cast/docs/semantics.md

# Behavior

The guarantees `cast apply` makes, the shapes it accepts, and the places
Coolify 4.1.2 does not cooperate. Extracted from the substrate repo this tool
was born in; the Coolify-source citations were verified against
`coollabsio/coolify` v4.1.2 and the vendored OpenAPI in `reference/`.


The command surface itself is in the README; this file is the behavior behind it.

## Team scoping

**A Coolify API token is scoped to exactly one team, and nothing below the team
scopes it.** `User::createToken` overrides Sanctum's and stamps the session's
team onto the token (`'team_id' => session('currentTeam')->id`); the API then
resolves every request through it — `getResourceByUuid($uuid,
getTeamIdFromToken())`, which walks `resource → environment → project →
team_id`.

The consequence that matters: **a wrong-team token does not error.**
`getResourceByUuid` returns `null` on a team mismatch, and `null` is
indistinguishable from *"this resource does not exist yet"* — which, to `apply`,
is an invitation to **create** it. An apply run with a token minted under the
wrong team would not fail loudly; it would provision a duplicate set of
resources into the wrong team, against whatever server that team owns. That is
why the team assert is a correctness guarantee and not a hardening nicety, and
why it is **fail-closed**:

- Every environment in `environments.yaml` **must** declare `team:` (`id`,
  `name`, or both). A missing team is a schema error — an environment whose
  token cannot be verified is exactly the failure the binding exists to prevent.
- Every command that reaches a live Coolify (`apply`, `diff`, `server add`,
  `smoke`) resolves `GET /teams/current` — the only endpoint that answers *"what
  team does this token act as?"*, resolved from the token itself
  (`TeamController@current_team` → `getTeamIdFromToken()`) — and compares it to
  the binding **before its first read**, aborting on mismatch. Before the first
  *read*, not merely the first write: a wrong-team `diff` reports "everything is
  absent", which is the very lie an `apply` would then act on.
- An unreadable or unauthorized answer aborts too. It is not "no team"; it is an
  unknown answer to the one question cast must not guess at.

**An Environment is not an auth boundary.** It has no `team_id` of its own (it
belongs to a project) and no API path scopes by it — Coolify environments are an
organizational construct. The team is the only boundary there is.

**A server belongs to exactly one team.** There is no pivot table and — unlike
`GithubApp` — no `is_system_wide` escape hatch; upstream confirms teams cannot
share a server and defers it to v5 (coollabsio/coolify#1820, #3235). Registering
a server under the wrong team is not fixable with a PATCH, which is why
`server add` takes `--env` and inherits the same assert.

**GitHub Apps, unlike servers, *can* be shared across teams** —
`is_system_wide` is the supported mechanism, on both the read and write side:

```php
// GithubController@list_github_apps (backs GET /github-apps)
$githubApps = GithubApp::where(function ($query) use ($teamId) {
    $query->where('team_id', $teamId)
        ->orWhere('is_system_wide', true);
    // …
```

`POST /github-apps` validates and accepts `is_system_wide` (boolean), stamping
`team_id` from the token. So **one App flagged system-wide is visible and usable
from every team, and per-team App duplication is unnecessary.** Note the
corollary for cast: because `GET /github-apps` deliberately includes other
teams' system-wide Apps, **resolving a GitHub App by name is not a proxy for
being in the right team** — which is the second reason the team assert has to be
explicit.

**`dockercompose` build pack** (compose apps, box-B parity): a manifest
application whose `build.pack` is `dockercompose` declares
`build.compose_file` (path to the compose file in the checkout) and
`service_domains` (map of compose service name → `string[]` of URLs) instead
of the plain-app `port`/`healthcheck`/`domains` trio — those three live in the
compose file itself and are rejected by the manifest schema on a compose app;
conversely `service_domains`/`compose_file` are rejected on a non-compose app.
`domains` is schema-optional at the top level for this reason, but still
required (via a `superRefine`) for every non-compose app — no existing
manifest needs to change.

```yaml
core:
  source: { repo: acme/widget, branch: main }
  build: { pack: dockercompose, base_directory: /, compose_file: /docker-compose.yaml }
  service_domains:
    api: ["https://api.widget.example.com"]
  env_template: core.prod.env.template
```

**Checkout paths are absolute.** `build.compose_file`,
`build.base_directory` and `build.publish_directory` are all paths *inside the
repo checkout*, and all three must begin with `/` — the manifest schema refuses
them otherwise. This is Coolify's own rule, not cast's taste: on create it
validates `docker_compose_location` against
`ValidationPatterns::FILE_PATH_PATTERN` and `base_directory`/`publish_directory`
against `DIRECTORY_PATH_PATTERN` (both anchored on a leading slash; only the
directory pattern also admits the bare `/` root), and a `docker-compose.yaml`
with no slash comes back as a bare 422 — *after* `apply` has already created
the project and the environment. cast refuses at parse time instead, on every
verb, at zero API cost. It refuses rather than normalizes: the manifest is the
artifact under review, so the value is fixed in the file, once, not repaired in
memory on every run.

Internally cast keeps the map vocabulary (`docker_compose_domains:
{service: string[]}`) all the way through `resolve.ts`/`apply.ts`/diffing;
only `cli.ts`'s wire-translation layer (`applicationApiFields`) flattens it to
the Coolify request shape — an array of `{name, domain}` where `domain` is
that service's URLs comma-joined (verified against the
`/applications/private-github-app` and `PATCH /applications/{uuid}` request
schemas in `reference/coolify-openapi-4.1.2.json`). A compose app's create
payload also sets `connect_to_docker_network: true` — without it the stack
cannot reach the environment's managed Postgres/Redis resources at all, which
fails at runtime rather than at apply time.

Live-state projection (`projectLiveFields`) reads both fields back for a
compose app: `docker_compose_location` (a plain string on the GET model) and
`docker_compose_domains`, which the GET model documents as a nullable
**string**, not the structured array the write side accepts — parsed
defensively as JSON back into the internal map, degrading to "field omitted"
(not a crash) on anything that doesn't parse as a well-formed array of
`{name, domain}`. Projecting both is what keeps a matching re-apply a true
no-op instead of a spurious PATCH + stack redeploy every run. **This parsing
path is unverified against a real Coolify instance** — the read-back is only
confirmed by an overlay apply followed by an overlay-edit re-apply against a
live instance, which has not yet happened. If a live instance turns out not to expose
`docker_compose_domains` on read, apply's idempotency guarantee for the
domains half breaks and needs the same warn-and-drop treatment as service
domains below — that also removes the cutover mechanism (domains no longer
flip via re-apply), so it would need a runbook amendment, not a silent fix.

**Hostname overlay, compose apps:** `--hostname-overlay <file>` accepts a
per-service map value for a compose app's entry instead of the plain-app
`string[]`:

```yaml
core:
  api: ["http://api.<PROD-IP>.sslip.io"]
landing: ["http://landing.<PROD-IP>.sslip.io"]
```

Only the named services' domain lists are replaced; other services in the
same app keep their manifest values. A map value naming an unknown service
errors, listing the app's known services; a map value against a non-compose
app errors (`hostname overlay gave a service map for non-compose app <name>`)
— the plain `string[]` shape keeps working unchanged for non-compose apps.

**Structural vs. full diff** are tied to what the configured token can do,
not a flag alone: **structural** diff needs only a standing read-only token
and never compares env values (output says so explicitly); **full** diff
(and `apply`, which always requires full) needs a session token with
`read:sensitive` and compares secret values too — but the output only ever
says `secret FOO differs`, never the value on either side.

