Two had real security consequences:
The bootstrap rejection ran on npm dotenv's parser while process.loadEnvFile
applied the file with Node's own. Two independently maintained dialects meant
the check and the thing it guards could disagree: a name Node accepts but the
checker misses would reach process.env unchecked, and BASH_ENV there runs a
file of the project's choosing on every `bash -c` the bash tool issues. Parse
once with node:util's parseEnv — the same engine loadEnvFile uses — and assign
the entries already checked, which also drops the dotenv dependency.
llm-pi-ai still returned a literal profile.apiKey ahead of everything, and it
registers a settings namespace, so the defect removed from llm-deepseek
survived intact in its design twin. The field is gone from the profile schema,
the resolution path, and the tests.
The rest are consistency and documentation defects the review named:
- verify-config-source-ownership did not scan the Python runtime's bundled
cordis.yml, which still inlined apiKey and baseURL. Both are covered now, and
the line-anchored INLINE_DENY documents that it is a tripwire, not a parser.
- The deny list missed NODE_TLS_REJECT_UNAUTHORIZED, the askpass hooks, the
GIT_CONFIG_* redirections, and PYTHONHOME — all implied by its own stated
rule about what a variable does.
- Snapshot lookups folded case on Windows, where environment names are
case-insensitive and an exact-match Map could miss a higher-ranked layer.
- The credentials note claimed a read-time permission check was "not taken"
while this PR implemented it; the credentials-local README still described
two layers, live process.env reads, dotenv-era limitations, and a renamed
anchor; the llm-deepseek README still advertised the removed literal apiKey;
and web.ts and base.cordis.yml kept personal-overlay wording.
- The ownership note's literal-apiKey claim now names its scope: the
web-search providers keep a literal field but register no settings
namespace, so nothing can shadow a stored credential through them.
Review found five real defects in the configuration-source work, all confirmed
against the code rather than argued:
1. The note claimed --config outranks settings.yaml. It does not: the settings
seam registers a plugin's cordis entry config as the `base` layer and the
user section layers over it, and the seam cannot tell a shipped value from a
--config one. The note now states shipped reality and names --config-replace
as the lever for a deployment that must win. Separately, a literal `apiKey`
in settings outranked both the environment and .credentials.yaml — the field
is removed, so configuration carries a reference and nothing else.
2. DEEPSEEK_SEARCH_BASE_URL was functionally deleted: the shipped inline went
away without the provider learning to read it. It now resolves from the
environment snapshot, as the README always claimed.
3. The bootstrap deny list missed the interpreter start-up hooks. BASH_ENV is
the sharpest: `bash -c` sources it on every bash tool call, so a project
.env could run a file of its choosing before every command. The list now
covers BASH_ENV and its per-language siblings, the Git hook commands, and
the remaining preload and CA variables, organised by what a variable does
rather than which runtime owns it.
4. YAML parse errors quoted the offending source line — which in a credentials
document is the secret — into boot stderr and the watcher's logger. Only the
error code and position are reported now, in credentials-local and
settings-local alike, pinned by a test that asserts the secret is absent.
5. 0600 governed only files the harness wrote. A hand-created 0644 document was
read normally. POSIX now checks the mode before reading contents, at boot
and on every reload; Windows has no mode to inspect and is skipped rather
than faked.
The project a session is launched in is trusted by default, with no prompt and
no stored trust record: it may supply its own endpoint, ordinary variables, and
a key ranked below the managed store. Trust stops at the harness itself — a
discovered file still cannot set DSH_PERMISSION_MODE, PATH, BASH_ENV, or the
rest, because those take effect with no user action, before any turn, outside
the permission policy and the sandbox.
