chore(repo): put the template under version control
The basis for every project here was itself unversioned: no .git, no remote,
no history. Changes to it had no diff and no revert, and two of its own guards
could not run at all -- doc-claims.sh and doc-triggers.py both read git
history, so the script written to catch documentation drift could not be run
against the documents that define drift.
This is the tree as it stands, including work that until now existed only as
loose files on disk: WORK_CYCLE.md, TOOLS.md, the Portainer image-line fix in
deploy.py, the status vocabulary corrected to the four words the conformance
checker actually enforces, the Exempt: mechanism documented, and the Forgejo
instance named in README.md.
secrets.sh --tracked reports one candidate, migrate.sh:480. It is the comment
documenting the three Postgres credential shapes that script redacts, with
literal placeholders, and it is left alone deliberately: GUARDS.md section 2
is that a source-grep guard must tell code from the comment about code, and
deleting an explanation to quiet a scanner is the failure it names.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-17 22:44:26 -05:00
# Architecture
```
Status: Current
Owner: < who maintains this >
Last reviewed: < YYYY-MM-DD >
Governs: docs/architecture/**
Review trigger: Any new module, any change to a module boundary or a data shape
```
## What belongs here
How the thing is built, for somebody who has to change it:
- **Module boundaries** — what each part owns, and what it is not allowed to
know about. The boundaries are the architecture; everything else is detail.
- **Data shapes** — the structures that outlive a single function, especially
anything persisted or sent over a wire.
- **Reference manuals** — the long documents that answer "how does X work"
without requiring a full read of X.
- **Decisions with consequences** — why this database, why this concurrency
model, why this dependency. Include the option that was rejected and what it
would have cost, because that is the part nobody can reconstruct later.
## Documents here
- **`GUARDS.md`** — how to write a check that actually checks. Read it before
adding a structural test or a probe; every rule in it was learned from a guard
that had been green over something broken.
## What ships in this folder
Working code, not just prose. Copy what a project needs and delete the rest —
these are a starting point with the arguments already made, not a framework.
This table is the one copy of that list. [`docs/TOOLS.md` ](../TOOLS.md ) is the
signpost every project is expected to have — it points here rather than
repeating it, and answers the two questions this table does not: which scripts
can stop you, and where to start in a fresh clone.
| Path | What it is |
| --- | --- |
| `scripts/release.sh` | version bump, guards, build, verify, push, prune. Refuses to build on a half-run test suite or a malformed public origin. |
| `scripts/verify.sh` | the repo's own checks, in one command |
| `scripts/check-env.sh` | which variables are set, which are missing, before anything reads them |
| `scripts/migrate.sh` | apply and report migrations, including the ones that run outside a transaction |
| `scripts/backup.sh` | a dump that is verified before it is trusted |
feat(ops): restore-check.sh, the other half of backup.sh
backup.sh says it outright -- it verifies the artefact, only a restore verifies
the backup -- and its header names this script as the missing half, with the
pg_restore command it should run. This is that command with the parts that stop
it being dangerous.
A dump pg_restore --list can read is a file with a table of contents, not a
database. Between those sit every reason a restore fails on the day it is
needed: a missing extension, an owner that does not exist, version skew, a dump
of the wrong database that reads perfectly. And the number nobody has and will
want badly: how long it takes. During an incident that decides whether you
restore or fail over, and it is unknowable from the file size. Printed every run.
**The dangerous part.** pg_restore --clean issues DROPs, and pointed at
production it obeys immediately and irreversibly. Handled by never accepting a
target: there is no --database flag, because naming the database is the mistake.
The script creates `restorecheck_<epoch>_<pid>`, restores into that, and drops it
from a trap so an interrupted run leaves no copy of production data behind.
Same argument status.sh makes for having no --host flag.
Shares BACKUP_DIR, BACKUP_NAME and BACKUP_MIN_TABLES with backup.sh rather than
taking its own, so the two cannot disagree about which series belongs to this
project.
