.ward/ward.yaml has no field-by-field schema doc; the security: block is authorable only by reading cli-guard Go source

coilyco-ops commented

2026-07-01 21:47:31 +00:00

Owner

Why

Persona: the-agent-itself — an agent handed "configure ward for a toy repo using only the documentation" (also the delegated-setup path a vibe-coder actually exercises). Trail: README → linked example .ward/ward.yaml → docs/config-discovery.md → docs/exec-verb.md → docs/doctor.md → docs/hook.md. There is no field-by-field reference for .ward/ward.yaml anywhere:

The canonical example shows only catalog: + commands:. Its lone schema comment ("Catalog schema: coilyco-flight-deck/agentic-os") points at a third repo, unlinked — and cli-guard's repocfg appears to read only commands + security, so the example's only schema hint may describe a block ward itself never reads.
The security: block — the tool's actual value proposition — has no example anywhere in the repo. Its shape must be reconstructed from prose fragments in doctor.md and hook.md, and the nesting of allowed_wrappers is ambiguous between them; only reading cli-guard Go source settles it.
Schema fields that exist but appear in zero ward docs or examples: commands.<name>.allow_metacharacters (a per-command security escape hatch), commands.<name>.audit.egress, security.protected_binaries[].mode, and the entire security.forbidden_argv[] feature.
exec-verb.md's contract sentence ("every ward-managed repo is expected to declare the build/test/install triple") appears nowhere near the example or install docs. Whether ward lint enforces it, and whether run: must be a make target (i.e. whether a Makefile is a hard adoption requirement) is unanswerable from docs.
AGENTS.md states "Downstream config schema: .ward/ward.yaml. Schema lives here." — but the schema struct lives upstream in cli-guard (cli/repocfg), which config-discovery.md half-admits ("Both use the cli-guard repocfg format", unlinked).

The kill shot: hook.md says malformed config "passes through silently". An agent that guesses the security: block wrong produces a repo whose owner believes they are protected while nothing is enforced. For a security tool, guessed-config-that-silently-noops is the worst failure shape — and today guessing is the only authoring path.

Deliverable

A docs/ward-yaml.md field-by-field reference: every key repocfg accepts (commands incl. allow_metacharacters / audit.egress; the full security: block incl. mode and forbidden_argv; catalog: documented or explicitly marked "not read by ward — agentic-os catalog tooling"), required-vs-optional per key, legal values, one complete annotated example that includes a security: block, and a plain statement of the Makefile/run: contract that ward lint enforces. Make AGENTS.md's "Schema lives here" true or fix it. Link the reference from README beside the example config.

Done condition

An agent (or human) with no access to cli-guard source can author a .ward/ward.yaml with a working security: block from ward docs alone, and can predict what ward lint / ward doctor will accept, with zero guesses. Reviewer test: hand the new doc to a fresh agent session, ask it to configure a non-ward toy repo, and count the guesses it is forced to annotate — the count must be zero.

Severity: adoption-fatal · persona: the-agent-itself · angle: yaml-config
Filed by Claude Code during a cold-read release pressure test (run 2).

