-IP limiter on /auth/login collapses into one bucket for every client unless we honor XFF. But trusting XFF when NOT behind a proxy lets an attacker rotate the header to bypass per-IP limits. The binary ships safe; chart-side §6.3 will invert the default to true (the chart's "behind an Ingress" assumption holds in deployment). TestRateLimitLoginIPIgnoresForwardedForByDefault pins the default-untrusted behavior at the binary level; TestRateLimitLoginIPCrossIPIsolation pins the trust-enabled behavior.
  • rateLimit.disabled not enabled (Slice C.4). Same shape as sweeper.disabled. Zero-value (false) gives the production-safe behavior so an operator who omits the rateLimit: block in their values file still gets the protection. Defaults applied at validate-time: 10/min subject burst 5, 20/min IP burst 5. Field validation skipped entirely when Disabled: true so an operator opting out can leave the per-route knobs empty.
  • Per-replica unbounded registry, by design (Slice C.4). The rateLimitRegistry keeps one *rate.Limiter per key with no TTL eviction and no max-entry cap. CodeRabbit flagged this as a memory-DoS vector; rejected after re-examining the threat model: (a) subjectReg growth is bounded by IdP user count (every key required a successful requireAuth pass, which means a valid IdP-issued token), (b) loginReg growth is bounded by the deployment posture (with trustForwardedFor=false the key is r.RemoteAddr, bounded by clients reaching the listener; with trustForwardedFor=true plus a correctly-configured XFF-stripping Ingress, the key space is bounded by real client IPs), and (c) TTL/LRU eviction makes the property worse under the stated attack: an attacker rotating keys faster than the TTL gets fresh buckets indefinitely, and LRU eviction during attack evicts legitimate users' older buckets first while the attacker's fresh buckets stay in the map. The right Phase-7+ fix lives at a different layer (cluster-shared rate limiter so per-replica eviction can't reset attacker state, or per-IP rate-limit annotations at the ingress controller). Realistic worst-case sizing is ~500KB at ~10k authenticated subjects — not memory-DoS-shaped. Mirrors the C.2 "sweep is unbounded" pushback in shape.

Open Questions

  1. First customer trial. Nesto (*.library.nesto.ca) is path-B — trial waits for product. Trial runbook lands at /trials/nesto.md when scoping starts.
  2. CLI relocation to tools/. Follow-up to Slice A. Requires tools/.goreleaser.yml, a release-tools job in the workflow, an install.sh block fetching the tools archive, and updates to plugin scripts + helm image build. Acceptable to defer until the release-pipeline work has its own dedicated PR.

Repository Layout

Reflects state as of Slice C.4 merge (2026-05-12):

deploy/
  helm/
    demarkus-server/         # one-world chart (Phase 6.1) — shipped PR #107
    demarkus-broker/         # OIDC token broker chart (Phase 6.3)
    demarkus-agent/          # crawl/index agent chart (Phase 6.0) — shipped PR #106
  k8s/
    examples/
      applicationset.yaml    # Argo CD ApplicationSet over a worlds: list
      kustomize-overlay/     # Kustomize alternative
  observability/
    datadog/                 # autodiscovery annotations + dashboard JSON
    otel-collector/          # collector config recipes
    vector/                  # vector config recipes
    fluent-bit/              # fluent-bit parser + filter recipes
  scripts/                   # operator helpers (cert pre-check, MTU probe, etc.)

protocol/
  auth.go                    # HashToken — sha256-<hex> contract (Slice A)
  token/                     # Generate, ReadFile, AppendEntry, WriteFile,
                             # FormatEntry, flock helpers (Slice A) +
                             # AppendBytes, RemoveBytes in-memory helpers
                             # (Slice B) + ParseBytes read-side helper
                             # (Slice C.2) for the broker's drift sweep.

server/cmd/
  demarkus-server/           # the server binary (existing)
  demarkus-token/            # token mint CLI — uses protocol/token
  demarkus-publish/          # publish CLI (existing; deferred move)

client/cmd/
  demarkus-agent/            # protocol client — federation crawler (existing)

tools/
  demarkus-broker/           # broker binary (Slice B PR #109, Slice C.1 PR #110,
                             # Slice C.2 PR #111, Slice C.3 PR #112, Slice C.4
                             # PR #114). main.go + internal/broker/
                             # { config, session, oidc, issuer, server,
                             #   labels, sweeper, ratelimit }. §6.2 broker
                             # binary complete; SCIM webhook stays in backlog.

