rig

A CLI that turns a pristine Debian server into a hardened, tailnet-joined node — one curl, one command. A second command installs a version-pinned Coolify on a control-plane box. And inside a box-minted guest, the same verb converges the box tenants — claude, codex, grok, staging — from thin, creds-free seeds (see the box tenants below).

Philosophy (shared with box): public tool, private state. rig carries plumbing logic only — no hostnames, no bindings, no secrets, nothing about your infrastructure. It takes arguments, does its work, and stores no credential, ever.

Install

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/heavy-duty/rig/main/install.sh | bash

That installs the latest release: the installer resolves the newest tag by following GitHub's releases/latest redirect (no API, no token) and downloads that tag's source tarball — which, for a pure-bash tree, is the package. Three channels from the same script; RIG_REF picks:

curl -fsSL .../install.sh | bash                   # the latest release
curl -fsSL .../install.sh | RIG_REF=0.1.0 bash     # pinned to a release
curl -fsSL .../install.sh | RIG_REF=main bash      # the development tree

A tag outranks a branch of the same name (the pin must win); anything that is not a tag falls back to refs/heads/<ref>.

Transitional, until 0.1.0 is cut (right after rig#32 lands): rig has no GitHub release yet, so the default channel has nothing to resolve — it fails loudly naming RIG_REF=main as the way to install today, and never silently falls back to main. Once 0.1.0 exists, the plain curl | bash above is the normal path.

The layout, under the install root (~/.local/share/rig):

versions/<version>/          one full tree per installed version
current -> versions/<v>      the tracked default
$BINDIR/rig -> current/bin/rig    the PATH entry, riding the chain

rig lands on your PATH via ~/.local/bin (/usr/local/bin when root).

Re-running is a safe converge. Installing a version you already have changes nothing and says so (RIG_REINSTALL=1 replaces that version's tree); a new version installs side by side and becomes the default — so "re-run any time to upgrade" stays true, and now means upgrade to the latest release; every version you had stays installed as the way back:

rig versions        # what is installed, which is current, which is running
rig use <version>   # flip the default (atomic; asserts the flip took)

On a bootstrapped host (one where /etc/rig/role exists) switching the default — by upgrade or by rig use — prints a WARNING, because a different rig under a converged host changes what a re-converge (rig bootstrap, rig users apply) would do. It warns rather than refuses: unlike box (which protects live boxes), rig holds no user state a flip can strand, and upgrading a bootstrapped host is the normal case.

A pre-versioning flat install is migrated into versions/ automatically on the next installer run — the tree is moved, not re-downloaded, and preserved bit for bit. For scripting: RIG_HOME/RIG_BIN override the install root and bin dir, RIG_INSTALL_SOURCE=<dir-or-tarball> installs from a local tree instead of downloading (how the test suite proves the installer under review), and RIG_YES=1 answers rig uninstall's prompt in automation.

Uninstall

rig uninstall is the real uninstall — no more "rm -rf two paths" prose — and it ends with an absence assert: every path it removed is re-checked, and any survivor makes it exit 1 naming the leftovers instead of reporting a clean uninstall that wasn't.

rig uninstall <version>    # one non-current version (side-by-side cleanup)
rig uninstall --all        # everything: every version, current, the PATH symlinks

Asks before removing; --force or RIG_YES=1 skips the prompt. The host itself is untouched — what bootstrap converged stays converged.

Commands

rig bootstrap <control-plane|workload|runner|dev|workstation|custom>

Run as root on the fresh box (over SSH). Convergent — safe to re-run; a second run changes nothing. (The box TENANT roles — claude, codex, grok, staging — share the verb but are their own family; see the box tenants below.)

rig bootstrap control-plane --hostname my-coolify-box
rig bootstrap workload --hostname my-prod-box
rig bootstrap runner --hostname my-ci-box
rig bootstrap dev --hostname my-dev-box
rig bootstrap workstation --hostname my-laptop
rig bootstrap custom --hostname my-vm-host --class server --host yes --join authkey