$DSH_HOME/.env had just become an ordinary environment layer, which left the
harness resolving user-facing values from a flattened process.env that could
no longer say where a value came from. A key stored through the web page
stayed shadowed by an older key in the user's own .env. An endpoint could be
redirected by the project: the invoking directory's .env is materialized like
every other layer, and a base URL decides where a resolved API key is sent, so
a DEEPSEEK_BASE_URL written into a model-editable workspace would send the
user's credential — and the prompts carrying their code — to whatever host
that file named.
Give every user-facing value one ordering, with four kinds of source:
explicit for this run per-operation override, CLI argument
> authored by deployment --config / --config-replace
> this launch's shell inherited process environment
> product-managed store settings.yaml, .credentials.yaml
> discovered file $DSH_HOME/.env
> defaults schema default, shipped base, public default
The domains differ only in which tiers exist. The earlier split — credentials
ranking the environment over the managed file while settings ranked over the
environment — was inconsistent: the distinguishing fact is who authored the
source, not the domain.
packages/util/environment owns an immutable snapshot with per-layer
provenance. getFrom(name, sources) searches only the layers a caller names,
and omitting one is a refusal rather than a demotion: the adapters ask for
['process', 'user-env'], so no reordering can let a project file back into a
decision it was excluded from.
isBootstrapOnly rejects, before anything is materialized, any .env setting a
variable that governs how a process launches (PATH, SHELL, NODE_OPTIONS,
LD_PRELOAD), where code or model-visible instructions load from (the whole
DSH_* namespace, HOME, XDG_*), or how the network is reached (proxy and CA
variables). The namespace is denied wholesale so a switch added later cannot
become settable by being forgotten, and there is no opt-out.
verify-config-source-ownership keeps both rules: no unregistered process.env
read under packages/*/*/src (26 allowlisted with reasons), and no apiKey,
baseURL, or headers inlined from the environment in shipped Cordis config —
removing those inlines is what makes the deployment tier meaningful.
$DSH_HOME/.env carried two incompatible jobs. As credentials-local's writable
secret store it could not be hoisted into process.env — hoisting makes every
stored key read as a read-only launch override and blocks rotation from the
TUI and the web page. But its name and dotenv format promise an environment
file, so a DEEPSEEK_BASE_URL sitting beside a working DEEPSEEK_API_KEY in the
same file was silently ignored: only the credential provider read the
document, and it addresses credential references alone.
Split the two jobs into two files.
.credentials.yaml is the provider-managed store: a strict YAML mapping of
CredentialRef to non-empty string, no version field, no wrapper level. Because
it holds credentials and nothing else, a non-mapping root, a non-identifier
key, a non-string value, an empty string, a duplicate key, and malformed YAML
are all rejections rather than skipped entries — loud at boot and at a write,
warn-and-keep-last-good on a live reload. The dotenv physical-line editor
gives way to a patch of the parsed document, so comments and untouched entries
keep their formatting and any string value round-trips, multi-line included.
Writer lock, read-modify-write, atomic 0600 write under a 0700 directory,
watcher, self-write suppression, and quiescent disposal are unchanged.
$DSH_HOME/.env becomes the user's ordinary environment layer. app-boot's new
loadLayeredEnv loads the invoking directory's .env then the Harness home's,
giving user < project < inherited; the home resolves from the inherited
environment first, so a project .env cannot redirect it.
Credential precedence is unchanged: the live environment still wins read-only
over the file, and shadowed writes still reject. Whether a provider-managed
store should instead win over the environment is a separate decision.
No migration: a key already in $DSH_HOME/.env keeps resolving through the new
environment layer, as a read-only env source that shadows the stored one.
The remaining P1 from the #939 review, plus the P2 it shares a mechanism with.
Nothing carried a version, so two tabs editing one namespace silently
overwrote each other — reproduced as tab B's `reasoning` lost to tab A's
older draft. The seam's per-namespace write queue orders writes; it cannot
tell a fresh writer from one replaying a snapshot a predecessor superseded.
