feat: give display devices their own paired identity #35

2026-08-24T04:43:31Z

Zayin_Admin commented

2026-08-24 04:43:31 +00:00

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]

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]>

Zayin_Admin added 1 commit 2026-08-24 04:43:31 +00:00

feat: give display devices their own paired identity

CI / verify (pull_request) Successful in 40s

Details

CI / infrastructure-smoke (pull_request) Successful in 21s

Details

CI / migration-smoke (pull_request) Successful in 1m22s

Details

80189c8ae2

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]>

Zayin_Admin merged commit ba32499456 into main

2026-08-24 05:28:41 +00:00

Zayin_Admin deleted branch phase-7b/device-pairing

2026-08-24 05:28:41 +00:00

Sign in to join this conversation.

1 Participants

Notifications

Due Date

No due date set.

Dependencies

No dependencies set.

Reference: Zayin/Ekklesia#35