[SDK 0.1.0][P0] Prove the packed SDK with cross-repository real-authority conformance

[BunsDev]

Parent: #31

Completed prerequisites:

• [SDK 0.1.0][P0] Implement secure Cave discovery and compatibility negotiation #34
• [SDK 0.1.0][P0] Implement Cave pairing and secure credential custody #35
• [SDK 0.1.0][P0] Implement canonical Cave reads and bounded pagination #36
• [SDK 0.1.0][P0] Resolve CLI scope and implement native trust boundaries #37
• [SDK 0.1.0 blocker] Integrate the packed SDK through Chat’s native trust boundary chat#27

Remaining release gate:

• passing real-authority evidence for linux-x64 and win32-x64

Outcome

Produce a repeatable, redacted conformance run that proves the complete packed SDK journey against real release-mode Cave and Coven authorities through the actual native trust and credential boundaries.

Why this is a release gate

Package tests prove components. They cannot observe listener behavior, proxy/body gates, Next request normalization, filesystem ownership, connected Unix peer credentials, Windows named-pipe ownership, native keychain behavior, packed installation, or the composed consumer lifecycle. Cave’s current conformance evidence explicitly lists the SDK and Chat as not covered.

Required journey

Cave

install packed SDK
→ discover release-mode Cave
→ negotiate health compatibility
→ create pairing request
→ observe pending
→ approve through Cave authority
→ exchange once
→ store bearer through native SecretStore
→ read familiars/projects/conversations/conversation/messages
→ restart consumer
→ reuse credential
→ revoke through Cave authority
→ verify every authenticated read refuses it

Coven

install packed SDK
→ discover owner-local daemon endpoint
→ validate endpoint and trusted executable path where applicable
→ connect
→ inspect the live Unix peer or Windows pipe identity
→ request health
→ preserve structured daemon errors

Required negative/fault scenarios

• pairing deny, expiry, wrong secret, replay, shared failure budget, and rate limit;
• missing Content-Length: 0 control case and correct exchange case;
• proxy rejection bodies versus Client v1 envelopes;
• stale/replaced discovery records and Cave instance replacement;
• malformed/non-canonical cursors and reconcile_required;
• revoked credential across all canonical reads;
• malicious COVEN_HOME, symlink/replaced socket, wrong owner/mode, wrong peer UID;
• constructed or foreign Windows pipe, failed ownership provider, executable trust failure;
• bounded connect/read/body/frame deadlines;
• missing native keychain/trust binding;
• no source checkout or workspace-link dependency.

Evidence format

Each record must include:

• exact Cave, Coven, SDK, and consumer commits;
• OS, architecture, runtime, and package-manager versions;
• packed tarball SHA-256 values;
• Cave and Coven release versions;
• stable assertion IDs;
• pass/fail/skip plus diagnostic ID;
• explicit notCovered list;
• no credentials, pairing secrets, prompts, message bodies, attachments, command output, private filesystem contents, or socket handles.

Harness quality requirements

• declare the complete expected assertion ID set;
• fail on missing, duplicate, or unexpected IDs;
• never count a skip as a pass;
• negative-test every assertion helper;
• mutation-test representative authority defects, not only helper functions;
• isolate temporary Cave/Coven homes and verify the operator’s real state is untouched;
• retain artifacts only after redaction and digesting.

Dependencies

• SDK protocol implementation: [SDK 0.1.0][P0] Implement secure Cave discovery and compatibility negotiation #34, [SDK 0.1.0][P0] Implement Cave pairing and secure credential custody #35, [SDK 0.1.0][P0] Implement canonical Cave reads and bounded pagination #36
• CLI/native trust decision: [SDK 0.1.0][P0] Resolve CLI scope and implement native trust boundaries #37
• Packed Chat consumer/native adapters: [SDK 0.1.0 blocker] Integrate the packed SDK through Chat’s native trust boundary chat#27
• Cave and Coven release-mode test fixtures

Acceptance criteria

• One command or documented operator procedure produces a deterministic evidence record.
• The complete Cave and Coven journeys pass on every release-supported OS/architecture.
• SDK and Chat are absent from notCovered for the read-only 0.1.0 journey.
• Producer fixture bytes, SDK vendored bytes, packed bytes, and consumer lock digests match.
• Every required assertion ID appears exactly once.
• Representative broken-authority mutations are caught.
• The harness cannot touch the operator’s real Cave, Coven, credentials, or projects.
• Retained evidence passes secret/content redaction scans.
• A release candidate cannot advance without a named passing evidence record.