• --hostname <name> — system + tailnet hostname (default: the role name; custom has no default and requires it)
• --class <human|server> — who lives here; decides root SSH's fate after rig users apply (see The identity model below)
• --host <yes|no> — does this box host VMs (box/Incus)
• --join <authkey|login> — how it enters the tailnet

Roles are presets over three orthogonal traits, nothing more — every per-role behavior keys off a trait, so any flag overrides its trait without needing a new role (rig bootstrap workstation --host no for a laptop that will never run VMs), and custom exists for the shape nobody foresaw: it presets nothing and requires --hostname plus all three traits.

trait	values	what it drives
class	human, server	root SSH's fate once operators exist — human closes it, server keeps it as the control plane's automation door
host	yes, no	whether the box exists to run VMs — the /dev/kvm advisory and, on yes, installing the box CLI + running box's setup-host
join	authkey, login	tagged pre-auth key (fleet identity) vs interactive browser login (user-owned device)

role	class	host	join	tailnet tag
control-plane	server	no	authkey	tag:server
workload	server	no	authkey	tag:server
runner	server	no	authkey	tag:ci — refuses tag:server
dev	human	yes	authkey	tag:local — refuses tag:server
workstation	human	yes	login	untagged — any tag refused

Where the staging preset went. Before #31, staging was the VM-host preset (class=server host=yes join=authkey). The name now belongs to the box TENANT family — the guest, not the host under it — because that is what "staging" mostly names in practice (the box the control plane will manage), and two meanings on one word was the worse bug. The host shape lost nothing: it is one flag away — rig bootstrap dev --class server --hostname my-vm-host — or fully spelled as custom --class server --host yes --join authkey. Tag policy is unchanged: mint the host's key with tag:local; an effective tag:server is refused on every role but control-plane and workload.

The tag column is derived policy, not a fourth trait: tag:server means "the control plane manages this box", and control-plane and workload are the only shapes it manages — every other role refuses an effective tag:server after join, one rule instead of per-role exceptions.

After the tag verification passes, bootstrap writes /etc/rig/role — one line, role=… class=… host=… join=… — recording the effective traits, overrides and all, so an overridden role never lies to the commands that read the marker later (rig users keys root policy off class=). Written post-join and cmp-guarded, so a marker never describes a box that failed to become what it claims.

join=login inverts the tag assertion. A workstation joins as a user-owned device: there is no pre-auth key — a set TS_AUTHKEY is a loud usage error (exit 2; unset it, or pass --join authkey) — tailscale up prints a login URL, and the human at the keyboard is the credential. After join the assertion flips: untagged is what rig asserts, and any effective tag is the refusal — a tag here means control granted this device fleet identity, and on a first join the half-joined node is backed out with tailscale logout (a box that was already joined is refused without backout; rig never unwinds state it did not create). Same principle as the authkey path, mirrored: verify what control granted, never what was requested.

There is no --ts-tag flag. A pre-auth key is minted with its tags, so the key is the single source of truth for the tailnet tag — rig no longer states a second one it might disagree with. It verifies the tag control actually granted after join instead (see below). Passing --ts-tag now exits 2 with a message pointing you at the key.

What it does: installs curl ca-certificates unattended-upgrades (and enables periodic unattended upgrades); writes an sshd hardening drop-in (PermitRootLogin prohibit-password, PasswordAuthentication no) and verifies it took effect via sshd -T; sets the system hostname; installs tailscale and joins your tailnet — then verifies the tag the key granted (see The tag comes from the key below).

--hostname converges both names. On a box that has already joined, bootstrap skips tailscale up (so a re-run needs no pre-auth key) — but it still reconciles the tailnet hostname via tailscale set --hostname. Without that, a box which joined under the wrong name — say --hostname was omitted, so it defaulted to the role — stayed misnamed forever, and re-running rig, the documented repair, could not fix it. A machine you deliberately renamed in the admin console keeps that name; rig will not fight it.