Sub-Phases

6.0 — demarkus-agent verified + chart ✓ (merged PR #106)

Existing demarkus-agent binary verified end-to-end (2 team worlds + 1 hub smoke test) and chart at deploy/helm/demarkus-agent/ shipped. Stateless Deployment; ConfigMap holds TOML agent config; Secret holds per-host tokens; exec liveness probe; outbound-only (no Service). Three publish bugs fixed during verification (publishIndex status acceptance, expected_version=-1 for idempotent re-publish, Makefile make client build).

6.1 — demarkus-server Helm chart ✓ (merged PR #107)

deploy/helm/demarkus-server/ — StatefulSet, 1 replica, volumeClaimTemplates (each world owns its PVC, never shared), exec probes against /.well-known/agent-manifest.md, Service type LoadBalancer protocol: UDP. Tokens Secret rendered with helm.sh/resource-policy: keep + helm.sh/hook: pre-install so helm upgrade never wipes broker-minted content. Bootstrap Job seeds the initial admin token via protocol/token.Generate + AppendEntry (Slice A). Cert-manager Certificate resource behind a flag. helm-unittest + kind integration test pin the upgrade-wipe regression.

6.2 — demarkus-broker binary (tools/demarkus-broker/) ✓ complete

Slice B (single-world OIDC mint flow) merged as PR #109 (commit 2a6aae6, 2026-05-11). Slice C.1 (groups-claim authorization + AllowEmails carve-out + email canonicalization) merged as PR #110 (commit 343f808, 2026-05-12). Slice C.2 (expiry + drift sweeper with Lease-based leader election, RBAC-denied mint guard) merged as PR #111 (commit cb5f800, 2026-05-12). Slice C.3 (POST /tokens/:label/rotate with re-login semantics + scope-frozen lifetime-reset asymmetry) merged as PR #112 (commit 6ee0d8b, 2026-05-12). Slice C.4 (per-subject + per-IP rate-limit middleware with shared subject buckets across the three /tokens routes, optional leftmost-XFF trust for the IP limiter, Reserve()+Cancel() for denial-doesn't-consume-budget) merged as PR #114 (commit e2933ff, 2026-05-12). §6.2 broker binary complete.

Role & topology

  • Issuance authority, not a request proxy. Broker sits on the demarkus login path; clients then talk to world servers directly carrying the raw token. World servers stay identity-blind; broker never sees mark:// requests. Capability model preserved.
  • One broker per universe (cluster) by default. Single OIDC client registration, single worlds: list in values, single issuance state Secret.
  • Broker SA holds a namespace-scoped Role + RoleBinding in each world's namespace, with get/patch limited to that world's tokens Secret only. No ClusterRole. Slice C.2 sweeper adds coordination.k8s.io/leases get/create/update in the broker namespace for leader election; §6.3 chart bundles both into the broker SA.

State

Two distinct Kubernetes Secrets, never merged:

Secret Lives in Contents Reader
<world>-tokens each world's namespace TOML: [tokens.<label>] hash=, paths=, operations=, expires= demarkus-server
<broker>-issuances broker namespace JSON: label → {email, world, paths, operations, issued_at, expires} + secondary index email → [labels] broker only

World servers see only hashes. Email and identity live in broker state alone. Both Secrets follow the §6.1 resource-policy: keep pattern — broker state must also survive helm upgrade of the broker chart.

