Two debt items, both about making a latent problem impossible rather than fixed. === 1. Node timezone pinned to Etc/UTC (node_baseline, `system` tag) === The prod nodes disagreed, measured from k3s's own etcd snapshot annotations: prod-1/2 at -05:00 (Central), prod-3 at -04:00 (Eastern). Functionally harmless — Kubernetes and etcd are UTC internally, and in UTC those snapshots are ~4 minutes apart, which is correct staggering — but it makes cross-node log correlation actively misleading, and this cluster has had two unplanned reboots in two days. `Etc/UTC` chosen on repo convention, not just principle: catalog/plex.yaml records "no other service in the repo sets a timezone ... so use the safe default" with TZ: Etc/UTC, and apps/wave-0/plex.yaml matches (platform/crafty is America/Chicago DELIBERATELY — a user-facing game schedule, not a log clock). Decisive extra fact: THE THREE DEV NODES ARE ALREADY Etc/UTC, so this makes prod match dev rather than inventing a convention. UTC also removes the class — no DST discontinuity, node time == platform time. New knob `node_baseline_timezone`, overridable per environment via group_vars (the same seam as node_baseline_backports_kernel) but deliberately NOT restated there: no environment needs to differ, and a second copy is a second thing to disagree. Guarded by an assert in the role's existing BLOCKED style before the module runs. `--check --diff --tags system -e k3s_hosts=k3s_prod` INDEPENDENTLY CONFIRMS the offset evidence, and is the whole verification — the play was never run for real: k3s-prod-1: -"America/Chicago" +"Etc/UTC" changed k3s-prod-2: -"America/Chicago" +"Etc/UTC" changed k3s-prod-3: -"America/New_York" +"Etc/UTC" changed The same --check against DEV reports the task `ok` on all three — idempotence demonstrated against live hosts, in check mode only. `--list-hosts` confirms `-e k3s_hosts=k3s_prod` selects the three prod nodes (the diagnostic plays take their OWN var; the wrong flag silently targets dev). *** AUTHORED, NOT APPLIED. *** Applying it is a live-cluster action and was deliberately left for the operator to schedule: prod's Longhorn had only just finished resyncing after a node reboot, and changing a node's clock config during storage recovery is not an unattended move. `ansible-inventory --list` was NOT used anywhere — it prints DECRYPTED vault values (the passphrase is mounted into the dev container) and has leaked the prod become-password to a transcript once already. === 2. New L0 check `placeholder-guard-coupling` (R-ENV-02, R-STATE-03) === On 2026-09-05 the PM changed a placeholder in clusters/base/cluster-vars.yaml from `TBD-PROD-S3-BACKUP-ENDPOINT` to `https://TBD-R2-ACCOUNT-ID...`. The guards in bootstrap/standup.sh matched the glob `TBD-*` — a PREFIX. All three silently died, and `resume` would have enabled velero on prod against a nonexistent hostname: installs clean, reports healthy, no backups exist. Found by accident. A guard in one file keyed on the SHAPE of a value in another file, with nothing tying them. The check exercises the REAL predicate — it does not reimplement it. standup.sh is not sourceable (top-level argv parsing hard-exits, cd, export, EXIT trap), so the check extracts the predicate's own source lines and sources only those. Faithfulness is pinned by: discovery of every `*_is_placeholder` (not a hardcoded name), exactly-one-definition, "extracted block is a verbatim substring", a self-containment gate, a canary (must refuse "", must accept a real URL), and a scan for a divergent second copy. If the predicate grows a dependency the check FAILS LOUDLY and names the remedy rather than degrading to testing a copy — the failure mode it exists for. Both sides derive from real files: guarded knobs from a taint trace in standup.sh (`x="$(cvar KEY)"` -> alias hop -> `*_is_placeholder "$x"`); values from base cluster-vars