The contract check ran as an Ansible task in the middle of every provider deploy, and the two client checks ran the same way. A test that is part of the deploy cannot be run without deploying, cannot be re-run on its own, and reports its verdict as a deploy failure. Twenty-seven task files lose 491 lines to this.
It is now what it always was. Each provider ships files/test/test.sh, templates/test.env.j2 and meta/tests.yml, and test-e2e-cli stages one shared harness beside it: run.sh drives contract.sh in a throwaway container on the provider's own network, then isolation.sh for adapter-fronted providers. The read probe each provider offers moved from the calling task into meta/mcp.yml next to the allowlist it must satisfy, and the schema now rejects a read probe naming a tool outside that allowlist.
The bearer the test presents is the one a client resolves through mcp.credential, via the new mcp_client_bearer lookup over resolve_credential, which moved to utils.roles.applications.mcp so it is the same function mcp_servers renders every client connection with. The probe presented whatever the calling role passed, which for the fifteen adapter-fronted providers is a different secret than any client holds.
Sidecar isolation is read from the engine rather than measured inside the container, so it no longer needs a delegation to the node holding the task: attachment is compared by network name, which drops the gwbridge special case, and a swarm worker says it cannot measure instead of skipping silently.
Retrying is bounded by wall clock against MCP_DEADLINE_SECONDS, which scales through the same lookup('timeout') as the harness budget it has to stay under. A flag that is neither true nor false aborts rather than reading as off.
mcp-provider-probe becomes mcp-provider-cli-test: an enabled provider must ship the test rather than include the task. mcp-probe-bearer becomes mcp-adapter-bearer, tying ADAPTER_BEARER to the declared credential key now that no probe include carries it. A new integration test renders the shared env template for every provider through Ansible's own templar, so a later change to it breaks visibly instead of poisoning twenty deploys quietly.
Hermes and OpenClaw keep their client-side proof as CLI tests of their own.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Four roles declared the litellm service and never included the gateway's consumer contract, which is the single place that refuses an empty virtual key and an AI base URL pointing outside the container network. They rendered their AI configuration regardless, so a missing key or a public endpoint reached a green deploy and every prompt left the deployment unauthenticated. Flowise, Hermes, OpenClaw and Open WebUI now include it, each gated on its own enable flag.
A lint derives the consumer set from the repository rather than a list: a litellm block without modes is a consumer, while the gateway and its admin UI declare the service they run and are exempt from the contract they own. The existing rule against addressing a model provider directly scanned only templates, so a role resolving the same variable in vars/ was invisible to it; it now scans both, and a negative control keeps the pattern from going quietly stale.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
The reconciler addresses a client with tasks_from: utils/mcp.yml, which
only works when every role offers its MCP work at the same path. The
files were named per role, and on the two agents the work sat inline in
the entry point, where nothing but a full role run could reach it.
The filter docstring pointed at the pre-rename path and now names the
file that exists.
Every MCP role keeps its task tree under tasks/utils/ without numeric
prefixes, so a caller can reach any of them through include_role
tasks_from. utils/roles/mapping.py holds that path as the single source.
Ansible resolves a relative include against the including file's own
directory when that file was reached by path, but against tasks/ when it
was reached through tasks_from. The same file therefore loaded from its
own role and failed from a caller using tasks_from. Every nested include
now names {{ role_path }}/tasks/utils/..., which holds under both bases,
and a lint walks each tasks_from entrypoint transitively to keep it so.
The exec-gating lint learns the same form, otherwise it loses the include
chain and reports inherited IS_STACK_HOST gates as missing.
The expression resolving a provider's stored token appeared eighteen
times. plugins/lookup/mcp_credential.py replaces it, and mcp_probe_owner
disappears from eight roles: it was only ever a step towards the bearer
and no probe read it.
The Hermes and OpenClaw probes stop aborting the play while it is still
running. Roles deploy in dependency order, so a client probing during its
own role can run before a provider exists at all, and failing there
prevents that provider from ever deploying. The verdict moves to the
reconciliation pass, gated on MCP_RECONCILE_STRICT, which the reconciler
sets and group_vars declares so the readers need no default.
The sys-svc-mcp-reconcile role is added here; wiring it into a stage is a
separate change.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
MCP_DISCOVERED_SERVERS resolves every server-direction role to its internal URL, the bearer the server role minted, and its transport, dropping any server without a token so no client renders a connection it cannot authenticate.
OpenClaw moves from 2026.3.11 to 2026.7.1 because the pinned version has no configuration surface for outbound MCP servers at all: its validator rejects mcpServers, the shipped bundle carries no bundle-mcp, and the ACP path refuses per-session servers while pointing at a gateway config that does not exist there. 2026.7.1 reads mcp.servers, which the template now renders. The gateway command gains its run subcommand because the bare gateway no longer starts anything.
Reachability was the missing half: openclaw sat on its own networks only, so the hub name resolved through the DNS wildcard to the ingress instead of the container. The hub overlay now declares an mcp consumer key, which attaches every role carrying services.mcp.