Plus one cluster-scoped coordination object (Slice C.2):

Resource Lives in Contents Reader
demarkus-broker-sweeper Lease broker namespace holderIdentity, renewTime, leaseDurationSeconds leader-election library only

Per-world authorization (values schema as shipped in C.1)

worlds:
  - name: team-a
    namespace: team-a
    tokensSecret: team-a-tokens
    allow:
      domains: ["nesto.ca"]
      groups: ["engineering"]
      emails: ["alice@example.com"]
    defaultToken:
      paths: ["/team-a/*"]
      operations: ["read", "publish"]
      expiresAfter: 24h
sweeper:
  disabled: false
  interval: 5m
  leaseName: demarkus-broker-sweeper
rateLimit:
  disabled: false
  tokens:
    perMinute: 10
    burst: 5
  login:
    perMinute: 20
    burst: 5
  trustForwardedFor: false   # binary default; chart-side §6.3 will flip to true

WorldConfig.Allow is a nested struct. All three lists lowercased+trimmed at config load with empty entries rejected. Match is case-insensitive everywhere. The authorization predicate (worldAllows):

  1. All three lists empty → match (back-compat).
  2. Email in Allow.Emails → match (per-user carve-out).
  3. Only Emails was configured and step 2 didn't fire → reject.
  4. domainMatches AND groupsMatch.

Mint and RotateLabel canonicalize claims.Email (trim + lowercase) once at the top before authorization runs.

Token-mint library

Broker imports github.com/latebit/demarkus/protocol/token. Slice A on-disk + pure helpers (Generate, AppendEntry, WriteFile, ReadFile, FormatEntry). Slice B in-memory helpers (AppendBytes, RemoveBytes) for k8s-Secret round-trips. Slice C.2 in-memory read-side helper (ParseBytes) for drift detection — empty input gives an empty File with a non-nil Tokens map. Slice C.3 refactored Issuer.mintForWorld to take explicit paths, operations []string parameters so Mint and RotateLabel share the cross-world-collision + rollback machinery.

Revocation

Three triggers, one cleanup index (the issuances Secret):

  1. User-initiated (DELETE /tokens/:label or POST /tokens/:label/rotate, both bearer-authed via OIDC ID token). Owner check + revokeIssuance (Slice C.2 helper extracted from Revoke; shared with the sweeper). Rotate re-runs worldAllows before minting (re-login semantics).
  2. Expiry sweeper (Slice C.2, leader-elected via Lease). Reads issuances once per tick, groups non-expired entries by world, reads each affected world's tokens Secret once via ParseBytes, retires (expired ∪ drifted) entries via revokeIssuance.
  3. Identity lifecycle — Default: short-lived tokens (defaultToken.expiresAfter ~24h). SCIM webhook backlogged.

SIGHUP intentionally not implemented in C.2/C.3/C.4 — revocation latency equals kubelet Secret-mount propagation + server re-read behavior. Verify during §6.3 chart work.

Cleanup edge cases

  • Orphan in tokens.toml (admin-minted via CLI): broker never claims it.
  • Orphan in issuances Secret (admin hand-deleted from world tokens Secret): Slice C.2 sweeper detects drift via ParseBytes and prunes.
  • Issuance for an unconfigured world: conservative skip (log, never silently drop). Verified by TestSweepSkipsUnconfiguredWorld and TestRotateLabelMissingWorldErrors.
  • In-flight request after revoke/rotate: a raw token already authenticated on a live QUIC connection completes its current request. Property of model.
  • Partial mint across multiple worlds: failed world has zero state in either Secret; prior worlds in the same Mint stay committed. Verified by TestMintRBACDeniedNoPartialState.
  • Soft-partial rotate (Slice C.3): mint succeeded but old revoke failed → both labels coexist until sweeper retires the old. User gets 200 + new token; operator sees WARN log. Verified by TestRotateTokenSoftPartial.

Routes (HTTP, behind Ingress) — middleware chains as shipped in C.4

  • GET /auth/login — ipRateLimit → authLogin. OIDC redirect entry point; sets signed state cookie (HMAC-SHA256, HttpOnly+Secure+SameSite=Lax, path-scoped to /auth/callback, default 5-min TTL).
  • GET /auth/callback — no middleware. State cookie HMAC + 5-min TTL is the natural rate gate. Verifies state cookie, exchanges code, mints tokens for every qualifying world, returns JSON {world → raw_token} once. No broker session cookie.
  • GET /tokens — requireAuth → subjectRateLimit → listTokens. Bearer-authed (OIDC ID token).
  • DELETE /tokens/:label — same chain. Bearer-authed.
  • POST /tokens/:label/rotate — same chain (Slice C.3). Bearer-authed. Owner check + worldAllows re-validation against current Allow config.
  • GET /healthz, GET /readyz — no middleware. Probes must succeed without auth or rate-limit gating.

