atlas-iac/docs/hermes_full_handoff_acceptance.md

Hermes full-handoff acceptance and release runbook

scripts/ops/hermes_handoff_acceptance.py is a fail-closed release gate. It contains 63 checks in 15 groups. An empty catalog, an unknown result status, a mandatory FAIL or NOT_RUN, a harness error, or incomplete evidence makes the decision NO_GO. The four ephemeral checks are non-mandatory NOT_RUN in the default mode and are replaced with mandatory results only in armed mode.

This runbook describes evidence collection. It does not authorize a merge, publish, deployment, Flux reconcile, credential read, or live cluster mutation. Human review of PR #19 and of the resulting report is required.

Required release inputs

Every value that can go stale must be supplied explicitly. Resolve main, PR heads, the image digest, build source SHA, deployment revision, and chat config revision from their authoritative read-only sources immediately before the run. Do not copy the snapshot in the dependency section into a later run.

scripts/ops/hermes_handoff_acceptance.py \
  --context atlas-operator \
  --remote-main-sha "$REMOTE_MAIN_SHA" \
  --reviewed-head-sha "$REVIEWED_PR19_HEAD" \
  --agent-image "$AGENT_GIT_SHA_BUILD_TAG_AT_SHA256" \
  --build-sha "$IMAGE_BUILD_SOURCE_SHA" \
  --deployment-revision "$RUNNING_DEPLOYMENT_REVISION" \
  --chat-config-revision "$RUNNING_CHAT_CONFIG_REVISION" \
  --dependency-head "12=$PR12_HEAD" \
  --dependency-head "14=$PR14_HEAD" \
  --dependency-head "15=$PR15_HEAD" \
  --dependency-head "16=$PR16_HEAD" \
  --dependency-head "17=$PR17_HEAD" \
  --dependency-head "18=$PR18_HEAD" \
  --dependency-head "20=$PR20_HEAD" \
  --output build/hermes-handoff-acceptance.json

The fixed topology is three pool workers on three distinct nodes. --node-count and --pool-replicas cannot lower that requirement. Pool node/ordinal assignment, Telegram session continuity, and the chat revision are mandatory. Deliberate Flux suspensions must be named with repeatable --expected-suspension arguments.

Exit status is 0 only for GO, 1 for NO_GO, and 2 for invalid execution bounds. JSON is written to --output or stdout; the human summary goes to stderr unless --json-only is passed.

Operator prerequisites for the forge evidence:

• The SCM broker (hermes-scm-broker.hermes-scm.svc:9081) must be healthy; every forge read is brokered and a dead broker makes all broker-backed mandatory checks NOT_RUN.
• No forge token anywhere on the harness path: the harness, the agent pod, and the operator never read /vault/secrets/gitea-token — only the broker holds it. There is no askpass helper to install.
• The agent pod must mount the current hermes-scm-boundary-v2 ConfigMap: the harness attests /opt/scm/gitea_api.py against the digest of the merged services/hermes/scm-common/scripts/gitea_api.py, so a stale mount (or a stale broker rollout) fails loudly instead of answering.
• Operator-vantage broker reads need the same pinned client (plus its sibling modules) at /opt/scm on the operator host, with the broker origin resolvable; git ls-remote origin refs/heads/main must work from the operator checkout with repo-local access, since global Git config is nulled.

Structural safety boundary

The catalog is validated before a Runner exists. Invalid inputs, an empty or unsafe catalog, and an invalid armed preflight therefore create no subprocess. The command policy is checked both before and after executable resolution.

