agent ui: answer questions inline from the per-agent page

loose-ends question rows get a textarea + send button; the operator
answers as operator by POSTing to the core dashboard's
/answer-question route, not the per-agent socket — keeps the
operator-authority path off the agent's own socket. cross-origin POST
needs a CORS shim on that route for now; drops out once the gateway
makes the page same-origin.

also splits deployment/ops/boundaries/gateway work into TODO-ops.md.
This commit is contained in:
müde 2026-05-20 10:01:12 +02:00
parent f8795dc029
commit 56e7eb6e73
5 changed files with 221 additions and 8 deletions

119
TODO-ops.md Normal file
View file

@ -0,0 +1,119 @@
# Hyperhive — deployment, ops & boundaries
Tracking the deployment-shape + operational-hardening work:
container network isolation, the unifying gateway, the
operator-vs-agent trust boundary, and process privilege
separation.
These items interlock. Today "the operator surface" and "the
agent surface" are a *convention*, not a boundary — nothing
stops a container from curling the core daemon on
`localhost:<port>`, or another agent's web UI. The gateway,
network isolation, and privsep together turn that convention
into an enforced boundary. Sequencing matters; see the order at
the bottom.
## The boundary we're building toward
Two principals, two paths:
- **Operator** — reaches every UI (the dashboard + every
per-agent page) through the gateway, on one origin.
Operator-authority actions (approve / deny, answer-as-operator,
lifecycle POSTs) are served by the core daemon and only
reachable via the gateway.
- **Agent** — speaks only for itself, only over its per-agent
unix socket. The socket's identity *is* the agent (see
`docs/conventions.md`, "identity = socket"). An agent must not
be able to reach the core daemon's HTTP surface, another
agent's socket, or another agent's web UI.
Design rule that falls out of this: **operator-authority
actions never get a per-agent-socket entry point.** They live on
the core backend. Worked example — answering an
operator-targeted question is a `POST /answer-question/{id}` on
the core dashboard, *never* an `AgentRequest` variant. If it
were a per-agent-socket request, an agent could `curl` its own
socket and spoof an operator answer. The per-agent web UI POSTs
cross-origin to the core for these (see the inline-answer
feature — the loose-ends section on each agent page).
## Workstreams
### 1. Container network isolation
Today containers share the host network namespace, so a
container can reach `localhost:<core-port>`, the dashboard, and
every other agent's web port. **Until this changes, nothing
below is actually enforced** — the operator/agent split is on
the honour system.
- Give each container a private veth / bridge with no route to
the host's loopback-bound services.
- The per-agent unix socket stays the only host-bound channel
(it already is the intended one).
- Open question: the per-agent web UI still needs to be
reachable *by the operator's browser* — that is what the
gateway is for (below). The container itself should not be
able to reach the gateway or the core daemon.
### 2. Unifying gateway / reverse proxy
(Moved here from TODO.md "Dashboard".)
Today every agent's web UI is reached at
`<host>:<per-agent-port>/`, so operators juggle a port list.
Stand up nginx (or similar) terminating one domain that fans
requests to `/agent/<name>/...` out to each container's web
port, and `/` to the main dashboard. Touches: a NixOS module on
the host, the dashboard's per-agent link rendering, and the
per-agent web server's base-path handling (currently assumes
root). Lets bookmarks survive port reshuffles and unblocks
per-agent stats links being relative URLs instead of hard-coded
ports.
Boundary payoff: once the dashboard and the per-agent pages are
same-origin behind the gateway, the cross-origin CORS shim on
`POST /answer-question/{id}` (added with the inline-answer
feature) can be deleted — the per-agent page's POST becomes a
plain same-origin request. Grep for `with_cors` /
`Access-Control-Allow-Origin` in `hive-c0re/src/dashboard.rs`
and remove it when this lands.
The gateway is also the natural home for auth, if/when the
operator surface ever needs it.
### 3. Privsep the core daemon from the web UI
(Moved here from TODO.md "Security".)
hive-c0re runs as root (it has to — `nixos-container` create /
start / destroy, the meta git repo, every per-agent bind
mount). The HTTP server lives in the same process, so every
read-endpoint (`/api/state-file`, `/api/journal/{name}`,
`/api/agent-config/{name}`) is one allow-list bug away from
serving arbitrary host files. Split it: keep the privileged
daemon doing lifecycle + git + ipc, run the web UI as an
unprivileged user that talks to the daemon over a unix socket
with a narrow request surface (`ReadAgentStateFile { agent,
rel_path }` etc.). The unprivileged process can't read
`/etc/shadow` even if every check in `get_state_file` is
bypassed — it doesn't have the bits. Container-lifecycle POSTs
(`/restart`, `/destroy`, etc.) become forwarded RPCs the
privileged side authorises on its terms.
Cheaper once the harness/state split lands (see TODO.md "Split
harness-internal state from agent-visible state") — the
unprivileged web server then only needs read access to
`/agents/<n>/state/`, not `/agents/<n>/harness/`.
## Suggested sequencing
1. **Gateway** first — pure ergonomics win, unblocks
same-origin, no behavioural risk.
2. **Network isolation** next — the step that makes the
operator/agent boundary *real*. Everything before it is
honour-system.
3. **Privsep** last — defence in depth on the core process
itself; valuable independent of the other two, but the
biggest refactor.