# Authorization Phase 4C establishes Core's authorization foundation and wires it into `apps/api` over HTTP. Phase 5A extends that same system so an installed module's declared permissions are enforced and grantable through the identical mechanism as Core's own. This page covers all of it: the schema/evaluator/store/registry Core owns, the platform-owner bootstrap operation, the enforcement/endpoints `apps/api` exposes, and how module manifests contribute to the one platform permission registry. See [Identity](identity.md) for the identity foundation this builds on, [API](api.md) for the HTTP transport it is mounted into, [Module development](../module-development/README.md) for the manifest shape that declares module permissions, and [ADR 0013](../architecture/decisions/0013-core-authorization-and-owner-bootstrap.md) / [ADR 0014](../architecture/decisions/0014-module-permission-declarations-and-platform-registry.md) for the durable architectural decisions this page describes in more implementation detail. ## What this is, and is not An operator can bootstrap exactly one platform owner for a deployment; a platform owner (or anyone they delegate to) can create, list, and revoke *explicit* authorization grants over HTTP for any registered permission, Core-owned or module-owned; and every enforced route fails closed on infrastructure trouble instead of silently allowing or denying. It is **not** possible to manage roles, groups, teams, or tenants; there is no owner-management HTTP endpoint (revoking or re-granting platform-owner status is not exposed at all); there are no service accounts or API tokens, so only cookie-authenticated browser callers can reach the mutation routes; a module cannot yet mount its own HTTP routes; and relationship-derived grants (for example, automatic access from a roster assignment) cannot yet be created by anything in this repository — the generic grants API structurally cannot create or revoke them either. ## Core authorization schema and store Established as a prior checkpoint on this branch (`ekklesia_core_platform_owner`, `ekklesia_core_grant`, `ekklesia_core_authorization_audit`; `AuthorizationEvaluator`, `AuthorizationStore`; `@ekklesia/contracts`'s `PermissionId`/`GrantId`/`AuthorizationScope` branded types). This page does not restate that design — read `core/src/authorization/schema.ts`, `evaluator.ts`, and `store.ts` directly for it. This page covers what pass 2 added on top: the permission registry, the bootstrap operation, and HTTP enforcement. ## Permission registry `PermissionDeclaration` (`packages/contracts/src/authorization.ts`) is the one authoritative, strict Zod-validated shape of a *registered declaration* — exactly `{id, baseline, description}`, nothing more — shared by Core's authorization registry and a module manifest's `permissions` array. Core does not declare its own separate interface for this; `core/src/authorization/permissions.ts` imports and re-exports the contracts type so existing `@ekklesia/core/authorization` consumers keep importing it from the same place. `id` is a branded `PermissionId`, `baseline` is `public`/`authenticated`/`restricted`, and `description` is required, trimmed, non-empty operator and audit-facing text up to 240 characters — informational only; nothing in authorization reads or interprets it. `core/src/authorization/permissions.ts` defines the smallest possible registry on top of that shape: an immutable, composition-time-built `PermissionRegistry` distinguishing a *registered* declaration from a merely well-formed `PermissionId` string. Two properties matter: - **Duplicate declarations fail at composition time.** `createPermissionRegistry` throws `PermissionRegistryError` (`PERMISSION_REGISTRY_DUPLICATE_DECLARATION`) if the same permission id is declared twice — this can only happen while wiring the registry itself, not at request time. - **Unknown permissions fail closed at lookup time.** `registry.get(permissionId)` and `registry.has(permissionId)` both re-validate their input (`safeParsePermissionId` internally) and return `undefined`/`false` for anything malformed or simply not registered — there is no "trust this permission id because it looks right" path. Permission matching is always exact string equality, both in the registry and in the evaluator's grant lookup — there is no wildcard, prefix, or namespace-inheritance matching anywhere; the required dot-namespacing in a `PermissionId` (`core.authorization.grants.manage`, `calendar.events.read`) is purely a naming convention for readability and collision-avoidance. `CORE_PERMISSION_REGISTRY` is Core's own registry, currently declaring exactly one permission, and remains what Core-only code and existing tests use directly. `CORE_PERMISSION_DECLARATIONS` is the same