Why the drop-in is 00-rig.conf and not 99-. sshd_config is first-wins — "for each keyword, the first obtained value will be used" (sshd_config(5)) — and Include expands its glob in lexical order. Cloud images ship /etc/ssh/sshd_config.d/50-cloud-init.conf carrying PasswordAuthentication yes, so a 99- drop-in is read second and every keyword in it is silently discarded. This is the opposite of the last-wins convention most config systems use, and it shipped green here for a month: rig asserted the file existed rather than what sshd actually resolved, and the Incus rehearsal container has no cloud-init drop-in to lose to. Every Hetzner box rig had bootstrapped was still serving passwordauthentication yes. bootstrap now sweeps a stale 99-rig.conf on re-run, and refuses to claim success unless sshd -T agrees.

The pre-auth key (join=authkey roles — everything but workstation): provide it via the TS_AUTHKEY env var or type it at the interactive prompt. Use a single-use, tagged, short-expiry key — the tagged part is now load-bearing, not advice (see below). It lives in process memory only — rig never writes a credential to disk.

The tag comes from the key, and rig verifies the one control granted. rig used to pass --ts-tag to tailscale up --advertise-tags, stating the tag a second time — with no way to know whether its request and the key's own tags agreed. It asserted the tag it requested, never the tag control granted; this is the same shape as the sshd first-wins bug above, and it left the same scar (both M900s joined carrying tag:server and had to be retagged by hand, because nothing in rig ever read the effective tag back). So rig stops overriding the key: tailscale up carries no --advertise-tags, the key's tags apply, and after join rig polls tailscale status --json for .Self.Tags — the netmap's ground truth, not tailscale debug prefs, which prints what was requested — and asserts on that, on first join and on every re-run (which catches a box bootstrapped before this change, or retagged behind rig's back).

An untagged key is a hard refusal. Drop --advertise-tags and you also drop the accidental net that used to tag an untagged key's node anyway. An untagged node joins owned by the key creator's user identity — it inherits that human's ACL grants, expires with the key, and vanishes if the account is deleted. That is a fleet-shaped mistake, not a warning: rig runs tailscale logout to back the half-joined node out and dies telling you to mint a tagged key. A wrong tag cannot be fixed in place either — tailscale set has no tag flag, re-tagging needs a fresh key via up --force-reauth — so rig detects and refuses, and never claims a convergence it cannot perform.

control-plane and workload are identical today except the default hostname; they exist because the boxes diverge over time, and because each follow-up command applies to exactly one role. runner is the box a CI agent will live on, and it differs behaviorally: it refuses tag:server. That refusal moved onto the effective tag and is strictly stronger for it — it is no longer "don't advertise tag:server" but "the key you actually used must not grant tag:server to repo-controlled code." A runner executes that code, and tag:server's grants (SSH between your servers, say) must never extend to it; the check turns the worst misconfiguration from a documentation warning into a hard, post-join error.

The VM-host shape — the box that hosts staging boxes: Incus VMs minted by the box CLI, each converged from inside with the tenant roles and (for staging guests) rig bootstrap workload — rides the traits since #31 (--class server --host yes --join authkey; see the note above). It is class=server: an unattended VM appliance — operators converge it and leave; nobody lives there. Mint its key with tag:local: the host and its guests sit on opposite sides of a trust boundary, and the host is never managed by the control plane — so an effective tag:server is refused, same mechanism as runner.

On a host-class box (host=yes), bootstrap finishes the job instead of leaving a to-do: after the role marker is written it installs the box CLI globally and runs box's own setup-host, so the Incus stack is ready for box new when bootstrap returns. rig delegates to box; it never touches Incus itself — it does not apt-get install incus, does not configure the daemon, does not create the incus group. It runs box's global installer (curl … | BOX_YES=1 bash) as root, and box installs Incus via its setup-host; two tools converging one daemon is drift by construction, and box is the single owner. The step is convergent (box's installer is a no-op once box is present) and opt-out (RIG_SKIP_BOX_INSTALL=1, plus a graceful skip with a manual-command pointer when curl or the network is missing — box is the host extra, so a failed box install never aborts a bootstrap that otherwise succeeded). Source is pinnable with BOX_REPO / BOX_REF (default heavy-duty/box@main). If /dev/kvm is absent, rig warns (a host that exists to run VMs should have it) but does not fail — the shape is rehearsed in containers, which legitimately lack it. (The world-readable global install path — box under /opt/box readable by every non-root user — depends on box PR #71; until that merges box's root install lands in /root.)