Default mode permits a narrow read grammar:

• Kubernetes reads use name or reviewed JSONPath projections. Secret resources, raw API reads, full JSON/YAML, describe, cluster-info dump, credential-bearing projections, auth reconcile, config operations, all mutations, and every dry-run mutation trick are rejected before spawn.
• Git is read-only. fetch, configuration/helper overrides, alternate worktrees, external diff helpers, and push are rejected.
• Forge evidence is collected through the credential-isolated SCM broker client that ships in the agent pod at /opt/scm/gitea_api.py (ConfigMap hermes-scm-boundary-v2, generated from services/hermes/scm-common/scripts/gitea_api.py). Its only admitted grammar is read <api-path>; bare HTTP methods (GET, POST, ...) are not part of the deployed client's grammar and are refused before spawn. Paths are pinned to titan/atlas-iac on an exact segment boundary (plus the bare /api/v1/user identity read), so a look-alike repository such as titan/atlas-iac-evil is refused, and any relative segment — including a percent-encoded %2e%2e — is rejected before the request is built. The broker holds the only forge token; the harness, the pod, and the operator environment never read /vault/secrets/gitea-token and no Git askpass helper exists or is configured.
• Shell commands must be rendered from frozen templates, use fixed executable paths, and cannot name service-account, Vault, runtime-access, SSH, or other credential roots.
• Impersonation is structurally impossible. --as, --as-group, and --as-uid are refused for every argv, in every mode, from every vantage, and the inner command of a kubectl exec is re-checked under the same rule rather than being granted an exemption. validate_catalog refuses an impersonating step from any vantage, not only the operator. A future audited self-probe that genuinely needs impersonation is a reviewed code change, not a configuration flag.
• The binary allowlist is exactly the set with pinned release digests: kubectl, git, sh, hermes, and the Gitea client. flux and helm are not on it; Flux and Helm status is read through kubectl instead, so no allowlisted binary can be admitted that the executor would refuse to attest.
• PATH is replaced with a fixed path. Every outer executable is resolved to an allowed real path, checked for unsafe write mode, and compared with a pinned SHA-256 digest. A caller-authored kubectl, git, or helper cannot fabricate evidence.

The executor uses a new process group, drains stdout and stderr concurrently, and retains at most the configured bytes while the child is running. A monotonic absolute timeout terminates and reaps the group, including descendants that keep pipes open. Timeout, deadline, and output-byte values reject booleans, zero/negative values, non-finite numbers, and values outside fixed bounds. There is no concurrency knob: run_catalog is strictly sequential and says so rather than accepting a bound it would ignore. Truncation discards the affected stream and makes every evaluator NOT_RUN. Bulk-evidence steps have their bytes replaced before they are recorded, but they keep the resolved executable path and its attested SHA-256, so withholding output never withholds the provenance of the binary that produced it.

Credential screening runs before truncation. Command, output, error, identity, reason, evidence, JSON, and human-summary fields are screened recursively, including mapping keys and short/numeric sensitive values. The complete rendered report is screened again; a remaining credential shape is replaced by a bounded NO_GO stub rather than being written. No credential prefix is retained at a truncation boundary.

Vantages and evidence

The operator must use an external read-only kubeconfig. The self probe runs in the actual Hermes agent pod. Both identities are obtained with kubectl auth whoami; equal or missing principals make the run NO_GO. Required Switchyard and chat/Telegram pod vantages must also resolve. Node coverage is derived from all daemonset pod node names, not one selected pod.

Dangerous Kubernetes permissions are checked only with side-effect-free kubectl auth can-i reviews. The default catalog never constructs a Secret, TokenRequest, mutation, attach, port-forward, or arbitrary exec request.

Forge evidence rides the broker path. The SELF-vantage forge checks prove the broker's identity — the only forge identity the platform can exercise — is not an administrator (read /api/v1/user), holds push-scoped rather than administrative repository authority, and is refused an administrative route: the broker's read allowlist rejects branch_protections, and only the client's real refusal lines ("SCM broker request failed with HTTP 400/403" and "Forgejo request rejected or unavailable; no credential was disclosed") count as denial evidence; generic 404, not found, and no route text are not. Because every other broker-backed mandatory check must pass in the same run, a dead broker reads as NOT_RUN across the catalog and cannot masquerade as a refusal. Operator-vantage broker reads (pending PRs, dependency PRs, the reviewed PR) additionally require /opt/scm/gitea_api.py with its sibling modules present on the operator host at the pinned digest and the broker origin hermes-scm-broker.hermes-scm.svc resolvable from it; the remote-main step needs git ls-remote origin refs/heads/main to work from the operator checkout using repo-local access (the harness nulls global Git config and disables prompts).

