A selection token may pin the mesh state as &vpn or &direct, but check_pins
had no arm for it. pinned_vpn_states intersects the pin with the states the
mode allows and only swarm meshes, so a token like @compose+clearnet&vpn left
an empty state list: the row produced no job at all and the run reported green
for a combination that never deployed. That is the outcome _reject exists to
prevent, and every sibling axis already refuses an impossible pin.
The new arm asks whether any candidate mode keeps a state rather than whether
the pin is reachable, so a held vpn axis still overrides the pin instead of
being refused. That behaviour has its own test and is unchanged.
An earlier check was removed with the compose-mesh revert of 2026-10-16
because it rested on meshable() and smallest_variant(), which that revert
deleted. This one reuses pinned_vpn_states, applies to the swarm-only axis the
revert restored, and covers both mesh states instead of only &vpn.
pin_vpn and vpn_mode now reach check_pins from all three callers. The run's
vpn axis reaches the validation job through call-orchestrator and
call-validation, which passed every other axis but this one. The priority
procedure and its skill state all eight axes a token carries, not six:
architecture and mesh were pinnable and, for architecture, already validated,
yet neither was documented.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Both architectures were claimed to work and only one was ever exercised. The
deploy matrix now carries an architecture the way it carries mode, tor, distro
and filesystem, so every run proves both.
A job cannot ask for an architecture the way it asks for a distro, because the
architecture is the machine rather than something the job installs on it. The
matrix therefore carries a runner label and `runs-on` reads it, and an
architecture without a label in RUNNERS is a build error rather than a row that
lands on the wrong hardware and still reports green. assert_architecture.sh
checks the runner it actually got, because a label that stops resolving to
arm64 would otherwise go unnoticed forever.
Assignment is rotation, not chance: two architectures against five distros and
fifteen distro/filesystem positions are coprime enough that every combination
comes round. A role narrows the pool through `architectures` in its
meta/services.yml; without one it takes whatever the rotation hands it. An
empty intersection aborts instead of silently removing the role from the run.
Images are built per architecture and pushed under an architecture-suffixed
tag, then merged into the plain tag by manifest_all.sh; pushing the plain tag
from both builds would let the last one win and send half the rows to the wrong
platform. cleanup.sh now protects the `ci-<sha>-<architecture>` children of a
protected tag, because the plain tag is an index over them and deleting a child
leaves it unpullable on that platform.
label.py is split out of axes.py, which the 500-line limit no longer fits.
Writing a job title and reading one back belong together: a retrigger that
recovers an axis wrongly replays a different deploy than the one that failed,
and a drifting artifact name makes the failure reporter download nothing. The
leading `.*` in LABEL_RE is greedy on purpose so it anchors on the last mode
glyph; a reusable-workflow caller path carries a glyph of its own, and
test_selection.py guards the case.
Verified: 313 unit tests and 48 subtests across utils/github/variant,
utils/roles and cli/meta/ci. Locally, a deploy pinned to arm64 reaches ok=1444
and its image builds log aarch64-linux-gnu paths.
Not verified here: actionlint over the seven changed workflows, and a full
`make test`. The matrix doubles the row count, so runtime and runner
availability change for every CI run from here.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
A run-wide draw proved one distribution and said nothing about the other four, while reporting green. Both are matrix-row axes now, assigned by the same deterministic rotation mode and tor already use, so one sweep exercises every distribution and every filesystem.
The two read the row's position like an odometer, the distro as the low digit. Turning both on the position directly covers only n of the n x m pairs whenever the pools are the same length, and no sweep unlocks it.
Both are part of a row's identity: glyphs in the job label, columns in the plan table, shards in the artifact name. Both are selectable through %distro and /filesystem, and a retrigger replays the distro off a failed title. It leaves the filesystem out, because a title states the kind the matrix assigned and a deploy may have fallen back from it.
A row's filesystem is a preference unless a human names it, on the run or in a token. Reading the matrix's own narrowing as a demand would fail rows for every transient condition the applying step is built to tolerate.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
The merge assertion was a job nobody depended on. ci-orchestrator needed the
scope, the branch prefix and the affected roles -- not it -- so a PR whose base
was not merged in went on to spend five distros on a deploy sweep and reported
a single red job beside a chain that had already finished.
Validation is now a reusable workflow every entry calls, and what it checks
follows the event and the inputs rather than the caller: a pull request gets
its branch prefix and merge base asserted, a run carrying a selection gets that
selection checked, a fork PR waits here for the privileged run's images. The
wait and its gate move in with it, so the orchestrator no longer keeps a second
copy of that logic. Every downstream job depends on the gate.
The selection check is what the last two nights needed. cli.meta.ci.validate
resolves every token against the branch that would deploy it -- role, variant,
mode, onion state -- and reports all offenders at once. Until now the matrix
builder raised on the first bad token from inside a chunk job, so a stale
priority line cost one full CI round per entry and only ever showed the next
problem after the previous one was fixed. Measured on a real list: three
unusable tokens, one pass.
A bare role name that matches nothing is a warning, not an error: the
diff-derived whitelist legitimately names roles the lifecycle envelope filters
out.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
kevinveenbirkenbachandClaude Opus 5