The box install is unpinned — on purpose, and out loud. coolify install demands a version pin; the box step tracks a moving heavy-duty/box@main. Not because box self-updates (it doesn't — it has Coolify's shape, not the runner's) but because there is nothing to pin to: box cuts no tags and no releases, and its installer resolves refs/heads/<ref> — branches only — so a BOX_REF=v0.5.0 would 404 even if the tag existed. Issue #12's call was that silently tracking main on the box that runs the agents is the option not to pick — hence this paragraph. BOX_REPO / BOX_REF are the pin points the day box cuts a tag (or you point at a frozen branch of your own fork); RIG_SKIP_BOX_INSTALL=1 opts out entirely for a host whose box you manage by hand.

dev is the human-class VM-hosting shape — tag:local, box CLI installed as above, a person living on it (--class server turns it into the unattended VM-host appliance) — and workstation is the machine at the keyboard end of all the SSH connections: human-class, join=login, entering the tailnet as your device rather than the fleet's.

rig bootstrap <claude|codex|grok|staging> — the box tenants

Run as root, inside a box-minted guest. Convergent — safe to re-run; a second run changes nothing.

rig bootstrap claude              # or codex, grok — the agent tenants
rig bootstrap staging             # the server tenant (docker + sshd hardening)
rig bootstrap claude --user dev   # when the seed's BOX_USER differs

The layering (rig#31 ↔ box#81): a box template stops being where tenant content lives. box mints a thin, creds-free seed — base image, the BOX_USER, rig (+ tmux) preinstalled, and nothing that joins or admits — and everything the guest becomes is a rig tenant role. cloud-init is a first-boot one-shot: not convergent, not re-runnable, and only parse-and-grep testable. rig roles are idempotent scripts with effective-state asserts, driven by the same harness as everything else — and re-runnable on an existing box to converge it to a new spec instead of re-minting it. One convergence engine; the guests were the hole.

It is one mechanism, parameterized per tenant (lib/tenant-config.sh holds the whole per-tenant table), not four hand-maintained scripts:

tenant	user	what lands
claude	claude	the agent toolbelt (git, gh, tmux, ripgrep, jq, age, unzip, build-essential), docker, node 22, the Claude Code CLI on the system PATH, zsh + oh-my-zsh, and ~/.claude/CLAUDE.md
codex	codex	the toolbelt, docker, node 22, @openai/codex on the system PATH, and ~/.codex/AGENTS.md
grok	grok	the toolbelt, docker, the grok CLI on the system PATH, and ~/.grok/AGENTS.md
staging	ops	box#69's server posture: docker + the same sshd hardening the machine roles get (shared lib/sshd.sh, class=server acceptance)

Every install is asserted on effective state, not exit codes: the CLI must answer (--version, run as the tenant user — a CLI that exists but cannot run has already cost a drill), docker must answer, sshd -T must resolve the hardening. The CLI also lands on the system PATH (/usr/local/bin): box exec <box> -- claude … runs a non-interactive shell that reads no rc files, so a PATH export alone is invisible to it.

Creds-free and non-interactive, by contract. box auto-runs these at mint (box exec … rig bootstrap claude), so nothing here prompts, joins, or admits — no tailnet, no keys (the harness pins this by absence: no tailscale, no prompt, in the shipped script). The one creds-holding step a staging guest eventually needs — the tailnet workload join — stays operator-run, exactly as box#69 designed it: box shell → sudo rig bootstrap workload --hostname <name> with a single-use tagged pre-auth key. After that join, re-running rig bootstrap staging still converges docker + hardening and leaves the workload marker alone — the machine role is the truer statement of what the box became.

The agent-context file carries the box#80 guard, once. Every agent tenant writes its agent's instructions file (CLAUDE.md / AGENTS.md), rendered from one shared template: the creds-free contract, the isolation and disposability facts, and the guard note — never run box setup-host, box teardown-host, or the drill inside a box; the box you are in is not a host you own. A nested box stack claims the guest's own uplink subnet and silently breaks its networking (box#80). The note lives in lib/tenant-config.sh exactly once, not copy-pasted per template — that was the point of moving it here.