An absence is only evidence when the probe observed something. Both name rules resolve their step through one guard, so a step that exits 0 with no lines — or with only separators — is NOT_RUN, never PASS. This is reachable in practice two ways, and both are pinned by regressions: a POSIX pipeline reports the status of its last stage, so a missing upstream binary in the frozen env_names template exits 0 with no bytes; and kubectl -o jsonpath exits 0 when the structure it walks has drifted, whether a parent field, a leaf field, or a container filter. Because all five absence checks are mandatory, silence costs the release its GO. The pool claim projection emits one <volume>=<claim> line per template volume so a volume without a PVC still counts as an observation.

The strict evaluators reject duplicate-key JSON, raw control characters, NaN/infinity, boolean/number equality coercion, future timestamps, stale provider evidence, and every malformed routing or Flux row. Routing freshness is required separately for each provider, lane, and effort. Flux objects must be non-suspended, current at observedGeneration, and explicitly Ready=True; unknown or reconciling state is not healthy.

release.exact-lineage-is-running atomically binds:

• fixed remote main SHA and local origin/main;
• merged PR #19 — state=closed with merged=true, base main, the existing feature ref, and the exact reviewed head — with that head additionally proven an ancestor of the release main by git merge-base --is-ancestor. A PR that is still open, closed without merging, or carrying a different head is a FAIL: after integration, only the merged terminal state proves the reviewed code is what runs;
• the exact :git-<source-SHA>-build-<n>@sha256:<digest> image identity, with the source SHA equal to the release main SHA;
• current Deployment generation and revision;
• the one active ReplicaSet revision/hash; every Ready pod image and imageID;
• the Flux-applied main revision.

The pool evaluator requires exactly ordinals 0, 1, and 2, all Ready, on three distinct nodes and claims, with service-account token automount disabled. The chat checks always require durable Telegram sessions and the exact running chat configuration revision.

Armed ephemeral mode

Armed mode is the only write path and runs only after the complete default catalog reports GO.

Armed mode is currently deferred. The deployed broker client speaks only read and create-draft: it has no close-PR or delete-branch operation, the armed git push has no credential path (no askpass exists and the broker git remote is not part of the harness), and the policy's armed mutation windows therefore describe probes the live platform cannot execute. Run armed mode only after the ephemeral probes are rebuilt on the broker's bounded mutation surface; until then the four ephemeral checks stay non-mandatory NOT_RUN in the default mode and an armed run fails closed at the client.

scripts/ops/hermes_handoff_acceptance.py \
  <all required release inputs above> \
  --arm-ephemeral-push \
  --confirm "ARM EPHEMERAL HERMES HANDOFF PUSH" \
  --ephemeral-token acceptance-20260817a \
  --output build/hermes-handoff-acceptance-armed.json

Before any runner, network request, or cluster vantage is created, preflight binds the working directory to the existing linked PR #19 worktree, the exact feature branch and reviewed local HEAD, the fixed HTTPS Atlas origin, base main, confirmation phrase, and one unique ephemeral ref. The command policy is then pinned to that exact ref. It allows only its push, one exact draft-create payload, cleanup of the exactly discovered PR number, and deletion of that ref.

The run reserves at least 300 seconds (up to 6000) for cleanup. It verifies the pushed SHA, then identifies the pull request from two independent sources: the create response itself, and the pull index read page by page to its last page (50 per page, 20 pages maximum) rather than a single truncated first page. Either source alone names a pull request this run definitely made, because preflight proved the ephemeral ref did not exist. Every number found from either source is registered and closed, so a failed or unusable index can no longer leave an orphan open. A GO still requires exactly one open draft with the expected base, head ref, base SHA, and head SHA, and the two sources must agree.

Cleanup requires successful PR close, successful branch deletion, a successful empty ls-remote, and a strict re-read of the same closed PR. Malformed or partial cleanup is FAIL; it is never inferred from an error. When anything is uncertain the draft-pull-request evidence carries residue_ref and an exact manual_cleanup action list — closing every numbered pull request and deleting the ephemeral branch with the operator's own forge credentials (the broker client exposes no close or delete operation), and, when no number could be determined at all, the exact ref to sweep the index for by hand.