**Apply semantics** (verbatim from the spec's Global Constraints — never
softened by an implementation detail):

- Apply never deletes. Resource removal or rename is a manual runbook act;
  `diff` reports the orphan as such until that act happens.
- Apply never recreates a database resource under any circumstances.
- Apply creates the **project** and its **environment** when they are absent —
  the two things a resource create has to name before it can name anything
  else. Coolify hands a project it has just created its OWN default environment
  (`production`), never ours, so without this the first apply against a
  from-nothing project 404s on its first resource — *"Environment not found"* —
  and leaves the project behind, created and empty (#38). Read-before-write, so
  an environment that already exists is never written to: adoption keeps working
  exactly as it did, and this cannot regress an apply that works today.
- That default environment is then **removed** — the one delete cast performs,
  and the only exception to *apply never deletes* (#40). What that rule protects
  is things cast did not make; this is a byproduct of cast's own `POST /projects`
  seconds earlier, holding nothing and having never held anything. Leaving it
  meant every project cast created from nothing carried a permanently-empty
  `production` beside the environment everything actually lives in — precisely
  the shape that makes a box unreadable later (on the box being migrated away
  from, `production` is empty and everything runs in `staging`, and *"the obvious
  guess is the wrong one"* is a note we had to write for ourselves). All three
  conditions hold jointly or nothing is touched: **cast created the project in
  this run** (never a project someone built by hand, whatever it carries), the
  environment is **empty** (asked of Coolify — the details route is the only one
  that eager-loads resources — not assumed from the first condition), and its
  name is **not ours** (an `--environment production` keeps its `production`).
  Best-effort: a delete that fails is reported and never fails the apply.
- On drift in a field the API cannot update in place (`build_pack`, a
  database's `type`/`version`, a service's `type`), apply **fails loudly
  naming the field** rather than recreating.
- Apply ends every mutated resource with a restart/redeploy
  (`instant_deploy` on create, `/deploy` or `/restart` on update) — API
  mutations land in Coolify's DB, not in running containers, so a create or
  update that skipped this would silently not take effect.
- **Apply acts in dependency order, not manifest order** — `database` →
  `service` → `application` (#45), for creates *and* updates: a redeploy is a
  redeploy, and an application restarted against a database whose own pending
  change has not landed is the same failure one apply later. The order cannot be
  computed — nothing in a manifest declares that `core` needs `postgres`, no
  resource names another, so there is no graph to walk — so it is a fixed
  kind-order (`KIND_ORDER` in `apply.ts`). The direction between the three kinds
  is not in question, and three is few enough to legislate. `cast destroy` tears
  down in its exact reverse: things come up in the order their dependencies
  allow and go down in the reverse. Only the *acting* order changes; the diff
  report still reads in manifest order (a resource is read where its author
  wrote it), and nothing about clean/orphans/placement moves with it.

  What that buys, and what it does not: an application is no longer created and
  deployed against databases that **do not exist**, which made a first apply's
  deploy fail by construction — a full build, a red deployment, and an operator
  told to ignore it. It is **not** a readiness barrier.
  `DeployController@deploy_resource` (v4.1.2) *queues*:
  `queue_application_deployment(...)` for an application and
  `StartDatabase::dispatch($resource)` for a database (only a service starts
  synchronously, `StartService::run`). So cast orders its **requests**, and
  Coolify runs them on its own queues. An app whose first boot must find a
  *listening* database still races it; apply guarantees the database exists and
  was asked to start first, not that it is up.
- Direction is one-way, manifest → Coolify, always.
- **Environment guards:** `apply` refuses if a var matching that environment's
  `forbidden_var_patterns` is present in the resolved env **at all, regardless
  of value** — "off" means absent, not `false` (see the README). `apply` also
  refuses `--path` combined with `--env prod`: prod always reads the default
  branch, so a feature-branch checkout can never reach it.
- **Reserved names:** cast never writes `SOURCE_COMMIT` or a `COOLIFY_*` var,
  under any manifest, in any environment. See below.

## Reserved env var names (`SOURCE_COMMIT`, `COOLIFY_*`)

Coolify injects a set of values into an application's runtime environment
itself — `SOURCE_COMMIT`, and the `COOLIFY_*` family (`COOLIFY_URL`,
`COOLIFY_FQDN`, `COOLIFY_BRANCH`, `COOLIFY_RESOURCE_UUID`,
`COOLIFY_CONTAINER_NAME`) — and it does so behind one guard
(`app/Jobs/ApplicationDeploymentJob.php`, v4.1.2):

```php
if ($this->application->environment_variables->where('key', 'SOURCE_COMMIT')->isEmpty()) {
    $coolify_envs->put('SOURCE_COMMIT', $this->commit);
}
```

**Coolify skips its own injection of a name when the resource already carries an
env var of that name.** So a resource-level `SOURCE_COMMIT` does not merely fail
to help — it **suppresses** the value Coolify would otherwise have provided. An
**empty** one suppresses it exactly as completely: `isEmpty()` is asked of the
*collection of vars*, never of the value. Presence, not value — the same rule
`forbidden_var_patterns` holds to, for the same reason.

And it **fails green**. The deploy succeeds, the health check passes, the
container runs, and the only symptom is that `/version` — which reads
`process.env.SOURCE_COMMIT` at request time, and which a production cutover is
gated on — reports `unknown`.

Anything that writes env vars can set that trap, and cast is a thing that writes
env vars. So the rule is applied at **every** place cast touches one:

| verb | behavior |
| --- | --- |
| `apply` / `diff` / `capture` / `inventory` | **refuse.** Any manifest read whose env template declares a reserved name fails the run, before any write, naming the var and the consequence. |
| `inventory --emit-draft` | **never copies one.** A reserved name read off a live box is dispositioned `suppressed`: kept out of the emitted template *and* out of the age store, its live value read into no artifact, and named in `UNCAPTURED.md` with the reason. |
| `diff` | **a finding, not an orphan var.** A reserved name on a live resource is *not* filed under `remove-candidate` ("apply never removes these; read them by eye"). It is not cosmetic residue — it is an active suppression — so it prints as a `FINDING`, with the consequence, and the report is **not clean**. |
| `smoke` | its probe vars are asserted to be outside the reserved space. |

Two things this rule is **not**:

- It is **not** `forbidden_var_patterns`. That one is *policy* — an environment's
  own choice about its own vars — and it lives in the operator's private state
  precisely so that a product-side change cannot lower its own guard. This one is
  a **fact about Coolify**: true on every box, in every environment, for every
  project. There is no environment in which declaring `SOURCE_COMMIT` is correct,
  so there is no file in which it can be permitted. It lives in cast's code.
- It is **not** a deletion. `apply never deletes` holds unchanged: on a live box
  that already carries one, cast **reports** it and a human removes it in the
  Coolify UI.

Nothing here applies to cast's own config vars (`COOLIFY_BASE_URL`,
`COOLIFY_ACCESS_TOKEN`, `COOLIFY_READ_ONLY`): those are read from the operator's
local instance file and are never written to a resource.

## The registry (`projects:`)

The top-level `projects:` block is the list of **which projects exist**, and in
which environments. It is the only place that says so: `environments:` says where
things deploy to, `environments.<env>.projects.<repo>` says how an already-named
project is placed, `github_apps` says how to clone one you have already named.

```yaml
projects:
  heavy-duty/incubator:
    environments: [prod, staging]
```

- **Keyed by the full `<org>/<repo>` slug, with no bare-`<repo>` fallback.** The
  key is the repo; there is no `repo:` field. `github_apps` and
  `environments.<env>.projects` accept a bare key because state files in the wild
  are written that way; this block is new and has none, so it requires the slug —
  a bare `<repo>` is unique only *within* an org.
- **`environments:` names OUR environments** — the keys of the `environments:`
  block, the values `--env` takes — never Coolify's. Non-empty.
- **Optional.** A state file with no `projects:` block loads unchanged, and
  `projectsIn` reports `[]` for every environment.