declarations exported separately in deeply immutable form, for the module composition helper below to build on without reconstructing Core's own list: | Permission | Baseline | Description | | --- | --- | --- | | `core.authorization.grants.manage` | `restricted` | Create, list, and revoke another user's explicit authorization grants. | ## Module permission composition A module manifest's `permissions` array (`manifestVersion: 3`, [Module development](../module-development/README.md#canonical-manifest)) declares permissions in the exact same `PermissionDeclaration` shape — but declaring one there only proves it is well-formed and correctly namespaced under the module's own id; it does not, by itself, register anything. `composePlatformPermissionRegistry` (`core/src/modules/permissions.ts`) is the trusted composer: given an already-discovered module list (for example `discoverModules`'s result), it builds one combined `PermissionRegistry` from `CORE_PERMISSION_DECLARATIONS` followed by every module's declarations, in discovery order, using the same `createPermissionRegistry` constructor — not a second registry implementation. Declaration order is deterministic: Core first, then each module in the order it appears in the supplied list, then each module's own declarations in manifest-array order. A duplicate exact permission id anywhere in that combined list fails composition the same way a duplicate would fail `createPermissionRegistry` directly — since a permission id must start with its own module's id, this is only reachable across two entries that share the same module id, which real discovery already rules out (`MODULE_ID_DUPLICATE`); composition still re-derives the check rather than trusting that guarantee alone. `core.*` is reserved for Core's own permissions. A discovered module contributing any `core.`-prefixed permission id fails composition with `ModulePermissionCompositionError` (`MODULE_PERMISSION_RESERVED_NAMESPACE`) before duplicate detection ever runs — since every Core-owned id is itself `core.`-prefixed, this is what actually catches a module attempting to collide with a Core-owned id specifically, regardless of that module's own id and regardless of whether the id happens to exactly match an existing declaration. Composition itself performs no filesystem, environment, database, network, or module-code operation — it is pure, synchronous, in-memory composition over data a caller already discovered and validated (`core/src/authorization` and `core/src/modules` remain independent of each other in the other direction: authorization never imports module discovery or runtime, only the module integration layer depends on authorization). ## API startup: discovery, composition, and enforcement `apps/api` builds its production permission registry from the complete installed-module inventory every time it starts, in a fixed order, before anything else: 1. Resolve module-discovery configuration (the repository's `modules/` directory, and the platform/Module SDK versions from their own `package.json` files). 2. Discover installed modules (`discoverModules`). 3. Compose the platform permission registry (`composePlatformPermissionRegistry`). 4. Construct the shared PostgreSQL pool. 5. Construct Identity and Authorization. 6. Create the Hono application, injecting the composed registry. 7. Bind the HTTP server. `apps/api/src/platform-permissions.ts`'s `composeStartupPermissionRegistry` performs steps 1–3. Discovery and composition happen strictly before any pool, Better Auth instance, or HTTP server exists, so a failure there — an invalid manifest, a broken dependency graph, a module claiming the reserved `core.*` namespace, or a duplicate permission declaration — leaves nothing to close: it propagates directly out of `startApi()`, and startup never falls back to `CORE_PERMISSION_REGISTRY` or any Core-only registry. The repository root is resolved from this compiled/source file's own location (two directories up from `apps/api/dist/*.js` or `apps/api/src/*.ts`, which sit at identical depth), never `process.cwd()` — a package-scoped test run has `apps/api` as its working directory, which would otherwise point discovery at the wrong `modules/` directory. The resulting registry is a **static, immutable snapshot** taken once at startup. There is no hot installation, removal, or dynamic mutation of installed modules or their permissions while the process is running — an installed-module change (add, remove, or edit a manifest) takes effect only on the next API restart. `createApiApp` requires this registry as part of its injected authorization options; `requirePermission` and the explicit-grant routes (`GET/POST /api/v1/grants`, `POST /api/v1/grants/:grantId/revoke`) consult exactly the same registry Core's