Validation

The conformance harness is itself tested through negative fixtures, missing-assertion mutations, authority mutations, redaction scans, and reproducibility checks.

Non-goals

This issue does not add write APIs, use unit-test proxies as final evidence, or make every conformance journey part of ordinary path-aware PR CI. Expensive real-authority execution may remain an explicit release gate if the evidence validator and scenario ownership remain in CI.

[BunsDev]

PR #54 adds Cave instance binding, pre/postflight checks, exact-value invalidation, and PID-reuse-safe native lock ownership. It also records OpenCoven/coven-cave#4996 as a P0 conformance blocker: the current Client v1 contract has no atomic transport/cryptographic binding between health instance proof and the subsequent pairing-secret or bearer request. The #38 restart/takeover scenario must prove the producer mechanism once #4996 lands; SDK preflight alone is explicitly insufficient.

[BunsDev]

SDK PR #54 merged to protected main as verified commit a57ca8ea148b8d9b40ac10519f0b4cfd2af911a8 after required CI and CodeQL passed. Real-authority conformance remains open and must cover the atomic instance-binding producer work in OpenCoven/coven-cave#4996; the merged SDK pre/postflight is documented defense in depth, not the final guarantee.

[BunsDev]

Dependency update: canonical reads merged

The canonical-read dependency is now available on SDK main through PR #55, squash merge d7f9e69378d6136c2771f60b4c57d7beeaa74f6a.

The implementation includes the five strict one-page Cave reads, four bounded lazy iterators, canonical cursor validation/cycle detection, packed-tarball consumer verification, and producer fixture provenance pinned to OpenCoven/coven-cave merge 4adc97b1bdafd1012ce4c66de598e82f49329f79.

Exact post-merge CI and CodeQL passed: 32796553510, 32796553300. Real-authority conformance should pin and report exact SDK, Cave, Coven, and Chat revisions rather than a moving branch.

[BunsDev]

Dependency update: SDK #37 is resolved and merged. The 0.1 release candidate contains four public SDK libraries; @opencoven/dev-cli remains private/source-tested. OpenCoven Chat #27 owns the Phase 1 native Cave path and Coven peer/pipe adapters required by this conformance gate. Implementation merge: 11952ee4a20cf6d0744c9040b568715708a1e81f; evidence merge: b9bc75936cd328d7951fc1b73798b9b0a1db2e88.

[BunsDev]

Managed native-secret custody merged through SDK PR #68 as a86773cb6ba45084495c00ca364f8646865f1606. Chat can now consume exact packed SDK artifacts while Tauri retains pairing secrets and bearers outside the webview. Post-merge Node 24.x/24.18.1 verification and both analyses passed. Remaining real-authority/final-security blocker is OpenCoven/coven-cave#4996 atomic binding.

[BunsDev]

Status update after #69: SDK PR #69 merged to main as 163961f4e59cfdef51d2271fa98e7c514977203f, and OpenCoven/coven-cave#5044 at 2a0ff9237e94e652e477b22f60fd6d721b9e6451 closed the Cave-side HPKE authority-boundary work. #38 remains blocked on durable OpenCoven/chat#27 implementation, a frozen supported platform matrix, and complete cross-repository evidence from exact packed artifacts. Chat #27 comments currently cite commit 950feb5 and branch feat/native-sdk-integration, but neither is reachable on GitHub, so treat that only as recovery/rebuild risk until reachable evidence is restated.

[BunsDev]

Status update from sdk commit ec64f37: the 0.1 native Chat/real-authority conformance matrix is now frozen to darwin-arm64, linux-x64, and win32-x64. This decision only defines the release-gate target set; it does not claim conformance has passed. #38 still requires one passing evidence record for each of those three targets from exact packed artifacts before this issue can close.