Rationale for skipping a broker session: the CLI is the primary /tokens consumer and already handles token lifetimes; the browser only sees the one-time JSON callback response. The Verifier interface exposes VerifyIDToken(ctx, raw) (Claims, error) so handlers authenticate bearer tokens uniformly.

OIDC providers

Provider behind a Verifier interface (AuthCodeURL, Exchange, VerifyIDToken). Initial implementation wraps coreos/go-oidc/v3 + golang.org/x/oauth2. Follow-ons (Okta, Entra ID, Auth0) are config only. Groups claim sourcing (Slice C.1 scope): ID-token only; userinfo-based groups in backlog.

HA

Multi-replica. Issuance writes to k8s Secrets use resourceVersion optimistic concurrency with retry-on-conflict. Sweeper (C.2) uses a coordination.k8s.io/Lease for leader election via k8s.io/client-go/tools/leaderelection; ReleaseOnCancel=true for sub-second handoff on rolling restarts. Mint/List/Revoke/Rotate handlers stay on every replica. Rate limit (C.4) is per-replica per the rateLimitRegistry doc-comment — effective rate seen by an abusive client is up to N× the configured value in a multi-replica deployment. Cluster-shared rate limiting backlogged.

Slice B test surface (shipped)

87% line coverage. Mint flow + state cookie + config + issuer (resourceVersion retry, label collision retry, mint ordering) + server (clock decoupling).

Slice C.1 test surface (shipped — PR #110)

  • 15-row TestMintAuthorizationPredicate covers every (Domains × Groups × Emails) × accept/reject cell.
  • TestMintCanonicalizesEmail — pins email trim+lowercase at top of Mint.
  • TestLoadConfig rows for lowercase normalization + empty-entry rejection on all three allow dimensions.
  • TestDeleteTokenNotOwner — owner-check 403.

Slice C.2 test surface (shipped — PR #111)

TestSweepRetiresExpiredKeepsFresh, TestSweepPrunesDrift, TestSweepSkipsUnconfiguredWorld, TestSweepEmptyIssuancesIsNoop, TestSweeperLeaderElection (two replicas + handoff), TestMintRBACDeniedNoPartialState, TestLoadConfig rows for sweeper.interval defaults + cap + negative-rejection. Coverage 81.0%.

Slice C.3 test surface (shipped — PR #112)

Issuer-layer (8): TestRotateLabelHappyPath, TestRotateLabelRejectsUnverifiedEmail, TestRotateLabelNotOwner, TestRotateLabelUnknownLabel, TestRotateLabelPreservesIssuanceScope, TestRotateLabelLifetimeUpdatesToCurrentConfig, TestRotateLabelReauthorizesAgainstCurrentAllow, TestRotateLabelMissingWorldErrors. HTTP-layer (5): success, not-owner, no-longer-authorized, not-found, soft-partial, unauthenticated. Coverage 81.1%.

Slice C.4 test surface (shipped — PR #114)

Registry-level (ratelimit_test.go):

  • TestRateLimitRegistryNilWhenDisabledOrZero (5-row table): nil for non-positive perMinute or non-positive burst. Pins the "disabled = no enforcement" contract.
  • TestRateLimitRegistryAllowsBurstThenDenies: burst+1 → first two allowed, third denied, retryAfter >= 1s (1s floor).
  • TestRateLimitRegistryCrossKeyIsolation: k1 exhausted, k2 still allowed.
  • TestRateLimitRegistryDenialDoesNotConsumeBudget: 50 denials in a tight loop + 150ms regen recovers. Pins Reserve()+Cancel() no-consume-on-denial.

ClientIP / middleware misuse:

  • TestServerClientIP (7-row table): untrusted XFF ignored, trusted single-hop, trusted multi-hop takes leftmost, trusted-but-empty falls back, trusted-whitespace-only falls back, IPv6, garbage RemoteAddr.
  • TestSubjectRateLimitMissingClaimsIs500: regression guard for misuse — 500 + ERROR log rather than silent enforcement disable.