own `core.authorization.grants.manage` permission is registered in, so a module-owned permission and Core's own are enforced, and grantable, through the identical mechanism — there is no module-specific enforcement path. Removing a module from the next startup's discovered inventory makes its permission unknown to new authorization checks and new grants (a well-formed but unregistered permission denies exactly as before, including on `POST /api/v1/grants`, which checks the registry explicitly before calling the store); it never deletes, revokes, or otherwise modifies a historical grant or audit row already recorded for that permission. A previously granted, still-unrevoked explicit grant for a now-uninstalled module's permission remains visible through `GET /api/v1/grants` and simply stops being something a `restricted`-baseline authorization check can newly succeed against. Listing and explicit revocation (`POST /api/v1/grants/:grantId/revoke`) are unaffected either way: neither route consults the registry for a grant that already exists — revocation is keyed to the grant's own id and source kind, not to whether its permission is currently registered — so a manager can still revoke a historical grant for a now-unregistered permission. Module HTTP route registration (a module owning its own mounted endpoints) and relationship-derived grant creation both remain deferred, unrelated slices — this work only makes a module's *declared* permission usable through Core's existing, generic explicit-grant HTTP API and enforcement middleware. ## Doctor and modules:validate `pnpm doctor`'s `modules.permissions` check composes the platform permission registry from the same already-discovered module list `modules.discovery`/`modules.dependencies` already produced — it never re-discovers modules itself. A successful composition reports a pass with a safe declaration count (for example `1 permission registered` with zero installed modules, since Core's own declaration is always present); zero installed modules still composes successfully. If module discovery itself failed, the check is skipped, matching the existing schema/migration checks' pattern; if discovery succeeded but composition failed, schema and migration checks still run normally — they are independent diagnostics that do not depend on the permission registry. A reserved-namespace violation (`ModulePermissionCompositionError`, `MODULE_PERMISSION_RESERVED_NAMESPACE`) and a generic duplicate declaration (`PermissionRegistryError`, `PERMISSION_REGISTRY_DUPLICATE_DECLARATION`) are reported as distinct failure details — a reserved `core.*` claim is never described as an ordinary duplicate, even though (see above) a module attempting to exactly collide with a Core-owned id always surfaces as the reserved-namespace failure specifically. Composition requires no database and never imports or executes a module's server entrypoint. `pnpm modules:validate` composes the same registry from its own already-discovered modules for the identical reason: a manifest that is otherwise structurally valid but claims the `core.*` namespace, or duplicates a permission id, now fails validation before that module is considered installable. ### Two layers, not one: shape versus registration `createAuthorizationEvaluator` (`core/src/authorization/evaluator.ts`) has no registry and is never given one — it independently re-validates `permission`, `baseline`, and `scope` as a pure shape check (`safeParsePermissionId`/`permissionBaselineSchema`/`safeParseAuthorizationScope`) and denies a malformed value under **every** baseline, including `public` and `authenticated`, before any baseline is allowed to return an allowed decision. This is defense in depth for a future caller that reaches the evaluator directly, not a substitute for the registry: the evaluator has no way to tell a well-formed-but-unregistered permission id (for example a plausible-looking `calendar.events.read` that nothing has ever declared) from a genuinely registered one — it can only reject what is not even shaped like a `PermissionId` at all. *Registration* — "does this permission actually exist" — is exclusively the registry's responsibility, consulted by every trusted caller before the evaluator ever runs: `requirePermission` (`apps/api/src/authorization-middleware.ts`) looks up the *caller's own* required permission (for example `core.authorization.grants.manage`, always a hardcoded route constant, never client-supplied) in the registry before resolving a principal or evaluating anything; `POST /api/v1/grants` (`apps/api/src/grants-routes.ts`) separately looks up the *target* permission being granted — the one named in the request body — in the same registry, after body shape-validation and before ever calling `store.createGrant`, so a caller cannot create a dormant grant for an invented permission id that might later become effective the moment someone actually registers it. A malformed target permission (fails `PermissionId` shape validation) still resolves to the body-level `400 {"code":"INVALID_REQUEST"}` documented below, unchanged; a well-formed but unregistered target permission instead receives the identical sanitized `403 {"code":"AUTHORIZATION_DENIED"}` a genuinely denied caller would, so that response never reveals whether the caller was denied or the permission was simply never registered. ## Platform-owner bootstrap There is no "first user becomes owner" inference anywhere in this repository, and no HTTP endpoint exposes bootstrap. The only way to establish a platform owner is the local CLI command: ```bash pnpm migrations:apply # the database must already be migrated DATABASE_URL=postgresql://... pnpm authorization:bootstrap-owner -- \ --user-id \ --confirm-user-id ``` `DATABASE_URL` is read only when the command actually executes (never merely by importing the CLI module — proved by `core/tests/cli-bootstrap-platform-owner.test.ts`), and it is never printed, logged, or included in any error. `--user-id` and `--confirm-user-id` must match exactly, checked before the id is even parsed as a valid `EkklesiaUserId` — this command never infers a target from signup order or "the only user in the database"; the operator must name the exact, opaque id twice. ### Bootstrap is permanently single-use `core/src/authorization/bootstrap.ts`'s `bootstrapPlatformOwner(db, {userId})` is a dedicated, Hono-independent Core operation — deliberately *not* a composition of "check for an owner, then call the existing grant function." "Already consumed" means **any row has ever existed** in `ekklesia_core_platform_owner`, for any user, including one whose `revoked_at` is set. There is no owner-management flow in this slice that clears that state; a revoked owner staying revoked (and bootstrap staying consumed) is intentional here. The single-use check, the target user's existence check, the owner-grant insert, and its audit entry are all one PostgreSQL transaction. The very first statement inside that transaction is a transaction-scoped advisory lock: ```sql select pg_advisory_xact_lock(1500000001, 1500000002) ``` This lock key pair is distinct from the migration runner's own advisory lock (`core/src/migrations/postgres-database.ts`), so bootstrap serialization can never collide with or be blocked by unrelated migration locking. `pg_advisory_xact_lock` releases automatically on commit or rollback, so no manual unlock path is needed even when the transaction fails partway. Two concurrent bootstrap attempts serialize on this lock: the second caller blocks until the first's transaction commits or rolls back, then re-evaluates the "does any owner row exist" check against now-current state — so exactly one of two concurrent attempts ever succeeds, proved live against real PostgreSQL in `core/tests/authorization-bootstrap.integration.ts` (`Promise.allSettled` on two simultaneous calls; asserts exactly one `fulfilled`, exactly one `rejected` with `PLATFORM_OWNER_BOOTSTRAP_ALREADY_CONSUMED`, exactly one owner row, exactly one audit row). A failed target-user lookup, an audit-insert failure, or losing the concurrency race all roll back the entire transaction — there is no partial state where an owner row exists without its audit entry, or vice versa. The audit entry for a bootstrap grant always uses a fixed, sanitized, non-user actor identity — never derived from any caller input — so an auditor can tell a given `platform_owner.grant` row came specifically from this command rather than from a future owner-management flow: | Field | Value | | --- | --- | | `actor_type` | `system` | | `actor_id` | `authorization-bootstrap-cli` | ### Error codes `PlatformOwnerBootstrapError` never carries the underlying database error, SQL text, host, port, path, or stack — only a stable `code` and a fixed message: | Code | Meaning | | --- | --- | | `PLATFORM_OWNER_BOOTSTRAP_ALREADY_CONSUMED` | A platform-owner row already exists (any user, revoked or not). | | `PLATFORM_OWNER_BOOTSTRAP_USER_NOT_FOUND` | `--user-id` does not match an existing identity user. | | `PLATFORM_OWNER_BOOTSTRAP_FAILED` | Any other failure (database/infrastructure). | ## HTTP authorization enforcement `apps/api/src/authorization-middleware.ts` exports `requirePermission(options, permissionId)`, a Hono middleware factory reused by every protected route: 1. Looks up `permissionId` in the trusted, server-side `PermissionRegistry` (never a client-supplied baseline) — an unregistered permission id fails closed with `403` before the principal is even resolved. In today's wiring only hard-coded registered constants are ever passed by route code, but the check stays live per-request as defense in depth rather than being trusted once at composition time. 2. Resolves the principal exclusively through the same server-side identity runtime `/api/v1/principal` already uses (`EkklesiaIdentityRuntime.resolvePrincipal`) — nothing here ever trusts a client-supplied claim about identity. 