**Validated at parse time, so every verb refuses a registry that lies.** Two
refusals, both defending the same failure — *a silently skipped project reads
exactly like a clean one*, which makes silence, the most common report there is,
ambiguous:

1. **An environment that does not exist** (a typo in `projects.<slug>.environments`)
   is an error naming the unknown environment and listing the known ones. Left
   alone, the project would be registered into an environment no command can
   visit: a fleet run skips it, reports nothing, exits clean.
2. **A binding the registry does not register.** Every
   `environments.<env>.projects.<slug>` key must be a project the registry
   registers *for that environment*. Otherwise the two blocks describe two
   different fleets: a `destination_uuid` or `smoke_target` real enough for a
   direct `cast apply <repo> --env <env>` to act on, and invisible to every
   fleet run over that environment. Enforced **only when `projects:` is
   present**, so pre-registry state files keep loading.

The registry is what makes two things possible, neither of which can be attempted
without a list to iterate: **fleet operations** (`--all`, below), and
**rebuild-from-state** — restoring a Coolify from the state repo, which is
otherwise an assumption, since you cannot restore what you cannot enumerate.

## Fleet runs (`--all`)

`cast diff --env <env> --all` and `cast apply --env <env> --all` act on **every
project the registry lists for that environment**, in place of the `<org>/<repo>`
positional. The projects are visited in the registry's sorted order
(`projectsIn`) — a fleet report a human reads top to bottom, and CI diffs, must
not reshuffle because someone appended a project.

**One implementation.** `--all` loops the *same* per-project path the single-repo
form runs (checkout → secrets → desired → bindings → team-asserted client → live
read → diff → optionally apply). There is deliberately no second, parallel fleet
code path: two implementations of "what a project run is" would drift, and drift
is the thing this tool exists to catch.

**The instance and the team are asserted once, before the first project's first
read.** One `--env` means one instance and one team for the whole run, so the
gate lands where it always did — strictly before the first live read, which is
already the lie a wrong-team token tells (see *Team scoping*).

### Fails closed on the aggregate

**A registered project cast cannot reach is an ERROR, never a skip.** "Cannot
reach" is every way a project can fail to answer: the clone failing, the manifest
carrying no block for this environment, the secret store being absent or
undecryptable, the Coolify project or environment being absent
(`LiveLookup.found === false`), and any HTTP error. They collapse into one
outcome because only one thing about them matters downstream — **this project was
not read** — and a silently skipped project reads exactly like a clean one. That
is the failure of #12/#18/#22 at fleet scale, and it would make *silence*, the
most common report there is, the least trustworthy one.

So the aggregate reports **coverage** (registered / read / clean / drifted /
unreachable), and the exit code ranks an unread project above a drifted one:

| verb | exit | meaning |
|---|---|---|
| `diff --all` | `0` | every registered project was **read**, and every one is clean |
| `diff --all` | `1` | every one was read, and at least one has drift |
| `diff --all` | `2` | a project could not be read. **Outranks drift**: an unreadable project is not a diff result, it is the absence of one |
| `apply --all` | `0` | every registered project applied |
| `apply --all` | `≠0` | anything else |

`fleetExitCode` defaults to `2` on any coverage shape it does not recognize — an
exit code is the only part of the report CI reads, so an unrecognized shape must
fail rather than pass.

### Opposite dispositions on failure, both deliberate

- **`diff --all` runs every project to completion.** A read that stops early hides
  the drift in the projects it never reached; a read that continues costs nothing.
- **`apply --all` stops at the first failure**, and reports which projects were
  applied and which were **not touched**. A write that continues costs everything:
  the next project's apply would be a guess about whether the last one broke
  something it depends on. `apply` is idempotent, so re-running after the fix is a
  no-op over the projects that already applied.

`apply` keeps its usual position on an absent Coolify project — it *creates* it,
exactly as a single-project `apply` does (see *the read side*, and `LiveLookup`).
Only `diff` treats absence as unreachable, because `diff` may only ever describe a
target that already exists.

### Two refusals

- **An empty or absent registry refuses** (exit 2). `projectsIn` answers `[]` both
  for a state file with no `projects:` block and for one whose registry names
  nothing in this environment; to a fleet run they are the same thing — *nothing
  to iterate* — and "0 projects, clean" is precisely the sentence this feature
  exists to make impossible. The refusal names what was looked for, distinguishes
  an unmigrated state file from a registry pointed elsewhere, and prints the YAML
  to write.
- **`--all` is mutually exclusive** with the repo positional and with every
  single-project coordinate: `--path`, `--project`, `--environment`, `--resource`,
  `--hostname-overlay`. Each names ONE project's checkout, ONE project's Coolify
  name, ONE box's resource names — none is true of the project beside it.
  Fleet-wide they are meaningless at best and dangerous at worst: `--project X`
  across a registry points every project at the same Coolify project, which on
  `diff` is a false report and on `apply` is every manifest in the fleet written
  into one project. The refusal names the offending flag and says what applying it
  fleet-wide would have done.

## Placement (destinations)

A **destination** is the Docker network a resource is created on. It is declared
per project — `environments.<env>.projects.<repo>.destination_uuid` — because a
destination is scoped project × environment, and the environment block above it
says `server:`, which is exactly what two projects share.

**Enforced once, at create.** `apply` sends `destination_uuid` on every create
(applications, databases, services — Coolify runs identical destination logic in
all three controllers). It is never sent on update, and `apply` never moves a
live resource between networks.

**Not comparable, and therefore reported rather than compared.** Coolify 4.1.2
accepts a `destination_uuid` on write and returns a `destination_id` (an integer
primary key) on read, exposes no endpoint mapping one to the other, and in fact
has no destinations API at all (zero routes at `v4.1.2`). So the declared UUID
**cannot be verified against the live resource it was sent for** — by cast or by
anything else. Two consequences, both deliberate:

- `diff` never diffs the destination as a field. Doing so would compare a UUID
  against an int and report drift that could never be resolved — a phantom
  "update" on every run.
- `diff` instead groups live resources by the `destination_id` Coolify *does*
  report. That int is opaque, but it is comparable **to itself**, which catches
  the thing worth catching: a project whose resources do not all sit on one
  network is a project whose isolation is broken. That is `split placement`, and
  it is drift — non-clean, reported, and **not repaired** (same disposition as an
  orphan).
- Whenever a destination is declared, `diff` says explicitly that it was *not*
  compared. Silence would make an unverified setting read as a verified one —
  the failure shape this document exists to avoid.
- Whenever one is **not** declared, `diff` says *that*, too:
  `placement: server's default destination (none declared)`. Declaring nothing is
  not the absence of a placement decision — it is one (cast sends no
  `destination_uuid`, Coolify picks), and it was the only placement decision made
  in silence until #41. It is reported even on a clean run that creates nothing,
  because the trap is set precisely for projects that are already built: the day
  their server gains a second destination, every project on it that declared no
  destination stops being able to create at all.

**The multi-destination 400 is translated, not passed through** (#41). A create
against a server with more than one destination that names none is rejected with
*"Server has multiple destinations and you do not set destination_uuid."* — a
message that names neither the remedy nor the file the remedy goes in, and that
arrives at the **first create**, after `apply` has already made the project and
the environment. cast **cannot** pre-flight the condition: 4.1.2 serves no
destinations API at all, and `GET /servers/{uuid}` does not carry them either, so
a server's destination count is unknowable until a create has been attempted.
What cast can do is answer the question the 400 raises, and it does: the failing
resource, the server by the name the operator wrote (not its UUID), the exact
state-file path the UUID goes in
(`environments.<env>.projects.<org>/<repo>.destination_uuid`), the create-time
warning, and Coolify's own words kept verbatim. A run interrupted this way is
safe to re-run once the UUID is declared — the project and environment it already
made are adopted, not remade.