HTTP integration:

  • TestRateLimitTokensExhaustsAndReturns429WithRetryAfter: burst=2 exhaust → 3rd returns 429 + non-zero Retry-After.
  • TestRateLimitTokensCrossSubjectIsolation: alice exhausts; bob (different Subject via multi-bearer verifier) still passes.
  • TestRateLimitTokensSharedBucketAcrossRoutes: 1 GET + 1 DELETE consumes burst 2; 3rd on a different route 429s. Pins single-bucket-for-three.
  • TestRateLimitLoginIPExhaustsAndReturns429WithRetryAfter: XFF trusted, same XFF entry 3× → 3rd 429s.
  • TestRateLimitLoginIPCrossIPIsolation: XFF trusted, two different spoofs → distinct buckets.
  • TestRateLimitLoginIPIgnoresForwardedForByDefault: XFF untrusted, three different XFF spoofs collapse to one bucket.
  • TestRateLimitDisabledBypasses: 20 rapid requests all 200 when rateLimit.disabled: true.

Config-level (config_test.go): defaults applied when block omitted (10/5 + 20/5), operator overrides honored, disabled: true bypasses field defaults, four "negative value rejected" rows. Coverage 83.4% (up from C.3's 81.1%).

6.3 — demarkus-broker Helm chart

Multi-replica HA. RBAC bundles per-world Roles for get/patch on each world's tokens Secret plus a broker-namespace Role for get/create/update on coordination.k8s.io/leases (the sweeper's lease) + the broker's own issuances Secret. sweeper: and rateLimit: blocks exposed in values with sensible defaults. rateLimit.trustForwardedFor: true in the chart default (inverting the binary default) since the chart's deployment assumption is "behind an Ingress that strips spoofed XFF"; chart README must document this invariant and the failure mode (operators turning on the flag in a directly-internet-exposed broker). issuances Secret rendered with helm.sh/resource-policy: keep + pre-install hook (mirrors §6.1 tokens Secret pattern); regression-test in kind CI.

6.4 — Universe topology examples

ApplicationSet + Kustomize overlay.

6.5 — Observability recipes

Per-backend configs in deploy/observability/. Slice C.2 added sweeper-side log lines (broker: swept, broker: sweep failed, broker: sweeper observing new leader, broker: sweeper lost leadership); Slice C.3 added rotate-side log lines; Slice C.4 added rate-limit log lines (broker: rate limit exceeded with route, subject or ip, retryAfter fields) — same audit-log routing target.

6.6 — Documentation suite

/deployment/*.md + per-chart READMEs.

6.7 — Release pipeline

GHCR images + OCI charts. Cosign deferred. Also folds in the deferred CLI relocation (demarkus-token, demarkus-publish) from server/cmd/ to tools/.

Sequencing

  1. Slice A — token-mint library ✓ merged 2026-05-11 (PR #108).
  2. 6.0 chart ✓ merged 2026-05-11 (PR #106).
  3. 6.1 server chart ✓ merged 2026-05-11 (PR #107).
  4. 6.2 broker binary — Slice B ✓ merged 2026-05-11 (PR #109, commit 2a6aae6).
  5. 6.2 broker binary — Slice C, split into four landed PRs:
    • C.1 ✓ merged 2026-05-12 (PR #110, commit 343f808) — groups-claim + AllowEmails authorization.
    • C.2 ✓ merged 2026-05-12 (PR #111, commit cb5f800) — expiry + drift sweeper with coordination.k8s.io/Lease leader election.
    • C.3 ✓ merged 2026-05-12 (PR #112, commit 6ee0d8b) — POST /tokens/:label/rotate with re-login semantics + scope-frozen/lifetime-reset asymmetry.
    • C.4 ✓ merged 2026-05-12 (PR #114, commit e2933ff) — per-subject + per-IP rate limit middleware via golang.org/x/time/rate, in-memory per-replica. requireAuth extracted from per-handler auth into middleware that stashes verified Claims on r.Context() via a typed key; three authed /tokens routes share one subject-keyed bucket; /auth/login is IP-keyed with optional leftmost-XFF parsing behind trustForwardedFor (binary default false; chart default true). Reserve()+Cancel() denial-doesn't-consume-budget; Retry-After with 1s floor. Defaults 10/min subject burst 5, 20/min IP burst 5. CodeRabbit "unbounded registry growth" comment pushed back on with threat-model reasoning; doc-comment expanded.
    • SCIM webhook stays in backlog.
  6. 6.3 broker chart — next.
  7. 6.4 topology examples.
  8. 6.5 observability recipes.
  9. 6.6 docs — incremental throughout.
  10. 6.7 release pipeline — final.

