The monolithic open-questions.md (1310 lines, 47 OQs) was large enough to be unmanageable, with high size variance (OQ-42 at 220 lines next to OQ-06 at 8). Decomposed into one file per OQ under docs/architecture/questions/ (NNN-slug.md, mirroring the ADR convention), with open-questions.md retained as the index: theme-grouped tables plus a cross-theme Deferred/Blocked section that surfaces the 6 deferred OQs with their Blocked-on conditions inline (the safe-exit visibility surface). Per-OQ content moved verbatim; all 62 inbound links stay valid (none used anchors). README's curated OQ summary dropped (now redundant with the index tables). Also seeds tasks/architecture/ with this task plus two follow-ups found during the decompose: OQ-09/10 missing structured Blocked-on fields, and the tasks/architecture/ blocker-task half of the Safe Exit protocol being unenforced.
1.9 KiB
OQ-21: Remote Vault Administration
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Origin: service.md, protocol.md, ADR-019
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Status: resolved
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Door type: One-way (vault crate is local-only by construction)
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Priority: medium
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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
RemoteServicetrait, no wire format for vault messages, no default-insecure remote handler. The vault's API isVaultServiceHandle(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 (forVaultServiceHandle). 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.
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Cross-references: ADR-005, ADR-008, ADR-014, ADR-018, ADR-019, ADR-025, protocol.md, service.md