**Coolify's create-time behavior** (`ApplicationsController` ~L1003,
`DatabasesController` ~L1700, `ServicesController` ~L378 @ v4.1.2): a server with
**one** destination uses it and *ignores* any `destination_uuid` sent, never
validating it — so a typo is invisible there. A server with **more than one**
rejects a create that omits it (`400`), and rejects a UUID that belongs to
another server (`422`). The second case is why cast could not apply to a shared
box at all before this field existed. Citations: `reference/README.md`.

## Domains (uniqueness is instance-wide)

**Coolify enforces domain uniqueness across the whole instance; cast plans inside one
project and one environment.** That gap is structural, not a bug: a plan can be
internally consistent, correct against everything cast can observe, and still be
refused — by a resource in a project cast never queries. The check is
`checkIfDomainIsAlreadyUsedViaAPI` (`bootstrap/helpers/domains.php` @ v4.1.2) and it
walks every application of the *team* (its `fqdn`, and for `dockercompose` apps its
per-service `docker_compose_domains`), every service application's `fqdn`, and the
instance's own `fqdn`. Only applications can claim a domain through cast: databases
have none, and cast's service creates send no domains at all.

**The create plan is pre-flighted** (#44). Before `apply` writes anything — the
project and the environment are created lazily, by the first create, so this is the
last moment a refusal is free — cast reads `GET /applications` and checks the domains
the plan is about to claim against every one already held. A conflict is a **refusal**
(nothing created), not a failed apply. It costs one GET, and only on a plan that
creates an application with a domain: a first apply, and nothing else. *N+1 is not
needed:* the list is serialized by the same `removeSensitiveData()` as the per-app
`GET` (`ApplicationsController.php` :38, called at :130 and :1980), so it already
carries `fqdn`, `docker_compose_domains` and `build_pack` — none of which the vendored
OpenAPI documents on that route.

**The 409 is translated when one gets through anyway.** The pre-flight is a *subset*
of Coolify's check — service `fqdn`s and the instance `fqdn` appear in no list cast
can read — so a create can still be refused mid-apply, with a raw
*"Domain conflicts detected. Use force_domain_override=true to proceed."* Both the
refusal and the translation say the same three things, the last of which is the one
the operator cannot get from Coolify: the domain, the resource holding it (name +
uuid, and the compose service if it is held per-service), and **whether that resource
is inside the applied project or outside it**. Outside is the usual case, and it has a
usual cause worth naming: *residue from an earlier run cleaned up by deleting a
Coolify project.* Deleting a project does **not** delete its resources — they survive,
invisible to cast, still holding the domain instance-wide. (The scope claim is checked
against the live resources cast read, never assumed: a conflict with something in the
plan's own project — a renamed resource — is a different fix, and would be a lie
otherwise.)

**cast never sends `force_domain_override=true`.** Coolify offers it in the error text
and it is the wrong answer: two resources on one domain is a routing coin-flip, and
Coolify says so in the same response (*"can cause routing conflicts and unpredictable
behavior"*). Nothing in cast can send that flag, and no retry may ever set it — if it
is ever wanted, it is an explicit operator act in the UI, not a tool's decision.

## Backup schedules

A manifest database's `backup` block (`frequency`, `retention`) is a **diffed
field like any other**: compared on every run, written on create *and* on
update. Declaring `backup:` on a database that already exists starts backing it
up — which is what every reader of that manifest already assumed it did.

It did not always work that way, and the reason is worth keeping: the schedule
used to be write-only, applied inside `apply`'s create branch and then never
looked at again, because *"live Coolify state doesn't expose it back"*. That was
false. A schedule is not on the database's own `GET` — but it was never supposed
to be. It has **its own route**, which cast had been POSTing to all along and had
simply never read:

```
GET    /databases/{uuid}/backups                     ← list a database's schedules
POST   /databases/{uuid}/backups                     ← create
PATCH  /databases/{uuid}/backups/{scheduled_backup_uuid}  ← update
```

The cost of not looking was exact: a database created before its `backup:` block
was declared never got one, a schedule deleted in the UI was invisible, and the
`--full` diff that gates a production cutover passed with an unbacked-up
production database (#51).

**What the route returns.** The vendored OpenAPI documents the body as *"Content
is very complex. Will be implemented later."*, so the shape comes from the source:
`DatabasesController@database_backup_details_uuid` (v4.1.2) returns
`ScheduledDatabaseBackup::…->with('executions')->where('database_id', …)->get()`
straight to `response()->json()` — a **JSON array of raw Eloquent rows** (no API
resource, no `removeSensitiveData`), whose columns are the model's `$fillable`:
`uuid`, `enabled`, `save_s3`, `frequency`,
`database_backup_retention_amount_locally`, … plus an eager-loaded `executions`
array cast ignores. `retention` is
`database_backup_retention_amount_locally` — the same field cast has always sent
on create.

**`frequency` round-trips verbatim**, which is what makes it diffable at all: the
controller *validates* it (`validate_cron_expression`, which only returns a bool)
and then stores `$request->only($backupConfigFields)` unchanged, with no mutator
on the model. `"0 3 * * *"` reads back as `"0 3 * * *"`; the preset words
(`daily`, `weekly`, …) read back as themselves. The old "diffing it would flag
spurious drift every run" fear was a guess about a read nobody had performed.

**A disabled schedule is not a backup.** A row with `enabled: false` exists but
backs nothing up, so it is neither clean (it diffs against a declared block) nor
absent (`apply` PATCHes it, rather than adding a second schedule). Every cast
write asserts `enabled: true`.

**What is still NOT compared**, and says so on screen when it applies:

- **An unreadable answer.** If the route is unreachable, or answers a shape cast
  does not recognize, cast reports `backup schedule for database <name>
  declared, NOT compared — verify in the Coolify UI` and treats it as neither
  drift nor clean. An absence of evidence is not evidence of drift: cast will not
  invent a change it cannot see, nor certify a database it could not read. On the
  write side the same read failure **raises** rather than guessing — POSTing blind
  would duplicate a schedule that may already exist, and skipping is the silent
  no-op this whole section exists to kill.
- **More than one schedule.** A manifest declares one; a database carrying
  several is outside that vocabulary, and choosing one to compare against would
  be a coin toss reported as a fact. Reported, not compared, not written.
- **The S3 target.** Coolify returns the storage as `s3_storage_id` (an int) and
  takes it as a UUID, the same unmappable pair as `destination_id` (see
  Placement). cast **asserts** `save_s3: true` + the environment's
  `s3_destination` on every write and can never verify it afterwards.
- **An undeclared schedule.** A live schedule on a database whose manifest says
  nothing about backups is left alone, unremarked — `apply` never removes.

**A backup change redeploys the database.** `apply` redeploys any resource it
mutates, and a schedule change is a mutation of the database, so changing
`frequency` restarts the container. Consistent with every other field, and worth
knowing before you edit a schedule on a live production database.

## Instance selection

**The Coolify a command talks to is an explicit, named value** — not a property
of whatever `<state>/.coolify.env` happens to contain at the moment. Resolution
order, highest first:

1. `--instance <name>` → `<state>/.coolify/<name>.env`
2. the environment's `instance:` binding in `environments.yaml`
3. `<state>/.coolify.env` (the default; unchanged when neither of the above is
   used)

Two refusals, both fail-closed:

- **An unknown `--instance` aborts**, naming the instances that do exist. It
  does *not* fall back to the default — that fallback is how a `--full` diff
  meant for a legacy box gets run against production.
- **`COOLIFY_READ_ONLY=true` in an instance file makes it read-only**, and
  `apply` / `smoke` / `server add` refuse it *before their first call*. The
  guard is the **declaration**, not the token's scope: an instance configured
  for inspection must not be writable even when the token it holds would permit
  the writes. `diff`, `team` and `capture` still work against it — they read.