Rough effort: ~1 week of focused work remaining (3 core code units + Slice C.1 + C.2 + C.3 + C.4 all shipped; what's left is the broker chart, examples, recipes, docs, release pipeline).

Backlog (deferred, easy to add later)

  • Cosign signing of images + chart releases. Half-day CI add.
  • Latency log-enrichment (duration_ms field on request slog lines). Tiny additive change.
  • SCIM lifecycle webhook on the broker. Optional add when a customer asks.
  • CLI relocation to tools/ (demarkus-token, demarkus-publish). Bundled with 6.7.
  • Userinfo-based groups in the broker Verifier. Slice C.1 ships ID-token-only; AllowEmails is the documented workaround.
  • Case-sensitive group matching for Keycloak. Slice C.1 chose case-insensitive for the validated IdP set.
  • Configurable lease timings (sweeper.leaseDuration, renewDeadline, retryPeriod). C.2 hardcodes the client-go defaults.
  • SIGHUP on revoke + sweep + rotate to shrink the revoke-to-effect window. Needs pods/exec RBAC across world namespaces.
  • Sweeper backing-store migration when the issuances Secret hits the ~1MB / ~5000-issuance k8s storage ceiling.
  • Cluster-shared rate limiter (Slice C.4 follow-up). Backend (Redis / memcached / k8s Lease-coordinated tokens) so a multi-replica broker enforces one budget across all replicas, instead of N× the configured rate. Required if a customer's failure model is "an attacker who can spread requests across replicas" rather than "a noisy legitimate user."
  • Idle-key GC for the rate-limit registry (Slice C.4 follow-up). Background goroutine evicting limiters whose token bucket is full and whose lastSeen exceeds a TTL. Only worth adding if a customer hits a sized-up deployment with millions of distinct authenticated subjects over the broker's uptime; per the C.4 doc-comment, ~10k subjects is ~500KB. Eviction does NOT defend against attacker-driven inflation — that wants cluster-shared rate limiting upstream of the eviction point.

Risks

  • Observability via logs ceiling. If customers want signals not derivable from current slog, we hit a wall. Mitigation: log enrichment is a small additive change.
  • Broker secret-write blast radius. Mitigated by namespace-scoped Roles, audit log, optional NetworkPolicy. Per-world Role is non-negotiable. TestMintRBACDeniedNoPartialState validates clean failure.
  • OIDC provider coupling. First impl is Google; structure so second provider is a one-day add.
  • Token revocation in-flight latency. Revocation latency = kubelet Secret propagation + whatever the server does on re-mount. Verify during §6.3.
  • Rotate transient two-tokens window. Mint-then-revoke means both labels are briefly valid; widens to next sweep cycle on soft-partial. Documented; verified by TestRotateTokenSoftPartial.
  • Helm upgrade wiping tokens. Mitigated by helm.sh/resource-policy: keep + pre-install hook on both the world tokens Secret and the broker issuances Secret. Kind integration test regression-guards.
  • Issuances Secret scaling wall at the ~1MB / ~5000-issuance k8s storage ceiling. Phase-7+ fix is a different backing store.
  • Chart proliferation. Three charts + examples + dashboards. Mitigate with shared common-labels templates.
  • Trial scope creep. First customer is path-B.
  • Per-replica rate limit ⇒ N× effective rate. Slice C.4's rate limiter is per-pod, so a multi-replica broker enforces up to N× the configured rate. Same shape as the Sweeper.ReleaseOnCancel posture: a known per-replica property documented in the rateLimitRegistry doc-comment, deferred fix (cluster-shared limiter) sized for Phase-7+. If a customer's threat model requires strict global rate-limiting, the cluster-shared backend in §Backlog needs to land before they go live.
  • Rate-limit registry growth under misconfigured XFF trust. Slice C.4's loginReg keys on s.clientIP(r). With trustForwardedFor=true and no trusted proxy stripping spoofed XFF in front, an attacker can rotate the header to inflate the map. The defense at this layer (TTL/LRU eviction) makes the property worse under the same attack — see the per-replica unbounded Decision bullet. The correct fix is at the deployment layer: the §6.3 chart docs must call out that rateLimit.trustForwardedFor=true is only safe behind an Ingress that strips spoofed XFF. Operators flipping the flag in a directly-internet-exposed broker is the failure mode.

