When no .zddc is on disk at the requested directory, ServeZddcFile
now renders the cascade's leaf-level ZddcFile as YAML — what
defaults.zddc.yaml's paths: tree declares for THIS exact path,
threaded through by the walker. The previous body was a comment-
only summary plus a `{}` placeholder, which forced operators to
write any override from scratch.
The .zddc file is still the single source of truth — no synthesis,
no merge: the virtual body IS the embedded subtree, marshalled in
the same shape the operator would write themselves. PUT-saving the
bytes back through the file API materialises an on-disk override
carrying exactly what the user saved. For the COMPOSED view across
the full chain, slice 2 will add ?effective=1 (returns JSON, not a
.zddc); the header comment in the virtual body points at it.
Three new test cases lock the contract:
- VirtualDefault: at /Project/.zddc with no on-disk file, the
embedded paths.* contribution surfaces (project_team: r,
observer: r, archive subtree, …).
- VirtualEmpty: at a path the embedded defaults don't declare
(e.g. /Project/random-subfolder/.zddc), the body collapses to
the header + an empty-document {} placeholder + an explanation
that rules come from ancestors only.
- VirtualPerPartyWorking: at /Project/archive/Acme/working/.zddc,
the body carries default_tool/auto_own/drop_target and the
classifier in available_tools — the per-party in-flight slot's
full declaration.
Drive-by: add `omitempty` to ZddcFile.ACL, .Admins, .Title yaml
tags. Without it, the marshaled virtual body carried `acl: {}`,
`admins: []`, and `title: ""` at every nested level, drowning the
real content in noise. ParseFile is unaffected (input parsing
ignores omitempty); WriteFile's round-trip sanity check still
passes.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Single audit pass that removes pre-release back-compat, consolidates the
admin-policy decider, and fixes the .zddc write path.
Field removal — acl.allow / acl.deny:
- Drop ACLRules.Allow / Deny struct fields and mergeLegacyACL().
- Remove walker / lookups / validate / decider branches that read them.
- Migrate every test fixture (YAML strings and ACLRules struct literals)
to acl.permissions: { principal → verb-set }.
- Rewrite both bundled Rego policies (access.rego, access_federal.rego)
to traverse level.acl.permissions; rewrite parity-test helpers.
- Update create-project form (profile page) to collect permissions
instead of allow/deny lists.
Admin decider consolidation:
- Delete zddc.CanEditZddc — strict-ancestor rule retired. Subtree admins
own their own .zddc; the policy decider's IsActiveAdmin short-circuit
is the single bypass site.
- Migrate tablehandler.ServeTable to AllowActionFromChainP — closes the
same Forbidden bug already fixed for /browse.html.
- Drop AccessView.EditableParentChoices and treeEntry.CanEdit (always
true after the retirement). Profile page renders AdminSubtrees
directly for both lists.
- Drop the excludeLeaf parameter from AdminLevelInChain /
IsAdminForChain — no production caller passed true.
Dead code removed:
- policy.AllowWriteFromChain (zero production callers, zero tests).
- zddc.AllowedWithChain (zero production callers; tests deleted).
ModeStrict retirement — federal posture is OPA-only:
- Delete cascade_mode.go / cascade_mode_test.go and the ModeStrict
branches in cascade.go and acl.go.
- Drop --cascade-mode flag, CascadeMode config field, and the
InternalDecider.Mode field.
- Drop the mode parameter from every cascade helper:
GrantedVerbsAtLevel, AllowedAction, EffectiveVerbs,
EffectiveVerbsRange, RoleMembers, MatchesPrincipal,
MatchingPrincipals, WormZoneGrant, PolicyChain.VisibleStart.
- Strip cascade_mode from /.profile/config and
/.profile/effective-policy responses.
- Refresh README / ARCHITECTURE.md to describe federal posture as
"deploy OPA with access_federal.rego" (NIST AC-6); the bundled Rego
is the parent-deny-is-absolute variant. The in-process Go evaluator
implements only the commercial cascade.
Legacy redirects + .admin.css fallback:
- Drop /<dir>/.zddc.html → ?file=.zddc redirect and its test.
