docs(prd): 0070 per-host orchestrator service #352

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# PRD 0069: Firecracker-native, Docker-free backend
- **Status:** Draft
- **Status:** Draft (partially superseded)
- **Author:** Claude
- **Created:** 2026-07-12
- **Issue:** #348
> **Superseded in part by [PRD 0070](0070-per-host-orchestrator.md) (#351):**
> the sidecar-consolidation framing here (Stage 1, per-host sidecar; Stage 4,
> sidecar-as-VM) is taken over by 0070's per-host orchestrator. This PRD still
> owns the docker-free **image-building** work — Stage 2 (nix-built fixed
> images, a dependency of 0070) and Stage 3 (in-VM Dockerfile builder).
## Summary
Make the Firecracker backend depend on **firecracker + KVM only**, removing
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# PRD 0070: Per-host orchestrator service
- **Status:** Draft
- **Author:** Claude
- **Created:** 2026-07-12
- **Issue:** #351
- **Supersedes:** the Stage-1 / Stage-4 sidecar-consolidation framing of
PRD 0069 (#348). Depends on 0069's nix-built fixed images (Stage 2) for
bootstrapping; 0069 still owns the docker-free image-building work.
## Summary
Replace the **per-bottle sidecar bundle** with a single **persistent,
per-host orchestrator**: one long-lived service that runs the sidecar
functions (egress / git-gate / supervise), coordinates with the console,
and brokers agent launches and teardown. It is **virtualized from the
start** using each backend's native isolation primitive — a Firecracker
microVM on the Firecracker backend, an Apple container on macOS, a Docker
container on the legacy backend — and is fronted by a single
**backend-agnostic contract**. Per-backend variation lives on
`BottleBackend`, not in the orchestrator.
## Motivation
Today each bottle spins up its own sidecar bundle (egress mitmproxy +
git-gate + supervise). That costs:
- **Resources.** N bottles → N heavy bundles booting and idling.
- **Operational churn.** Per-launch container/VM lifecycle for the
sidecars, a control path baked at launch and torn down at exit.
- **A blurry contract.** "How a bottle talks to its sidecar" is
re-implemented per backend instead of being one agreed interface.
A per-host orchestrator collapses the first two and forces the third to
be made explicit. It's also the component that will own per-host runtime
**state** (slot leases, the approval queue, the bottle registry) — today
that's ad-hoc `fcntl`-locked files.
## Security review (read this first)
Consolidation is a real change to the trust model. The goal is to **not
significantly weaken** the posture; some properties strengthen, some
weaken, and the weakened ones must be mitigated by design, not hand-waved.
### What gets stronger
- **Build/host isolation of untrusted inputs** (with 0069 Stage 3): user
Dockerfiles build in a disposable VM instead of on the host.
- **One audited privileged surface.** Today the launcher runs as the full
host user and needs the Docker socket (root-equivalent). The orchestrator
model replaces that with a **thin launch broker** (below) — a small,
structured, auditable privileged core instead of a fat socket.
- **Attribution is enforced, not assumed.** Making source-IP identity a
first-class contract invariant (below) means each backend must *prove*
it, rather than the sidecar implicitly trusting network position.
### What gets weaker, and the mitigation
1. **Secret concentration.** Per-bottle sidecars isolate secrets at the
process boundary — each holds only its bottle's tokens/keys. A host
orchestrator concentrates **every bottle's** egress tokens, git deploy
keys, and the console credential in one long-lived process. A single
attribution bug leaks bottle A's token into bottle B's request — a class
of bug that *cannot exist* per-bottle.
- *Mitigation:* lean on the enforced source-IP invariant for
attribution; keep the most secret-dense, least-shareable service
(**git-gate**, per-repo deploy keys, no natural source-IP scoping)
**per-bottle** unless there's a compelling reason; scope each secret
to the bottle in the state DB so a lookup can't return the wrong
bottle's secret by construction (key every secret access by the
verified source identity, never by ambient state).
2. **Shared fate.** Orchestrator down = no new launches, and running
agents lose egress / git / supervise. Compromise = the whole host's
fleet, plus launch authority, plus the console token.
- *Mitigation:* the orchestrator is itself confined (its own VM/container
with its own fail-closed egress); make it **restartable without killing
running agent VMs** (agents keep running; they briefly lose sidecar
connectivity until it's back); persist state to a host volume so a
restart re-adopts live bottles rather than losing them.
3. **The launch broker is the new privileged core.** We don't eliminate
host privilege — we shrink and relocate it. If the broker accepts
arbitrary paths/commands, the orchestrator VM can escape through it.
