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OQ-21: Remote Vault Administration

  • Origin: service.md, protocol.md, ADR-019

  • Status: resolved

  • Door type: One-way (vault crate is local-only by construction)

  • Priority: medium

  • Resolution: Remote vault access is not a feature of the vault crate. ADR-025 dropped irpc from the vault, making the vault local-only by construction — no RemoteService trait, no wire format for vault messages, no default-insecure remote handler. The vault's API is VaultServiceHandle (direct method calls), nothing else.

    If remote vault access is ever needed (e.g., the machine→worker pattern), it requires a separate vault-server crate that depends on both alknet-core (for IdentityProvider, scopes, auth-wrapping) and alknet-vault (for VaultServiceHandle). That crate would define its own threat model, access policy, operation filtering (Unlock/Lock local-only), and wire format — and requires its own ADR. This is a deliberate addition, not a flag flip on a default that was already loaded.

    The pre-ADR-025 deferral framed remote access as "non-breaking" (the wire format was additive). That framing was misleading: once workers build dependencies on the remote vault API, disabling it breaks them — the door is operationally one-way even if the wire format is additive. ADR-025 inverts the default: the vault is local-only by construction, and remote access requires building something new, not removing a default.

    Per-node vaults are the recommended pattern for multi-node deployments: each node has its own vault and mnemonic; credentials are encrypted for the receiving node's public key, not decrypted centrally. This is end-to-end encryption between nodes, matching ADR-008's "capability source" model.

  • Cross-references: ADR-005, ADR-008, ADR-014, ADR-018, ADR-019, ADR-025, protocol.md, service.md