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]>
conformance/ — the home-k3s conformance harness (WS-TEST)
This subtree is the definition of "done" for the whole platform. Nothing is accepted
on a demo, a screenshot, or "it reconciled": every requirement is proven by an
automated, reproducible, behavior-based test tagged with the requirement ID(s) it
verifies (spec docs/14,
ADR-0010,
ADR-0011).
Tooling is fixed by ADR-0011: Kyverno for L0 (the CI policy gate + in-cluster admission enforcer — owned by task T-0.5) and Chainsaw for L1 rendering / L2 behavioral / L3 fault-injection (this harness).
The single command
./run.sh # full suite (skips L1/L2/L3 if no cluster)
./run.sh --requirements R-NET-01,R-NET-06 # merge-gate subset (tagged)
./run.sh --layer l2 # one layer: l1 | l2 | l3 | meta | all
./run.sh --coverage-only # regenerate the coverage report (no cluster)
./run.sh --status # derived requirement-STATUS report (no cluster)
./run.sh --lint # structural-validate test defs (no cluster)
./run.sh --strict-coverage # hygiene gate: fail on tag/annotation drift
./run.sh --require-all # phase-exit gate: every requirement must be covered
./run.sh --record # run AND capture the evidence (see "Proof of pass")
Gating is scoped, not "all 51 always" (R-TEST-03). Three distinct checks:
--strict-coverage— hygiene (always-on, WS-TEST owns it): fails only on tag/annotation drift or a tag absent from the registry. Uncovered future-phase requirements are visible gaps in the report, not a harness failure.--requirements R-…— merge gate: selects the tagged tests to run and asserts those touched requirements are covered (a listed safety-critical one must have an L3 test).--require-all— phase-exit gate: every registry requirement must be covered.- Documented out-of-scope gaps (e.g.
R-ENV-02dev→prod promote andR-GITOPS-01state-in-git, owned by WS-INFRA/WS-GITOPS and keyed wholesale by the coarse path map) are exempted from the completeness gates via--allow-gap, wired inrun.shasDOCUMENTED_GAPSso the exemption is explicit and reviewable. (R-STATE-02node-loss used to be here; it now has a real L3 test —tests/l3-fault-injection/node-loss— and is covered, not exempted.)
Coverage vs status — two different questions
coverage.md answers "does a requirement-tagged test EXIST for R-x?" (R-TEST-04).
status.md (./run.sh --status, generator lib/status.py) answers the operator's
question — "what is the real state of each requirement given what is actually in the
repo?" — deriving three orthogonal axes per requirement:
- implementation — is there a tracked artifact naming the requirement?
- reconciliation — is that artifact reachable by walking
resources:fromclusters/<env>/kustomization.yamland expanding every FluxKustomization'sspec.path? This is what separates authored from actually reconciled: a commented-outresources:entry (e.g.platform/image-automation) is correctly reported as in-git-but-not-on-any-cluster. - verification — is the tagged test EXECUTABLE, or a TODO scaffold? Coverage counts
both as "covered"; status does not. TODO markers in a body always outrank an
executable: "true"annotation, so ambiguity never upgrades a test.
It deliberately refuses to derive proof-of-pass. Nothing tracked in git records a test
result — _artifacts/ and results/ are git-ignored and DECISIONS-LOG.md prose is not a
signal — so every requirement's proof state is reported as not-derivable rather than
defaulting to green. A status report that overstates completion is worse than none
(agents/definition-of-done.md). Closing that gap needs a committed, machine-readable
run ledger; until then the strongest claim the report makes is wired and testable.
--strict-coverage also applies status's hygiene gate (registry↔spec drift,
annotation/body conflicts, a safety-critical requirement whose only L3 test is a scaffold).
Exit codes follow ci/lib.sh: 0 pass / 1 fail / 3 skipped — a skip is never green.
run.sh is the only entrypoint. Local runs and the in-cluster CI Chainsaw Job call
the same script with the same config, so results are identical.
Artifacts (always emitted, under _artifacts/, git-ignored)
| Path | What | Consumer |
|---|---|---|
_artifacts/report.junit.xml |
JUnit — Chainsaw results, or a skipped-scaffold shim when no cluster | CI gate |
_artifacts/coverage/coverage.md |
Human requirement-coverage report | PR reviewers / logs |
_artifacts/coverage/coverage.json |
Machine coverage: {requirement: [tests]}, gaps, safety gaps |
CI gate |
_artifacts/status/status.md |
Human requirement-STATUS report derived from repo state | operator / PM |
_artifacts/status/status.json |
Machine status: implementation / reconciliation / verification per requirement | tooling |
Reproducibility contract (R-TEST-02 — what the harness guarantees)
- Single command.
