A prod box with zero drift could not make `cast diff` say clean: sixteen
lines of `live-only (orphan var — apply never removes)`, every one of them a
var Coolify MINTED — `SERVICE_FQDN_API` for a compose app's per-container
domains, `SERVICE_PASSWORD_POSTGRES`/`POSTGRES_*` for the one-click umami
service's bundled datastore. They held two resources permanently in `change`.
`remove-candidate` means "a live-only var the manifest does not declare;
apply never removes it; read it by eye". For a name cast did not put there,
cannot declare in any vocabulary, and will never remove, that is a category
error — and a report that can never say clean is how an operator learns to
stop reading it. #78's own Impact section made the argument: "an operator who
learns these always show change stops trusting the diff."
cast already knew: draft.ts has held this exact judgment since #27 and used
it to refuse copying these into a draft. diffEnv just never asked. So the
vocabulary moves to reserved.ts — which already owns "names the platform, not
the manifest, controls" — and both callers consult it.
TWO WIDTHS, deliberately, because over-matching is safe in a draft and unsafe
in a diff:
- draft (WIDE): over-matching withholds a value for review — loud and
recoverable. Under-matching copies the source box's DATABASE_URL into a
new box that boots against the OLD box's database. It errs wide.
- diff, applications (NARROW): over-matching HIDES a live-only var. A
hand-left DATABASE_URL still pointing at a box nobody declares is the one
orphan most worth printing — and it matches the wide rule. Probed against
prod: the wide bucket on a real application held DATABASE_URL and
REDIS_URL, both of them cast's OWN declared vars.
- diff, services (WIDE): a Coolify service is a vendored bundle whose
internals cast does not model — `type` + `service_domains` + an
env_template is the whole vocabulary, and the rest is the template's.
Also fixes a real gap the #87 tests found: the pair-rule missed `POSTGRES_DB`
outright, because [POSTGRES, DB] is datastore + datastore with no connection
word. A db NAME is a connection coordinate like any other, so `DB` joins them
— it is exactly the var a one-click service mints for its bundled Postgres.
And corrects LiveEnvVar's comment: it still cited #79's "stale real_value, a
stored column Coolify does not refresh". That was false — an accessor cannot
go stale, and real_value tracks value on every row of a real box. The split
is still right (real_value is an ESCAPED rendering: 'true' is not true); only
its motivation was wrong. The drift it chased was #85's preview shadow.
Tests: an application carrying only SERVICE_* reads clean; a hand-left
DATABASE_URL on an application is STILL reported; a service carrying the
one-click template's wiring reads clean; a non-generated live-only var on a
service is STILL reported.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
`cast diff` re-proposed an env var that was updated in place and is
correct on the box: a flag flipped false→true, applied, and redeployed
still showed `env … : change` on every subsequent diff, while created-once
vars did not. A false drift that never clears also masks real drift.
Root cause: `fetchEnv` collapsed each live var to `real_value ?? value`,
and Coolify leaves `real_value` at the pre-update value after an in-place
PATCH of `value` (a redeploy does not refresh it either). So the diff read
the stale `real_value` and compared "false" against the manifest's "true".
The `real_value ?? value` choice is deliberate for SECRETS — `value` is
masked to a plain token, so `real_value` is the only plaintext to compare —
so the fix is per-var, not a blanket switch. `fetchEnv` now carries both
forms through as `LiveEnvVar {value, realValue}` and `diffEnv` picks per the
desired side's `secret` flag it already knows: `value` for non-secrets
(always fresh), `real_value ?? value` for secrets (unchanged). Capture and
draft, which want the decrypted plaintext and compare against no manifest
literal, keep the old flattening via `flattenEnv`.
Tests: a non-secret flipped in place with stale `realValue` reads clean; a
masked secret still diffs via `realValue` so a genuine rotation is caught.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Coolify injects SOURCE_COMMIT and the COOLIFY_* family into an application's
runtime environment itself, and SKIPS its own injection of a name the resource
already carries a var of (ApplicationDeploymentJob.php v4.1.2, line 2994 —
`->where('key', 'SOURCE_COMMIT')->isEmpty()`). A resource-level var of that
name therefore SUPPRESSES the platform's value. An empty one suppresses it
just as completely: presence, not value.
And it fails green — the deploy succeeds, health checks pass, and the only
symptom is /version reporting "unknown", the endpoint a production cutover is
gated on (D-266).
The rule is now a property of cast, not of one code path. A new src/reserved.ts
owns it, and every place cast touches an env var honors it:
- resolve — every manifest read (desiredFromManifest, requiredSecrets,
manifestResources) refuses a template declaring a reserved name, before any
write. So apply, diff, capture and inventory all refuse identically.
- draft — a reserved name read off a live box gets its own provenance,
`suppressed`: out of the template, out of the age store, its live value read
into no artifact, and named in UNCAPTURED.md with the consequence.
- diff — promoted out of the remove-candidate orphan list ("apply never removes
these; read them by eye") and printed as a FINDING with its consequence. Not
clean. apply still never deletes: cast reports, the human removes it.
- capture (classify) and cli (syncEnv) carry the same assertion at the file and
at the wire — unreachable through the CLI today, and kept because the
invariant is "cast never writes one", not "the CLI happens to check first".
- smoke writes an env var too; its probe names are asserted outside the space.
The rule lives in cast's code, NOT beside forbidden_var_patterns in private
state: that one is policy an environment may set for itself, this one is a fact
about Coolify, true on every box — nothing a manifest change could lower.
19 tests in test/reserved.test.ts, one per path.
Closes#50.
claude-hdb