Every command that reaches a live Coolify prints which one, next to the team
assert.

## Adoption (`capture`)

`capture` is the only verb that writes *into* the state directory rather than
into Coolify, and the only one that reads a hand-built instance as a **source**
rather than as a target. It exists because cast is otherwise scoped to the
steady state and has no bootstrap path for a box that predates its manifest.

**The required set comes from the manifest, not from the box.** The names are
the `${…}` refs in that environment's env templates, read by the same parser
`apply` uses to demand them (`parseTemplate`, shared by `resolveTemplate` and
`templateRefs` — deliberately one grammar, because a drift between the two
would mean `capture` collects a different set than `apply` will later require,
which is the "a name silently missed" failure it exists to remove). So the store
it writes contains **exactly** the names the manifest requires: a live var
nobody asked for is not the store's business, and a template literal
(`NODE_ENV=production`) is not a secret.

**The mapping is not mechanical, and must not be.** Some entries encode
migration decisions rather than facts about the source box:

- A `DATABASE_URL` / `REDIS_URL` read off the source points at the **source
  box's** Postgres/Redis. Copying it is confidently wrong in a way that looks
  entirely plausible, and the target's real URL does not exist until Coolify
  creates the resource. These are declared `generated_secrets:` in the manifest
  environment and written as the literal `pending-coolify-generated`.
- staging's `ADMIN_EMAIL` must be the operator, not the source's value: staging
  and prod share a Mailgun domain, so a staging box carrying the real address
  can mail real users. That is `--override`.

A "capture everything" verb would therefore be silently wrong in a handful of
entries out of seventeen — worse than being wrong in all of them. So every
required name is **forced into a disposition**, and two of the four stop the
run:

| disposition | source | outcome |
| --- | --- | --- |
| captured | found live | value taken |
| generated | manifest `generated_secrets` (or `--generated`) | `pending-coolify-generated` |
| overridden | `$CAST_CAPTURE_<NAME>` | operator's value |
| **missing** | required by a template, absent live | **refuses** |
| **conflict** | one name, different live values on two resources | **refuses** |

`generated_secrets` is a **manifest** property, not a flag: the manifest is what
knows `DATABASE_URL` comes from a database it declares. An entry naming
something no template refs is a hard error — dead config here is not untidy but
dangerous, because it reads like a guard standing over a name while standing
over nothing, and the likeliest cause is a typo whose real name is then
*captured* from the source box instead of placeheld.

### The placeholder is a promise, and `apply` refuses to write it over a value

The bootstrap is **two-pass**, and only the first pass is safe to repeat.
`pending-coolify-generated` means *"no real value exists yet — Coolify will make
one"*. The first `apply` sends it, Coolify creates the Postgres/Redis and
replaces it with the real URL. **From that moment the store is known-wrong**, and
a second `apply` would PATCH the placeholder back over the live, working value
and redeploy every consumer onto it — Coolify's bulk env endpoint is a plain
upsert (`create_bulk_envs`, v4.1.2: an existing key is found and its value
overwritten), so nothing on the far side stops it either.

So `diff` and `apply` both know the literal:

- `diff` gives it its own state and its own words — `secret DATABASE_URL: store
  holds the generated-secret PLACEHOLDER, live holds a real value — apply would
  OVERWRITE it`, plus a count in the summary line. The old report said `secret
  DATABASE_URL differs`, which is what a legitimate **rotation** of the same
  secret prints: the one signal there was could not be told from routine.
- `apply` **refuses** — it does not warn. Data-loss write, same fail-closed
  family as the team assert and the absent-project gate. Refused before any
  resource is touched, and the refusal names the key and the resource, **never
  the live value**.

The rule, exactly:

| store value | live value | disposition |
| --- | --- | --- |
| placeholder | a real value | **refuse** (an already-generated secret) |
| placeholder | placeholder | proceed (nothing differs) |
| placeholder | absent | proceed (`add` — this is the first pass) |
| placeholder | *resource does not exist* | proceed (`create` — Coolify replaces it) |
| a real value | anything | proceed (an ordinary rotation) |

It is keyed on the **store's value**, not on the manifest's `generated_secrets:`
list — that list names store *refs* (`DATABASE_URL_PROD`) while an env diff is
keyed by env var *key* (`DATABASE_URL`), and the template maps one to the other.
The value is the same fact, carried to where it is needed. It is also the
stricter reading: a name dropped from `generated_secrets:` while the store still
holds the placeholder is still a write of a promise over a value.

The other half of this hole is that nothing can yet **fill** the store after the
first apply — `capture` placeholds a generated secret by design. Until it can,
the refusal is the guard and filling the store is a manual act.

**Secret hygiene**, all enforced by tests against real values:

- The plan prints **names and provenance, never values**. (The one value-shaped
  thing it prints is the `pending-coolify-generated` literal, which carries no
  information about the source.)
- An `--override`'s value is read from `$CAST_CAPTURE_<NAME>`, **never from
  argv** — a command-line value is visible in `ps` to every process on the box.
- Plaintext is piped to `age` on **stdin**: never a temp file, never stdout,
  never shell history. The hand-run recipe this replaces wrote
  `/dev/shm/prod.env` and relied on remembering to `shred -u` it.
- An existing store is **not overwritten** without `--force`: it may hold the
  only copy of values the source box no longer has. Same disposition as apply's
  never-delete.

**`capture` takes `diff`'s position on an absent target** (see `LiveLookup`),
and refuses one: against a project or environment that isn't there it would read
back zero live values and report every required secret as *missing* — an
alarming, meaningless report about the wrong box. It also inherits the team
assert (a wrong-team token reads back `null` for everything, producing the same
lie) and the `--path`-with-`--env prod` refusal (a feature-branch manifest must
not decide which names land in the prod store).

The final gate is a **typed confirmation** — the environment's own name, after
the plan. There is no `--yes`: a store written without someone reading the
provenance column is the outcome the verb exists to prevent. A closed stdin
aborts rather than hanging.

### Pass 2 (`capture --generated-only`)

An environment that declares `generated_secrets:` **bootstraps in two passes, by
construction** — the value does not exist until Coolify makes it:

    capture  →  apply  →  capture --generated-only
    (placeholds)  (Coolify generates)  (the store learns the real value)

Without pass 2 the store's value for `DATABASE_URL` stays a placeholder while the
live value is real — which is exactly the state in which the next routine `apply`
overwrites a working secret (#47). **The absence of pass 2 is what leaves that gun
loaded**, and it is on the DR path: *rebuild the control plane from state* means
apply-from-nothing, which means every generated secret in every store is a
placeholder again. This used to be a hand `age` re-encrypt against production —
decrypt a fourteen-name store, edit two lines, re-encrypt to the environment's
recipient, holding the prod key, with a `jq` filter that must not pick the wrong row.

`--generated-only` **inverts** capture's disposition rule and changes nothing else:
the names in `generated_secrets` are the ones it *fills*, and every other name is
left **exactly as the store has it, byte for byte** — never re-read from the box,
which is what makes it safe to run against an environment whose other secrets have
since been rotated by hand. Same verb, same store-writing code path, same typed
confirmation.

| | |
| --- | --- |
| **fill** | a generated name holding the placeholder → the value from the database that owns it |
| **keep** | every other name → carried over from the store, untouched |
| **UNMAPPED** | cast cannot attribute the name to exactly one database → **refuses** |
| **OCCUPIED** | a generated name already holding a real value → **refuses** (without `--force`) |
| **ABSENT** | a generated name the store does not carry at all → **refuses** |
| **PENDING** | a placeholder in a name nothing here fills → **refuses** |

**The value is read from the resource that OWNS it.** A generated URL never appears
on the consuming application's env — the app's env holds whatever the template
resolved to, which at this point in the bootstrap is *the placeholder itself*.
Reading the app back would faithfully capture the lie pass 2 exists to correct. It
lives on the **database**, as `internal_db_url`.