./run.sh(or a tagged/layer subset) runs everything and emits the artifacts above — locally and in CI. - Hermetic. Each Chainsaw test provisions its own namespace + fixtures/probes and tears
them down (
config/chainsaw-config.yamlauto-creates/auto-deletes the namespace; tests addfinallyfor anything out-of-namespace). It never relies on pre-existing state. - Deterministic. Tool versions pinned in
versions.env; eventual consistency handled by bounded polling with explicit timeouts (config), never sleeps or wall-clock/ordering assumptions. - Isolated & parallel-safe. Unique generated namespaces + per-requirement labels; tests run concurrently without cross-talk.
- Machine-readable & requirement-tagged. JUnit + coverage, every result carrying its
R-*tags (convention intests/README.md). - Self-cleaning. Fixtures removed on pass or fail; a leaked namespace/fixture is
itself a failure (
skipDelete: false, enforced delete/cleanup timeouts). - Versioned with the code. Tests live next to what they verify and change only when the human-owned spec they encode changes — never weakened to go green (R-TEST-06).
Layout
run.sh single-command runner (the entrypoint)
versions.env pinned toolchain (Chainsaw/kubectl/Kyverno) — determinism
config/chainsaw-config.yaml shared execution contract (timeouts, ns isolation, JUnit)
requirements/registry.yaml mirror of EVERY spec R-* ID (coverage enumerates from here)
lib/
common.sh tagging convention + test discovery/selection helpers
coverage.py requirement-coverage generator (stdlib only)
status.py requirement-STATUS generator (stdlib only; --selftest)
record_run.py run-ledger writer: PROOF-of-pass (stdlib only; --selftest)
emit_skipped_junit.py Phase-0 skipped-JUnit shim (no cluster)
runs/
ledger.jsonl TRACKED append-only proof-of-pass ledger (one row per
testcase per run) — the only source status.py trusts
<UTC>-<short-sha>/ TRACKED per-run evidence: run.log + report.junit.xml
tests/
l1-rendering/ l2-behavioral/ l3-fault-injection/ meta/ (see tests/README.md)
incluster/
chainsaw-job.yaml rbac.yaml in-cluster L2/L3 Job + scoped test SA (ADR-0011)
Proof of pass — the run ledger (runs/)
--status used to report PROVEN: 0 for all 51 requirements, and said so honestly:
proof-of-pass was not recoverable from repo state. _artifacts/ is gitignored and the
root .gitignore kills *.junit.xml globally, so no run result ever reached git; the
only record of a green run was DECISIONS-LOG.md prose. runs/ is the fix lib/status.py
asked for — a committed, machine-readable run ledger.
./run.sh --record # runs normally, and captures the evidence
# -> conformance/runs/<UTC>-<short-sha>/run.log (tee'd, carries the sentinels)
# -> conformance/runs/<UTC>-<short-sha>/report.junit.xml (that run's JUnit)
# -> conformance/runs/ledger.jsonl (one appended row per testcase)
python3 lib/record_run.py --run-dir runs/<id> [--dry-run] # or record an existing run dir
python3 lib/record_run.py --selftest # deterministic, no cluster
Recording is explicit, never implicit. Plain ./run.sh writes no ledger row: a run
that silently records itself is how a bad run becomes a permanent false proof. Commit
the run dir and the ledger — an uncommitted ledger proves nothing.
Why a committed JUnit alone would be WORSE than nothing
The L2/L3 tests are runnable and self-skipping: when a precondition is missing (no
longhorn StorageClass, no Velero CRDs, fewer than 3 Ready nodes) they echo a skip token
and exit 0, and their check: accepts either outcome —
(contains($stdout, 'DR_RESTORED_FROM_OFF_CLUSTER_BACKUP_OK')
|| contains($stdout, 'DR_RESTORE_SKIPPED_OK')): true
So a self-skip exits 0 and Chainsaw records passed exactly as a real run does, and
Chainsaw's JUnit carries no stdout — its <testcase> elements hold only <properties>.
A committed JUnit on its own would therefore record DR_RESTORE_SKIPPED_OK as proof of
R-STATE-03: fake green, and worse than no ledger because it would look authoritative.
