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docs(#139): tighten agent harness guard contract - #170
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📝 WalkthroughWalkthroughThe architecture documents define guard decisions as per-call outcomes and describe each harness’s behavior when a guard hook does not run. They also clarify initialization-branch validation and the limits of downstream checks for file-source provenance and shell operations. ChangesGuard enforcement documentation
Estimated code review effort: 2 (Simple) | ~10 minutes Suggested reviewers: Merge Risk: 🔵 Low · up to Qualify the documented specification-edit route before merging. Direct edits can occur when the Codex guard fails open, although later checks gate what merges. 🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 5✅ Passed checks (5 passed)
✨ Finishing Touches🧪 Generate unit tests (beta)
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In `@docs/architecture/agent-harness/opencode.md`:
- Around line 237-241: Change the native OpenCode permission rule for
"ears-manager *" from allow to deny so the shell path fails closed when
protobot-guard.js is unavailable; leave the guard plugin’s argument-level
handling unchanged.
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docs/architecture/agent-harness/adapter-contract.mddocs/architecture/agent-harness/opencode.md
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Risk Assessment: moderate (2/5) DetailsRe-review anchoring holds: Tier 1 buckets are identical to the immediately preceding round (9 files, still 4-10 files/300-799 lines/medium blast, zero protected/security/dependency/CI signals, non-bot non-first-time author, Tier1=1.375), the 43-line growth (450 to 493) does not move any bucket; Tier 2 git-history composite (~2.6-2.7) is essentially unchanged from the prior ~2.57, still driven by high pre-existing churn/fix-revert counts on this long-lived doc set offset by zero reverts and zero hack/todo sentiment; Tier 3 remains low-to-moderate (~1.83) as the diff continues to close the named findings from issue #139 with no new unresolved discussion; weighted composite (~1.83) rounds to 2, preserving the prior moderate score with no material delta. Previous runRisk Assessment: moderate (2/5) DetailsRe-review anchoring holds: Tier 1 signals remain in the same buckets as the immediately preceding round (9 files, 450 lines, still 4-10 files/300-799 lines/medium blast, zero protected/security/dependency/CI signals, non-bot non-first-time author, Tier1=1.375); Tier 2 git-history composite is essentially unchanged (~2.57) with high pre-existing churn/fix-revert counts on this long-lived doc set offset by zero reverts and zero hack/todo sentiment; Tier 3 stays low-to-moderate (~1.83) as the diff continues to target the named findings from issue #139 with no new unresolved discussion; weighted composite (0.501.375 + 0.302.57 + 0.20*1.83 ~= 1.83) rounds to 2, preserving the prior moderate score with no material delta. Previous run (2)Risk Assessment: moderate (2/5) DetailsRe-review anchoring holds: since the immediately preceding assessment (commit 09198ae, 9 files/414 lines) the head only grew to 9 files/428 lines with 6 of 9 files re-touched, so Tier 1 stays in the same buckets (4-10 files, 300-799 lines, medium blast, zero protected/security/dependency/CI signals, non-bot non-first-time author, Tier 1 = 1.375); Tier 2 git-history composite is essentially unchanged (~2.56 vs prior ~2.52) with continued zero reverts and zero hack/todo sentiment despite heavy pre-existing churn on this doc set; Tier 3 remains low (~1.6) as the diff still visibly targets only the two named findings from issue #139 with no new unresolved discussion signal; the weighted composite (0.501.375 + 0.302.56 + 0.20*1.6 ~= 1.77) rounds to 2, so the score stays moderate with no delta from the prior run. Previous run (3)Risk Assessment: moderate (2/5) DetailsRe-review anchoring holds: Tier 1 metadata remains in the same buckets despite growing from 8 to 9 files (still 4-10 files, still 300-799 lines, still medium blast, zero protected/security/dependency/CI signals, non-bot non-first-time author), keeping Tier 1 at 1.375; Tier 2 git-history analysis on the 9 changed docs shows high 30-day churn and fix/revert rates but zero reverts and zero hack/todo sentiment, landing at ~2.52; Tier 3 remains low at ~1.5 since the diff still visibly satisfies both concrete asks in linked issue #139 with no unresolved discussion; the weighted composite (0.50x1.375 + 0.30x2.52 + 