The platform has had a complete story for one module using another's
*backend* since ADR 0006 — capabilities, versioned ranges, provider
registration. It has had none at all for one module using another's *browser*
code, and every workaround is wrong in a way that matters: a consumer cannot
import a peer module, it cannot re-implement a renderer for a domain it does
not own, and a second `entrypoints` role would put the platform in charge of
deciding when a slot inside someone else's screen should be filled.
Add a generic browser contribution. `manifestVersion: 7` declares one:
namespaced id, its own version, a target capability, a compatible range, and
one artifact. That is the complete list, and the omissions are the decision —
no payload schema, slot, ordering, or rendering hint exists anywhere, so Core
cannot learn what a slide is because the declaration cannot express it.
Discovery resolves a contribution artifact through the *identical* loop every
other compiled entrypoint uses, inheriting the path, containment, symlink,
extension, and file-kind checks rather than getting a weaker copy of them. The
registry publishes one only when another eligible module provides the target
capability within the declared range; otherwise it is absent rather than
mounted and broken. `apps/api` serves it as a sibling of the artifact and
display routes, with the same policy: three lookup keys, one exact match, one
already-validated path, and one indistinguishable 404 for unknown, undeclared,
stale, and incompatible alike.
A consumer discovers through the host, never through a URL. Its descriptor
carries identity, version, and capability; the URL stays server-side and is
resolved exactly as `api.request("records")` is. A module can only ever see
contributions aimed at a capability it itself provides, and cannot name its
way to anything else — a mount for a withheld id fails without fetching.
The consumer owns the domain contract entirely. Input is opaque JSON, checked
structurally so a Date, a function, a cycle, or `undefined` fails at the
boundary rather than vanishing somewhere far from the mistake, and checked for
nothing else. A contributed renderer receives its own id and that input: no
API client, realtime, principal, configuration, database, storage, or
credential. Loading one grants its module nothing.
The contribution ABI is versioned separately from the module UI ABI, because
the two have different shapes and lifecycles and coupling them would force
every module to rebuild whenever either moved. It supports asynchronous
readiness, update-without-remount (a screen that remounted per tick would
restart animations and reload media), deterministic cleanup in a `finally`,
and sanitized failure that never carries the consumer's domain data. Each
renderer mounts in its own isolated root with its own stylesheet.
The template now declares a contribution, so `pnpm build` exercises the whole
authoring path, and the shell suite drives the full relationship — one module
discovering, mounting, updating, and unmounting another's React renderer with
neither importing the other.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <[email protected]>
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]>
ekklesia