- Drop ?zip=1 retired comment + legacy test (handled by the
.zip virtual-URL path; covered by TestServeSubtreeZip).
- Drop .admin.css fallback in profile_assets.go — only .profile.css now.
- Refresh stale "retired" / "back-compat" / "legacy" comment markers.
.zddc write path fix:
- Dispatcher: route only GET/HEAD on .zddc URLs to ServeZddcFile; carve
.zddc out of the dot-prefix guard so PUT/DELETE/POST reach
ServeFileAPI. Before this, .zddc writes 405'd at ServeZddcFile and
the YAML editor's save flow had no live path.
- ServeFileAPI.resolveTargetPath: same .zddc-leaf carve-out so the file
API accepts the path; intermediate dot dirs (.zddc.d/) stay reserved.
- Listing: compute Writable per-file with ActionAdmin for .zddc
(matches the file API's gate) instead of ActionWrite for everything.
- Virtual .zddc placeholder: compute Writable via the same
parentActiveAdmin || ActionAdmin path. Was always false before.
- browse YAML editor canSave: exempt virtual .zddc — the synthetic
body is designed to materialize on PUT.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Reads (apps resolution, directory listing, file GET, archive index,
profile pages, subtree zip, form render) used policy.AllowFromChain
with email — no admin-bypass branch fired even for elevated admins,
because IsActiveAdmin only landed in AllowActionFromChainP.
Symptom: elevated admin navigating to /browse.html got 403 because
the root cascade has no explicit read grants in my refactored root
.zddc (role memberships + admins only; no acl.permissions). The
app-resolution path's AllowFromChain didn't see admin status.
Fix: new policy.AllowFromChainP that forwards to
AllowActionFromChainP(action=read). Migrate every read-path caller
to the principal-aware variant. The decider's single bypass branch
now fires uniformly across read and write decisions.
Migrated:
cmd/zddc-server/main.go (9 sites)
handler/directory.go (1)
handler/archivehandler.go (2)
handler/zddcfile.go (1)
handler/formhandler.go (3)
handler/projectshandler.go (1; EnumerateProjects sig takes Principal)
handler/subtreezip.go (1)
fs/tree.go (1; uses already-built principal)
profilehandler.go:400 stays on AllowFromChain — it probes ACL for a
DIFFERENT email (the enumeration target, not the request principal),
so admin bypass on the request's principal doesn't apply.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Three coordinated changes that share the same files. Common theme:
convention beats exception. Where the codebase had a bespoke wire shape
or a special-case route, replace it with the generic shape every other
client already speaks.
== Listing protocol ==
GET / Accept: application/json used to dispatch to a bespoke
ServeProjectList handler returning {name, url, title} per project — a
shape that diverged from every other directory's listing.FileInfo
response. Now:
- listing.FileInfo gains an optional `title` field (read from each
directory's own .zddc title:). Generic clients (landing, browse)
read the same shape from every URL.
- appfs.ListDirectory emits a virtual `.zddc` entry (is_dir:false,
virtual:true) when no on-disk file exists at that path and the
caller asked for ?hidden=1. Opens an editable view of the cascade
defaults; PUT-saving its bytes materialises a real file.
- The bespoke GET / JSON branch in cmd/zddc-server/main.go is gone.
The bare-root landing serve is Accept-gated: HTML requests get the
landing tool (project picker), JSON requests fall through to
ServeDirectory and get the generic listing.
- landing's fetchProjects filters the new generic shape (is_dir,
strip trailing slash) — same pattern fetchParties already used at
/<project>/archive/.
== Form editor retirement ==
`<dir>/.zddc.html` was a server-rendered form for editing per-directory
.zddc files (~900 LOC across zddceditor.go, zddchandler.go, zddc_assets.go).
Browse's YAML/CodeMirror editor (with .zddc-schema lint) already edits
the same files via the generic file-API. Two ways to edit the same data
is exception, not convention.
- Delete zddceditor.go, zddchandler.go, zddc_assets.go and tests.
