fix(portable): fence Hermes authority requalification

[senthilr-nv]

Summary

Follow up on #10441 by keeping Hermes receipt requalification inside the public probe's host and lifecycle fences. The change also retains exact operating authority across schema-6 publication, rejects unsafe filesystem ancestry, and settles the exact post-create Podman probe inspection before onboarding proceeds.

Related Issue

Related to #10423

Changes

• Route a bare Portable probe through receipt-candidate detection so interrupted successor publication is reconciled only inside the probe-owned fences.
• Require explicit probe-derived requalification authority before an identical schema-5 state copy can publish its schema-6 successor.
• Retain and revalidate policy, socket, executable, registry, OpenShell, Podman, container, and publication-state authority throughout publication.
• Require every stable receipt and live socket directory ancestor to be owned by root or the current user and not writable by group or other users.
• Settle only exact ETIMEDOUT results from the first post-create Podman probe inspection, using the same full runtime ID and a bounded three-attempt policy.
• Consolidate ordinary and requalification receipt-disposition mapping while retaining their separate readers and fence boundaries.
• Add deterministic public-command, interrupted-publication, identity-drift, publication-boundary, ancestry, and post-create inspection regressions.

Type of Change

• Code change (feature, bug fix, or refactor)
• Code change with doc updates
• Doc only (prose changes, no code sample modifications)
• Doc only (includes code sample changes)

Quality Gates

• Tests added or updated for changed behavior
• Existing tests cover changed behavior — justification:
• Tests not applicable — justification:
• Sensitive paths changed (security, policy, credentials, preflight, onboarding, inference, runner, sandbox, or messaging)
• Sensitive-path review completed or maintainer-approved waiver recorded — reviewer/approval link/justification: Pending external maintainer review.
• Non-success, skipped, or missing CI check accepted by maintainer — check name, approval link, and follow-up issue:

DGX Station Hardware Evidence

• Tested on DGX Station
• Tested commit:
• Station profile/scenario:
• Result:
• Supporting evidence:

Verification

• PR description includes a Signed-off-by: line and every commit appears as Verified in GitHub
• Normal pre-commit, commit-msg, and pre-push hooks passed, or npm run validate:pr passed after refreshing origin/main when hooks were skipped or unavailable
• Targeted behavior tests pass for the current change set, or tests are marked not applicable above — 7 focused test files / 158 tests and the affected lane 2,671 / 2,671 tests passed; CLI type-check, formatting, repository checks, growth guardrails, and diff hygiene passed.
• Applicable broad gate passed — Exact-head field qualification is pending on Ubuntu 22.04.
• Quality Gates section completed with required justifications or waivers
• No secrets, API keys, or credentials committed
• npm run docs builds without warnings (doc changes only)
• Doc pages follow the style guide (doc changes only)
• New doc pages include SPDX header and frontmatter (new pages only)

---

Signed-off-by: Senthil Ravichandran senthilr@nvidia.com

Summary by CodeRabbit

• Bug Fixes
  • Improved socket and directory ownership validation for trusted root or current-user ownership.
  • Strengthened portable lifecycle recovery by detecting authority, policy, and executable changes during successor publication.
  • Improved interrupted-operation recovery and host protection during portable-agent transitions.
  • Added up to three attempts for transient container inspection timeouts.
  • Improved sandbox identity settlement with clearer diagnostics and safeguards against missing, changed, ambiguous, or malformed identities.
  • Prevented verification and runtime effects when sandbox identity data is invalid or changes unexpectedly.

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• src/lib/adapters/openshell/sandbox-identity.test.ts
• src/lib/adapters/openshell/sandbox-identity.ts

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---

📝 Walkthrough

Walkthrough

The changes strengthen portable receipt successor publication with authority revalidation, add interrupted-publication recovery through probe-only commands, validate sandbox identity settlement, clarify socket ownership errors, and bound Podman probe inspection retries to three attempts.

Changes

Portable authority and probe flow

Layer / File(s)	Summary
Socket directory ownership validation src/lib/adapters/podman/socket-authority.ts, src/lib/adapters/podman/socket-authority.test.ts	Ancestor directories accept root or current-user ownership. The immediate socket parent requires current-user ownership.
Receipt candidate detection and guarded publication src/lib/onboard/experimental/hermes-portable-receipt.ts, src/lib/onboard/experimental/hermes-portable-receipt.test.ts	Schema-6 successor publication validates receipt snapshots, host fences, and authority during recovery, linking, and final verification.
Lifecycle snapshot and authority requalification src/lib/onboard/experimental/hermes-portable-lifecycle.ts, src/lib/onboard/experimental/hermes-portable-lifecycle.test.ts	Requalification compares policy and publication state, injects successor publication, and checks authority before and after publication.
Portable-agent authority inspection src/lib/onboard/experimental/portable-agent-lifecycle.ts, src/lib/onboard/experimental/portable-agent-lifecycle.test.ts	Classification and requalification use separate receipt inspection paths. Authority snapshots map to absent, OpenClaw, or Hermes dispositions.
Probe-only fence and recovery integration src/lib/cli/nemoclaw-oclif-command.ts, src/lib/cli/nemoclaw-oclif-command.test.ts	Probe-only connections acquire the host fence when a Hermes receipt candidate exists and route interrupted successor recovery through portable-agent requalification.
Sandbox identity settlement validation src/lib/adapters/openshell/sandbox-identity.ts, src/lib/adapters/openshell/sandbox-identity.test.ts, src/lib/onboard/sandbox-gpu-create-identity-gate.test.ts	Settlement retries incomplete metadata, rejects malformed results, and fails when the observed sandbox ID changes or disappears.
Bounded Podman probe inspection src/lib/onboard/runtime-provider/podman-host-local-inference.ts, src/lib/onboard/runtime-provider/podman-host-local-inference-probe-inspect.test.ts	Post-creation probe inspection retries timeout failures up to three attempts and fails closed after three unsuccessful attempts.