Tenants and the role marker. A tenant run writes role=<tenant> tenant=yes host=no — no class=, because a guest has no root-door policy of its own (rig users close-root fails closed on it, by design). The guard runs the other way too: a box already carrying a machine role refuses the agent tenants outright, and any tenant refuses a host=yes box — a VM host is the opposite of a guest, and a pre-#31 staging host re-running its old command is exactly who that refusal catches (it names the new spelling).

The rig install in the seed is unpinned — same honesty as the box note above. The seed preinstalls rig via its curl installer, which resolves RIG_REPO/RIG_REF — and since rig#32 the installer defaults to the latest release, with RIG_REF=<tag> the pin and RIG_REF=main the dev channel. Until rig cuts 0.1.0 there is no release to resolve, so the seed must set RIG_REF=main explicitly (the default channel fails loudly rather than falling back). That inverts the install edge on this page: rig installs box on host-class machines, and box guests now install rig. RIG_REPO/RIG_REF are the pin points, or point them at a frozen branch of your own fork. The seed side of this edge is box#81's to document.

The identity model

Named operators exist on every class, and humans never enter as root. The tailnet is network-only — no Tailscale SSH — so there is no identity broker at the door: whoever holds a key to an account is that account, and a shared root login is unattributable by construction. rig users apply puts named operators on every box, server-class included; a human always enters as themself and elevates via sudo.

Per role, the whole identity picture at a glance — issue #25's class comparison, translated onto the traits that replaced the class binary:

role	class	host	join	who lives here	root SSH after rig users apply
control-plane	server	no	authkey	nobody — Coolify runs here	open — the automation door
workload	server	no	authkey	nobody — deployed services run here	open — the automation door
runner	server	no	authkey	nobody — CI jobs as github-runner	open — the automation door
dev	human	yes	authkey	operators, minting boxes	closed by rig users close-root
workstation	human	yes	login	its owner	closed by rig users close-root

(The unattended VM-host appliance — formerly the staging preset — is the class=server host=yes join=authkey shape: nobody lives there, root SSH stays open as the automation door. The box TENANT roles sit outside this table on purpose: a guest is not a tailnet machine, and its marker carries no class=, so rig users close-root fails closed on it.)

Who installs what, and who runs as what: bootstrap is always root and installs everything a role needs — on host=yes that includes the box CLI (globally) and box's own setup-host. Humans always run as themselves: operators land via rig users apply on every class and elevate through sudo (roles admin/rig) or the incus group (role box) — never by logging in as root. Machine identities stay machine-shaped: Coolify's automation SSHes in as root (that is what server-class root is), CI jobs run as the unprivileged github-runner, and guest VMs are their own server-class boxes, converged from inside by rig bootstrap workload.

class decides root SSH's fate — after rig users apply, never before. On class=human, root SSH closes entirely (rig users close-root, below). On class=server it stays open — key-only, as bootstrap left it — because root there is the automation identity the control plane (Coolify) SSHes in as. It is a machine door, never a human one.

Where this diverges from #17's original table: that table let the runner role close root ("no Coolify involved"). The class model supersedes the per-role call: runner is class=server — an automation identity, not a person's box — and on every server-class machine root SSH is the management plane rig itself converges through, so close-root refuses there deliberately, runner included. A CI box you mean to administer like a human machine is --class human at bootstrap, not an exception carved out of the gate.

The detection side benefit: once humans never use root, any root login that is not the control plane is anomalous by definition — a cheap, high-signal alert that a shared root identity makes impossible to write.