The sentinel token in run.log is the only thing that separates proven from skipped.
record_run.py derives each test's tokens from its own chainsaw-test.yaml (every
contains($stdout, 'TOKEN'); *_SKIP*_OK is a skip token, the last non-skip token is the
verdict token), so the table below is never hand-maintained:
| Test | pass token (proof) | skip token (never proof) |
|---|---|---|
l3/node-loss |
NODE_LOSS_VOLUME_AVAILABLE_OK |
NODE_LOSS_SKIPPED_OK |
l3/dr-restore |
DR_RESTORED_FROM_OFF_CLUSTER_BACKUP_OK (+ OFF_CLUSTER_TARGET_OK, BACKUPS_ARE_SCHEDULED_OK) |
DR_RESTORE_SKIPPED_OK, DR_SCHEDULE_SKIPPED_OK |
l3/data-survival |
DATA_SURVIVED_OK |
DATA_SURVIVAL_SKIPPED_OK |
l3/vm-data-survival |
VM_DATA_SURVIVED_OK |
VM_DATA_SURVIVAL_SKIPPED_OK |
l3/hands-off-update |
HANDS_OFF_UPDATE_OK |
HANDS_OFF_UPDATE_SKIPPED_OK |
l2/vm-lifecycle |
VM_LIFECYCLE_OK |
VM_LIFECYCLE_SKIPPED_OK |
l2/vm-default-deny |
VM_DEFAULT_DENY_OK |
VM_DEFAULT_DENY_SKIPPED_OK |
A row reaches proof: "proven" on one path: JUnit passed, every declared pass
token present in that test's log lines, and no skip token anywhere in them. A skip
token beats a pass token (worst wins). Anything else is skipped, failed,
junit-skipped, unknown-no-sentinel-declared or unknown-sentinel-absent — all
non-green. L0/L1 need no sentinel because lib/run_l1_offline.py already renders their
skips as JUnit <skipped/>, never as a green pass.
Staleness — a proof is a claim about a tree, not a badge
--status honours a proven row only while the run's git_sha is a descendant of the
last commit touching that requirement's implementing manifests or its verifying test.
Otherwise the row degrades to stale-proof, which is not green. A run captured from a
dirty working tree is recorded as <sha>-dirty, which no ancestry check can satisfy — so
it never counts. Re-run with --record to refresh.
A requirement reads proven only when every verifying test does; one skipped, failed
or unrecorded test drags the whole requirement down. With an empty ledger --status
behaves exactly as before: every requirement not-derivable, headline PROVEN 0.
How CI invokes it
CI (Gitea Actions, wired in T-0.2 / migrated in T-6.1b) calls this same run.sh:
- No-cluster stage (every PR, fast):
./run.sh --lintand./run.sh --coverage-only --strict-coverage --requirements <IDs the change touches>. Validates every test parses- is tagged, regenerates coverage, fails the PR on tag/annotation drift (hygiene) and on any touched requirement lacking a test (merge gate). (L0 Kyverno CLI runs alongside — task T-0.5.)
- Cluster stage (L2/L3): CI does not hold a kubeconfig. It triggers the
in-cluster Chainsaw Job (
incluster/), which runs./run.shunder the scopedconformance-runnerServiceAccount and writes JUnit + coverage to a results volume CI collects.- Merge gate: the Job runs
--requirements <IDs the change touches>; that subset runs green and those requirements are covered to merge (R-TEST-03). - Phase-exit gate: the Job runs
--layer all --strict-coverage; add--require-allonly at the milestone where the full requirement set is expected covered. The phase suite must be green before the phase's exit criteria are met.
- Merge gate: the Job runs
Phase 0 status (no cluster yet)
No cluster exists, so L1/L2/L3 cannot execute. The behavior tests are valid
scaffolds (steps + assertions authored, tagged, TODO(T-x.y) where a later phase
delivers the fixture). In this phase run.sh:
- always generates the coverage report (cluster-independent), and
- emits a skipped JUnit listing every scaffold (so the gate is green and the artifact shape is real), and
- the
meta/harness-selfcheckchecks (reproducible output, JUnit+coverage emitted, everything tagged, zero safety-critical gaps) are whatrun.sh --strict-coverageactually enforces today.
As later phases deliver capabilities, each scaffold's TODOs are filled and the test flips
from skipped to executing green — landing coverage without re-architecting the harness.