3. Calls the injected `AuthorizationEvaluator` with the registry's baseline and permission for that principal (platform owners pass through the evaluator's owner bypass here — this is how delegation to `core.authorization.grants.manage` recipients also works, without a second code path). 4. On success, stores the resolved `EkklesiaPrincipal` (Core's narrow `{kind, userId}` — never a Better Auth session/user object) on the Hono context via `c.set`, readable by the route through `getAuthorizedPrincipal(c)`. This is a deliberately narrow exception to the "no generalized session/user object in Hono context" concern [ADR 0011](../architecture/decisions/0011-identity-http-transport-and-public-enrollment.md) raised — only this already-public-safe principal shape is ever set. A denied decision and an unregistered permission id both return a sanitized `403 {"code":"AUTHORIZATION_DENIED"}`. A genuine infrastructure failure — principal resolution, evaluation, or the database underneath either — is never folded into that `403`; it returns a sanitized `503` instead (`PRINCIPAL_RESOLUTION_FAILED` or `AUTHORIZATION_EVALUATION_FAILED`), mirroring `/api/v1/principal`'s existing rule that "could not be determined" must never look like "no permission." Neither response ever reveals whether a grant or owner row exists for the caller. ### Origin enforcement for mutations `requireTrustedOrigin(trustedOrigins)` requires an exact match against the same `EKKLESIA_IDENTITY_TRUSTED_ORIGINS` set the API already uses for CORS and Better Auth's own checks (see [API](api.md#origin-cors-and-cookies)) — a missing or untrusted `Origin` header is rejected with `403 {"code":"UNTRUSTED_ORIGIN"}` before the permission check or the route handler ever runs. This exists because CORS response headers alone are not CSRF protection: they only stop a browser from *reading* a cross-origin response, not from *sending* the state-changing request in the first place. Every grants mutation route (`POST /api/v1/grants`, `POST /api/v1/grants/:grantId/revoke`) requires this; the read-only list route does not. Non-browser, non-cookie automation (service accounts/API tokens) is out of scope for this slice and has no way to satisfy this check yet. ## Explicit-grant HTTP API Mounted at the API's root by `apps/api/src/grants-routes.ts`. Every route requires `core.authorization.grants.manage`. All three routes only ever act on *explicit* grants — the generic HTTP API structurally cannot create or revoke a relationship-derived grant. | Route | Origin required | Notes | | --- | --- | --- | | `GET /api/v1/grants?userId=` | No | Lists the subject's explicit grants only (`sourceKind: "explicit"` filter applied server-side). | | `POST /api/v1/grants` | Yes | Creates a new explicit grant. | | `POST /api/v1/grants/:grantId/revoke` | Yes | Revokes an explicit grant without deleting it. | ### `POST /api/v1/grants` request body Only four keys are accepted; any other key present (`actor`, `owner`, `isOwner`, `sourceKind`, `sourceRef`, `id`, `createdAt`, `revokedAt`, `createdByActorId`, `effectivePermissions`, or anything else) makes the **entire body** invalid rather than being silently dropped, so a caller cannot smuggle a server-derived field through a request that otherwise looks well-formed: | Field | Required | Notes | | --- | --- | --- | | `subjectUserId` | Yes | Must parse as a valid `EkklesiaUserId`. | | `permission` | Yes | Must parse as a valid `PermissionId` **and** be registered in the running API's composed platform registry (Core's own declarations plus every installed module's — see [API startup](#api-startup-discovery-composition-and-enforcement)). A malformed value is a `400`; a well-formed but unregistered one is a `403`. | | `scope` | No | Must parse as a valid, non-empty `AuthorizationScope` if present. | | `expiresAt` | No | An ISO date string if present. | The server always derives, and the request body can never supply: the grant id, `sourceKind` (always `"explicit"`), the actor (always the authenticated caller, via `createUserActor(principal.userId)`), and all audit/timestamp fields. ### Response shapes A grant, wherever returned: ```json { "id": "...", "userId": "...", "permission": "core.authorization.grants.manage", "scope": null, "sourceKind": "explicit", "createdAt": "2026-07-23T00:00:00.000Z", "expiresAt": null, "revokedAt": null } ``` `GET /api/v1/grants` → `200 {"grants": [...]