The honest caveat: on a Docker-running box this buys attribution, not privilege reduction — an operator with sudo is root-equivalent anyway. Attribution is the goal: who did what survives, even where what they could do is everything.

rig coolify install --version <pin>

Control-plane box only. Installs Coolify at exactly the pinned version with AUTOUPDATE=false — your deploy tooling is verified against an API surface; the platform must never move underneath it on its own. Upgrading is an explicit re-run with a new pin. The pin is required; there is no default.

rig coolify backup install

Control-plane box only. Installs a nightly age-encrypted dump of Coolify's own database as a systemd timer.

rig coolify backup install
rig coolify backup install --schedule '*-*-* 02:30:00 UTC' --pg-container coolify-db

• --schedule <OnCalendar> — systemd calendar expression (default: *-*-* 04:00:00 UTC)
• --pg-container / --pg-user / --pg-db — Coolify's postgres (defaults: coolify-db, coolify, coolify)

That database holds the GitHub App private key, every registered server's SSH key, and every environment value for every environment the control plane manages. It is pg_dumped straight into age — encrypted client-side, on the box — and only then shipped to S3. The bucket is never trusted with plaintext.

It is forensics, not a restore path. A lost control plane is rebuilt fresh and reconciled from your manifest, never restored from this artifact. Which is exactly why the plumbing belongs in rig: there will be a next control-plane box, and it should be backed up from birth rather than depending on someone remembering a runbook step mid-incident.

rig installs the machinery; you supply the bindings. rig writes /etc/coolify-dump.env empty, 0600, and never reads it back — no credential ever passes through rig. You fill in the age recipient (a public key), the S3 bucket + endpoint, and the S3 credentials. Until you do, the unit fails loudly on every run: a silent backup is worse than a missing one.

rig cannot verify that the upload works — that needs your credentials. So prove it by hand once, rather than letting the timer discover it at 04:00:

systemctl start coolify-dump.service
journalctl -u coolify-dump.service -n 20 --no-pager

A backup you have never read back is not yet a backup.

rig db <dump|restore>

Ad-hoc PostgreSQL dump/restore for a container running on this box. Run as root.

rig db dump coolify-db                          # -> coolify-db-20260717T041500Z.sql.gz
rig db dump my-app-db /srv/snapshots/pre-migrate.sql.gz
rig db restore pre-migrate.sql.gz my-app-db     # prompts before overwriting
rig db restore umami.sql.gz shared-pg umami --yes

This is imperative on-box tooling — the "give me a copy of that database right now", "put this artifact back" verbs you reach for by hand. It is the counterpart to rig coolify backup install, which is the scheduled, declarative, forensics-only path; db is interactive, targets any container, and (on restore) overwrites live data behind a confirm gate. Declarative convergence lives elsewhere by design — this verb exists precisely for the moments that are not convergent.

dump pipes pg_dump straight into gzip:

docker exec <container> sh -c \
  'pg_dump -U "$POSTGRES_USER" --clean --if-exists --no-owner --no-acl "$POSTGRES_DB"' | gzip

• --no-owner --no-acl is mandatory, not cosmetic. A cross-instance restore runs as the target's superuser, and Coolify randomizes that role per database — so the source's ALTER OWNER/GRANT statements name a role that does not exist on the target and, under ON_ERROR_STOP=1, abort the whole restore on the first one. Stripping ownership and ACLs makes the dump describe data and schema, portable onto any instance.
• $POSTGRES_USER / $POSTGRES_DB are read inside the container — that is why the command is a single-quoted sh -c: it evaluates the container's own environment, never the host's. The host never hardcodes postgres; on the next container that role name is simply wrong.
• With no [outfile], it writes <container>-<UTC-timestamp>.sql.gz in the current directory (same timestamp shape as the nightly dump). pipefail is load-bearing: without it a failing pg_dump still exits 0 through the pipe and gzip compresses the truncated output into a valid .gz that looks exactly like a good backup. rig dumps to a sibling temp, promotes it only on success, and refuses to keep an empty artifact.

restore <artifact> <container> [db] streams the artifact back in:

gunzip -c <artifact> | docker exec -i <container> sh -c \
  'psql -U "$POSTGRES_USER" -d "${db:-$POSTGRES_DB}" -v ON_ERROR_STOP=1'

• It connects as the container's own superuser ($POSTGRES_USER), again never a hardcoded role, and runs with ON_ERROR_STOP=1 so a bad restore fails loudly instead of limping to a half-applied state and reporting success.
• [db] targets a named database in a shared container — e.g. a umami database living in a Postgres that also hosts other apps. Omit it to restore into the container's default $POSTGRES_DB. rig passes the name into the container as an env var rather than splicing it into the command string.
• Restore overwrites the target, so it prompts y/N first. --yes (or --force) is the automation bypass. The artifact is checked for existence and non-emptiness before the prompt and before anything touches the database, so a fat-fingered path fails cheaply.