plus each overlay's JSON6902 /data/KEY patches. The independent detector is deliberately NOT the guard: seed idioms UNION the guard's own words with glob anchors STRIPPED — so a prefix-anchored guard cannot pass, and deleting an arm cannot make a value stop being placeholder-shaped. Real tree: 32 assertions, 18 values through the extracted predicate, PASS. NON-VACUITY VERIFIED BY ME, twice, on throwaway copies (the real repo and the read-only spec repo untouched). My first perturbation tripped the self-containment rail instead of the anchoring property, so I redid it shape-preserving — substring globs -> prefix globs, nothing else — and it failed on exactly the right property, naming mid-string and tail acceptances with the diagnosis "This is the 2026-09-05 failure exactly". Control: unperturbed copy exits 0. === 3. ci/touched-requirements.sh: bootstrap/ was UNMAPPED (found by the agent) === The path->requirement map had no `bootstrap/*` entry, so a change touching standup.sh ALONGSIDE any already-mapped path scoped the L0 run to that other path's requirements and silently excluded the new check — the one that exists to catch exactly the 2026-09-05 class. A safety net with a hole where the incident was. Mapped to R-STATE-03 R-GITOPS-01; verified the map now resolves bootstrap paths. VERIFIED: full CI gate PASS. `run.sh --layer l0` 8/8 PASS including the new check. Coverage unchanged at 45/51 (the new check tags existing requirements). Refs R-ENV-02, R-STATE-03, R-TEST-01, R-PLAT-01. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <[email protected]>
ci/ — portable merge gate (runnable today, without Gitea)
Task T-0.2 · R-TEST-02 (reproducible, single-command) · Owner WS-GITOPS (CI).
The same merge gate the Gitea Actions workflow runs
(.gitea/workflows/), as plain scripts + a Makefile so the gates are
runnable now, before any Gitea host or cluster exists. CI and a laptop call the identical
scripts, so make -C ci gate == the CI merge gate.
Quick start
make -C ci gate # the single command: run every stage + the R-TEST-03 decision
make -C ci help # list targets
make -C ci tools # which pinned tools are installed locally
make -C ci touched # print the touched-requirement subset for this branch vs main
Individual stages:
make -C ci lint # yaml/lint (no cluster; live now)
make -C ci l0 # schema + Kyverno + L0 static conformance (no cluster; live now)
make -C ci l1 # L1 rendering checks (no cluster; live now)
make -C ci conformance # L2/L3 in-cluster Chainsaw Job (SKIPS unless CLUSTER_AVAILABLE=true)
make -C ci test # unit tests for these scripts themselves (ci/tests/*.test.sh)
The l0 stage has three sub-stages: ServiceDefinition schema validation, the Kyverno policy gate
(kyverno test), and conformance/run.sh --layer l0 — the whole-repo L0 invariants a
per-resource policy cannot express (secret hygiene across every tracked file, least-privilege RBAC,
spec-immutability enforcement). See conformance/tests/README.md.
Exit-code contract
Every stage script uses: 0 = pass · 1 = fail (blocks merge) · 3 = SKIPPED (cluster-gated
with no cluster, or an unwired seam / missing tool). A 3 is never counted as green — that is how
the gate stays honest in Phase 0 (no fake green).
The touched-requirement subset can also be undeterminable (exit 3)
touched-requirements.sh is the input to the R-TEST-03 decision. It resolves a diff base in this
order, verifying each candidate exists before using it:
BASE_REF (explicit) > GITHUB_BASE_REF (Actions PR runs) > origin/main > main
If no candidate resolves, if there is no merge base, if the diff command fails, or if HEAD is not
ahead of the base (you are sitting on main, or the branch is already merged), it prints a loud
banner, writes nothing to stdout, and exits 3 — plus a machine-readable reason code
(on-base / no-base / diff-failed) to $TOUCHED_REASON_FILE when that variable names a path.