Force, force-with-lease, fan-out, protected refs, other repositories, other PR numbers, arbitrary PATCH payloads, and repository administration remain denied.

Dependency, merge, and conflict graph

Authoritative snapshot observed 2026-08-17 after refreshing Gitea and Git against remote main d8f2d818b9a552ea6c2d7fe86554be829bd5ffff:

PR	Head SHA	Draft	Base	Role
#12	ed43dbaa7f094e1841aa760862e80015deb9d80c	no	main	AI usage exporter repair
#14	8c6e3acdacb223f68b1716f0a74bd543e18890e6	yes	main	bounded forge client and least-privilege RBAC
#15	73fefbb5d92ef07371a9a997f22d848acd2d06ed	yes	main	result-decomposition reliability
#16	e8c26ecf85a0c802d378fffffb98b7df43b78242	no	main	unprivileged image builder
#17	48cbe13ee50ce3fcb07cea3fe8d088cfed349e0c	yes	main	three-lane placement
#18	689bcb6e48414854447988ba174143a307d308b9	yes	main	distributed three-worker pool
#19	c808baff40a12a90f43c2e5e39b94d139f88ea29	yes	main	head this repair replaces on the same branch
#20	a242dcc786576ae1a18000cb4941836ff610dff2	yes	main	CLI process-group reaping

The repaired #19 SHA cannot be embedded in its own commit without changing that SHA. Resolve it from Gitea after push and require it as --reviewed-head-sha; the PR handoff records the exact value. All eight heads in this table, including the repaired #19, merge cleanly with main individually. Pairwise git merge-tree --write-tree over all 28 combinations found conflicts for: #12+#17, #12+#18, #12+#19, #14+#15, #14+#16, #14+#17, #14+#19, #14+#20, #15+#16, #15+#17, #15+#19, #16+#19, #16+#20, #17+#18, and #17+#20. Gitea's mergeable=false on a draft is not treated as conflict evidence.

This graph differs from the previous snapshot in exactly two ways. #12 and #18 both advanced, which adds #12+#18, #17+#18, and #12+#19. And #19 no longer duplicates the repo-wide hygiene legacy-exception mechanism that #18 also carries, which makes #18+#19 clean. Recompute before every integration step; nothing here is durable.

Use this dependency order, refreshing every head and re-running merge-tree at each step:

1. #14 first so the release never restores or prolongs cluster-admin authority.
2. #16, then #15, resolving their Dockerfile and quality-contract changes additively. Never take one PR's quality contract wholesale.
3. #20 after #15; it depends on the CLI lifecycle work and must be rebased across the current #14/#16 contract and helper changes.
4. #12 before #17, resolving their Deployment overlap once.
5. #17, then #18, after the authority, image, reliability, and reaping work.
6. #19 last as the integration/acceptance change, only after #12/#14-#18/#20 are merged and their exact supplied heads are ancestors of refreshed main.

An exact post-repair merge-tree check reports #19 clean with current main, #17, #18, and #20, and conflicting with #12, #14, #15, and #16 on these files:

Pair	Overlapping files
#12+#19	testing/tests/test_hermes_auto_router.py
#14+#19	testing/quality_contract.json, testing/quality_coverage.py, testing/tests/test_quality_coverage_helpers.py
#15+#19	testing/tests/conftest.py
#16+#19	testing/quality_contract.json

Every one of those overlaps is additive on the #19 side. Resolve the contract by union — take every PR's managed modules, lint paths, tracked files, and branch tracked files, and never take one PR's quality contract wholesale. #19 adds two fixture-isolation fixtures to conftest.py and two lines to the auto-router test; keep both sides. Preserve branch coverage, every tracked module, fixture isolation, and all desired-state changes during conflict resolution.

Recompute this graph from the Gitea API immediately before integration; do not infer conflict status from Gitea's draft mergeable field.