## Why Persona: `the-agent-itself` — an agent handed "configure ward for a toy repo using only the documentation" (also the delegated-setup path a vibe-coder actually exercises). Trail: README → linked example `.ward/ward.yaml` → docs/config-discovery.md → docs/exec-verb.md → docs/doctor.md → docs/hook.md. There is no field-by-field reference for `.ward/ward.yaml` anywhere: - The canonical example shows only `catalog:` + `commands:`. Its lone schema comment ("Catalog schema: coilyco-flight-deck/agentic-os") points at a third repo, unlinked — and cli-guard's repocfg appears to read only `commands` + `security`, so the example's only schema hint may describe a block ward itself never reads. - The `security:` block — the tool's actual value proposition — has **no example anywhere in the repo**. Its shape must be reconstructed from prose fragments in doctor.md and hook.md, and the nesting of `allowed_wrappers` is ambiguous between them; only reading cli-guard Go source settles it. - Schema fields that exist but appear in zero ward docs or examples: `commands.<name>.allow_metacharacters` (a per-command security escape hatch), `commands.<name>.audit.egress`, `security.protected_binaries[].mode`, and the entire `security.forbidden_argv[]` feature. - exec-verb.md's contract sentence ("every ward-managed repo is expected to declare the `build`/`test`/`install` triple") appears nowhere near the example or install docs. Whether `ward lint` enforces it, and whether `run:` must be a `make` target (i.e. whether a Makefile is a hard adoption requirement) is unanswerable from docs. - AGENTS.md states "Downstream config schema: `.ward/ward.yaml`. Schema lives here." — but the schema struct lives upstream in cli-guard (`cli/repocfg`), which config-discovery.md half-admits ("Both use the cli-guard `repocfg` format", unlinked). The kill shot: hook.md says malformed config "passes through silently". An agent that guesses the `security:` block wrong produces a repo whose owner believes they are protected while nothing is enforced. For a security tool, guessed-config-that-silently-noops is the worst failure shape — and today guessing is the only authoring path. ## Deliverable A `docs/ward-yaml.md` field-by-field reference: every key repocfg accepts (commands incl. `allow_metacharacters` / `audit.egress`; the full `security:` block incl. `mode` and `forbidden_argv`; `catalog:` documented or explicitly marked "not read by ward — agentic-os catalog tooling"), required-vs-optional per key, legal values, one complete annotated example that includes a `security:` block, and a plain statement of the Makefile/`run:` contract that `ward lint` enforces. Make AGENTS.md's "Schema lives here" true or fix it. Link the reference from README beside the example config. ## Done condition An agent (or human) with no access to cli-guard source can author a `.ward/ward.yaml` with a working `security:` block from ward docs alone, and can predict what `ward lint` / `ward doctor` will accept, with zero guesses. Reviewer test: hand the new doc to a fresh agent session, ask it to configure a non-ward toy repo, and count the guesses it is forced to annotate — the count must be zero. --- **Severity: adoption-fatal** · persona: the-agent-itself · angle: yaml-config Filed by Claude Code during a cold-read release pressure test (run 2).

coilyco-ops added the

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2026-07-01 21:47:31 +00:00

coilyco-ops referenced this issue

2026-07-01 21:48:05 +00:00

meta: release pressure-test run log (cold-read usability sweeps) #428

coilyco-ops commented

2026-07-01 21:55:38 +00:00

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Dedup note: #434 is a concurrent duplicate of this issue — two pressure-test sweeps raced between their dedup pulls and filings. This one additionally carries the undocumented-field inventory (allow_metacharacters, audit.egress, protected_binaries[].mode, forbidden_argv) and the silent-pass-through failure mode from hook.md; suggest merging the two into whichever survives.
Filed by Claude Code during a cold-read release pressure test (run 12 dedup pass).

Dedup note: #434 is a concurrent duplicate of this issue — two pressure-test sweeps raced between their dedup pulls and filings. This one additionally carries the undocumented-field inventory (allow_metacharacters, audit.egress, protected_binaries[].mode, forbidden_argv) and the silent-pass-through failure mode from hook.md; suggest merging the two into whichever survives. Filed by Claude Code during a cold-read release pressure test (run 12 dedup pass).

coilyco-ops referenced this issue

2026-07-01 22:43:16 +00:00

AGENTS.md opens by pointing agents at a private workspace chain (agentic-os-kai) and never addresses the adopter-agent 'set this up for me' path #476

coilyco-ops commented

2026-07-01 22:43:16 +00:00

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Related line hit during run 31 (vibe-coder/agent-legibility): AGENTS.md § Cross-repo contracts says "Downstream config schema: .ward/ward.yaml. Schema lives here." — asserting an in-repo schema that this issue establishes does not exist as a doc. Worth fixing that line (link the schema doc) when this lands.