Proved against a real PostgreSQL, not asserted -- GUARDS.md section 1:
exit 0 a real 3-table dump, minimum 1
exit 1 minimum raised to 99; a dump truncated to 2000 bytes; a zero-byte dump
exit 2 unconfigured (naming the missing value one at a time); server
unreachable
exit 0 --dry-run, always, contacting nothing
Two things that testing found and assertion would not. Every scratch database
was dropped, confirmed by querying pg_database afterwards. And --dry-run could
exit 1 on an empty dump, because the emptiness check ran before it; a mode whose
exit code depends on the state of the data is not a dry run, so the check moved
below and the dry run now notes the emptiness in its plan instead.
closes #7
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-17 23:07:36 -05:00
| `scripts/restore-check.sh` | the other half of `backup.sh` : restores the newest dump into a scratch database it creates and drops, counts the tables, and **times it** — the number an incident actually needs. Never accepts a target, because naming one is the mistake `--clean` punishes. |
chore(repo): put the template under version control
The basis for every project here was itself unversioned: no .git, no remote,
no history. Changes to it had no diff and no revert, and two of its own guards
could not run at all -- doc-claims.sh and doc-triggers.py both read git
history, so the script written to catch documentation drift could not be run
against the documents that define drift.
This is the tree as it stands, including work that until now existed only as
loose files on disk: WORK_CYCLE.md, TOOLS.md, the Portainer image-line fix in
deploy.py, the status vocabulary corrected to the four words the conformance
checker actually enforces, the Exempt: mechanism documented, and the Forgejo
instance named in README.md.
secrets.sh --tracked reports one candidate, migrate.sh:480. It is the comment
documenting the three Postgres credential shapes that script redacts, with
literal placeholders, and it is left alone deliberately: GUARDS.md section 2
is that a source-grep guard must tell code from the comment about code, and
deleting an explanation to quiet a scanner is the failure it names.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-17 22:44:26 -05:00
| `scripts/healthcheck.sh` | a liveness tick with the URL written down rather than re-derived each run |
feat(security): preflight.sh, the live-URL checks
Four things auditors of applications of this kind report seeing over and over,
each of them mechanical: a header that is absent, a scheme that is plain, a
login that answers a thousand guesses, a reset form that confirms which
addresses have accounts. None needs understanding to be checked, which is why
they belong in a script rather than a page somebody re-reads before a release
and then does not.
*(precautionary)* -- none of it has bitten a project here. The checks are cheap
and the evidence is somebody else's.
**Passive by default.** A bare run sends two GETs and could not be mistaken for
anything. Rate limiting and enumeration are behind --auth, because one of them
deliberately generates a dozen failed authentications.
**It refuses any host but its configured origin.** There is no URL argument that
can point it elsewhere: the target is PREFLIGHT_ORIGIN, and a URL on the command
line must match it. status.sh makes this argument for having no --host flag;
here there is more at stake, since a mistake there reads the wrong machine and a
mistake here hammers somebody else's login form from your address. The login and
reset paths are configured too, never guessed -- a POST to an assumed /login on
the wrong app posts to whatever is actually there.
Verified: exit 2 unconfigured, for a foreign host, and for an unreachable one;
exit 0 for --dry-run; exit 1 with the finding named. Run passively against
privacyllc.dev it correctly reported a strong CSP, a framing policy and HSTS,
and found that plain http answers 200 with the full page rather than
redirecting -- which is the class of finding this exists for, on its first real
target.
closes #9
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-17 23:14:06 -05:00
| `scripts/preflight.sh` | the live-URL checks: headers, TLS, and *(with `--auth`)* login rate limiting and account enumeration. Refuses any host but its configured origin — two of its checks generate failed logins and look like an attack in somebody's log. |
chore(repo): put the template under version control
The basis for every project here was itself unversioned: no .git, no remote,
no history. Changes to it had no diff and no revert, and two of its own guards
could not run at all -- doc-claims.sh and doc-triggers.py both read git
history, so the script written to catch documentation drift could not be run
against the documents that define drift.
This is the tree as it stands, including work that until now existed only as
loose files on disk: WORK_CYCLE.md, TOOLS.md, the Portainer image-line fix in
deploy.py, the status vocabulary corrected to the four words the conformance
checker actually enforces, the Exempt: mechanism documented, and the Forgejo
instance named in README.md.
secrets.sh --tracked reports one candidate, migrate.sh:480. It is the comment
documenting the three Postgres credential shapes that script redacts, with
literal placeholders, and it is left alone deliberately: GUARDS.md section 2
is that a source-grep guard must tell code from the comment about code, and
deleting an explanation to quiet a scanner is the failure it names.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-17 22:44:26 -05:00
| `scripts/status.sh` | what is deployed, and whether it matches this checkout |
feat(ops): controls.sh, which controls this project actually has
The question that decides whether a system can be depended on is not "does it
work" -- a demo answers that -- but which controls are present, asked before
something goes wrong. verify.sh reports which checks ran just now; backup.sh
proves one dump; the Command Center reports documents and tracker labels. None
of them says whether this project has backups AND has ever restored one AND has
somewhere errors go AND has an environment that is not production.
