Documentation

ADR-0018: Session Identity and Coordination Hardening

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  • Status: Accepted (identity hardening, 2026 Q3) — 2026-07-21 — security P0 subset is unconditional
  • Date: 2026-07-21
  • Builds on: ADR-0009 (mutation trust substrate)

Context (verified at HEAD 91794a0f)

  1. Session metadata is caller-supplied. SessionContext is parsed from _session_* keys inside tool-call arguments (session_context.rs:28-35): _session_id, _session_project_path, _session_deferred_tool_loading, principal fields. In a shared HTTP daemon any client can forge another session's identity, rebind its project, or spoof its principal — argument-derived identity is inherently untrusted.
  2. Coordination fails open. When the coordination DB is unavailable, register_agent_work / claim_files / release_files fall back to a per-process in-memory map and return success with only a tracing::warn! (agent_coordination.rs:440,548,630). Two processes (or one restart) later disagree about who owns which files — silent split-brain.
  3. Hosts now own agent coordination natively (worktrees, task ownership, teams); a server-side claim registry duplicates that at lower fidelity.

Decision

  1. Identity moves to the transport layer. Session id, project binding, deferred state, and principal derive from the HTTP session (connection-scoped server state established at initialize/prepare_harness_session), or from authenticated headers under RBAC. _session_* argument keys are accepted only from the stdio transport (single-client by construction), ignored elsewhere, and removed from public schemas.
  2. Coordination fails closed. Store failure returns a typed error (coordination_unavailable) — never a fabricated success. No in-memory fallback.
  3. Deprecate register_agent_work / claim_files / release_files / list_active_agents. Hosts own work distribution and worktrees; CodeLens keeps only snapshot/preflight evidence (verify_change_readiness, get_changed_files, diff-bound approval in the mutation gate). Removal gate: one release of deprecation telemetry showing no legitimate callers.
  4. Companion P0 audit tracked in the same epic: LSP server command/args must resolve against a vetted allowlist (no config-supplied arbitrary executables); remote project roots rejected by default; no trust in unauthenticated forwarded headers. (These claims from the external review are accepted as audit items; each lands with a failing-then-passing test.)

Consequences

  • A shared daemon becomes safe for mutually untrusted sessions on one machine, and the RBAC story (ADR-0009) stops being bypassable via argument forgery.
  • Losing the claim registry removes a false safety signal; hosts that relied on it get honest errors instead of best-effort bookkeeping.

Verification (exit criteria)

  • Forgery test: a second session sending _session_id/_session_principal_id of the first is rejected (HTTP) — zero cross-session reads or writes.
  • Chaos test: coordination store outage yields typed errors, zero silent successes.
  • P0 audit: LSP exec allowlist, remote-root rejection, and header-trust removal each covered by a regression test that fails on the pre-fix code.

Verification status (2026-07-24, evidence audit at HEAD 27c897e5)

  • Forgery — met. from_json_ignores_unprovenanced_principal_id and transport_scope_authenticates_server_injected_identity (session_context.rs) pin argument-forgery rejection; server-owned injection is centralized in server/session_injection.rs.
  • Chaos — met. every_coordination_operation_fails_closed_when_store_is_unavailable and coordination_store_outage_fails_closed_across_processes (agent_coordination.rs): typed coordination_unavailable errors, no in-memory fallback path remains.
  • P0 LSP exec allowlist — met. Registered-recipe policy plus lsp/command_security_tests.rs (engine) landed in #402.
  • P0 forwarded headers — met at the transport-config layer. Non-local HTTP listen requires auth + TLS (server/http_config.rs::validate_remote_transport_config); cross-origin POST rejected (post_from_remote_origin_is_forbidden).
  • P0 remote project roots — met. ProjectRoot::new/new_exact reject roots on network filesystems by default (project/remote_root.rs: statfs kind detection, fail-open on detection error, opt-out via CODELENS_ALLOW_REMOTE_PROJECT_ROOT=1). Rationale: the .codelens SQLite index is unsafe on network mounts and a stalled mount wedges the shared daemon. FUSE-backed remotes present as local and stay out of scope.
  • Decision 3 — in progress. The coordination quartet entered the deprecation window (569513da) with persisted removal-gate telemetry (27c897e5); removal lands in v2.0 after one clean release of telemetry.

Removal-gate verdict (2026-09-16)

Usage telemetry from the window open (2026-07-24) through 2026-09-16 holds 45,731 rows. The coordination quartet registers one call (list_active_agents, client telemetry-verify, the window-open verification itself); the memory family registers one (list_memories, client e6-verify). No organic caller touched the wave, and v1.13.35 shipped as the one clean release the gate required. Deletion is authorized for the v2.0 cut.