The #16/#19 integration must keep both the immutable digest and the source tag (newTag: git-<main-SHA>-build-<n> plus the digest) in rendered image identity. Digest-only rendering loses the attested build-source link and therefore correctly remains NO_GO under the exact-lineage evaluator.

Safe rollback guidance

Every rollback is a reviewed forward fix or selective Git revert followed by the normal Flux workflow. Never restore hermes-agent-cluster-admin, even when reverting unrelated portions of #14. If a rollback would widen RBAC, stop and write a forward least-privilege fix instead.

Reverting #18 removes the StatefulSet desired state, but its volumeClaimTemplates PVCs are retained by the Kubernetes default because no delete retention policy is set. Do not claim Flux pruning deletes those PVCs. Any PVC deletion is a separate, explicit, human-reviewed data-destruction task with exact targets and recovery implications.

Image rollback means a reviewed commit restoring a previously attested digest; never retag an immutable image. Do not use direct kubectl edits as a durable rollback.

Quality and release evidence

The canonical quality contract explicitly manages, lints, and tracks all 16 scripts/ops/hermes_handoff_*.py modules. It enforces at least 95% line and branch coverage per tracked file and the 500-physical-line source cap. Contract tests derive the module set so a future file cannot silently escape the gate. This change is purely additive to the contract: it registers its own modules and changes no repo-wide hygiene semantics.

The gate's hygiene step is red on main and stays red here. Exactly four pre-existing test files exceed the 500-line cap — scripts/tests/test_dashboards_render_atlas.py (516), testing/tests/test_hermes_chat_quality.py (2242), testing/tests/test_hermes_cli_lanes.py (1971), and testing/tests/test_hermes_coordinator.py (510). All four are byte-identical at merge-base 30259b52 and at current origin/main, none is touched by this change, and the same four are the only issues a pristine main reports. Splitting them, or grandfathering them, is a repo-wide contract decision that belongs to the canonical contract change carried by PR #14/#15, not to this acceptance harness. Every other gate step — docs, smell, unit, coverage — is green, and every file this change adds or edits is under the cap.

python3 -m testing.quality_gate --profile local --build-dir build
python3 -m testing.quality_handoff_mutation
python3 -m ruff check --select F,B,SIM,C4,UP --ignore B017,UP015,UP035 \
  scripts/ops/hermes_handoff_*.py testing/quality_coverage.py \
  testing/quality_handoff_mutation.py testing/tests/test_hermes_handoff_*.py
python3 -m ruff format --check \
  scripts/ops/hermes_handoff_*.py testing/quality_coverage.py \
  testing/quality_handoff_mutation.py testing/tests/test_hermes_handoff_*.py
python3 -m compileall -q scripts/ops testing
kustomize build services/hermes | kubectl apply --dry-run=client --validate=false -f -
git diff --check origin/main...HEAD

The format scope names the files this change owns. A wider testing/quality_*.py glob picks up testing/quality_gate.py, which is unmodified here and not format-clean, so the documented command would fail for a reason this change did not cause. ruff format is evidence, not a gate step: the canonical gate runs ruff check only.

The deterministic mutation gate must kill every policy, redaction, verdict, numeric, truncation, provenance, and cleanup mutant, including one that restores the zero-evidence pass, one that restores the bare-prefix repository pin, one that stops re-checking a kubectl exec inner command, and one that drops binary attestation from an unrecorded step. The adversarial suite includes large concurrent stdout/stderr, malformed JSON and bytes, zero state, partial failure, absolute timeout, descendant-held pipes, malformed cleanup, ambiguous creates, and no-subprocess/no-mutation spies. Render/client dry-run, exact conflict checks, and bounded diff/full-tree secret scans must also pass.

The provider-health and Gitea-token-sensitive tests use hermetic fixtures. Their result must be identical whether synthetic runtime files exist or are absent; tests must never read the mounted production token.

Release decision

The handoff remains NO_GO until all dependency heads are merged, the exact lineage check passes from an external operator, both default and armed reports are complete, the branch and PR cleanup is verified, the canonical and adversarial gates are green, and a human has reviewed PR #19 plus the artifacts. The harness never merges, deploys, reconciles, publishes, or approves anything.