step 1/4: the permission engine is called permissions, not capabilities

The word meant four different things in this repo, not the three the offscale
doc records:

  1. the permission registry              → RENAMED here
  2. $OFFICER_ROOT/capabilities/ items    → kept; this is what capabilities are
  3. sidecar routing keys                 → step 3, becoming `handles`
  4. Lightning wallet features            → kept; a domain term, and on the wire
                                            to the mobile apps

The fourth was not in the doc and a global find-and-replace would have broken
the mobile wallet, which reads `{ kind, capabilities: Capability[] }` from the
wallet sidecar. So this renamed against an explicit file allowlist rather than
by sweeping the tree, and `CapabilityPage.tsx` — the UI for the item store, and
correctly named already — was left alone.

Moved: servers/capabilities/ → servers/permissions/, capability-gate.ts →
permission-gate.ts, users/capabilities-routes.ts → permissions-routes.ts,
hooks/useCapabilities.ts → usePermissions.ts. Identifiers follow.

Three breaks the typechecker could not see, all found by exercising it live.

The route paths moved with the prose sweep, so the server served
/user/permissions while the frontend still called /user/capabilities. A 404 on
every page load, and tsgo clean throughout.

The response FIELD moved too. `client.get<SelfPermissions>()` is an unchecked
cast, so `data.capabilities` became `undefined` at runtime with no compile
error — `can()` would have answered "no" to everything and the dock would have
emptied itself.

And the grants list was passed straight out of the database, so it arrived as
`{ role, capability, level }` while the screen read `grant.permission`. Every
role would have rendered as holding nothing. It is now mapped in the route:
the wire says `permission`, the column still says `capability`, and step 2
therefore changes nothing any client can see.

The stale react-query keys were the quiet one: two files still invalidated
['self-capabilities'] after the hook moved to ['self-permissions'], so
installing a plugin would have silently stopped refreshing the dock.

The database is untouched — `role_capabilities` and its `capability` column are
step 2, and the two call sites that cross that boundary say so in a comment.
Round-tripped the 9 live grants through the admin endpoint to prove the PUT
contract survived: 9 before, 9 after, Member's three intact.

Also reverted prettier churn on five landing-page files that a broad --write
picked up. Second time today; the lesson is not sticking.

tsgo clean. 797 tests, 787 pass, same 7 pre-existing failures — two of which
now read "path → permission" rather than "path → capability".
This commit is contained in:
2026-08-15 16:03:22 +00:00
parent b0fcd8b81b
commit 2e8ec845c8
59 changed files with 454 additions and 442 deletions
+4 -4
View File
@@ -556,7 +556,7 @@ export async function hardenOwnerHome(): Promise<{ ok: boolean; closed: string[]
*
* `platform/.env` was 664 on this machine when this was written — world-readable, holding the JWT signing
* secret and `POSTGRES_URL`. A member with a shell could read it and mint an owner token, which would
* leave the capability model intact and entirely bypassed.
* leave the permission model intact and entirely bypassed.
*
* Checked at boot rather than documented, because a prerequisite that is only written down is one that
* gets skipped. Returns the offending paths; the caller decides whether that is fatal.
@@ -599,10 +599,10 @@ export async function findReadableSecrets(projectDir: string): Promise<string[]>
/**
* Refuse to boot while a secret in the project tree is readable by other accounts on this machine.
*
* Same posture as `assertCapabilityTotality`, and for the same reason: this is a prerequisite that
* Same posture as `assertPermissionTotality`, and for the same reason: this is a prerequisite that
* silently not holding would make the whole feature theatre. Confirmed exploitable while testing — a
* member's shell read `platform/.env` and printed `JWT_SECRET`, which is enough to mint an owner token and
* bypass every capability check in the codebase.
* bypass every permission check in the codebase.
*
* Unconditional. It was a no-op unless `OFFICER_OS_USERS` was set, which made the guarantee opt-in — and
* a security prerequisite that only holds when someone remembers a flag is not a prerequisite.
@@ -618,7 +618,7 @@ export async function assertSecretsClosed(projectDir: string): Promise<void> {
...readable.map((p) => ` • ${p}`),
'',
'A member with a shell can read them. JWT_SECRET alone is enough to mint an owner token, which',
'bypasses every capability check. Fix with:',
'bypasses every permission check. Fix with:',
'',
...readable.map((p) => ` chmod 600 ${p}`),
'',