Related line hit during run 31 (vibe-coder/agent-legibility): AGENTS.md § Cross-repo contracts says "Downstream config schema: `.ward/ward.yaml`. Schema lives here." — asserting an in-repo schema that this issue establishes does not exist as a doc. Worth fixing that line (link the schema doc) when this lands.

coilyco-ops referenced this issue

2026-07-01 22:43:18 +00:00

meta: release pressure-test run log (cold-read usability sweeps) #428

coilyco-ops commented

2026-07-01 22:58:06 +00:00

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+1 — independently hit via security-skeptic/yaml-config, run 19. Grepped every doc in docs/ for a full security: block example (specifically protected_binaries:) - zero hits anywhere in the repo. A skeptic cannot verify what the security: block actually guarantees without a worked example.

+1 — independently hit via security-skeptic/yaml-config, run 19. Grepped every doc in docs/ for a full `security:` block example (specifically `protected_binaries:`) - zero hits anywhere in the repo. A skeptic cannot verify what the security: block actually guarantees without a worked example.

coilyco-ops referenced this issue

2026-07-01 22:58:07 +00:00

meta: release pressure-test run log (cold-read usability sweeps) #428

coilyco-ops added this to the ward launch milestone

2026-07-01 23:29:41 +00:00

coilyco-ops added the

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2026-07-01 23:30:33 +00:00

coilyco-ops referenced this issue

2026-07-01 23:57:02 +00:00

the .ward/ward.yaml schema is documented nowhere field-by-field #434

coilyco-ops referenced this issue

2026-07-01 23:58:51 +00:00

ward doctor exits 0 (clean pass) on a repo with no security: block at all, and no doc flags this for CI gating #450

coilyco-ops commented

2026-07-01 23:59:28 +00:00

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Canonical for #434 (merged). Triage note that raises the stakes: during this triage Kai did not recognize the security: block by name - the tool's author cannot currently author its headline config from the docs. Field source for the schema doc: cli-guard cli/repocfg/security.go - protected_binaries (name/mode=deny-direct/allowed_wrappers/expected_real_paths/credential_env), sudo.forbid_passwordless, hooks (PreToolUse deny/route), forbidden_argv (description/matches_glob_any/hint). Also required as remediation target by #450's fail-by-default decision. Recorded by Claude Code (Fable) during the 2026-07-01 ward launch triage session with Kai.

coilyco-ops referenced this issue

2026-07-02 00:01:42 +00:00

meta: jul 1st evening sprint - launch burndown session 1 #492

coilyco-ops commented

2026-07-02 02:54:07 +00:00

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🔒 Reserved by ward agent --driver claude — container engineer-claude-ward-436 on host kais-macbook-pro-2.local is carrying this issue (reserved 2026-07-02T02:54:04Z). Concurrent ward agent runs are blocked until it finishes or the reservation goes stale (2h0m0s TTL); --force overrides.

— Claude (she/her), via ward agent

🔒 Reserved by `ward agent --driver claude` — container `engineer-claude-ward-436` on host `kais-macbook-pro-2.local` is carrying this issue (reserved 2026-07-02T02:54:04Z). Concurrent `ward agent` runs are blocked until it finishes or the reservation goes stale (2h0m0s TTL); `--force` overrides.  — Claude (she/her), via `ward agent`

coilysiren referenced this issue from a commit

2026-07-02 03:06:16 +00:00

docs(ward-yaml): add field-by-field .ward/ward.yaml schema reference

coilysiren closed this issue

2026-07-02 03:06:16 +00:00

coilysiren commented

2026-07-02 03:07:06 +00:00

Owner

WARD-OUTCOME: done - added docs/ward-yaml.md, a field-by-field .ward/ward.yaml schema reference, and fixed AGENTS.md's stale schema/lint claims.

The work went smoothly once I stopped trusting the docs and read the actual struct. The pinned cli-guard is v0.65.0 but /substrate sits at v0.66.0, so I read repocfg.go + security.go straight from the v0.65.0 tag rather than guessing they matched. That was the whole game: every field, its legal values, and the required-vs-optional split came from the source, not prose.