**Resolved inside the project + environment, never instance-wide.** cast reads
`GET /projects/{uuid}/{env}`, whose `postgresqls` / `redis` relations are *this*
environment's and nothing else's. It never calls `GET /databases`, which lists
every database on the box — other projects', and umami's own bundled Postgres —
where picking ours out means matching by name across a list in which a collision
is both possible and silent (#29 in another hat, and the reason the hand-run `jq`
carried a comment about not taking the third row). The scoping is **structural**
rather than a filter cast has to remember to get right.

**cast will not guess which database a name comes from.** Nothing in the system
carries that edge: `generated_secrets:` is a flat list of *names*, the env template
knows only `DATABASE_URL=${DATABASE_URL}`, and the box does not say. So the
inference is made **only when it cannot be wrong** — one generated name, one
database, no other candidate — and otherwise the run refuses and hands back the
flag: `--from DATABASE_URL=incubator-db`. Reading the type out of the *name*
(`REDIS_URL` → the redis one) is precisely the bug this must not have: a
name-directed pick is wrong **silently**, and what it writes is a perfectly
well-formed URL to somebody else's database.

**And it asserts the postcondition it exists for** — against the ciphertext now on
disk, decrypted back, not trusted from memory. Zero `pending-coolify-generated`
remain, and the name count is unchanged. Both claims, because they fail in opposite
directions: a store that still holds a placeholder is still a lie, and a store that
*lost* a name on the way through re-encrypts perfectly, reads back perfectly, and
surfaces at the next `apply` as a missing secret in an environment whose plaintext
nobody has any more. That assertion used to be a line in a human runbook — which is
to say, a step that could be skipped.

`apply` deliberately does **not** do this automatically after a create. It would
close the window entirely, but it would make the verb that mutates Coolify also
mutate the encrypted store and hence the git repo — a much bigger blast radius for
a verb people run on a schedule. A separate, explicit, operator-run verb is the
right first step.

## Derived resource URLs (`${resource:<name>.url}`)

The two-pass bootstrap above **automates** a hand-dance. Derivation **deletes**
it. A `DATABASE_URL` is not a secret anybody authored — it is a fact about a
resource cast itself created, readable from the API that created it, at any time,
for free. So a template can say so directly:

    DATABASE_URL=${resource:postgres.url}
    REDIS_URL=${resource:redis.url}

`${resource:<name>.url}` resolves to the **internal** URL of a database the same
manifest environment declares (`connect_to_docker_network` puts apps on the
Docker network, so it is the internal URL, not the external one). The value is
read back from the live resource's `internal_db_url` — the same field, on the
same `GET /projects/{uuid}/{env}` route, that `capture --generated-only` reads —
**never** stored in the age store, **never** decrypted, **never** printed.

**It is not a secret ref.** `parseTemplate` classifies `${resource:…}` as a
distinct *derived* var, so `capture` never goes looking for a store name called
`resource:postgres.url`, and `templateRefs` (the required-secret set) never lists
it. The age store shrinks to the things a human actually authored.

**Resolved in two places, one function.** `fillDerivedEnv` is the only code that
turns a ref into a value, and it runs twice against two different URL maps:

- **at diff/apply time**, against the databases that **already exist** on the
  box. On a re-apply this is the whole story: the app's live `DATABASE_URL`
  already equals its database's URL, so the derived var shows **no drift** —
  which is what deletes the `secret DATABASE_URL differs` line the store-copy
  approach printed on every plan. And if the two have diverged (a password
  rotated in Coolify), the diff shows it and `apply` **follows** the live
  database, rather than reverting it to a stale stored copy.
- **at apply time in the executor**, against a database this same run just
  created. On a from-nothing apply nothing existed to resolve against at plan
  time, so the ref rides through the diff unresolved (rendered `DATABASE_URL:
  derived from database postgres — apply will set it`) and `syncEnv` fills it
  after the create. `apply` acts databases-before-applications (see *Apply acts
  in dependency order*), so the database exists by the time the app's env is
  written.

**The unresolved sentinel is never written.** Until it resolves, a derived var
carries a sentinel that is not a legal value; the executor **refuses** to write
one that never resolved, rather than writing a blank — an empty `DATABASE_URL`
boots every consumer pointed at nothing. Coolify mints a database's credentials
at create time and `internal_db_url` is a model accessor built from them (not
from a running container), so the URL is expected the moment the create returns;
if a given Coolify only publishes it once the container is up, the refusal names
the app and the database and says to re-run once it is up — and the second run
resolves it as an ordinary update, because by then the database is live and the
diff fills it. It is graceful either way, and single-pass in the expected one.

**Validation is at plan time, in the same voice as the dead-`generated_secrets`
check.** A `${resource:X.url}` naming a database the manifest does not declare, or
an attribute other than `.url`, is a hard error before any write — refused by
every verb that opens a template (`apply`, `diff`, `capture`), because a ref that
resolves against nothing is broken for all of them, not just the one about to
write.

**Scope.** This covers only databases cast itself declares and creates. It does
not touch a service that builds its own URL internally from magic vars against
its *own* bundled database (Coolify's umami is the example): there is no edge for
the manifest to declare there, and a value of cast's would never be read.
`generated_secrets:` and the two-pass bootstrap above **remain** for the residual
class — a provider-generated value that is genuinely not derivable (a service's
own generated credential). What leaves is `DATABASE_URL` / `REDIS_URL`: they stop
being store names at all, so the placeholder they held, and the `apply` refusal
that guarded it, simply cease to exist for them — there is nothing in the store
to overwrite, and nothing to re-encrypt on a rebuild-from-nothing.

## Drafts (`inventory --emit-draft`)

`inventory` with no repo sweeps an instance. `--emit-draft <dir>` writes that
sweep down as a draft of cast's **own inputs** — a manifest per project, env
templates, an `environments.yaml` carrying the `projects:` registry, an age store
per project, and `UNCAPTURED.md`.

**A draft is a PROPOSAL. It is never desired state, and `apply` never reads it.**

    sweep → emit draft → a human reads it → manifest PR → capture → apply

Same shape as `terraform import` → HCL. Every other rule in this section follows
from that one, and each is enforced rather than merely stated:

| refusal | why |
| --- | --- |
| a **non-empty** target directory | emitted over a repo that has a manifest, a draft would overwrite a reviewed spec with a live box's accumulated cruft — the one direction nobody reviews. **Adoption is one-way.** |
| an **existing manifest** at the path it would write | the same invariant, once more at the file (`assertNoExistingManifest`). For a declared project the manifest *is* the truth; `cast inventory <org>/<repo>` reconciles it instead. |
| `--emit-draft` with a **repo positional** | with a repo, inventory reconciles against a manifest that already exists — exactly the case where a draft must not be written. |
| **no age recipient** (and no `--no-secrets`) | a draft whose store was silently skipped *looks complete*: a manifest, templates full of `${REF}`s, and not one value anywhere. You would find out when `apply` refused, some time after the box those values were on stopped existing. |
| a project with **two populated environments** | a draft carries one environment per project. Picking would emit a blueprint of *half a box* that says nothing about the other half. `--environment` breaks the tie — as a **tiebreak, not a filter**: a project with one populated environment is drafted from it either way, or filtering by name would drop whole projects (each client site sits alone in Coolify's default `production`) out of a blueprint that claims to describe the box. |

**Provider-generated names are placeheld, never copied.** This is `capture`'s
discipline (see above), applied to a verb that has no manifest to tell it which
names are generated — so it decides **by name**, in two families:

1. Coolify's per-instance magic vars — `SERVICE_FQDN_*`, `SERVICE_URL_*`,
   `SERVICE_PASSWORD_*`, `SERVICE_USER_*`, `SERVICE_BASE64_*`.
2. Any name carrying a **datastore** word (`DATABASE`, `DB`, `POSTGRES`, `PG`,
   `REDIS`, `MONGO`, …) *and* a **connection** word (`URL`, `URI`, `DSN`, `HOST`,
   `PORT`, `PASSWORD`, `USER`, …) as underscore-delimited segments —
   `DATABASE_URL`, `UMAMI_DATABASE_URL`, `REDIS_URL_PROD`, `DB_HOST`.