0.20x1.5 ~= 1.75) rounds to 2, so the score stays moderate. Previous run (4)Risk Assessment: moderate (2/5) DetailsRe-review anchoring holds: Tier 1 metadata is unchanged in bucket terms despite the 6-to-8 file growth (still 4-10 files, still 300-799 lines, still medium blast radius, zero protected/security/dependency/CI signals, non-bot non-first-time author), keeping Tier 1 at 1.375; Tier 2 churn analysis on the 8 changed docs shows high 30-day commit frequency and fix/revert rates but zero reverts and zero hack/todo sentiment, landing at ~2.71 (slightly below the prior round's 3.0); Tier 3 is unchanged at 1.67 since the diff still visibly satisfies 2 of the 3 concrete asks in linked issue #139 with no unresolved discussion; the weighted composite (0.50x1.375 + 0.30x2.71 + 0.20x1.67 ~= 1.84) again rounds to 2, so the score stays moderate. Previous run (5)Risk Assessment: moderate (2/5) DetailsRe-review anchoring applies: Tier 1 metadata signals are unchanged from the prior round (same FILES/LINES/BLAST buckets, zero protected/security/dependency/CI signals, non-bot non-first-time author), holding Tier 1 at 1.375. Tier 2 ticked up slightly (3.0 vs ~2.59, driven by change-coupling) and Tier 3 ticked down slightly (1.67 vs 1.75, since the diff now visibly satisfies the issue's concrete asks). Weighted composite = 0.501.375 + 0.303.0 + 0.20*1.67 = 1.92, rounding to 2 (moderate) -- unchanged from the prior round's score -- because the additional files are required consistency propagation of the same guard-guarantee wording rather than new risk surface. Previous run (6)Risk Assessment: moderate (2/5) DetailsWeighted composite (50/30/20) = 1.3750.5 + 2.590.3 + 1.75*0.2 = 1.81 -> rounds to 2 (moderate); file/line count grew from 2/78 to 6/253 (blast radius small->medium) but docs-only nature, zero protected/security/dependency/CI signals, unchanged non-first-time non-bot author, and scope still matching the linked issue keep the composite below the 2.5 threshold, holding the prior round's score of 2 (moderate) despite persistently high churn/fix-revert history on these agent-harness spec files. Previous run (7)Risk Assessment: moderate (2/5) DetailsRe-review anchoring holds: 2-file, 78-line docs-only diff with no protected/security/dependency/CI signals and a well-matched linked issue; persistently high churn and fix/revert history on these two agent-harness spec files keeps the weighted composite around 1.6, rounding to 2 (moderate), consistent with the prior two assessments on this PR. Previous run (8)Risk Assessment: moderate (2/5) DetailsRe-review anchoring holds: still a 2-file, 42-line docs-only change with no protected/security/dependency/CI signals and a well-matched linked issue, so despite persistently high churn/fix-revert/coupling on these two agent-harness spec files, the weighted composite (~1.63) rounds to 2, preserving the prior moderate score with no articulable reason to diverge. Previous run (9)Risk Assessment: moderate (2/5) DetailsSmall, well-scoped docs-only PR (2 files, 28 lines) with no protected/security-sensitive paths, no dependency or CI changes, and a fully-matched linked issue, but the two touched agent-harness spec docs show notably high recent churn and fix/revert activity, lifting the weighted composite from a Tier1/Tier3 baseline near 1 to a rounded score of 2 (moderate). |
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All findings confirmed fixed from the prior review round (SHA Previous run (2)ReviewFindingsMedium
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Scope check: this round's changes remain within issue #139's authorization (guard rule 6's initialization-branch lifetime check and the OpenCode native-wildcard/file-source documentation), and both prior-round findings on this PR (the High The findings above are new for this round: the fix that resolved the prior High finding at its original location (adapter-contract.md's main Credentials/Untrusted-input passages) was not propagated to two more restatements of the identical claim in the same file (the WMS bullet and the Traces paragraph), nor to two sibling documents (git-integration.md's ceremony table and source-control-manager.md's topology paragraph) that state the same guarantee and were not updated to match. Next steps:
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Scope check: this PR's changes remain within issue #139's authorized points 1–2 (guard rule 6's initialization-branch lifetime check plus a new guard vector, and OpenCode native-wildcard/file-source documentation), and both prior-round findings on this PR (the medium Next steps:
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Scope check: this PR's changes map directly to issue #139's authorized points 1–2 (guard rule 6's initialization-branch lifetime check plus a new guard vector, and OpenCode native-wildcard/file-source documentation), touch only the two files in the diff, and both new cross-references ( Next steps:
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Scope check: this PR resolves the prior review's medium Next steps:
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Scope check: this PR maps precisely onto items (1) and (2) of linked issue #139's "Proposed change" — the guard rule 6 lifetime check plus a negative test vector, and documenting the OpenCode native-wildcard defense-in-depth gap for Next steps:
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🤖 Finished Review · ✅ Success · Started 6:52 PM UTC · Completed 7:09 PM UTC Commit: Runtime: pi · Model: sonnet → claude-sonnet-5 · Effort: high · Cost: $4.60 |
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🤖 Finished Review · ✅ Success · Started 8:02 PM UTC · Completed 8:18 PM UTC Commit: Runtime: pi · Model: sonnet → claude-sonnet-5 · Effort: high · Cost: $3.49 |
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Review — round 1
Request changes. The PR does what #139 asks: the .protobot/ lifetime check now runs ahead of the generic refusal in guard rule 6, a negative vector covers it, and the OpenCode binding records that its native rules cannot cover --content-file and --impact-file. Five findings remain, and every one is on a line this PR adds.
One blocks. The new sentence at opencode.md:240-241 makes the guard mandatory for the governed shell path, while the parent contract says the harness layer is optional and the later layers always hold. A reader of the two documents cannot tell which is true.
| ID | Label | Location | Title |
|---|---|---|---|
| A1 | issue (blocking) | opencode.md:240-241 |
Guard called mandatory, contract says optional |
| A2 | issue (non-blocking) | adapter-contract.md:670-672 |
Generic check excludes the initialization form |
| A3 | issue (non-blocking) | adapter-contract.md:676-678 |
Rule 1 does not require this |
| A4 | issue (non-blocking) | adapter-contract.md:1205 |
Vector states ordering, not a reason |
| A5 | issue (non-blocking) | opencode.md:216-218 |
Wildcard limit is not an observed behavior |
Every comment is inline. Two further findings — the shortened git rev-parse at adapter-contract.md:673 and the 4-space indentation at adapter-contract.md:664-678 — are real but already open as Fullsend findings on the same lines, so I did not open a second thread for either.
Reviewed at db63aee48cea78a951291152ffca8e9d614a8559.
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Request changes: qualify the shared guard/hook-off guarantee for file-source arguments, and restore git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD in guard rule 6. The detailed rationale is in this review and the existing inline threads.
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🤖 Finished Review · ✅ Success · Started 5:10 PM UTC · Completed 5:32 PM UTC Commit: Runtime: pi · Model: sonnet → claude-sonnet-5 · Effort: high · Cost: $4.85 |
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Follow-up to Lukas’s and John’s reviews — these changes are in commit
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Request changes: OpenCode's native permissions do not enforce the documented no-guard refusal, the shared file-source rule conflicts with Claude Code/Codex's documented fail-open hook cases, and the Codex later-layer summary needs scoping. See the inline comments.
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🤖 Finished Review · ✅ Success · Started 8:39 PM UTC · Completed 8:55 PM UTC Commit: Runtime: pi · Model: sonnet → claude-sonnet-5 · Effort: high · Cost: $4.92 |
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Request changes. The per-call fail-open exceptions are now documented, but shared credential/effect guarantees and cross-document Git-access guarantees remain absolute. See B1 and B2.
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🤖 Finished Review · ✅ Success · Started 2:07 PM UTC · Completed 2:25 PM UTC Commit: Runtime: pi · Model: sonnet → claude-sonnet-5 · Effort: high · Cost: $6.57 |
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Requesting changes — four blocking findings, one non-blocking nitpick.
