ekklesiaandClaude Opus 5
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One canonical security document, linked from the README, platform architecture, and module-development guide, stating what the boundaries actually protect against — and, more importantly, what they do not. Installed modules are trusted compiled backend code. A module runs arbitrary JavaScript inside the API process and shares its PostgreSQL role and pool, so `ModuleDatabase.execute` gives it the API's full database authority over every table, including identity, grants, owner, bootstrap, and audit. Table prefixes, manifests, permission declarations, route validation, frozen contexts, typed facades, and the capability registry are correctness and coordination boundaries that assume a cooperative module; none of them constrains one that is not. There is no process, container, syscall, filesystem, network, database-role, schema, tenant, or resource sandbox between a module and Core, and the document says so in those words, along with what would have to be built before untrusted modules could be accepted. It also records the honest deployment state: Ekklesia is not deployed. There is no production instance, reverse proxy, public listener, or deployment automation anywhere in this repository, and no `.env` has ever been committed. The loopback listen default and the production signup refusal are real, but a config default is not a firewall, so the origin-reachability, proxy-overwrite, header-spoofing, and trusted-peer properties a public launch needs are written as a launch-blocking checklist rather than as guarantees. The per-process authentication limiter is described as exactly that, valid only while signup stays disabled and exactly one instance serves traffic. The CI section records the workflow's verified posture and deliberately stops there: a pull request can edit `runs-on`, so a workflow file cannot be the boundary, and the runner topology is not described as though it had been verified. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <[email protected]>
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Platform architecture
Ekklesia is a long-lived platform from which churches can compose many applications and user experiences. It begins as a modular monolith so contracts can stabilize before distribution is introduced.
Trust boundary. Installed modules are trusted compiled backend code, not sandboxed plugins: a module runs arbitrary JavaScript in the API process and shares its PostgreSQL role. The layering described below is a correctness and ownership boundary, not hostile-code isolation. See Security model and deployment trust boundaries.
Dependency model
The arrows below mean "depends on." Presentation and composition depend on stable lower-level contracts; infrastructure never learns individual feature names.
Surface Builder configuration -> Surfaces -> public capability contracts
^
|
HTTP/API and client contracts
|
Feature Modules -> Module SDK / platform contracts <- Core implementations
The four ownership layers are:
- Core orchestrates generic platform infrastructure: startup, identity, permissions, configuration, database connectivity, storage, events, jobs, module discovery, and lifecycle.
- Modules own backend domain behavior, data schemas, resources, actions, routes, events, permissions, and jobs.
- Surfaces own every presentation concern: components, renderers, layout, navigation, accessibility, interaction, branding, and client state.
- Surface Builder stores validated declarative composition. It selects capabilities and surface-owned renderers but contains neither executable code nor module business logic.
Modules do not own UI. For example, Calendar data, actions, and permissions will live in
modules/calendar; Calendar renderers for a dashboard or public website will live in those
surfaces.
Stable seams
- Modules use public SDK ports and injected Core services, never undocumented Core internals.
- Modules do not import another module's schema or private code. Integrations use public service contracts, capabilities, events, or APIs.
- Surfaces consume API/client and capability contracts, never feature-module packages.
- Core discovers feature modules generically. It contains no feature-specific imports or conditional branches.
- Deployable apps are thin composition roots and do not become domain-logic owners.
- Generated bootstrap artifacts may connect discovered entry points at the application edge; they do not become manually maintained Core registries.
Security invariants
- Authorization is enforced server-side.
- Secrets are isolated from public configuration and logs.
- Authentication tokens, private form content, prayer requests, and pastoral information are not logged.
- Sensitive actions are designed for auditability without copying sensitive content into audit records.
- Private objects use signed access and namespaced storage paths.
- Every network service starts from least-privilege and local-only development defaults.