Each namespace now carries a monotonic `revision` over its RAW section. A
write may send `expectedRevision`, checked at the FRONT of the queue (not at
call time, which would race the very predecessor it guards against); a
mismatch rejects with `SettingsConflictError` → `settings-conflict` on the
wire, carrying both revisions. The editor captures the revision it opened at
and, on conflict, asks the user to reopen rather than replaying its snapshot.
The same counter fixes the missing broadcast. `settings/updated` is gated on
the resolved value — correct for consumers, wrong for configuration surfaces:
storing an override equal to the composition base leaves the resolved value
alone while changing what the document says (the field is now overridden, not
inherited) and moving every open editor's revision. `settings/document-updated
(ns, revision)` fires on any raw-section change, in-process or external, and
`host/settings-changed` now rides it.
That event also closes the stale model picker: editing a provider's `models`
changes no route, so `llm/adapters-updated` never fired and an open picker
kept serving the old catalog. A change to an exposed provider namespace now
emits `host/models-changed` too — that namespace holds the catalog.
Docs: both sides of the five touched README pairs, a type-equiv block for
`SettingsPathOp`, and an Agent Note recording what the plane exposes and who
may overwrite what. The deferred wire-redaction gaps (secrets behind
union/intersection/transform, `.default(...)` in the served envelope, schema
text in rejection messages, `new Function` rehydration, pi-ai's `headers`) are
recorded as TODO(settings-wire-redaction) and in Known Limitations rather than
half-fixed.
Both provider READMEs state what actually holds: credentials-local now
documents the physical-line editor, the read-modify-write under the
writer lock, and a Security boundary section saying plainly that the file
mode stops other OS users and not the model. sandbox-policy documents
readDenyPaths and its per-backend enforcement. The llm READMEs carry the
registration handle, pi-ai's credential-miss semantics, and DeepSeek's
same-generation snapshot; app-boot and the CLI README stop describing
$DSH_HOME/.env as an environment layer.
A new Agent Note records the round (and the prior seam note cross-links
it); the sandbox and core catalog pages gain readDenyPaths and
AdapterRegistrationHandle with their manifest entries. The headless
missing-credential snapshot re-records for the reworded guidance, pi-ai
gains the Loader-composition guard its twin already had, and the
deliberate provider symmetry is marked for the clone detector.
The policy home's resolve() now stamps readDenyPaths, so every consumer
that pins the resolved shape (bash-sandbox hand-off, tool-fs stamps)
carries it, and three uncovered branches gained real tests: landlock
reporting partial enforcement for a denial it cannot express, the
policy's default under programmatic construction, and both ambient
credential paths in llm-deepseek without a mounted seam.
Four review findings across the seam and both adapters.
registerAdapter now returns a handle carrying replace(providers): the
candidate route set is validated in full before anything moves, so a
route another adapter owns leaves the previous registration intact, and
the swap itself is one synchronous section with no observable gap. pi-ai
uses it instead of dispose-then-register — the old shape dropped every
route when the new set conflicted, and its facts cache could then equal
the registry's, so reverting to a working configuration never re-applied.
Its registration facts are also sorted by provider, so a settings
document that merely reorders keys no longer triggers a swap.
DeepSeek's per-request snapshot now carries the credential facts, and
resolveApiKey receives it instead of re-reading the raw config: a
settings generation the resolver rejects can no longer contribute its
literal key to a request the previous generation's endpoint serves.
pi-ai only defers to the SDK's provider-native discovery when a profile
names no credential at all; a configured apiKeyEnv that misses now fails
with MISSING_CREDENTIAL naming the route and the reference, instead of
handing pi-ai undefined and letting it authenticate with an unrelated
ambient key.
The eager boot-time credential probe is gone: it could run before the
credentials service mounted and reported every failure as a missing key.