Estimated code review effort: 4 (Complex) | ~60 minutes

Merge Risk: ⚪ Minimal · up to e3b6c

The PR tightens Hermes authority and lifecycle checks with targeted regression coverage; no actionable merge-blocking risk remains beyond normal checks and review.

Sequence Diagram(s)

sequenceDiagram
  participant ProbeOnlyConnectCommand
  participant portableAgentLifecycle
  participant HermesPortableLifecycle
  participant publishHermesPortableSuccessorReceipt
  ProbeOnlyConnectCommand->>portableAgentLifecycle: start probe-only recovery
  portableAgentLifecycle->>HermesPortableLifecycle: requalify Hermes sandbox
  HermesPortableLifecycle->>publishHermesPortableSuccessorReceipt: publish guarded successor
  publishHermesPortableSuccessorReceipt-->>HermesPortableLifecycle: return verified publication
  HermesPortableLifecycle-->>portableAgentLifecycle: return qualified lifecycle
  portableAgentLifecycle-->>ProbeOnlyConnectCommand: complete recovery under fences

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Suggested reviewers: prekshivyas, apurvvkumaria, ericksoa

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 4 | ❌ 1

❌ Failed checks (1 warning)

Check name	Status	Explanation	Resolution
Docstring Coverage	⚠️ Warning	Docstring coverage is 39.39% which is insufficient. The required threshold is 80.00%. Docstring coverage is scoped to functions touched by this diff. Analyzed 33 functions across 15 files.	Write docstrings for the functions missing them to satisfy the coverage threshold.

✅ Passed checks (4 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Description Check	✅ Passed	Check skipped - CodeRabbit’s high-level summary is enabled.
Title check	✅ Passed	The title clearly and concisely describes the main change: fencing Hermes authority requalification within the required lifecycle and host boundaries.
Linked Issues check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.
Out of Scope Changes check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.

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[github-code-quality]

Code Coverage Overview

Languages: TypeScript

TypeScript / code-coverage/plugin

The overall line coverage in commit ea21fa1 in the codex/10423-authorit... branch remains at 96%, unchanged from commit 4222c10 in the main branch.

TypeScript / code-coverage/cli

The overall line coverage in commit ea21fa1 in the codex/10423-authorit... branch remains at 84%, unchanged from commit 4222c10 in the main branch.

Show a line coverage summary of the most impacted files.

File	main 4222c10	codex/10423-authorit... ea21fa1	+/-
src/lib/state/r...-reservation.ts	96%	90%	-6%
src/lib/onboard...able-receipt.ts	78%	76%	-2%
src/lib/onboard...le-lifecycle.ts	77%	76%	-1%
src/lib/onboard...e-onboarding.ts	85%	85%	0%
src/lib/onboard...rchestration.ts	30%	31%	+1%
src/lib/state/registry.ts	89%	90%	+1%
src/lib/adapter...et-authority.ts	83%	86%	+3%
src/lib/state/r...ormalization.ts	89%	96%	+7%
src/lib/onboard...tion-receipt.ts	75%	84%	+9%
src/lib/state/r...verification.ts	0%	71%	+71%

---

_{Updated August 27, 2026 13:49 UTC}

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Actionable comments posted: 1

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Inline comments:
In `@src/lib/adapters/podman/socket-authority.ts`:
- Around line 196-201: Update the error message in the ownership validation
branch so the index === 0 case reports that the immediate parent must be owned
by the current UID only, while retaining the existing root-or-current-UID
wording for index > 0.

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📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between 4c58407 and eaa273c.

📒 Files selected for processing (12)

• src/lib/adapters/podman/socket-authority.test.ts
• src/lib/adapters/podman/socket-authority.ts
• src/lib/cli/nemoclaw-oclif-command.test.ts
• src/lib/cli/nemoclaw-oclif-command.ts
• src/lib/onboard/experimental/hermes-portable-lifecycle.test.ts
• src/lib/onboard/experimental/hermes-portable-lifecycle.ts
• src/lib/onboard/experimental/hermes-portable-receipt.test.ts
• src/lib/onboard/experimental/hermes-portable-receipt.ts
• src/lib/onboard/experimental/portable-agent-lifecycle.test.ts
• src/lib/onboard/experimental/portable-agent-lifecycle.ts
• src/lib/onboard/runtime-provider/podman-host-local-inference-probe-inspect.test.ts
• src/lib/onboard/runtime-provider/podman-host-local-inference.ts

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