Each such name is written as the literal `pending-coolify-generated`, listed in
the run's disposition table, and declared under the emitted manifest's
`generated_secrets:` — so a later `capture` placeholds it again with no flag to
remember. **Its live value is not written into any artifact.**

The rule errs **wide**, deliberately, because the two errors are not symmetric:

- over-match a real secret → it is placeheld, reported, and you put the value
  back. Noisy, recoverable, **loud**.
- under-match a generated one → it is copied, and a box rebuilt from the draft
  comes up **working**, reading and writing the *source box's* database, until
  the day that box is deleted. Silent, unrecoverable, **quiet**.

It is a name-pattern rule, not a promise: a var that points at the source box
under a name cast does not recognize **will** be copied. The disposition table
(names and provenance, **never values** — same contract as the capture plan) is
what a reviewer reads to catch it.

**Every other live var becomes a `${REF}`**, with its value in the age store —
never a template literal. cast cannot know which of a box's vars are secret
(nobody wrote it down, which is why the verb exists), and the two mistakes are
again asymmetric: a non-secret in an encrypted store is untidy, a live API key
written as a literal into a manifest is a key in a git repo. One name carrying
**different values** on two resources is not a conflict cast resolves (one store
holds one value per name — see `capture`'s CONFLICT refusal): both are kept,
under `<RESOURCE>_<KEY>` refs, and the split is reported.

**`UNCAPTURED.md` is a first-class output, emitted on every run.** cast cannot
express everything a Coolify holds, and a blueprint that omits those things
without saying so is worse than no blueprint — in a disaster you would trust it
and rebuild a *different box*. Per resource, it names what was seen and could not
be written: `destination_id` (which Docker network — no destinations API in 4.1.2
to resolve it to the UUID `destination_uuid:` wants, #21), service hostnames (no
flat `domains` on a Coolify 4.1.2 service), Basic Auth / custom Traefik labels,
build and deploy command overrides, backup schedules (**a rebuild has no backups
until you declare them** — *not* because they cannot be read, which is what this
line used to say and #51 disproved, but because `inventory --emit-draft` has not
yet been taught to read them: `GET /databases/{uuid}/backups` answers, and `diff`
and `apply` now use it. Until the draft path does too, a blueprint still omits
them and still says so), database kinds cast
does not model (MySQL, MariaDB, MongoDB, KeyDB, Dragonfly, ClickHouse — named,
never silently dropped), env var names a cast template cannot express, names
**reserved by the platform** (`SOURCE_COMMIT`, `COOLIFY_*` — suppressed, never
copied; see [Reserved env var names](#reserved-env-var-names-source_commit-coolify_)),
and applications whose build pack the manifest has no vocabulary for (left *out*
of the manifest rather than fabricated into the nearest pack).

It also carries the table below, because that is the file someone will be reading
at the worst possible moment.

### What a blueprint still cannot restore

| | |
| --- | --- |
| control plane | `rig coolify install` ✅ |
| structure | draft → manifest PR → `apply` ✅ |
| secret **values** | the age store + your key ✅ |
| **data** | Coolify's DB backups → S3 ✅ (a separate path) |
| **the GitHub App private key** | ❌ re-create by hand |
| **S3 access keys** | ❌ re-mint by hand |

The last two are not in the state repo — correctly, it holds no live credentials
— and cannot be regenerated from it. A DR runbook that does not say so is not a
runbook.

**What the box cannot tell you, and cast therefore does not invent:** the
`<org>/<repo>` slug comes from an application's git remote (the only place a live
box knows it), so a project with **no application** — a lone service — has no repo
on the box at all. cast writes the bare project name as the registry key, and the
registry's own parse-time refusal (*"a registry key has no meaning without its
org"*) then stops the file being used until a human supplies it. That refusal is
the design: the alternatives are inventing an org, or leaving the project out of
the registry — and a project missing from the registry is one every fleet run
skips **in silence**. Likewise `github_apps`: nothing Coolify returns about an
application says which App cloned it, so cast binds every repo to the instance's
only GitHub App when there is exactly one (there is no other it could be), and
writes a `REVIEW-…` marker when there is not.

## Teardown (`cast destroy`)

`apply` never deletes. `destroy` is the one verb that does, and everything below
is what stands between it and the hand deletion in the Coolify UI it replaces.

### What a Coolify DELETE actually removes

`DELETE /applications|databases|services/{uuid}` takes four query parameters, and
**every one of them defaults to `true`**
(`{Applications,Databases,Services}Controller@delete_by_uuid`, v4.1.2 — each reads
`$request->boolean('delete_volumes', true)` and hands the four to
`DeleteResourceJob`). cast sends all four **explicitly**: a default is a thing the
vendor gets to change, and three of these decide whether an operator's data still
exists afterwards.

| parameter | cast sends | what it does (`app/Jobs/DeleteResourceJob.php`, v4.1.2) |
|---|---|---|
| `delete_volumes` | `true` | `Application::deleteVolumes` → `docker volume rm -f <storage>` per persistent storage (`docker compose down -v` for a compose app), then deletes the persistent-storage rows. **This is what makes a database delete unrecoverable** — its data volume goes with it. |
| `delete_connected_networks` | `true` | `docker network disconnect <uuid> coolify-proxy` and `docker network rm <uuid>` (`Application::deleteConnectedNetworks`). The network is named for the **resource's own uuid** — it is *not* the shared destination network the rest of the box hangs off, so a multi-project server keeps its network and the other projects on it keep running. Left `false`, every delete would leak a dead network. |
| `delete_configurations` | `true` | removes the resource's configuration directory on the server. |
| `docker_cleanup` | **`false`** | It is not scoped to the resource at all: it dispatches `CleanupDocker` against the **server** — `docker container prune`, an image prune, `docker builder prune -af` (`app/Actions/Server/CleanupDocker.php`). The boxes in this fleet are multi-project by design and one of them hosts third-party production. A teardown of *our* project does not get to prune somebody else's build cache. Coolify runs its own scheduled cleanup. |

Independently of all four, the job also deletes the resource's **env vars**, file
storages, and — for a database — its SSL certificates and its **scheduled-backup
configurations** (`scheduledBackups()->delete()`). Backups already written to S3
are not touched by any of this; local backup files live under the storage the
delete removes.

**The delete is asynchronous.** The controller dispatches `DeleteResourceJob` onto
the `high` queue and answers `200 {"message": "…deletion request queued."}`. A 2xx
means *Coolify accepted the deletion*, not *the resource is gone* — which is why
`--with-project` polls `GET /projects/{uuid}/{env}` until the environment actually
reads back empty before it removes anything else, rather than racing the queue into
a `400`.

### Scope, order, and what is left standing

destroy deletes **the resources the manifest declares**, in this project and this
environment, in **reverse dependency order** (applications → services → databases —
`DESTROY_ORDER` in `src/destroy.ts`; a database removed while an app still points at
it does not fail quietly, it fails as a restart loop). Anything else it finds is
**reported and left standing**: that report is how a resource created outside cast
gets discovered, and deleting it would make this an environment wipe.

It takes **no `--project`, no `--environment`, no `--resource`**. Those coordinates
exist to point cast at names somebody else chose in a UI — which is exactly the box
a delete must never be aimed at.