- `/<dir>/.zddc.html` → 302 redirect to `/<dir>/?file=.zddc` (browse
opens the .zddc in its editor pane).
- /.profile/zddc/* namespace deleted (REST API + assets sub-route).
- Profile page's "Editable .zddc files" list links to browse.
- ServeZddcFile's 405 message + virtual-body comment point at the
browse URL instead of the dead form.
== Admin elevation (Principal model) ==
Sudo-style: admins are treated as normal users by default; opting into
admin powers is per-request and gated by a `zddc-elevate=1` cookie.
- zddc.Principal{Email, Elevated} replaces bare-email arguments on
IsAdmin / IsSubtreeAdmin / CanEditZddc. The signature change makes
the elevation gate compiler-enforced at every admin call site —
audit-fragility is gone. The empty-email short-circuit is no longer
load-bearing for elevation; Principal.gate() is the explicit check.
- handler.ACLMiddleware derives Elevated per request: bearer tokens
are implicitly elevated (CLI clients can't toggle a cookie); browser
sessions elevate only when zddc-elevate=1 is set. PrincipalFromContext(r)
is the one-call-per-site bundling helper.
- Every admin-check call site updated to pass a Principal.
- /.auth/admin (forward_auth target for the dev-shell IDE) explicitly
bypasses elevation with a synthetic-elevated Principal — different
cookie scope than zddc-server origin, documented inline.
- AccessView gains CanElevate (elevation-independent "does this email
have admin authority anywhere?") so the header toggle can render
itself for an un-elevated admin who hasn't opted in yet.
- ServeProjectList is removed; ProjectInfo + EnumerateProjects stay
for the profile page's server-rendered project list.
- MatchAppHTML stays — still used by main.go to route <dir>/<tool>.html
URLs to the apps subsystem when no real file exists.
- Test helpers carry Elevated=true by default (matches the
pre-elevation default; tests for the un-elevated gate use the
explicit form).
Go tests pass across all 14 internal packages. Browse + every other
tool rebuilds clean.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Two related routing fixes:
1. /<project>/archive/<party>/mdl[/] now follows the slash/no-slash
convention uniformly with the rest of the system:
- mdl (no slash) → tables app (default tool for mdl/)
- mdl/ (slash) → browse (ServeDirectory empty-listing fallback)
Previously the slash form auto-redirected to mdl/table.html, which
forced the user into the table view from any party-folder click and
produced a confusing "Unrecognized table URL" error when the
redirect race-conditioned. tableRowsRedirect now only redirects
when a real on-disk table.yaml exists; the default-MDL virtual case
stays in browse via the convention.
New zddc.IsArchivePartyMdlDir helper recognises the canonical
<project>/archive/<party>/mdl pattern at depth 4 (relative path).
fs.ListDirectory uses it to return [] for the missing-on-disk case
so browse renders the empty workspace cleanly. Test updated
(TestServeDirectoryRedirectsDefaultMdl → TestServeDirectoryDefaultMdlNoRedirect).
2. <dir>/.zddc URLs now work at every directory depth.
The dispatcher previously 404'd anything beginning with a dot
(except /.archive and /<dir>/.zddc.html). New IsZddcFileRequest +
ServeZddcFile handlers carve out the raw .zddc leaf so an operator
can navigate to /Project-1/archive/PartyA/mdl/.zddc and inspect
the rules effective at that depth.
Semantics:
- Method: GET / HEAD only. Writes go through the existing admin-
gated form at <dir>/.zddc.html (unchanged).
- ACL: parent directory's read permission gates access; 404
(not 403) is returned to non-readers so existence isn't leaked.
- On disk: file bytes served verbatim with
Content-Type: application/yaml and X-ZDDC-Source: file:<rel>.
- Virtual: when no file exists at this level, a synthetic
placeholder body is returned with a YAML-comment cascade
summary so the reader sees exactly what rules apply here from
ancestors. X-ZDDC-Source: virtual:zddc distinguishes it.
The virtual body parses as valid YAML (`{}` after the comments) so
downstream tooling that consumes the URL isn't confused.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