Why this is not cosmetic. Every one of those conditions used to degrade silently to an empty
touched set and exit 0. An empty set means conformance/run.sh is invoked with no --requirements,
which means its coverage --require gate never runs — so on 2026-08-31 the local gate printed
MERGE GATE: PASS having checked nothing, while CI (correct base, 17 touched requirements) BLOCKED
on real coverage debt. There is no silent narrowing left: the HEAD~1 last resort and the two-dot
diff fallback are both gone. Locked down by ci/tests/touched-requirements-base.test.sh.
gate.sh turns exit 3 into an UNDECIDED merge decision, never a pass:
| reason | headline | exit |
|---|---|---|
on-base |
MERGE GATE: NOT APPLICABLE — no branch under gate |
0 (a push-to-main CI run legitimately lands here; it just must not read as "my branch is green") |
no-base, diff-failed |
MERGE GATE: BLOCKED |
1 (the environment cannot support a merge decision; refusing to decide must not look like deciding yes) |
A stage that needs the subset (l0.sh, l1.sh) still runs its FULL layer as a superset sanity net
in that case — nothing goes untested — and says plainly that the scoped check did not happen.
Reproducibility (R-TEST-02)
- Version-pinned: all tool versions live in
versions.env— the single source of truth shared by the local scripts and the CI installer. Bumping a version is a normal feature-branch → main change. - Single command, environment-agnostic:
make -C ci gateon any machine with the pinned tools. - Deterministic: no cluster state is assumed; L2/L3 SKIP unless a cluster is explicitly declared.
Files
ci/
Makefile targets: lint · l0 · l1 · conformance · gate · touched · test · tools · versions
versions.env PINNED tool versions (R-TEST-02) — single source of truth
lib.sh shared helpers: logging, tool checks, cluster detection, artifact paths
yamllint.yaml lint config for the yaml/lint stage
lint.sh Stage: yaml/lint
l0.sh Stage: schema validation + Kyverno L0 gate + L0 static conformance
l1.sh Stage: L1 rendering checks (Chainsaw L1 via the conformance runner)
conformance.sh Stage: L2/L3 in-cluster Chainsaw Job (trigger + collect)
touched-requirements.sh compute the R-* subset a change touches (drives the R-TEST-03 filter);
exits 3 LOUDLY rather than guessing when the diff base is unreliable
gate.sh run all stages + the merge decision (the single command)
tests/*.test.sh unit tests for these scripts (`make -C ci test`), run against
throwaway git repos via the REPO_ROOT override — no network, no cluster
README.md this file
Integration seams — entrypoints owned by OTHER agents
This gate is an orchestrator. It does not implement schema validation, Kyverno policies, or the conformance runner — those are other workstreams' deliverables. Each seam is env-overridable so the owning agent / PM can reconcile the real entrypoint without editing these scripts. Defaults below are this workstream's assumptions — flagged for the PM to verify at integration.
| Seam | Owner / task | Env override | Assumed default | Assumed interface |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ServiceDefinition schema validator | WS-GITOPS · T-0.3 (schemas/) |
SCHEMA_VALIDATE_CMD |
schemas/validate.sh |
validate.sh catalog/*.yaml → exit 0/1; --version supported |
| Kyverno L0 policies + tests | WS-TEST · T-0.5 (platform/kyverno/) |
KYVERNO_POLICY_DIR |
platform/kyverno |
contains kyverno-test.yaml files discoverable by kyverno test <dir> |
| Conformance runner (Chainsaw) | WS-TEST · T-0.4 (conformance/) |
CONFORMANCE_CMD |
conformance/run.sh |
run.sh --layer <l0|l1|l2,l3> [--requirements R-A,R-B]; artifacts land in conformance/_artifacts/ |
| Catalog (ServiceDefinitions) | WS-APPS | CATALOG_DIR |
catalog |
*.yaml ServiceDefinition files |
Artifact locations (git-ignored): JUnit → results/junit/*.xml; coverage → reports/coverage/**.
Override with JUNIT_DIR / COVERAGE_DIR if the runner writes elsewhere.
A seam that is missing or not executable reports SKIPPED (exit 3), not a false pass — so during parallel Phase 0 development the gate is green-honest, and each seam goes live automatically the moment its owner delivers a runnable entrypoint.
Cluster gating
CLUSTER_AVAILABLE=true (env locally, vars.CLUSTER_AVAILABLE in Gitea) makes the L2/L3 stage run and
be required; anything else makes it SKIP (Phase 0). REQUIRE_CLUSTER_TESTS=true (Phase 1+)
turns any unverified cluster-needing touched requirement into a hard block.