Current implementation status
Implemented now: the Phase 1 repository and infrastructure foundation plus public module contracts, static versioned manifests, independent capability versions and dependency ranges, automatic filesystem discovery, compiled server loading, runtime-definition verification, staged capability registration, dependency-ordered startup and reverse shutdown, rollback, and a backend-only module template. Optional compiled schema entrypoints now contribute validated, namespaced module-owned Drizzle tables to a deterministic aggregate without connecting to a database. Optional module-owned Drizzle migration directories now produce an atomic dependency-ordered offline inventory with validated metadata, explicit destructive-change declarations, and exact SHA-256 checksums. Core can now compare that inventory with its fixed PostgreSQL history table, produce a read-only plan, and apply the complete pending batch under a session advisory lock and one transaction. Destructive migrations require an exact externally supplied approval bound to module, identity, and checksum. Hermetic integration coverage now exercises those contracts through the production adapter against the pinned PostgreSQL container, including real DDL rollback and advisory-lock concurrency. The Core-owned Doctor composes those existing services into a deterministic terminal readiness report: static module, schema, and migration validation always run when their prerequisites succeed, while PostgreSQL history planning runs only when configured. Schema inspection evaluates compiled schema definition entrypoints, which the module contract requires to be side-effect-free; Doctor never imports or starts module server entrypoints. It does not apply migrations or modify PostgreSQL, and it honestly skips object storage because no production Core storage service exists yet.
Phase 4A added the Core identity foundation. Core owns a Better Auth-backed identity schema
(ekklesia_core_user, ekklesia_core_session, ekklesia_core_account,
ekklesia_core_verification) reachable only through Ekklesia-owned contracts and an explicit
Core-owned Better Auth construction boundary; modules never import Better Auth or receive a raw
database client. That schema ships as a first-class Core-owned migration source that reuses the
exact migration format, checksum rule, planner, and transactional runner Phase 3 already
established, ordered before module migrations in the same aggregate. See
ADR 0010.
Phase 4B adds identity HTTP transport: a minimal Hono-based apps/api composition root mounts
Better Auth at /api/auth/* and exposes one Ekklesia-owned route, GET /api/v1/principal, behind
Core's own Fetch-compatible identity runtime (@ekklesia/core/identity) — Core still does not
depend on Hono. Public email/password registration is the intended eventual product policy — every
account receives identical lowest-privilege baseline status, and signup order never grants
elevation — but is disabled by default as of Phase 5D pass 1, below. See
ADR 0011 and
the API guide, and
the identity development guide for the underlying schema and
contracts. It is now possible to publicly register, sign in, resolve a principal, and sign out.
Phase 4C is complete: Core's authorization foundation — a schema, evaluator, and store for
platform owners, explicit grants, and relationship-derived grants, plus an immutable permission
registry — and an explicit, single-use, auditable platform-owner bootstrap command, plus reusable
Hono enforcement and an /api/v1/grants HTTP API in apps/api. See
ADR 0013 and
the authorization guide.
Phase 5A wired module-declared permissions into that same authorization system — a version-3
manifest, one composed platform permission registry spanning Core's own declarations and every
installed module's, enforced through the identical middleware Core's own routes use. Phase 5B let a
module mount its own framework-neutral HTTP routes in production, under
/api/v1/modules/<module-id>, enforced and response-sanitized exactly like Core's own routes. This
branch completes Phase 5C: typed module database access (context.services.database) for a
module's lifecycle hooks and authorized HTTP handlers, over the platform's one existing PostgreSQL
pool. See ADR 0014,
ADR 0015,
ADR 0016, and the repository root
README for the complete, current status of every phase.
Phase 5D pass 1 of 5 hardens the public request perimeter against an independent security audit of
the Phase 5C checkpoint: a server-owned client-address resolution boundary (direct mode by default,
explicit trusted-proxy mode otherwise) replaces trusting a caller-controlled forwarded header for
the authentication rate limiter; public sign-up is disabled by default behind an explicit typed
opt-in; every public route — Better Auth, Core's grant mutation, and every module route via a new
required maxBodyBytes field on the executable route contract — has an explicit, enforced
request-body ceiling with one sanitized 413 contract; and the Node HTTP server has finite
header/request timeouts. See
ADR 0017. This pass does not add
distributed rate limiting or durable signup-abuse control, and Phase 5D itself is not complete —
passes 2–5 and a final independent re-audit remain before Phase 6 may begin.
The project continues finishing the module platform's backend foundations before Phase 6 Surface work begins. Target architecture not yet implemented includes production approval-provider composition, physical storage-bucket provisioning, jobs/workflow automation, richer public resource and action contracts, a Dashboard, a Builder, and reference feature modules; none of these are scheduled by this document.