Verifying a dump/restore actually works

A .gz that opens without error is not proof of a good backup: a pg_dump truncated mid-stream still compresses into a perfectly valid gzip file that looks exactly like a complete one. The same ethos as the nightly dump applies here — a backup you have never read back is not yet a backup. The only fully-trustworthy proof is to restore the artifact and read the rows back out.

On a real Coolify box you can do that without touching prod data by restoring into a fresh scratch database rather than over the live one:

# 1. dump the live database (read-only; harmless)
rig db dump coolify-db /srv/snapshots/verify.sql.gz

# 2. create a throwaway database as the container's OWN superuser
docker exec coolify-db sh -c 'createdb -U "$POSTGRES_USER" rig_verify'

# 3. restore the artifact INTO the scratch db (not the live one)
rig db restore /srv/snapshots/verify.sql.gz coolify-db rig_verify --yes

# 4. spot-check a table you expect to see
docker exec coolify-db sh -c \
  'psql -U "$POSTGRES_USER" -d rig_verify -c "\dt"'
docker exec coolify-db sh -c \
  'psql -U "$POSTGRES_USER" -d rig_verify -c "SELECT count(*) FROM <some-table>"'

# 5. drop the scratch db — live data was never touched
docker exec coolify-db sh -c 'dropdb -U "$POSTGRES_USER" rig_verify'

If the counts and tables are there, the artifact is real. This is exactly the round-trip test/db-integration.sh automates in CI (the db-integration job): it seeds a known table in a source container whose superuser is not the default, dumps it, restores into a second container whose superuser differs, and asserts the rows and an ordered checksum survived — the same proof, done against throwaway containers on every push.

rig runner install --repo <owner/repo>

Runner box only, run after rig bootstrap runner (the same two-step rhythm as bootstrap control-plane → coolify install):

rig bootstrap runner --hostname my-ci-box
rig runner install --repo acme/widgets

Installs GitHub's official actions/runner as a systemd service under an unprivileged user (default github-runner, created if absent, never root, no supplementary groups). The runner is an agent, not a server: it long-polls GitHub outbound and receives jobs down that already-established connection, so it needs zero inbound ports and works fine behind a deny-all firewall — it can even trigger deploys on hosts only it can reach, like a tailnet-only control plane.

No Docker, deliberately: the Docker socket is a root API and docker group membership is root-equivalent, which is a gratuitous path to root on a box whose whole point is a narrow blast radius. Add Docker only once a job genuinely needs it, and rethink the isolation model then.

• --version <pin> — actions/runner release to install (default: the latest release, resolved at install time; e.g. --version 2.335.1 — the latest as of this writing). Pin it when you need a deterministic, auditable install.
• --name <name> — runner name (default: this host's hostname)
• --labels <csv> — runner labels, replacing the ci-runner default — keep any label your workflows' runs-on needs (GitHub adds self-hosted itself)
• --user <name> — the unprivileged service user (default: github-runner)

The registration token: provide it via the RUNNER_TOKEN env var or type it at the interactive prompt. It's short-lived, consumed at registration, and never written to disk by rig.

Why latest-by-default here when coolify install demands a pin: the two tools age differently. Coolify never self-updates (AUTOUPDATE=false), so its version is a contract your deploy tooling is verified against — stating it is the point. The runner self-updates regardless: GitHub refuses jobs from stale runners, so freezing it would just make it silently stop taking work. The install-time version is a starting point either way; --version exists for when you want that starting point deterministic and auditable.