- *Mitigation:* the broker takes **structured requests only** — "launch
bottle from *this* content-addressed, nix-built rootfs on TAP slot
*k*", never "run this argv". It validates against a fixed image set,
not caller-supplied paths. It is small enough to audit line-by-line.
4. **The egress proxy now parses every bottle's traffic in one process.**
Higher blast radius for a mitmproxy/TLS-bump bug.
- *Mitigation:* this is the argument for virtualizing the orchestrator
from the start (Stage B, not a host daemon) — the code that TLS-bumps
and parses agent traffic and holds every token runs **inside its own
confined VM**, not as a host process. If egress sharing's blast radius
feels too high, egress can stay per-bottle while supervise (near-zero
secrets) goes host-level first.
### The attribution invariant
Source-IP attribution is what makes a shared orchestrator safe: one
process serves every bottle and tells them apart by source address. The
*mechanism* is identical everywhere (read source IP → look up bottle); the
**guarantee that the address can't be forged is a per-backend
responsibility** and part of the contract:
> **Invariant:** a packet's source address, as seen by the orchestrator,
> *provably* identifies the originating bottle.
didericis marked this conversation as resolved
Review

Given all the different ways to do ip spoofing, would it also be worth adding an outbound proxy to the agent that injects a token to every outbound request to the sidecar so an agent can prove who it is? I think we’ve already added that proxy/should be trivial to add a token, but let me know if that didn’t land

Given all the different ways to do ip spoofing, would it also be worth adding an outbound proxy to the agent that injects a token to every outbound request to the sidecar so an agent can prove who it is? I think we’ve already added that proxy/should be trivial to add a token, but let me know if that didn’t land
- **Firecracker** — enforced by the `/31` point-to-point TAP + the
`bot_bottle_fc` nft table (strongest; already built).
- **Docker** — the per-bottle `--internal` network + anti-spoof; weaker,
must be made explicit.
- **Apple** — the host-only network.
If a backend can't honor the invariant, source-IP consolidation is not
safe there and that backend keeps per-bottle sidecars. The invariant is a
hard precondition, not an aspiration.
## Design
### The contract (backend-agnostic)
Three surfaces; only one is per-backend.
1. **Control plane (CLI / console → orchestrator)** — an RPC:
`launch_bottle`, `teardown_bottle`, `register_policy`,
`deregister_bottle`, `supervise_queue`. Fully backend-agnostic. Both the
local `cli.py` and the remote console funnel through it, so policy is
uniform and `cli.py` becomes a thin client rather than a parallel
launcher.
2. **Data plane (agent → orchestrator)** — the egress / git / supervise
endpoints. Already agnostic today (agents dial `http://sidecar:9099`);
only the *address* and *how packets get there* are per-backend.
3. **Launch / wire (orchestrator → backend)** — the irreducibly
backend-specific part; lives on `BottleBackend`.
### One `Orchestrator`, no subclass tree
The orchestrator is a **single concrete class** holding all the
backend-neutral logic — egress addon, git-gate, supervise, source-IP
attribution, live-reload control plane, console client. It never branches
on backend; it *composes* a `BottleBackend`. That composition is what makes
the contract agnostic: there is nothing backend-specific left in the
orchestrator to leak.
Rejected alternative: an `Orchestrator` ABC with per-backend
implementations. The interesting logic (proxies, attribution, control
plane) is backend-neutral, so three subclasses would triplicate the hard
part; and a second hierarchy paralleling `BottleBackend` reintroduces the
same hand-maintained lockstep coupling we just removed from the netpool
constants (PR #350). Composition over a parallel tree.
### `BottleBackend` absorbs the per-backend variation
A small, cohesive surface — reused for launching agent bottles *and* the
orchestrator's own unit (the orchestrator is just another native unit):
```
launch_unit(spec) -> Handle # agent bottle OR the orchestrator itself
# (fc microVM / apple ctr / docker ctr)
wire(unit, endpoint) -> None # DNAT+forward (fc) | attach shared net (docker/apple)
endpoint_of(unit) -> Endpoint # address resolution
health(unit) -> Status
```
Plus the **launch broker** — the answer to "a VM/container can't spawn its
own host-network siblings." The orchestrator can't directly open host
`/dev/kvm` + a host TAP fd (Firecracker), and a container can't spawn
siblings without a root-equivalent socket (Docker). So every backend
exposes a broker the orchestrator calls to launch an agent:
- **Firecracker** — a thin, structured host shim (see security #3). This
replaces today's implicit "launcher runs as host user."
