docs: adopt wiki-hq conventions + separate agent instructions (phases 1-2)
Problem: the narrative docs lacked an enforceable style standard, and
agent-facing instruction (OIKOS/CAVEMAN/CONTRIBUTING) was interleaved with
human content at the repo root.
Change:
- Add .agents/shared/{writing-style,llm-wiki}.md — a lint-checkable prose
standard (with an imperative-voice exception for runbooks/recipes) and the
sources/wiki/index/log layer model.
- Move CAVEMAN.md -> .agents/shared/caveman.md,
CONTRIBUTING.md -> .agents/shared/page-templates.md,
OIKOS.md -> .agents/OIKOS.md; leave thin root stubs so old links resolve.
- Add .agents/domains/{knowledge,operations}/schema.md; operations schema
codifies "plans always live in plans/".
- Repoint live references (AGENTS, README, GLOSSARY, OIKOS) and fix OIKOS.md's
internal relative links for its new depth.
Risk: none to the operational substrate — inventory.yaml, hosts/*.yaml,
oikos/, mcp/, secrets/, bin/ untouched (verified via git status).
Verification: relative-link check across .agents/ clean; substrate churn empty.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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.agents/OIKOS.md
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# Oikos — the operating model
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Oikos (Greek: *household*) is the agent operating system layered on this
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repo. It is not new infrastructure: `inventory.yaml` is the kernel data
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structure, the `homelab` CLI and MCP server are the syscall surface, and
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this page defines the rules everything above them follows.
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Read this after [AGENTS.md](../AGENTS.md). Machine-readable companions:
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[oikos/ontology.yaml](../oikos/ontology.yaml) (systems model),
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[oikos/policy.yaml](../oikos/policy.yaml) (risk & approval).
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## The kernel loop: OODA
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Every Oikos activity — scheduled probe, agent task, operator request — is
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one pass through **Observe → Orient → Decide → Act**:
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1. **Observe** — probes, drift detectors, and agent findings produce
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**Signals** (structured records, not loose messages): pending updates,
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high temperature, low disk, service down, cert expiry, stale backup,
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inventory drift.
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2. **Orient** — walk the ontology graph: what entity is affected, what
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depends on it (blast radius), its lifecycle state, whether a runbook
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matches, what the ledger says about past attempts.
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3. **Decide** — the classifier scores **risk class × blast radius ×
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confidence** and routes:
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- **auto-act**: within autonomy policy, high confidence, contained radius
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- **escalate**: operator approval via Matrix (✅/❌ reaction) or the
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Oikos Console's `/approvals` page (destructive actions additionally
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need a typed confirmation phrase either way)
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- **queue**: informational — console + reports
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The classifier can only *lower* autonomy relative to policy, never raise
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it. When in doubt, escalate.
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4. **Act** — execute through `homelab` commands or runbooks (never ad-hoc
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SSH), then **verify** with the action's verification command, write a
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**ledger** entry, resolve the Signal, and update docs in the same session.
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## Primitives
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| Primitive | What it is | Lives in |
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|---|---|---|
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| Host / Service | topology entities | `inventory.yaml` (+ generated `hosts/*.yaml`) |
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| Secret | SOPS+age encrypted value, per-client recipients | `secrets/` + `.sops.yaml` |
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| Runbook | executable workflow with risk class + verification | `runbooks/` (Week 2) |
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| Signal | something needing attention, with lifecycle | `signals/` ledger (Week 3) |
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| Change | one mutation: who, what, risk, approval, verification | `ledger/` (Week 2) |
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| Approval | short-TTL signed grant for a gated action | approval engine (Week 3) |
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| Incident | investigation narrative | `investigations/` |
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| Plan | design doc for non-trivial work | `plans/` |
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| Agent | enrolled client identity = its age pubkey | `inventory.yaml` + `.sops.yaml` |
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## Risk classes (enforced, not advisory)
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From [oikos/policy.yaml](../oikos/policy.yaml):
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- **read_only** — status, logs, docs, inventory. Unattended.
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- **reversible_low** — restart, cache clear, sync pull. Unattended + ledger.
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- **config_mutation** — tracked-config edits (commit+push, never local),
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deploys, upgrades, DNS/ingress changes. Operator approval.
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- **destructive** — destroy, format, wipe, rotate, revoke. Approval +
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typed confirmation phrase.
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Lifecycle gates modify these: `provisioning` nodes are freely mutable
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(nothing depends on them); `deprecated` nodes accept no new dependents;
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anything touching a `destroyed` node is drift.