### The gates

- **`--all` is refused, always.** `apply --all` is safe to iterate because it is
  idempotent and never deletes; `diff --all` because it only reads. A loop over a
  delete is neither.
- **A read-only instance is refused** (`assertWritable`), like `apply`/`smoke`/
  `server add`.
- **An absent project is refused** and names what *is* there — the D-237 family, and
  doubly so here: an absent target reads back exactly like an empty one, and an empty
  one gives this verb a plan that deletes nothing, which renders as a clean teardown
  of an environment that is still standing. The same refusal fires when the manifest
  declares nothing this environment actually holds.
- **`environments.<env>.destroy_allowed: true` is required, and absent means refuse.**
  A `--yes` flag is not a gate; it is a thing you type without reading. The gate lives
  in the private state repo — a line a human edits, commits and merges — for the same
  reason `forbidden_var_patterns` does: *a change on one side must not be able to lower
  its own guard.* It is `true` on an environment that is empty and being battle-tested,
  and the cutover checklist **deletes it** the moment that environment carries real data.
- **The plan, then the environment's name, typed** — the ceremony `capture` uses. Names
  and kinds, never values.
- **`--with-project` is refused up front** when anything cast did not declare is still
  in the environment, or when another environment of the project holds resources.
  Coolify refuses those deletes too (`400 Project has resources, so it cannot be
  deleted.` / `400 Environment has resources…` — `ProjectController@delete_project` /
  `@delete_environment`, both guarded by `isEmpty()`), but it refuses them *after* the
  declared resources are already gone.

### What a database line says

`GET /databases/{uuid}/backups` returns the backup configurations with their
executions eager-loaded (`ScheduledDatabaseBackup::…->with('executions')->get()` —
`DatabasesController@database_backup_details_uuid`), so one call answers both halves
of the only question that matters at the prompt: *is this database backed up, and did
a backup ever actually land?* The vendored OpenAPI documents that response as the
literal string *"Content is very complex. Will be implemented later."*, so cast parses
the source's shape and **refuses to guess**: an envelope it does not recognize, or a
route that errors, prints `backup schedule: UNKNOWN` with the reason and is treated as
unrecoverable. It never rounds down to `NONE` — a database that *is* backed up must
never read as one that is not, and the reverse must never happen either.

## Cloning a private manifest

`resolveCheckout` resolves git credentials **inside cast**, in a fixed order —
`gh` borrowed as a per-invocation credential helper, then
`GITHUB_TOKEN`/`GH_TOKEN`, then the ambient helper — rather than leaving it to
whatever the workstation's git config happens to do.

It matters because `gh auth login` **does not** wire git's credential helper
(that is `gh auth setup-git`, a separate act most people never run), so a
perfectly logged-in operator still fell through to git's interactive
username/password prompt — which GitHub no longer accepts — and got an error
about *the repository* rather than about the missing credentials. There is no
routing around it for prod: `--path` is refused there, so the clone is the only
path and its auth is mandatory.

`GIT_TERMINAL_PROMPT=0` is set on every path, so cast can never hang on or fall
into that prompt. The token is never placed in the clone URL or in
`http.extraheader` — both leak it into `ps`, and the latter persists it into the
clone's `.git/config`; the helper reads it from the environment at run time, so
what lands in argv is the literal text `$CAST_GIT_TOKEN`. Note that the empty
`credential.helper=` reset clears **URL-scoped** helpers
(`credential.https://github.com.helper`, which is what `gh auth setup-git`
writes) as well as generic ones, so cast's chosen credential is genuinely the
one used — verified against a live private clone.

**Known limitations, not defects:**

- **~~Backup schedules are create-time only.~~** **Corrected (#51).** This entry
  used to claim that a database's `backup` block was create-time only and kept
  out of the diffed `fields` because *"live Coolify state doesn't expose it
  back"*. The parenthesis was load-bearing and it was false — `GET
  /databases/{uuid}/backups` is a route, and cast had been POSTing to it all
  along without ever reading it. Backup schedules are now compared on every run
  and written on create *and* update; see **Backup schedules** above for what
  is still not compared (an unreadable answer, several schedules, the S3
  target) and how each says so out loud. Kept here, struck through, because
  this entry is *why nobody looked*: a limitation filed as a defect gets fixed,
  and a defect filed as a limitation does not.
- **A service's `domains` cannot be applied via the API in Coolify 4.1.2,
  and is deliberately kept out of the diffed `fields` for idempotency.** (This
  used to cite backup schedules as its precedent; it can't any more — that
  reasoning was disproved above. This one was re-checked and holds: Coolify
  4.1.2 exposes no flat `domains` on a service, on any route. If that is ever
  disproved the same way, `domains` belongs in `fields` too.) The `/services`
  create/update payload takes a structured per-container `urls` list, not
  the manifest's flat `domains: string[]`, and the manifest has no
  per-container name to build that list correctly from — so cast
  drops it rather than send a malformed payload. Live Coolify service state
  doesn't expose a flat `domains` back either, so if it stayed in `fields`
  every domain-bearing service would diff as a perpetual update and every
  `apply` would needlessly restart it — `desiredFromManifest` drops
  `domains` from the service's `fields` and **warns**
  (`service <name> declares domains (...), but apply cannot set them on
  Coolify 4.1.2 services — configure hostnames manually in the Coolify UI`)
  once per run for every service that declared any. Set service hostnames
  in the Coolify UI by hand.
- **"Include Source Commit in Build" cannot be enabled via the API in Coolify
  4.1.2 — `apply` warns instead.** A dockercompose application whose build
  consumes `SOURCE_COMMIT` as a **build arg** only receives it if the
  per-application setting *Include Source Commit in Build* is on; Coolify
  withholds it by default to preserve build cache. That setting
  (`ApplicationSetting.include_source_commit_in_build`, default `false`) has no
  API surface in 4.1.2: it appears in **zero** API controllers, and both the
  create and PATCH allowlists in `ApplicationsController.php` (l.914, l.2368)
  reject unrecognized keys outright (`"This field is not allowed."`), so cast
  cannot smuggle it through — sending it would fail the whole request. Its only
  writer is the Livewire *Advanced* tab
  (`app/Livewire/Project/Application/Advanced.php:128`), i.e. a human in the UI.
  Contrast `connect_to_docker_network`, which *is* in both allowlists and which
  `apply` therefore does set on create. So `desiredFromManifest` **warns** once
  per dockercompose application (`application <name> builds with dockercompose,
  but apply cannot enable "Include Source Commit in Build" on Coolify 4.1.2 …`)
  rather than pretending it is desired state. Enable it in the Coolify UI and
  redeploy if your image bakes the SHA in at build time.

  **This toggle gates the build-time arg only.** Coolify's **runtime** injection
  of `SOURCE_COMMIT` is unconditional with respect to it
  (`ApplicationDeploymentJob.php:2949` — `if (! $forBuildTime || …)`
  short-circuits true at runtime), so a service that reads
  `process.env.SOURCE_COMMIT` per request does **not** need the toggle at all.
  What silently suppresses *that* value is an application-level env var of the
  same name (`ApplicationDeploymentJob.php:2950`) — a distinct trap, and the
  actual cause of a live box reporting `{"sha":"unknown"}`.
- **The redis default image is an unverified extrapolation.** Coolify's
  "New Resource" wizard drives PostgreSQL version selection through a
  verified `postgres:<version>-alpine` image string; Redis has no version
  picker in that same wizard, so cast's `redis:<version>-alpine`
  guess for a manifest-declared `version` is the same Docker Hub tag
  convention applied by analogy, **not confirmed against a live Coolify
  instance**. Recommendation: leave a manifest database's `version` unset
  for `redis` until this has been verified once against bootstrap, letting
  Coolify pick its own default image instead of risking a bad tag.