feat: give display devices their own paired identity
ADR 0033 gave Ekklesia a display host and ADR 0034 gave it a login page. Together, the only way to light a television in a foyer was to sign a human being into it and leave that session running on a screen anyone can walk up to: a person's credentials on a wall, a person's session as the thing signage depends on, and the display going dark when they are revoked or their session simply expires. A screen is not a person. Ekklesia now recognizes three principal classes — anonymous, authenticated human, and managed device — and a device is a first-class principal with its own credential and its own explicit permissions. It has no email, no password, and no row in the identity tables, and it satisfies the `authenticated` baseline never, so every route that settles for "somebody is signed in" stays closed to it. Device permissions live in their own table because ekklesia_core_grant.user_id is a non-null foreign key into the user table and making it polymorphic would rewrite the platform's central authorization record to serve one narrow case. That is a schema decision, not a second decision point: the evaluator gained one branch, so a device is allowed or denied by the same function, with the same deny-by-default, as anyone else — with no owner path it could reach and no baseline that stands in for a grant. The six-digit code is not the credential. It is printed across a screen in a public hallway, so it is treated as public: it identifies a request to an administrator and is worth nothing alone. Collecting the credential also requires a 256-bit claim secret held only in the requesting browser's HttpOnly cookie, and approving requires the restricted core.devices.manage permission. Without that split, reading a code off a wall would hand over the screen's identity. The permission a pairing asks for is read from the module's validated display declaration, never from the request, so a browser cannot ask to be granted core.devices.manage or another module's permission. Approval grants exactly that one permission. Credentials are stored only as SHA-256; the raw value exists in the Set-Cookie that issues it and the device's own cookie jar, and is never logged, returned in JSON, or placed in a URL. The cookie is HttpOnly, so the module display code running in that same page cannot read it. Revocation is a server-side column checked on every principal resolution, and re-pairing mints a new identity so an old credential can never come back. State transitions are conditional updates, so one code cannot be approved twice or claimed into two credentials under a race. /api/v1/principal still reports a device as anonymous: it is what the Dashboard uses to decide whether a person is signed in. Displays read their viewer from the descriptor instead, which already performed the authorization — so displays are descriptor-first while the Dashboard stays principal-first, and neither infers an identity by elimination. Proven end to end against real PostgreSQL and real HTTP: an unpaired screen shows a code, an owner approves it, the device opens the display descriptor and a realtime stream, and revocation closes both while the device still holds its cookie. An already-open SSE stream is bounded by realtime's existing five-minute reconnect rather than closed instantly, and that bound is documented rather than called immediate. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <[email protected]>
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@@ -544,6 +544,44 @@ is **where it can be invoked**, not a weaker policy:
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It deliberately does not solve creating *additional* users or owners. That is user administration,
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which does not exist yet.
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### A display device is a principal, not a person and not a shortcut
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An unattended screen has its own identity, paired by an administrator and revocable by one
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([ADR 0036](../architecture/decisions/0036-managed-device-identity-and-pairing.md)). What makes that
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safe is what it is *not* allowed to be:
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- **Not a user.** No device row exists in the identity tables and no device has an email or a
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password. A device satisfies the `authenticated` baseline **never**, so every route that settles
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for "somebody is signed in" stays closed to a television.
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- **Not a bypass.** Device authority is decided by the same `createAuthorizationEvaluator` as
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everyone else's, with the same deny-by-default. There is no device branch that returns allowed
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before consulting an explicit permission, and no device is ever a platform owner.
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- **Not broadly granted.** Approval grants exactly the one display permission the host derived from
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the module's own validated display declaration. A browser cannot ask for a permission of its
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choosing, and a device paired for one display has no authority over another.
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- **Not a Dashboard login.** `/api/v1/principal` reports a device as anonymous, and the shell tests
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for `=== "authenticated"` rather than "not anonymous". A device cookie cannot open the Dashboard.
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- **Not the pairing code.** The six-digit code is displayed on a wall and is treated as public. It
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identifies a request to an administrator; it never yields a credential. Collecting the credential
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additionally requires the HttpOnly claim cookie only the requesting browser holds, so reading a
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code off a screen is worth nothing.
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- **Not stored in a usable form.** The server keeps SHA-256 of the credential. The raw value exists
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only in the `Set-Cookie` that issues it and in the device's own cookie jar; it is never logged, put
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in a query string, returned in JSON, or written to `localStorage`. The cookie is `HttpOnly`, so the
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module display code running in that very page cannot read it.
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- **Not revocable only at the browser.** Revocation is a server-side column checked on every
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principal resolution. A revoked screen keeps its cookie and stops working; re-pairing creates a
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**new** identity, so an old credential can never be reactivated.
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Approval, listing, and revocation require the restricted `core.devices.manage` permission and an
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exact trusted `Origin`, exactly like every other Core mutation. A device cannot approve a pairing —
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including its own.
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**Bounded, not instantaneous.** A revoked device fails its next request and its next realtime
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connection immediately, but an already-open SSE stream is not torn down at that moment: realtime's
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five-minute forced reconnect is the upper bound on how long a just-revoked screen can keep receiving
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a channel. That window is stated rather than described as instant.
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### Rate limiting is per-process today
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Better Auth's authentication rate limiter is **in-memory and per API process**. That is acceptable
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