All ten findings from the previous round are fixed, and bb81c68's continued sweep (the manifest-table and scm-face scoping, the uninitialized init-branch vector, the opencode.md terminology straggler) is accurate too. What remains:
Blocking comments:
- B1 — Registry write defeats the recorded later checks (inline on the Codex row and the new
architecture.mdsentence). The admitted.protobot/write reaches the registry where the digests backing the pre-stage check andears-manager checklive, so a compound edit passes every later layer. This one needs a decision: record the consequence and qualify the caught-later claims, or treat registry integrity as an open design question for the SCM/CI layers. - B2 — UX credential claim stays absolute (file comment on
drafting-table-ux.md;The agent never holds live credentialsis outside the diff hunks). - B3 — UX opener attributes flow bullets to the guard (inline on the new opener).
- B4 — SCM-face rationale keeps unscoped read claim (file comment on
adapter-contract.md; thewhich the role does not readline is outside the diff hunks).
One non-blocking nitpick inline (N1, the session-record scoping of the SCM's no-remote-URL guarantee).
Praise: The qualifications added in bb81c68 are the right continuation of the sweep — the manifest table and scm-face scoping match the fail-open rows, and the uninitialized init-branch vector closes the guard-rule-6 story from both sides.
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Note: The following review comments could not be posted on the diff (GitHub returned 422) and are included here instead:
docs/architecture/agent-harness/adapter-contract.md(file-level): Line 487 · [medium] secret-exposure
The new File-source arguments section states that on every call that receives a guard decision, the shared guard rejects non-'-' values for --content-file/--impact-file (line ~841). The shell-syntax refusal list this same contract enumerates for that parser is not exhaustive for stdin provenance: it names output redirection, command substitution, and variable expansion (line 487), but not input redirection (< file, <> file). The parser splits a command into an argument list plus a standard-input text (line ~469), and the allowed write form permits --content-file -, --content-stdin, and --impact-file - with stdin supplied as a quoted here-document (line ~464). An implementer following the list could fill stdin from < ~/.netrc while the option value still reads '-'. No guard vector covers input redirection onto the permitted stdin source.
Suggested fix: In the guard refusal list next to output redirection, explicitly refuse input redirection and any other stdin source that is not a quoted here-document body. State that the guard-checked guarantee covers not only value == '-' but also that stdin bytes come from that here-document, not a redirected host file. Add a guard vector such as ears-manager --output json artifact put ... --content-file - < ~/.netrc (and the --content-stdin / --impact-file - analogues) that must be refused.
docs/architecture/agent-harness/adapter-contract.md(file-level): Line 384 · [medium] spec-doc-cross-consistency
This PR adds a new File-source arguments section (~line 831) stating that the guard's --content-file/--impact-file restriction to '-' only holds on every call for which it returns a decision, and that a fail-open call can admit a non-'-' path (including a credential file). The earlier passage in the same document stating this same rule ("the guard allows only '-', because a path there would let the role copy any readable file, a credential file included, into a registered artifact") was left in its original absolute phrasing with no cross-reference to the fail-open exception.
Suggested fix: Add a forward reference from the --content-file/--impact-file bullet (~line 384) to the new File-source arguments section (or fold this bullet's claim into it), so both statements of the same restriction use identical, cross-referenced terminology.
| directly; for the Drafting Table the guard enforces this on the calls | ||
| it checks, and a call without a guard decision may still write one | ||
| ([What the harness layer stops][layer-stops]). A file edited outside | ||
| `ears-manager`, by any route, must be rejected or caught before it can |
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[medium] internal-inconsistency
The "Ungoverned-edit detection" section still states that a file edited outside ears-manager, by any route, must be rejected or caught before the default branch, and that the four listed layers do that (repeated at line ~797). That completeness claim contradicts the same document's repository-fields text (a fail-open write can rewrite digests, which the later checks then trust) and the File-source arguments contract this PR adds elsewhere: a compound edit of a registered path plus its digest in .protobot/project.yaml passes pre-stage comparison, ears-manager check, and CI path ownership; PR review is the remaining check. The paragraph was updated to admit fail-open writes exist, but the following "must" claim and the layer table were not qualified to match.
Suggested fix: Qualify the "must be rejected or caught" claim the same way adapter-contract.md and architecture.md now do: the pre-stage, ears-manager check, and CI path-ownership layers catch unauthorized persistent edits that leave the registry intact; a fail-open write that also rewrites the matching digest in .protobot/project.yaml is a recorded gap and is not caught by those layers.