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## The systems model
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Eight domains — physical, compute, network, storage, software,
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identity & access, operations, external — cover everything in the lab;
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entities are connected by typed edges (`hosts`, `provides`, `mounts`,
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`stores-on`, `routes-to`, `can-decrypt`, `depends-on`, `backs-up-to`, …)
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defined in [oikos/ontology.yaml](../oikos/ontology.yaml). Rule of
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completeness: **if it can break, be changed, or hold data, it has an
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entity and edges.** Blast-radius questions ("what breaks if strong goes
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down?") are graph walks, not doc archaeology.
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Nodes move through an explicit lifecycle —
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`planned → provisioning → active → migrating → deprecated → destroyed` —
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stored as `state:` in inventory (absent = active). Destroyed nodes live in
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the `archaeology:` section. Each transition is a runbook checklist;
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deprecation completes only when inbound edges reach zero.
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Generated views: [infrastructure/topology.md](../infrastructure/topology.md)
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(Mermaid, regenerated from inventory) and the live, clickable version at
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`oikos.hubris.network/graph` once the Console is deployed.
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## Conventions carried forward
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- Inventory is the truth; live state wins over narrative docs.
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- Prefer `homelab` CLI and MCP over ad-hoc SSH.
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- Meaningful changes update docs in the same session.
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- Secrets are decrypted locally via per-client keys; never into docs/comments.
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- Tracked configs change by commit + push, not local edits.
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- Netbird is the preferred mesh path for new traffic.
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- Agents are terse ([caveman.md](shared/caveman.md)), verify claims, and fix
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collateral drift when found.
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## Build status (30-day roadmap, started 2026-07-05)
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- **Week 1**: policy, ontology, service contract, archaeology, topology
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generator, this brief. Shipped.
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- **Week 2**: context cards, `homelab service <name> …`, change ledger,
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`node relations`, runbooks. Shipped.
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- **Week 3**: ops scheduler + state cache (`homelab service <name> health`
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is cache-first, `--live` forces a probe), drift detectors, signal engine
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(`homelab signal …`), decision classifier (`homelab decide …`), approval
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engine (`homelab approval …` — shared-HMAC grants; Matrix delivery is
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Hermes's existing `@dtoro:avispero` send path, not a new bot, see
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`oikos/approve.py`), daily brief + weekly report (`oikos/report.py`).
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Shipped, except: Prometheus is still `planned` (see
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[plans/2026-07-05-oikos-prometheus-lxc.md](../plans/2026-07-05-oikos-prometheus-lxc.md)) —
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trend signals (disk-full prediction, temp creep) wait on that LXC; the
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scheduler's disk check today is point-in-time only, and CPU/NVMe
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temperature isn't probed at all yet (no confirmed sensor path on
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hubris/strong). DNS-vs-inventory and generic tracked-config-cleanliness
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drift checks are also deferred (see `oikos/drift.py` docstring).
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- **Week 4**: Oikos Console v0 shipped — signals landing page, service
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grid + detail, node/blast-radius view, live Mermaid graph, drift view,
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approvals queue (approve/deny, destructive confirmation-phrase
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enforced), daily/weekly reports. Server-rendered FastAPI + Jinja2, no
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SPA build chain, tested end-to-end against live production data (see
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`oikos/console/`). Deploys as a third webhook on `dtoro/Homelab-Docs`
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(`/opt/oikos-console`, port :9831) — see
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[oikos/console/deploy/README.md](../oikos/console/deploy/README.md) for
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the Caddy route and Gitea webhook registration this repo can't do for
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itself. Approval grants are now single-use (a second `check_grant` call
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for the same request fails even within the TTL) and already exact-bound
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to request id + entity + action.
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**Not shipped as originally planned:** per-agent *age-key-signed*
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request authentication — age has no signing primitive (it's an
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encryption-only keypair format), so "age-key-signed" wasn't
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buildable as stated. The real alternative (SSH-key signing via
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`ssh-keygen -Y sign`/`-Y verify`, using each host's already-provisioned
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SSH key) is real and buildable, but needs SSH public keys recorded in
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inventory first — not there today. Moved to the 60/90-day backlog.
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Authentik step-up re-auth on the approve/deny route is documented but
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needs a live Authentik instance to configure — also backlog.
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Docs pass done (this file, AGENTS.md, operations/commands.md); found
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and fixed two more stale references while at it (DNS section still
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pointed at destroyed LXC 124/dnsmasq instead of Technitium on 107, and
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a `claudio-monitor` reference that's been deprecated since 2026-06-04).