Two things fought back and both turned out to be the interesting findings. First, the issue says the Makefile/run: contract is enforced by ward lint - there is no ward lint verb (lint is just the ward exec lint dev verb). It is ward doctor, and AGENTS.md carried the same wrong claim, so I fixed it there too. Second, and more important: forbidden_argv is fully parsed and validated by repocfg, but ward's hook only calls ProtectedFor, never ForbiddenFor - so declaring it today enforces nothing at runtime. commands.<name>.audit.egress is the same shape (parsed, not wired for repo verbs). Those are exactly the silent-noop traps the issue was worried about, so I documented them loudly under a 'what ward reads / ignores / no-ops' section rather than pretending they work.

One judgment call worth flagging: the doc blows past the repo's 80-line/4000-char documentation-layout cap (it is ~15KB - a full config reference plus a ~2KB annotated example cannot fit, and splitting it would defeat the issue's 'author from ward docs alone' goal). I excluded it from the size cap only, on the same carve-out README.md and docs/README.md already use, with dead-cross-links still validating it. If that carve-out is unwelcome I can split it, but I think a single self-contained reference is the right call here.

Confident in the accuracy - every claim traces to source I read and pre-commit is green. Worth a follow-up issue: wire ForbiddenFor (and per-verb audit.egress) into ward's hook so forbidden_argv actually enforces, since a documented-but-inert security feature is still a sharp edge even now that it is documented as inert.

WARD-OUTCOME: done - added docs/ward-yaml.md, a field-by-field .ward/ward.yaml schema reference, and fixed AGENTS.md's stale schema/lint claims. The work went smoothly once I stopped trusting the docs and read the actual struct. The pinned cli-guard is v0.65.0 but /substrate sits at v0.66.0, so I read repocfg.go + security.go straight from the v0.65.0 tag rather than guessing they matched. That was the whole game: every field, its legal values, and the required-vs-optional split came from the source, not prose. Two things fought back and both turned out to be the interesting findings. First, the issue says the Makefile/run: contract is enforced by `ward lint` - there is no `ward lint` verb (lint is just the `ward exec lint` dev verb). It is `ward doctor`, and AGENTS.md carried the same wrong claim, so I fixed it there too. Second, and more important: `forbidden_argv` is fully parsed and validated by repocfg, but ward's hook only calls ProtectedFor, never ForbiddenFor - so declaring it today enforces nothing at runtime. `commands.<name>.audit.egress` is the same shape (parsed, not wired for repo verbs). Those are exactly the silent-noop traps the issue was worried about, so I documented them loudly under a 'what ward reads / ignores / no-ops' section rather than pretending they work. One judgment call worth flagging: the doc blows past the repo's 80-line/4000-char documentation-layout cap (it is ~15KB - a full config reference plus a ~2KB annotated example cannot fit, and splitting it would defeat the issue's 'author from ward docs alone' goal). I excluded it from the size cap only, on the same carve-out README.md and docs/README.md already use, with dead-cross-links still validating it. If that carve-out is unwelcome I can split it, but I think a single self-contained reference is the right call here. Confident in the accuracy - every claim traces to source I read and pre-commit is green. Worth a follow-up issue: wire ForbiddenFor (and per-verb audit.egress) into ward's hook so `forbidden_argv` actually enforces, since a documented-but-inert security feature is still a sharp edge even now that it is documented as inert.

coilysiren referenced this issue

2026-07-02 07:10:55 +00:00

meta: jul 1st evening sprint - launch burndown session 1 #492

coilysiren referenced this issue

2026-07-02 08:10:46 +00:00

ward doctor exits 0 (clean pass) on a repo with no security: block at all, and no doc flags this for CI gating #450

Rows
Columns

.ward/ward.yaml has no field-by-field schema doc; the security: block is authorable only by reading cli-guard Go source #436

Why

Deliverable

Done condition