- **Docker** — the socket today (fat, root-equivalent — the thing 0069's
Stage 3 removes); a narrower broker later.
- **Apple** — the `container` CLI/daemon.
If `BottleBackend` bloats, the pressure valve is composition one level
down: vend a `backend.network()` / `Wiring` collaborator rather than
piling methods on — the same discipline, recursed.
### State: one SQLite DB, owned by the orchestrator
The orchestrator is the natural owner of per-host **runtime state**:
- pool **slot leases** (which bottle holds slot *i*) — replaces today's
`fcntl`-locked files with WAL-mode transactions;
- the **supervise approval queue** + remembered approvals;
- the **live bottle registry** (source IP → bottle → policy/secrets refs),
the lookup table the attribution invariant reads.
This is deliberately **not** a "single source of truth for all config."
Config splits into three tiers with different homes:
| Tier | Example | Home |
|---|---|---|
| Build-time constants | pool size, IP base, nft table | flat `.env` (PR #350) — must be readable by Nix eval + root bash, zero runtime |
| User-authored config | bottle manifests, egress routes, secret refs | declarative files under `~/.bot-bottle/` — trust boundary at `$HOME`, git-trackable, "unknown keys die at load" |
| Runtime state | slot leases, approvals, registry | **SQLite**, owned by the orchestrator |
SQLite is right for the runtime tier (mutable, concurrent, queried) and
wrong for the other two (Nix can't read it at eval time; it fights the
declarative manifest trust model). Keep the tiers separate.
## Sequencing
Jump straight to the **virtualized** end state (not a host-daemon stepping
stone): a host daemon's agent→`localhost` transport is throwaway once the
orchestrator becomes a VM. Decouple the two risks instead:
- **Consolidation risk** (one process, all secrets, attribution, reload)
and **packaging/transport risk** (VM-to-VM wiring, the shim) are
independent. Develop the orchestrator **service as a plain process
dev-harness** first, so the consolidation logic (attribution, reload,
secret handling) is proven with fast iteration — *then* wrap that exact
service in the VM and solve wiring separately.
Backend order (cheapest proof → hardest → last):
1. **Docker orchestrator** — nearly free (the sidecar bundle is already
containers; collapse N bundles into one persistent container). Proves
consolidation + the `BottleBackend` seam with the least moving parts.
2. **Firecracker orchestrator** — the real work: the shim + VM-to-VM
routing (host forwards `bbfcN` → orchestrator TAP; the nft table grows
forward rules where today it drops all non-DNAT egress). Built against
the dev-harness so the app logic is already proven.
3. **macOS (Apple container)** — last (container-to-container networking).
Keep the sidecar **service one shared thing** throughout.
## Non-goals
- Removing OCI/Dockerfile support for agent images (0069's concern).
- A single database for *all* config (see the three-tier table).
- Changing the per-bottle isolation of agent workloads — only the sidecar
is consolidated; agents stay one-VM/container-each.
## Relationship to other work
- **PRD 0069 (#348):** 0070 subsumes its Stage 1 (per-host sidecar) and
Stage 4 (sidecar-as-VM). 0069 retains Stage 2 (nix-built fixed images —
a **dependency** here: the orchestrator and agent base must be
nix-built so the broker launches from a fixed image set and bootstrapping
has no chicken-and-egg) and Stage 3 (in-VM Dockerfile builder).
- **Minimal CI runner (paused):** the Firecracker broker + no host Docker
is what lets a dedicated `gitea` runner user drop the root-equivalent
`docker` group — it only needs broker-socket access + `kvm`/pool group
membership. This work unblocks it.
- **PR #350 (netpool single-source):** the same "one source per fact,
composition over parallel hierarchies" discipline the contract follows.
## Open questions
- **Egress sharing tradeoff:** is the secret-concentration blast radius of
one shared mitmproxy worth the resource win, or share only supervise
(near-zero secrets) and keep egress + git-gate per-bottle initially?
- **Control-plane shape:** RPC transport (unix socket / vsock / HTTP over
the TAP) and the live-reload protocol for per-bottle policy.
- **State re-adoption:** exact scheme for an orchestrator restart to
re-adopt running agent VMs from the SQLite registry without racing
in-flight launches.
- **VM-to-VM routing:** the nft forward rules + addressing for a
per-host orchestrator VM on its own TAP.
- **Broker request schema:** the exact structured contract that stays
auditable and can't be coerced into launching arbitrary payloads.