The route stays registered and browsable; the first request gives the
accurate error, whose guidance now leads with the credential store and
mentions a literal apiKey last.
apps/cli/cordis.yml gains settings-local, credentials-local, and the bare
dormant llm-pi-ai row (manifest deps added for the resolver contract);
llm-deepseek drops its !!js apiKey inline for per-request credential
resolution. Both adapters tag apiKeyEnv role('credential-ref') so the
form mounts the credential control. The web e2e scaffold isolates a
harness home per run — an in-process boot must never touch the
developer's real ~/.dsh — and the new models-settings scenario pins the
whole loop through the shipped app: dormant directory as add vocabulary,
schema-driven editor apply landing in settings.yaml, the route
registering live (topology frame), and a write-only key landing in the
temp .env with the configured badge converging. A hermetic test-owned
reference name keeps a developer's real provider keys from flipping the
badge. schema-form joins the platform module table (seed + externals)
so client bundles share one instance.
ctx.llm gains 'llm/adapters-updated' — a payload-free registry notification
emitted at every topology commit point (adapter routes registering or
disposing, directory entries appearing or withdrawing) with contained
observers and INVARIANT rethrow — plus registerConfigurableProviders/
listConfigurableProviders, the directory of routes an adapter plugin can
activate through configuration. llm-deepseek declares deepseek-official
(whole llm-deepseek section as profile); llm-pi-ai declares the full
installed catalog under providers.<provider> even while dormant, so the
web settings surface can offer every provider before any route exists.
The invariant companion asserts the registry stays readable at each
notification.
An empty or omitted providers dict is now the valid dormant posture: the
adapter mounts with zero routes and no catalog entries, registers routes
the moment the llm-pi-ai settings section supplies profiles, and drops
them when it empties. The TUI demo mounts the adapter bare, so adding an
openai/anthropic provider is purely a settings.yaml (or, next PR, web
form) operation with per-request apiKeyEnv credential resolution.
New credentials data-structure page (type-equiv manifested), group README,
rewritten llm-deepseek/llm-pi-ai READMEs (dynamic configuration, dict
profiles, credential chain), capability-seams/service-role registration,
Agent Note (bilingual), demo compositions mounting settings-local +
credentials-local with no inline key plumbing, installSettingsSection
consumer helper on the settings seam (deduplicating both adapters' wiring),
jscpd symmetry markers for the provider twins, runtime-closure additions for
python/sdk-runtime, and doc-budget ceilings AGENTS.md 1750→1755 /
packages/README.md 850→865 for the structural one-line group rows.
providers becomes a dict keyed by provider route, so the composition base
and the llm-pi-ai settings section merge per provider and the route set is
structural; the pre-release array shape and per-profile provider field fail
loud with migration directions. The adapter reads a profiles thunk once per
operation and resolves the credential per stream call (literal apiKey, then
apiKeyEnv through ctx.credentials with an ambient env fallback, then pi-ai's
provider-native discovery), so key, endpoint, and knob changes reach the
next request without restarts. Route-set or captured-retry-policy changes
re-register the same adapter instance in one synchronous section; an invalid
settings snapshot keeps the last good profiles.
A well-formed provider stream that ends with finish_reason stop and zero
content blocks previously became a successful empty assistant message: the
turn completed silently, and drivers like goal-session counted the no-op
round. Both adapters now map that degenerate completion to a finish
{kind:'error'} with the new canonical EMPTY_RESPONSE code from dsh-llm, and
dsh-llm-retry adds the code to its default retryable set, so the existing
closed-step recovery path retries it and fails loud once the budget is
exhausted.
Covered by adapter unit tests, an llm-retry default-policy test, and a new
authored keyless ACP snapshot (empty-response-retry) with a deterministic
1 ms zero-jitter retry overlay.
pi-ai 0.80 restructured its entrypoints: the static catalog reads now
live on /providers/all as getBuiltinModels/getBuiltinProviders (keyed by
the catalog-only BuiltinProvider type, replacing KnownProvider at those
call sites), and the global streamSimple moved to /compat. The config
schema gains the new 'max' reasoning level.