}`. `POST /api/v1/grants` → `201 {"grant": {...}}`. `POST /api/v1/grants/:grantId/revoke` → `200 {"success": true}`. ### Status-code mapping | Status | When | | --- | --- | | `200` / `201` | Success. | | `400 {"code":"INVALID_REQUEST"}` | Malformed query/body/param (including a disallowed extra field). | | `403 {"code":"AUTHORIZATION_DENIED"}` | Caller lacks `core.authorization.grants.manage`; the caller's own required permission id was unregistered; or, for `POST /api/v1/grants`, the well-formed *target* permission named in the body is not registered. | | `403 {"code":"UNTRUSTED_ORIGIN"}` | Missing or untrusted `Origin` on a mutation route. | | `404 {"code":"AUTHORIZATION_GRANT_NOT_FOUND"}` | The targeted grant id does not exist as an *explicit* grant — this is also what revoking a real relationship-derived grant's id looks like, indistinguishably. | | `503` | Principal resolution, evaluation, or store failure (`PRINCIPAL_RESOLUTION_FAILED`, `AUTHORIZATION_EVALUATION_FAILED`, or an `AuthorizationStoreError` code). | Every response sets `Cache-Control: no-store`. ## Shared database composition `apps/api/src/database.ts`'s `createApiDatabase(databaseUrl, options)` is the one place `apps/api` touches PostgreSQL connection setup. It constructs exactly one validated, timeout-bounded `pg.Pool` (`createValidatedPostgresPool`, `@ekklesia/core/database`) and wraps it with two independent typed Drizzle views — `createIdentityDrizzleView(pool)` and `createAuthorizationDrizzleView(pool)` — rather than two separate pools. `close()` on the returned handle is the only thing that ever calls `pool.end()`; neither domain view owns or closes the pool itself. `apps/api/src/server.ts` calls `createApiDatabase` once during `startApi()`, builds the identity runtime from `.identity` and the `AuthorizationStore`/`AuthorizationEvaluator` from `.authorization` off that same handle, and closes the handle exactly once — on graceful shutdown, and on any startup failure after the pool was already constructed (mirroring the existing identity-only failure-cleanup path from [API](api.md#graceful-shutdown)). The existing per-domain factories (`createIdentityDrizzleDatabase`, `createAuthorizationDrizzleDatabase`), which each construct and own a private pool, are unaffected and remain available for standalone/testable use — the CLI bootstrap command uses `createAuthorizationDrizzleDatabase` directly for exactly that reason, since it only ever needs the authorization schema and has no reason to share a pool with anything else. `apps/api/tests/lifecycle.test.ts` proves this composition explicitly: exactly one `new Pool(...)` call for a full `startApi()` lifecycle (covering both identity and authorization usage), and exactly one `pool.end()` call regardless of how many concurrent `shutdown()` callers there are or whether the failure happened during startup. ## Tests - `core/tests/authorization-permissions.test.ts` — registry construction, duplicate-declaration rejection, fail-closed lookup, `CORE_PERMISSION_REGISTRY`/`CORE_PERMISSION_DECLARATIONS` contents and immutability. - `packages/contracts/tests/authorization.test.ts` — `PermissionDeclaration` shape validation: every baseline, unknown-property/missing-baseline/invalid-baseline/blank-or-oversized-description rejection, malformed permission id rejection. - `packages/contracts/tests/module-manifest.test.ts` — `manifestVersion: 3` acceptance and version 2/string-array rejection, per-declaration validation (mirroring the contracts-level cases above), module-namespace enforcement, duplicate permission id at its exact `permissions[index].id` issue path, and default-empty-list isolation across separate parses. - `core/tests/module-permissions.test.ts` — `composePlatformPermissionRegistry`: Core-only and Core-plus-modules composition, deterministic ordering, exact baseline/description preservation, duplicate rejection, reserved `core.*` namespace rejection, unknown-permission denial once a module is absent from the supplied list, and input/output immutability with no I/O. - `core/tests/database-pool.test.ts` — shared pool validation/construction (mirrors the existing per-domain database tests). - `core/tests/authorization-bootstrap.test.ts` — import safety, `PlatformOwnerBootstrapError` behavior. - `core/tests/cli-bootstrap-platform-owner.test.ts` — the CLI never constructs a pool merely by being imported. - `core/tests/authorization-bootstrap.integration.ts` (live PostgreSQL) — successful bootstrap and its audit row, nonexistent-user rollback, second-bootstrap rejection, a revoked historical owner still blocking reuse, and the concurrency scenario described above. - `apps/api/tests/authorization-middleware.test.ts` — allow/deny/unregistered/infrastructure- failure paths