Status

Plan v13, 2026-05-13. Slice A, 6.0 chart, 6.1 chart, 6.2 broker binary Slice B, 6.2 broker binary Slice C.1, 6.2 broker binary Slice C.2, 6.2 broker binary Slice C.3, 6.2 broker binary Slice C.4 all merged (PRs #106, #107, #108, #109, #110, #111, #112, #114). §6.2 broker binary is complete. Next: §6.3 broker chart.

  • Slice B (PR #109, commit 2a6aae6, 2026-05-11): single-world OIDC mint flow, signed state cookie, bearer-auth on /tokens + DELETE /tokens/:label, k8s Secret writes via resourceVersion retry, opaque usr_<8 hex> labels with collision-retry. Added protocol/token.AppendBytes / RemoveBytes helpers. 87% coverage.
  • Slice C.1 (PR #110, commit 343f808, 2026-05-12): groups-claim + AllowEmails authorization. Nested WorldConfig.Allow schema. Predicate (domain AND groups) OR email-carve-out with the only-emails-set reject. Email canonicalized in Mint. All three lists lowercased+trimmed at config load; group matching case-insensitive.
  • Slice C.2 (PR #111, commit cb5f800, 2026-05-12): expiry + drift sweeper, leader-elected via coordination.k8s.io/Lease. protocol/token.ParseBytes for drift detection. Issuer.revokeIssuance extracted as shared helper. sweeper.interval capped at 24h; sweeper.disabled named for safe zero-value. RBAC-denied mint guard. Coverage 81.0%.
  • Slice C.3 (PR #112, commit 6ee0d8b, 2026-05-12): POST /tokens/:label/rotate with re-login semantics + scope-frozen/lifetime-reset asymmetry. Issuer.mintForWorld refactored for shared cross-world-collision + rollback machinery. EmailVerified + EqualFold gates. Mint-then-revoke with soft-partial 200 on revoke failure. Coverage 81.1%.
  • Slice C.4 (PR #114, commit e2933ff, 2026-05-12): per-subject + per-IP rate limit middleware via golang.org/x/time/rate, in-memory per-replica. requireAuth extracted from per-handler s.authenticate into middleware that stashes verified Claims on r.Context(); three authed /tokens routes share one subject-keyed bucket (hashSubject(claims.Subject)); /auth/login IP-keyed via s.clientIP(r) with optional leftmost-XFF parsing behind trustForwardedFor (binary default false; chart default true). Reserve()+Cancel() so denied requests don't consume budget; Retry-After with 1s floor. Defaults 10/min subject burst 5, 20/min IP burst 5. rateLimit.disabled named for sweeper-style zero-value-safe opt-out. CodeRabbit "unbounded registry growth" comment pushed back on; doc-comment expanded with full threat model. Coverage 83.4%.

Next: §6.3 broker chart. Multi-replica HA Helm chart at deploy/helm/demarkus-broker/. RBAC bundles per-world Roles for get/patch on each world's tokens Secret + a broker-namespace Role for get/create/update on coordination.k8s.io/leases (sweeper). Wire Ingress to strip+append X-Forwarded-For, then flip rateLimit.trustForwardedFor: true in the chart's default values so the per-IP limiter on /auth/login is effective behind the Ingress. sweeper: and rateLimit: values blocks exposed with sensible defaults so single-replica dev installs can opt out cleanly.

Then 6.4 examples → 6.5 observability recipes → 6.6 docs → 6.7 release pipeline.

trail
  1. soul.demarkus.io v13