Four states, because flattening them is how a report starts lying:
measured observed here -- a file with a date, a variable that is set, a
command that answered
declared asserted in configuration, checked for shape and not for truth
n/a the project said the control does not apply. A library has no
uptime; saying so is an answer, not an omission
unknown expected and undeterminable. Never rendered as absent, because
"I could not tell" and "it is not there" send people to different
places
Reads BACKUP_DIR, BACKUP_NAME, HEALTHCHECK_BASE_URL, STATUS_HOST and
STATUS_CONTAINER from the scripts that own them, so the two cannot disagree
about which project this is. Writes nothing: a committed CONTROLS.md saying
"backups: ok" is a description of current state in a document, which is what the
batch ledger was and why it was archived.
Verified: exit 2 when nothing is declared and when a control name is unknown;
exit 0 for a library that declares only what applies, with seven n/a rows; exit
1 with three absent and one unknown; --quiet showing only rows needing
attention.
One bug that testing found and reading would not. GNU date parses relative
English, so `CONTROLS_LAST_RESTORE="last tuesday"` returned a real timestamp and
a plausible age -- a restore date the script invented. The shape is now required
before date sees it, and prose becomes unknown rather than a number.
closes #10
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-17 23:11:52 -05:00
| `scripts/controls.sh` | which operational controls this project actually has, each row saying **how** it is known: measured, declared, n/a, or unknown. An unknown is never rendered as absent — "I could not tell" and "it is not there" send people to different places. |
chore(repo): put the template under version control
The basis for every project here was itself unversioned: no .git, no remote,
no history. Changes to it had no diff and no revert, and two of its own guards
could not run at all -- doc-claims.sh and doc-triggers.py both read git
history, so the script written to catch documentation drift could not be run
against the documents that define drift.
This is the tree as it stands, including work that until now existed only as
loose files on disk: WORK_CYCLE.md, TOOLS.md, the Portainer image-line fix in
deploy.py, the status vocabulary corrected to the four words the conformance
checker actually enforces, the Exempt: mechanism documented, and the Forgejo
instance named in README.md.
secrets.sh --tracked reports one candidate, migrate.sh:480. It is the comment
documenting the three Postgres credential shapes that script redacts, with
literal placeholders, and it is left alone deliberately: GUARDS.md section 2
is that a source-grep guard must tell code from the comment about code, and
deleting an explanation to quiet a scanner is the failure it names.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-17 22:44:26 -05:00
| `scripts/dev.sh` | bring the local stack up |
| `scripts/scaffold.sh` | lay out a new project in this shape |
fix(tools): doc-triggers matched the glob but not the trigger's verb
DOC_TRUST_MAP.md declares `Governs: docs/**`, the broadest glob in the tree,
while its Review trigger is one of the narrowest -- any doc added, deleted or
moved. Matching on the glob alone fired it on every edit to every document,
forever, and correctly by the only rule the tool had. Touching one script fired
three documents and exactly one of them applied.
A prompt that always fires is one people stop reading, and it takes the true
positives with it. This tool exits 0 by design -- it is a prompt, not a gate --
which makes it more vulnerable to that, not less, because nothing forces the
reading.
Documents now declare the kinds of change their trigger names, in an optional
`Fires on:` header field, read against git's own status letter. Absent, empty or
unparseable means every kind, so nothing changes for the six other
path-governing documents and a document is only ever quietened by somebody
writing the line deliberately.
## Why declared rather than read out of the trigger prose
The obvious first cut is to look for added/deleted/moved with no changed/change
to. Tried against the seven path-governing documents here, it misclassifies the
one it exists to fix: DOC_TRUST_MAP.md's trigger ends "any change to which doc
owns a subject", so it reads as a change-verb. That clause is about which
document owns a subject, not about a file being edited, and nothing lexical
separates it from architecture/README.md's "any change to a module boundary or a
data shape", which genuinely does mean modification.
Guessing at English is silent in the expensive direction: a document wrongly
read as existence-only stops being prompted for and goes quietly stale, which is
the failure this whole tool exists to prevent. So the narrowing is declared or it
does not happen.
## Also
changed_paths now carries a status letter per path, from --name-status for
--staged and --range and from the porcelain columns for the working tree. Paths
named on the command line have no diff to read, so the kind is inferred: absent
from disk is a deletion, present but untracked is an addition, otherwise a
modification.