for `requirePermission`, and `requireTrustedOrigin`'s allow/reject behavior; a dedicated block proves `requirePermission` enforces module-owned `public`/`authenticated`/ `restricted` declarations identically to Core's own, that the evaluator receives the registry's exact id/baseline, and that an absent module permission denies before principal resolution or evaluator access — the shared mechanism, not a module-specific code path. - `core/tests/doctor.test.ts` / `core/tests/doctor-report.test.ts` — the `modules.permissions` check: passing count (including zero installed modules), reuse of the already-discovered module list (no rediscovery), distinct reserved-namespace vs. generic-duplicate failure detail, an unexpected-exception fallback to a fixed generic detail, schema/migration checks continuing independently after a composition failure, and the exact documented terminal report shape. - `apps/api/tests/grants-routes.test.ts` — all three routes' allow/deny paths, disallowed-field and malformed-field rejection, a well-formed but unregistered target permission rejected with `403` and `store.createGrant` never called, exact server-derived-argument assertions, sourceKind-filtered revoke returning 404 for a non-explicit grant, origin enforcement, and store-error mapping. - `apps/api/tests/lifecycle.test.ts` — shared-pool-closes-exactly-once coverage described above, plus module-permission composition at startup: discovery/composition run before any pool, Better Auth instance, or HTTP server is constructed; a discovery failure, a reserved-namespace failure, and a generic duplicate-declaration failure each create zero pools/Better Auth instances/servers and remain distinguishable from one another; zero installed modules still succeeds; and import safety for `platform-permissions.ts`. - `core/tests/authorization-evaluator.test.ts` — includes a malformed permission id denying under every baseline (`public`, `authenticated`, `restricted`), never just `restricted`, and never consulting the grant or platform-owner ports for `public`/`authenticated`. - `apps/api/tests/api-http.integration.ts` (live PostgreSQL) — end-to-end: anonymous/non-owner denial, real bootstrap against the running API's own database, owner authority over the HTTP grants API, the owner delegating `core.authorization.grants.manage` to another account and that account then managing grants as a non-owner, a well-formed but unregistered target permission rejected with `403` (with no grant or audit row written) even for a caller with full grant-management authority, a create/list/revoke cycle with audit-trail verification (using `core.authorization.grants.manage` itself as the granted permission), disallowed-field rejection, missing/untrusted-origin rejection, a real relationship-derived grant proven invisible to LIST and unreachable by REVOKE, and an infrastructure-failure scenario (database dropped out from under a live session) asserting a `503` rather than a false `403` or `200`. - `apps/api/tests/api-http.integration.ts`, "installed module permission end-to-end" (live PostgreSQL) — a real temporary module fixture (structurally valid manifest, a server entrypoint that throws if ever imported) proves the complete chain against a real API process and real Doctor run: Doctor recognizes the installed module and passes permission composition without executing its entrypoint; API startup discovers the fixture and makes its declared permission enforceable; a bootstrapped platform owner creates a real explicit grant for the module's permission with an atomic audit row recorded under its exact declared id; a well-formed permission absent from the composed registry is rejected with no grant or audit write; and, after a clean shutdown and restart with the module absent, the same permission can no longer be newly granted while the earlier, still-unrevoked grant remains listed — with ordinary identity HTTP behavior (sign-up, sign-in, principal resolution) unaffected throughout. Run the focused suites: ```bash pnpm --filter @ekklesia/core test pnpm --filter @ekklesia/api test pnpm test:migrations:integration # requires Docker ``` ## Next phase Deliberately deferred, unrelated slices — see [ADR 0014](../architecture/decisions/0014-module-permission-declarations-and-platform-registry.md#deferred) for the complete list: module HTTP route-registration contracts (a module mounting its own endpoints), a module runtime-context authorization service, relationship-derived grant creation itself (a roster or similar module operation, not the generic grants API), reinstall/reactivation policy for a permission whose owning module was previously removed, roles/groups/teams/tenants, an owner-management HTTP endpoint, and service accounts/API tokens for non-browser automation.