The 2026-09-29 session found the merge gate did not exist -- no branch protection, no runner -- while the tree asserted both. This corrects the documents that carried, and in several cases CAUSED, that belief. CLAUDE.md gains section 2b: never infer platform state from this repository. It carries the specific API and kubectl checks for protection, runners, CI status, workloads and Flux revisions, and the rule that a green tick is not proof anything ran (a skipped Gitea job reports success). This is the rule whose absence produced every other finding. .gitea/workflows/README.md and merge-gate.yaml both said "there is no remote git host, this file is dormant". Gitea had been live for weeks. Both were written as plans and never revisited once the plan completed. The Transition section is now marked COMPLETE and says what is genuinely still outstanding (CLUSTER_AVAILABLE unset, so L2/L3 never runs in CI). DECISIONS-LOG 2026-08-31 is annotated IN PLACE. Anyone reading chronologically previously hit "required status check; runner incluster-dind online" with nothing marking it false until a month later. The correction now sits on the bullet itself. ci/README.md, clusters/README.md and both conformance READMEs carry a status banner: they speak as though no cluster exists, which makes a live L2/L3 coverage gap read as an expected phase. That framing is why the gap went unexamined. apps/wave-1/gitea-actions-runner-secret.sops.yaml: fixed a wrong path, replaced advice to `sops -d` into a terminal (which CLAUDE.md forbids) with the rotation script, and recorded that a fresh token alone does not re-register a runner holding a stale /data/.runner. apps/wave-0/plex-claim-secret.sops.yaml: the header claimed the file ships the placeholder. It has not since the claim -- it holds the spent token, which is inert and deliberately left in place. catalog/plex.yaml and the plex secret both asserted a "~4-minute TTL" as fact. It was uncited, upstream documents no expiry, and it was the basis for a since-disproven claim that the pipeline was too slow to fit inside it. Measured: ~2m45s. Both .sops.yaml files were verified to still decrypt after the comment edits (`sops -d > /dev/null`), and render==golden confirms the catalog comment does not propagate into the rendered manifest. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
catalog — ServiceDefinition entries (the onboarding surface)
One YAML file per service. Each file is a ServiceDefinition conforming to
../schemas/servicedefinition.schema.json. Adding or
editing a service here is the only onboarding step — the platform renders compute, storage, network
policy, egress, TLS, DNS, monitoring, and update policy from it (see
../schemas/renderer-contract.md). Serves R-GITOPS-02.
Source of truth for the initial catalog: spec
docs/13-service-catalog.md (14-service table +
SSO/egress/dependency intent).
Current examples
| File | docs/13 row | exposure | egress | auth | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
pihole.yaml |
6 | internal | internet | forward-auth | admin UI behind oauth2-proxy; config on Longhorn (DR-critical); also platform DNS |
keycloak.yaml |
0 | public | internet | native | the IdP itself (own admin login + MFA); PostgreSQL on Longhorn; DR-critical |
The remaining catalog services (plex, sonarr, radarr, jackett, seerr, nextcloud, minecraft, unifi, semaphore, kasm, gitea, qbittorrent) are onboarded in later phases; they follow the same schema and inherit every guarantee automatically.
Authoring rules
- Only
nameandsourceare mandatory; every other field defaults to docs/13's default posture (kind: container,exposure: internal,egress: internet,auth.mode: forward-auth, stable auto-update, DNS-only default-deny). Set a field only to override the default. - Any exposed UI must have an
authblock:forward-auth(default) oroidc, each with a non-emptyauth.groups;native/noneare documented exceptions only. - Irreplaceable state (
class: longhornconfigs/DBs) must setbackup.policyto an off-cluster schedule — neverreacquirable(R-STATE-03). Only bulk media may bereacquirable. - Shell braces must be escaped
$${...}. Anything rendered verbatim onto the workload — alifecyclepostStart script, anenvvalue — lands underapps/wave-<N>/, and everyapps-wave-<N>Flux Kustomization declarespostBuild.substituteFrom: cluster-vars. Flux runs envsubst over the WHOLE manifest at reconcile time, so an unescaped${VAR:-}meant for the shell is replaced with the empty string before the container ever starts (this silently killed gitea's and nextcloud's OIDC registration for days). Bare$VARand$(cmd)are left alone and need no escaping; a genuine environment knob is declared inclusters/base/cluster-vars.yamland written bare${KNOB}. Full contract:../clusters/base/apps-vms.yaml.render.pyREFUSES to emit a manifest that breaks this rule (Flux's strict substitution mode cannot: it deliberately exempts the${V:-}/${V:=x}/${V:?}default-operator forms).
Validate before commit — single command, no cluster (R-TEST-02)
check-jsonschema --schemafile schemas/servicedefinition.schema.json catalog/*.yaml
See ../schemas/README.md for install/pinning and a pure-Python fallback.
This is the L0/L1 schema gate (spec docs/14); CI (.gitea/) runs it on every change.
Rendering — render.py (the ServiceDefinition renderer, T-0.3)
render.py compiles a ServiceDefinition into the concrete manifest set defined
by ../schemas/renderer-contract.md: a Namespace (with the
app-namespace/gateway-access labels), the default-deny baseline (R-NET-01), a
Deployment+Service or a KubeVirt VirtualMachine + CDI DataVolume (R-PLAT-02/03), PVCs
(R-STATE), one CiliumNetworkPolicy egress-allow per dependency (R-NET-02), the
egress-class steering label (R-NET-05), HTTPRoute(s) on the shared Gateway (R-TLS/R-DNS),
ServiceMonitor + SLI alerts (R-OBS-01), the Flux ImageRepository/ImagePolicy update plumbing
(R-UPD), and the auth-mode / backup wiring hints (R-IDP/R-STATE-03).
python3 catalog/render.py catalog/pihole.yaml # render one SD to stdout
python3 catalog/render.py --all catalog -o out/ # render every SD to out/<name>.yaml
python3 catalog/render.py --selftest # deterministic self-test (no cluster)
- Deterministic: identical input → byte-identical output (golden-diffable). The L1 render
conformance tests (
conformance/tests/l1-rendering/*) diff the output against committed goldens — run offline byconformance/run.sh --layer l1andci/l1.sh(no cluster). - How CI/Flux consume it: CI invokes
render.pyin the L1 stage; a GitOps flow renders--all catalog -o <rendered-dir>and Flux reconciles the rendered directory. Design choice (renderer-contract is silent on mechanism): a render-then-consume script is the simplest reproducible option — see the header ofrender.py. - Dependency: PyYAML (the renderer's single dependency; the conformance harness stays stdlib-only and only shells out to this script + diffs text).