A probe task runs openclaw mcp probe after the handlers flush and fails the deploy when a configured server does not answer. Without it the previous run reported failed=0 while the client could not reach anything.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
The sandbox tier carried no check of its own. Three agent replicas once ran on
the shared kernel while every test stayed green, because nothing between the
runtime selection and the running container ever asked what the container
actually got. Each guard below sits where the promise first breaks.
A node is declared a sandbox target by a label that routes every sandboxed
service to it. It now has to prove it can carry them first: the node reads its
own default runtime and refuses the label while that is still runc. Doing it
before the label rather than after is the point, since the label is what makes
the promise.
Compose has no node-wide default to inspect, so the agent roles read the
runtime the container actually received once the stack is up. The check is
skipped in embodied mode, where the runtime is dropped on purpose because a
microVM between the agent and the hardware it drives defeats the point, and it
keys on the same services.kata switch that already drives the placement
constraint and the compose pin.
A runtime is only as good as the template around it. The new lint refuses a
privileged container, a host network, pid, ipc or user namespace, and a host
docker socket bind in any role that declares a kata service. It fails when it
finds no sandboxed role at all, so renaming the service cannot silently retire
the guard.
It caught its own subject on the first run: both agent templates emitted
privileged: true next to the device allowlist, which grants every device and
made the allowlist decorative. The requirement is explicit that no device
outside the allowlist reaches the agent, so the flag is gone and the role
README no longer claims a limit that was not enforced.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
`docker stack deploy` drops the per-service `runtime:` key, so a swarm worker
can only carry the sandbox as its daemon-wide `default-runtime`. That was never
set: the role reached the manager only, no node was labelled, and one of three
agent replicas executed model-generated code under plain runc.
Setting it from the base render is not possible either. The container role
writes `daemon.json` before the runtime binary exists, and dockerd refuses to
start when a runtime path does not resolve ("stat /usr/local/bin/runsc: no such
file or directory"). The role's own attempt to re-render afterwards was a silent
no-op, because `include_role: sys-svc-container` hits the
`run_once_sys_svc_container` guard.
Move the probes plus the render into `daemon_config.yml` and let the role
re-enter it via `tasks_from` after installing runsc. Only runtimes whose binary
the probe found are registered, and `default-runtime` is written only for a
present shim on a non-stack host, so the stack host keeps the shared kernel for
the platform's own services.
The placement constraint compares against a fixed literal because Docker
constraints have no presence test: label the node `kata-capable=true` rather
than with the runtime name, otherwise a Kata node fails a `== runsc`
comparison. Without a worker outside the stack host no node is eligible at all,
so refuse the deploy instead of leaving the service pending forever.
`select_runtime.yml` is gone: hermes and openclaw included it by absolute path
out of a foreign role, and one probe in the container role now serves every
consumer.
Verified live on a three node cluster: worker `DefaultRuntime=runsc`, both
workers labelled, manager unlabelled, service constrained, and the running
replica reports `runtime=runsc`.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Requirement 034 inverts the isolation model of the other agent roles: the
boundary is the whole machine rather than a kernel boundary inside it.
Adding this role to a device switches the agent from isolated to
embodied.
The agent then runs privileged with exactly the devices from
ROBOT_DEVICE_ALLOWLIST bound into its container, and the kernel-isolating
runtime is dropped, because a microVM between the agent and the hardware
it is meant to drive defeats the purpose. The allowlist lives in
group_vars so the agent templates can read it; a role variable is not
visible across roles.
The admission checks run inside the agent role before it deploys rather
than in this role afterwards. The agent is declared shared, so the
service loader brings it up during the constructor stage while svc-ai
roles only run at the following step; a check placed here would sit
behind the deployment it exists to prevent.
The dedicated-device check now compares against something group_names
actually carries: any other web-app role on the host. The previous list
held Docker node labels, which are a different namespace from Ansible
inventory groups, so that intersection could never match and the failure
message always blamed a multi-node swarm.
Which agent embodies the device follows from the topology: both agent
flags take the dynamic in-group_names form, Hermes Agent wins when both
are present, and the matrix pins one per round so neither path rots.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The second agent of requirement 032, pinned to the same isolating runtime
as hermes. Unlike hermes it exposes a browser Control UI rather than a
bearer API, so it takes the oauth2 proxy flavour with its own sso port;
a proxy in front of a browser surface is correct where it would break
OpenAI-compatible clients.
Three deploy failures shaped this role. OpenClaw maps no environment
variables onto config keys, so it restart-looped on 'Missing config' and
then on 'non-loopback Control UI requires allowedOrigins'; both now come
from a rendered openclaw.json mounted as a config. That render must run
after sys-stk-full, because it notifies compose up and the handler would
otherwise fire before the compose file exists. And the process runs as
root: OpenClaw refuses a config file not owned by the running uid and
writes cron state into its home, neither of which a non-root user can do
against the platform's root-owned volume and config mount. gVisor is the
isolation boundary here, not the in-guest uid.
The administrator persona is blocked: the Control UI is a WebSocket SPA
behind gateway device pairing with no DOM logout control for the shared
helper. The SSO round-trip itself is covered by test-oidc-login.js, which
drives the full unauthenticated to Keycloak to authenticated path.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
kevinveenbirkenbachandClaude Opus 5