feat: create the initial platform owner from an operator command
A fresh production installation deadlocked. ADR 0034 gave Ekklesia a login
page and ADR 0019 gave it a single-use platform-owner bootstrap, but that
bootstrap grants ownership to a user id that already exists and has no way
to bring one into being. Public signup is disabled by default and
production cannot enable it at all, so a newly deployed instance had a
login page, no account, and no supported way to create one — only hand-
written SQL or briefly opening public registration.
pnpm identity:create-initial-owner -- --email [email protected]
creates the identity and grants it ownership, in the same shape as the
other operator commands: trusted local tooling, reachable only by someone
who already holds the database credentials, serving no HTTP route. No
/signup, /register, or /setup route is added, no bootstrap endpoint, and
no setup token; public signup stays disabled in every environment and a
test asserts a freshly bootstrapped deployment still refuses
/api/auth/sign-up/email.
The identity is created through Better Auth's own sign-up path, so
hashing, salting, normalization and the 8-128 bound are the identity
system's rather than a second implementation that could drift. Because the
server's instance refuses account creation, the command builds its own
in-process instance; nothing in apps/api imports it and the running
server's posture is untouched.
The sign-up result is verified rather than trusted. Better Auth returns a
fabricated success for an already-registered address — a user object whose
id was never persisted, database unchanged. That is correct enumeration
defence on a public endpoint and a trap here, so the identity is always
read back from the database and that read, not the response, is what the
grant uses.
An existing usable identity is adopted: ownership is granted and its
password left alone, reported as an adoption rather than a creation. This
is the recovery path for the one partial failure possible, since sign-up
commits on Better Auth's connection and the grant is a separate
transaction. A credential-less row is refused instead — making it an owner
would consume the single use on an identity nobody can authenticate as. A
password is never reset and an account is never taken over.
Whole invocations are serialized by an advisory lock on their own key, so
a race cannot leave a stray signable-in account behind; the grant's own
locked single-use transaction is unchanged. There is no --force or reset.
The password is prompted for invisibly or read from stdin, never from
argv (--password is refused with an explanation) and never from an
environment variable, so nothing about it becomes permanent deployment
configuration. The command needs DATABASE_URL and nothing else — verified
that sign-up needs no secret, base URL, or trusted origins, and that the
resulting account signs in through a separately configured server — so the
first owner can be created before TLS or DNS exist. It never migrates.
Proven end to end rather than at the database: a fresh installation is
bootstrapped, signed in through the real browser login transport with
signup disabled, its principal read, and used to open an owner-protected
resource that stays closed to anonymous callers.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <[email protected]>
This commit is contained in:
co-authored by
Claude Opus 5
parent
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commit
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@@ -262,6 +262,87 @@ roles/groups/teams/tenants model exists.
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Core's authorization foundation (platform owners, explicit grants, and an immutable permission
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registry) is covered separately in [Authorization](authorization.md). Its bootstrap command grants
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an existing identity; it does not create one. Because production signup is prohibited and no
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operator enrollment command exists, creating the initial production identity needed for owner
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bootstrap remains an explicit operational gap.
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an existing identity; it does not create one. Creating the *first* identity on a fresh installation
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is what `pnpm identity:create-initial-owner` is for — see below.
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## Creating the first platform owner
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A fresh installation has a login page and nothing to log in to. Public registration is disabled by
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default and production cannot enable it at all, so one explicit, operator-invoked command creates
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the initial identity and grants it platform ownership
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([ADR 0035](../architecture/decisions/0035-initial-platform-owner-bootstrap.md)):
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```bash
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pnpm migrations:apply # the schema must already exist; this command never migrates
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DATABASE_URL=postgresql://... pnpm identity:create-initial-owner -- --email [email protected]
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# Password: (typed invisibly)
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# Confirm password:
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# Initial platform owner created successfully.
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# Email: [email protected]
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# You can now sign in to the Ekklesia dashboard.
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```
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`--name` is optional and defaults to the email address; the identity model requires a display name,
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and asking for one that nobody can edit yet would be a question without a purpose.
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### The password never becomes an argument or a variable
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It is prompted for twice, invisibly, when a terminal is attached. `--password` is **refused with an
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explanation**, because a command-line argument is visible in shell history and to every process on
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the machine through the process list. For automated deployment the password is read from standard
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input:
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```bash
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printf '%s' "$PASSWORD" | pnpm identity:create-initial-owner -- --email [email protected]
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```
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**No environment variable is read for it, and none belongs in `.env`.** A bootstrap password is used
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once to create an account; it is not deployment configuration, and an environment variable is
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precisely the thing that quietly becomes permanent. Nothing prints the password, its length, a hash,
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a session token, or the database URL.
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### Required environment
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`DATABASE_URL`, and the same optional transport variables every other Core command honours
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(`NODE_ENV`, `EKKLESIA_DATABASE_TLS_MODE`, `EKKLESIA_DATABASE_CA`). Deliberately **not** the identity
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secret, trusted origins, or a public base URL: none is needed to create an account, so the first
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owner can be created on a freshly provisioned server before TLS or DNS exist.
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### Password and email rules are the identity system's own
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The 8–128 character bound and email validation are enforced by Better Auth through the same sign-up
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path a browser would use, not by a separate CLI policy that could drift from it. The address is
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normalized exactly as a browser sign-up normalizes it — stored lowercased — and the command reports
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the stored address, so the one you are told to sign in with is the one that exists.
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### It runs once
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Ownership bootstrap is permanently single-use (see
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[Authorization](authorization.md#bootstrap-is-permanently-single-use)). A second run is refused and:
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- creates no second owner,
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- changes no existing password,
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- creates no stray identity, even when a different address is supplied.
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### Rerun and recovery
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| situation | behaviour |
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| --- | --- |
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| Bootstrap already completed | Refused. Nothing changes. |
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| Identity exists, ownership was never granted | Ownership is granted to it and **its password is left unchanged**. Reported as an adoption, not a creation. |
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| A `user` row exists with no password (cannot sign in) | Refused, and bootstrap stays available — granting ownership to an identity nobody can authenticate as would consume the single use and leave the installation unusable. |
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| Identity created but the grant failed | Reported as incomplete. The identity is real and bootstrap is still available: run the identical command again with the same address to finish. |
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| Database unmigrated or unreachable | Refused with a clear message. The command never migrates. |
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Nothing is deleted automatically on failure: removing an account that was created successfully, on
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the strength of a later error, would destroy something an operator may need.
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### This is not signup
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There is no `/signup`, `/register`, or `/setup` route, no unauthenticated bootstrap endpoint, no
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temporary setup route, and no setup token. The login page stays login-only, and public registration
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stays disabled in every environment — an integration test asserts that a freshly bootstrapped
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deployment still refuses `POST /api/auth/sign-up/email`.
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Creating additional users or owners is not this command's job. That belongs to user administration,
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which does not exist yet.
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