Documents that govern a path in the change but do not fire on its kind are named
in their own short block rather than dropped, because a reader who saw nothing
would have to guess whether they had been considered. The no-match message now
distinguishes "nothing governs these paths" from "governed, but not this kind of
change" -- the second is a declaration somebody wrote, not an unclaimed area.
Verified: modifying a script fires TOOLS.md and architecture/README.md and not
DOC_TRUST_MAP.md; adding, deleting and moving a document under docs/ each still
fire it; modifying a document fires nothing; an unknown word warns and fires on
everything; an empty or absent field fires on everything.
closes #20
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-17 23:50:21 -05:00
| `scripts/doc-triggers.py` | which documents a **pending** change fires, read from their `Governs:` headers and narrowed by the optional `Fires on:` — the kinds of change (added, deleted, moved, changed) a document's trigger actually names, so one governing `docs/**` for existence changes alone does not fire on every edit. The `Review trigger` on each document names the change that should send somebody back to it; this is the check that asks before the commit rather than after |
chore(repo): put the template under version control
The basis for every project here was itself unversioned: no .git, no remote,
no history. Changes to it had no diff and no revert, and two of its own guards
could not run at all -- doc-claims.sh and doc-triggers.py both read git
history, so the script written to catch documentation drift could not be run
against the documents that define drift.
This is the tree as it stands, including work that until now existed only as
loose files on disk: WORK_CYCLE.md, TOOLS.md, the Portainer image-line fix in
deploy.py, the status vocabulary corrected to the four words the conformance
checker actually enforces, the Exempt: mechanism documented, and the Forgejo
instance named in README.md.
secrets.sh --tracked reports one candidate, migrate.sh:480. It is the comment
documenting the three Postgres credential shapes that script redacts, with
literal placeholders, and it is left alone deliberately: GUARDS.md section 2
is that a source-grep guard must tell code from the comment about code, and
deleting an explanation to quiet a scanner is the failure it names.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-17 22:44:26 -05:00
| `scripts/prove-guard.sh` | breaks the thing a guard protects, requires the guard to go red, restores the file from a trap. `GUARDS.md` §1 written out as a command, including the count — one failing test reported on six lines is not six failures |
| `scripts/commit-mine.sh` | commits only the paths you name, by pathspec, after the secret scan. For a tree something else is also writing: what anyone else has staged is reported and left exactly as it was |
| `scripts/doc-claims.sh` | every file a document names must exist, and (`--covers`) every file that exists is named — the second is the one that catches a list missing rows |
| `scripts/duplication.py` | code that exists twice, tuned so what it reports is worth reading |
| `scripts/dead-code.py` | exports nothing imports, and assets nothing renders |
| `scripts/secrets.sh` | credential shapes in a staged diff, using the project's own patterns where it has them |
| `scripts/audit-gate.mjs` | high/critical advisories in **production** dependencies, with the allowlist npm does not have. An entry must say why the advisory cannot reach this app, what would make it reachable, and what retires the entry — three fields, so a waiver stays falsifiable. Exits 2 when nothing was checked. |
| `scripts/forgejo-issue.py` | file and close issues in the tracker convention, with every rule of it as a check |
| `scripts/deploy.py` | update the running stack to a published image. Publishing and deploying are separate; this is the second one. **The only copy** — it existed twice and drifted (#209); the `privacyllc-deploy` skill's is now a symlink to this file. Identity-free by design: it reads `DEPLOY_IMAGE` , `DEPLOY_STACK_ID` , `DEPLOY_CONTAINER` and `DEPLOY_SITE_URL` from the environment and refuses to run without them, so each project supplies its own via a wrapper. Never hard-code one here — least of all the site URL, which is frozen into the image at build time. |
| `scripts/release-notes.mjs` | tags the release and writes its notes, grouped by the commit types the message hook already enforces. Runs after `release.sh` has published, so a failure here cannot cost an image. Scrubs credential shapes out of commit subjects first — the body goes to a public repository. |
| `githooks/` | pre-commit, commit-msg, post-commit — see its README for the one install command |
Every script takes its configuration from the environment and hard-codes nothing
about any particular deployment. `check-env.sh` is the one to run first.
## What does not belong here
- Product intent — that is `docs/planning/PROJECT_PLAN.md`
- What it should feel like — that is `docs/design/`
- What happened while building it — that is a history log, not architecture
## A note on drift
Architecture docs go stale faster than any other kind, because code changes
under them silently. This is exactly what the **Review trigger** line is for:
name the change that should send somebody back here, and a reader can tell
whether the trigger has fired.