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### Real drift found while building Week 3 (unresolved, needs operator action)
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The drift detectors surfaced genuine, currently-true findings on first
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run against production — recorded here rather than silently fixed, since
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each is a `config_mutation`/`destructive`-class decision:
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- `republic-laptop` has no `age_pubkey:` in `inventory.yaml`, but its real
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age key is granted on nearly every shared secret in `.sops.yaml`
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(`age1vf8h7...`) — the enrollment write-back to inventory never
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happened. Fix: `homelab client add republic-laptop --finalize-pubkey
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age1vf8h7s8mqsn2q5eadgpdupsj4mwn8zguc77d85ws3xj40sl9rgksx2rxw6`.
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- `grimmory` has an `age_pubkey` in inventory but is missing from
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`secrets/hello.yaml`'s recipient list — incomplete enrollment the
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other direction. Fix: re-run `homelab client add grimmory
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--finalize-pubkey <its key>`.
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- `pve_id 131` exists live on hubris (`pct list`) with no inventory entry
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— investigate before assuming it's a stale ID (see the Prometheus LXC
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plan doc above, which flags this explicitly).
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- Three `lifecycle-pve-id-reuse` info findings (100, 106, 107 each shared
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between an active host and an archaeology entry) — expected/benign ID
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reuse after destroy, no action needed.
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## 60/90-day backlog
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Derived from gaps observed while building the 30-day roadmap, not
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guesswork. Roughly ordered by what unblocks the most:
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- **Fix the oikos-console deploy webhook's signature mismatch.** Console
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is live on apps (105) via a manual `deploy.sh` run, but Gitea webhook
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14's deliveries all 403 with a signature mismatch for a cause not yet
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found — the secret is confirmed synced correctly on both sides
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(rotated once already to rule out drift). Until fixed, `git push`
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doesn't auto-redeploy the console the way it does for homelab-mcp/
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secrets-issuance; re-run `deploy.sh` on apps manually after changes.
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See [oikos/console/deploy/README.md](../oikos/console/deploy/README.md).
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- **SSH-key-signed approval requests.** Replaces the design note in
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Week 4: age keys can't sign (encryption-only format), so per-agent
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request authentication needs `ssh-keygen -Y sign`/`-Y verify` against
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each host's existing SSH key. Blocked on a schema gap: inventory
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doesn't record SSH public keys today, only ports/users. First step is
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populating that field on enrollment, then wiring `oikos/approve.py` to
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require and verify a signature over the request payload.
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- **Authentik step-up re-auth** on the Console's `/approvals` POST route
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— needs a live Authentik `PromptStage`/reauth flow scoped to that path;
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not configurable without a running instance to test against.
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- **Prometheus provisioning** (see
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[plans/2026-07-05-oikos-prometheus-lxc.md](../plans/2026-07-05-oikos-prometheus-lxc.md))
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— unblocks trend signals (disk-full prediction, temp creep) and real
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sparklines in the Console; investigate the undocumented `pve_id 131`
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on hubris first.
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- **CPU/NVMe temperature probing** in the scheduler — needs a confirmed
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sensor path on hubris and strong (lm-sensors vs vendor tool) before a
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real check can be written; guessing one risks a probe that silently
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never fires.
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- **DNS-vs-inventory drift check** — compare Technitium zone records
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against `services.*.url`/`public_host`; not implemented (`oikos/drift.py`
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has no Technitium API wiring yet).
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- **Generic tracked-config-cleanliness drift check** — today only caddy's
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`/etc/caddy` git-checkout path is hardcoded in `oikos/drift.py`; every
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other service with a `config_repo` needs its local checkout path
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recorded (a `mutation_path`-style field, same gap Week 1's service
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contract flagged but didn't backfill) before this generalizes.
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- **Per-service policy overrides** (`oikos/policy.yaml`
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`service_overrides`) — schema is ready (caddy/dns already use it);
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populate more as specific services turn out to need non-default risk
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classes.
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- **Incident timeline generator** — stitch ledger + signal history into
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a single narrative for `investigations/` entries instead of writing
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them by hand.
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- **Secret access audit** — who-can-decrypt-what report from
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`.sops.yaml` + inventory `age_pubkey`s, extending what
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`oikos/drift.py`'s SOPS check already partially does.
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- **Restore drills** — exercise `backs-up-to` (once populated) by
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actually restoring from a backup target on a schedule, not just
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checking freshness.
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- **Multi-agent delegation model** — more than one agent acting
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concurrently; needs the ledger's `agent` field to carry real identity
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(age pubkey, not just hostname) consistently, which it mostly does
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already but hasn't been stress-tested with concurrent writers.
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- **Grafana** — only if the Console's own Prometheus-backed sparklines
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turn out to be insufficient once Prometheus ships.
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- **"Generalize later" extraction** — the original decision was personal-
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first, generalize-later (see Week 1). Once patterns stabilize, extract
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a config-driven Oikos core with no `hubris.network`/`hubris`/`strong`
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hardcoding, so it's installable on a different homelab.
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