Five field reports in the 24 hours after v0.10.0 all pointed at the same thing:
gates that were right in principle refused real, ordinary setups, and then
failed to say why. Per the consolidated strictness decision, each gate keeps the
protection that matters and drops the part that was refusing legitimate users —
and every refusal now names what it refused and how to proceed.
**Daemon image gate: npx and every ephemeral install path (#1539, #1383).**
The admission check treated "the peer's image hashes differently" and "the
peer's image cannot be examined at all" as one failure. The second is what
`npx codebase-memory-mcp` always produces (ephemeral cache path,
unfingerprintable), so every npx-invoked client was rejected — and, because the
client never reported it, agents saw a transport that closed mid-handshake with
zero bytes on stdout. Reported by @wassolles with the admission path already
read and the fix space mapped.
An unverifiable image is now admitted: the rendezvous HELLO immediately above it
has already proven semantic version, build fingerprint, and protocol/store/
feature ABI, and the image check was trading that real proof for an unavailable
one. It logs daemon.client_image_unverifiable_admitted so the weaker check is
never invisible. A fingerprint MISMATCH — the tamper case the gate exists for —
still rejects hard. Separate test seams keep the two modes testable apart.
**Client bootstrap failures are no longer silent (#1539).**
An MCP client that cannot reach the daemon now emits a JSON-RPC error on stdout
naming the reason, plus the same text on stderr. Previously the reason sat in
bootstrap_result.message and the process exited having written nothing at all.
**POSIX activation: group-writable ancestors (#1535, discussion #1526).**
activation_directory_secure required no group or other write bit on the install
directory AND every ancestor. WSL2 ships ~ and ~/.local at 0775, as do several
distro skeletons and any site using a shared primary group, so install.sh failed
for a large fraction of Linux users — reporting a policy refusal as "activation
transaction I/O failed", which sent reporters after disk errors and filesystem
types. Root-caused by @AmirF194 in a clean ubuntu container; @shochdoerfer and
@iandol confirmed independently.
World-writable ancestors are still refused (any local user could swap a path
component mid-transaction). Group-writable ancestors are now warned about and
admitted. The LEAF directory stays strictly owner-private — that is where the
binary is published, and group write there would let another account replace the
executable between validation and exec. Refusals now name the directory, its
mode, and which rule refused.
**The obsolete ui/standard chooser (#1538, from discussion #1526).**
v0.10.0 consolidated to one archive per platform with the UI always embedded,
but `update` still offered a variant choice: "ui" could only 404, and "standard"
quietly WAS the UI build. Reported by @iandol upgrading 0.9.0 -> 0.10.0. The
chooser, its --standard/--ui flags, and the ui- URL plumbing are removed, along
with the CBM_VARIANT=ui remnant in the npm installer.
Already-released 0.9.x binaries cannot be fixed retroactively, so the release
workflow now publishes byte-identical ui-*-named alias assets — their updaters
work again with no user action. The aliases are uploaded AFTER the VirusTotal
gate: they are the same bytes as archives it already cleared, and uploading them
earlier would duplicate every object in the scan set and the provenance manifest.
**macOS install noise and attribution (#1537).**
install.sh silenced the "No such xattr: com.apple.quarantine" line, which is
what happens when a curl-downloaded archive carries no quarantine attribute —
harmless, and it became the title of a bug report about an unrelated failure.
The session-stop refusal now points at `daemon status` to list the client
processes actually holding the daemon, instead of asserting sessions exist and
leaving the reader to guess. Reported by @listepo.
**Riders.** hatchling is pinned in pkg/pypi (an unpinned backend resolved fresh
inside `python -m build` is what emitted Metadata-Version 2.5 and broke the
v0.10.1 publish); SECURITY.md's supported-versions table moves to 0.10.x.
Tests: separate seams for unverifiable vs mismatched peer images with a test per
outcome; activation refusal must name directory + mode + rule; a group-writable
ancestor must stage successfully. The update tests drop the flag that no longer
exists. Verified against each reporter's environment shape.
**Open security alerts (all three, OSSF Scorecard).**
- HIGH, binary artifact: an 8.8 MB compiled Go ELF wrapper had been committed at
pkg/go/codebase-memory-mcp by accident. Removed, and both it and its .exe
sibling are gitignored so `go build` in that directory cannot repeat it.
- HIGH, GHSA-2v37-7h3g-55p8: nanoid < 3.3.17 loops forever when a custom
generator is called with size 0. It reaches us transitively (postcss -> vite),
so it is pinned through the existing graph-ui overrides block rather than
promoted to a direct dependency; the lockfile resolves 3.3.18.
- MEDIUM, unpinned pip command: the publish step installed build/twine by
version only, leaving the whole transitive graph resolved at run time.
pkg/pypi/requirements-publish.txt now hash-pins the complete toolchain (316
hashes), generated on a linux/amd64 python:3.12 image so the wheels match what
ubuntu-latest resolves, and the step runs pip with --require-hashes. Verified
by installing from it in that same image.
Signed-off-by: Martin Vogel <martin.vogel.tech@gmail.com>
Two open security alerts.
Dependabot #13 (GHSA-r28c-9q8g-f849, high): postcss path traversal via
sourceMappingURL auto-loading. Transitive dev dependency of vite, so it never
ships in the binary, but the fix is a clean lockfile bump -- vite requires
^8.5.3 and the patch floor is 8.5.18, so 8.5.24 satisfies it with no dependency
graph change. Verified: npm ci resolves and the UI still builds.
Scorecard #76 (PinnedDependenciesID): Dockerfile.glibc22 used a floating
`ubuntu:22.04`. Every other venue image is digest-pinned; this one was missed.
It matters more here than the checkbox suggests -- that image IS the glibc-floor
assertion, the oldest userland we claim the portable binary runs on. A floating
tag means the floor silently drifts to whatever 22.04 points at, and a floor
that moves is not a floor.
Signed-off-by: Martin Vogel <martin.vogel.tech@gmail.com>
- graph-ui: bump vite ^6.4.2 -> ^6.4.3 and add overrides pinning the transitive
form-data >=4.0.6 and @babel/core >=7.29.6 (all dev-scope build/test deps, not
shipped in the binary). Clears the 4 open Dependabot alerts and Scorecard's
VulnerabilitiesID. `npm audit` now reports 0 vulnerabilities.
- codeql.yml: move `security-events: write` from the workflow top level to the
`analyze` job (top level is now `contents: read`), resolving Scorecard's
TokenPermissionsID least-privilege finding. CodeQL still uploads results from the
job-scoped token.
Signed-off-by: Martin Vogel <martin.vogel.tech@gmail.com>
Structural layer: drop the hardcoded component list — any directory
containing vendored source or data files must now be covered by a
license file in itself or an ancestor within the vendored tree, so
newly vendored code without a license fails immediately. New third
layer: the graph-UI npm production tree is resolved (postinstall
scripts disabled) and every bundled package must be on the policy
allow-list; unknown licenses fail. Reclassifies @tailwindcss/vite as a
devDependency — it is a build plugin and was inflating the production
tree with native tooling.
Resolves the critical Dependabot/Scorecard alert for vitest <4.1.0 (UI server
arbitrary file read/exec). graph-ui has no test files, so the major bump is
risk-free here (CI uses 'vitest run'); lockfile regenerated, vitest 4.1.8.
ws 8.19.0 had a moderate uninitialized-memory-disclosure issue in websocket.close() (fixed in 8.20.1). Transitive dev dependency; the existing ^8.18.0 range already permits the fix, so this is a lockfile-only bump. npm audit now reports 0 vulnerabilities.
Martin Vogel