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🤖 Finished Review · ✅ Success · Started 4:03 PM UTC · Completed 4:30 PM UTC Commit: Runtime: pi · Model: sonnet → claude-sonnet-5 · Effort: high · Cost: $6.96 |
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PR #170 ("tighten agent harness guard contract", closing #139) took 6 days, 12 commits, 70 review entries, and 5 rounds of human (JohnStrunk) CHANGES_REQUESTED before merging. No code or fix agent ever ran on this PR — jerry-ng2 (human) wrote all 12 commits by hand in response to review feedback, so this was a human-authored, human-and-bot-reviewed docs PR, not an agent rework loop. The dominant failure pattern across all 5 human rounds was the same class of defect recurring in new locations: an absolute claim ("the guard always/never does X") got qualified for fail-open exceptions in one governed doc, which then exposed an unqualified sibling claim in another governed doc (adapter-contract.md → harness bindings → architecture.md/components.md → git-integration.md/source-control-manager.md → drafting-table-ux.md, an untouched file). This is exactly the terminology/staleness problem ProtoBot's own AGENTS.md governance rules (added across 9 prior retro-driven issues, #58 through #181) were written to prevent, and it recurred despite those rules already being live for most of this PR's lifecycle. I initially misread the bot's final review (CHANGES_REQUESTED at 2026-09-28T16:30, five minutes after JohnStrunk's approval) as stale/duplicate content re-served from a 6-day-old sticky comment. On closer inspection this was wrong: the review was dispatched at 16:02 (before the approval) against the final commit and simply took ~29 minutes to complete — a timing artifact, not a bug. More importantly, I verified directly against docs/architecture/agent-harness/adapter-contract.md and docs/architecture/git-integration.md on main: all three Medium findings from that final review (a guard-refusal-list gap that doesn't cover input redirection for stdin, e.g. Evidence for existing issues (no new proposal filed for these): PR #170 is a second, independent instance of the structural gap already tracked in open fullsend-ai/agents#1354 (docs-currency sub-agent's methodology is identifier-rename/removal-based grep matching, which cannot catch a prose claim made stale by a new conceptual exception introduced elsewhere without a shared identifier — confirmed by reading skills/docs-review/SKILL.md at v0.43.0). It's also fresh evidence that closed ProtoBot issue #107's remedy (strengthening AGENTS.md instructions instead of upgrading the docs-currency model, per an explicit maintainer instruction: "do not change the review model") has not closed the human-vs-bot cross-document-review gap: the same miss pattern (human catches multi-document staleness the bot doesn't) recurred here. Separately, the human-overrides-unresolved-bot-review pattern itself is already covered by closed #116 (rejected as a conscious velocity tradeoff for the general case) and open #180 (narrowly scoped to protected-path findings only); this PR doesn't touch protected paths, so I'm not re-proposing either policy. Proposals filed
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🤖 Finished Retro · ✅ Success · Started 5:01 PM UTC · Completed 5:23 PM UTC Commit: Runtime: claude · Model: sonnet → claude-sonnet-5 · Effort: high · Cost: $3.38 |
…findings PR redhat-et#170's final review left three Medium findings unaddressed. The shared guard's shell-syntax list named output redirection, command substitution, and variable expansion, but not input redirection, so --content-file - < ~/.netrc still satisfied the dash-only option check while sourcing a host file. The earlier --content-file bullet still stated that restriction as an unconditional absolute, and Ungoverned-edit detection still claimed four layers must catch every ungoverned edit. Refuse input redirection and non-here-document stdin sources in the guard parser, add matching guard vectors, and qualify both absolute claims with the File-source fail-open and registry- digest recorded-gap phrasing already used in adapter-contract.md and architecture.md. Closes redhat-et#198
…-redirection docs(redhat-et#198): close remaining PR redhat-et#170 guard-contract findings
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Summary
.protobot/exists with the specific reasonProject already initialized. Rawgit switch -cwas never a permitted shell operation, so it was already refused by the generic check; this makes the lifetime constraint explicit and testable rather than closing an exploitable bypass.--content-fileand--impact-file.Testing
pre-commit run --all-filespython scripts/lint.py --files docs/architecture/agent-harness/adapter-contract.md docs/architecture/agent-harness/opencode.mdgit diff --checkCloses #139
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