Convergent toward --repo — re-running against the repo this box is already on re-uses the binary, skips registration, and never asks for a token. Pointed at a different repo it refuses, and names both: skipping there would not be convergence, it would be ignoring the argument — restarting the runner on the old repo while reporting success, leaving the repo you asked for with no runner and its runs-on jobs queued forever. Moving a runner between repos is a trust-boundary act; that verb is rig runner repoint.

rig runner status

rig runner status

What this box's runner is registered to — repo, runner name, labels, install dir, systemd unit and its state. Reads the runner's own on-disk config; no token, no network call. Exits 1 when no runner is installed.

The answer to "wait, which repo is this box wired to?" should not require knowing that the config lives in a dotfile under an unprivileged user's home.

rig runner remove

rig runner remove
rig runner remove --local     # no token; leaves a stale entry to delete by hand

Stops and uninstalls the systemd service, then deregisters the runner from GitHub. The binary and its user stay put, so a later rig runner install re-registers without downloading anything.

The token here is a removal token, not a registration token — a different endpoint, and mixing them up is the easy mistake:

gh api -X POST repos/<owner/repo>/actions/runners/remove-token

Supply it via RUNNER_REMOVE_TOKEN or the prompt; it never touches disk.

--local is the escape hatch for when the registration is already gone server-side (or you can't mint a token): the box is cleaned, but a stale offline runner stays listed in the repo, for you to delete from Settings → Actions → Runners.

The service always comes down first, in both paths. GitHub's own removal refuses to run while the service is installed ("Uninstall service first"), and --local skips that check entirely — which would otherwise leave a running service pointed at config that no longer exists.

Convergent — a box with no runner installed exits 0.

rig runner repoint --repo <owner/repo>

rig runner repoint --repo acme/widgets

Moves an installed runner from one repository to another: deregister, re-register, reusing the binary already on the box. It keeps the runner's existing name unless you pass --name.

This is the verb that was missing. runner install can create a runner but never move one — pointed at a repo the box is not on, it fails and sends you here — and re-pointing a box otherwise meant hand-rolled config.sh/svc.sh incantations against an install path only rig knew.

Two short-lived tokens, each minted from its own repo — RUNNER_REMOVE_TOKEN for the one it's leaving, RUNNER_TOKEN for the one it's joining. Both are collected before anything is torn down: a token you turn out not to have should fail while the runner is still registered and working, not halfway through the move. If re-registration fails anyway, rig says so plainly and prints the exact runner install line that finishes the job.

Labels do not survive a move on their own. GitHub holds them; the runner does not persist them locally. rig now records what it registered with, so repoint and status can read it back — but a runner installed before rig did that has nothing to read, and repoint falls back to the ci-runner default and warns loudly before it touches anything. Labels are what runs-on matches, so a silent change there is a workflow that simply stops finding its runner. Pass --labels if yours differ.

Convergent — repointing to the repo it is already on changes nothing, exits 0, and never asks for a token.

rig users apply --file <path>

Converges named operator accounts from a declarative users file — on every class (see The identity model). Run as root. Convergent: a second identical run says "already converged; no changes".

# user   roles       ssh public key
dan      admin,box   ssh-ed25519 AAAA... dan@laptop
dan      admin,box   ssh-ed25519 AAAA... dan@desktop
maria    rig,box     ssh-ed25519 AAAA... maria@mac

One line per key — user, comma-joined roles, then the SSH public key (the rest of the line). The format is bash-parseable on purpose: a rig box has no YAML parser and no jq, and gets neither for this. Repeated username lines add authorized keys, and the roles must be identical on each — a repeated line always means "another key", never a quiet role edit hiding mid-file. root is refused as a username: this file names operators; root's fate is class policy. --file - reads stdin. A bad file exits 2 with every error listed at once, before anything changes — one fix cycle, not one round-trip per line.

@root — seed keys from the door you came in through (#17). A key field of exactly @root means "this user's authorized_keys becomes root's CURRENT /root/.ssh/authorized_keys". The point is lockout-avoidance: you provably hold a root private key — you SSHed in with it to run apply at all — so the seeded key is the one key rig can know opens for you; any pasted literal can be a key you do not hold. @root mixes with literal lines (seeded keys land first, literals append after), re-runs re-seed from root's then-current file — convergent to it, so a seeded key you hand-remove from the admin returns until you switch the line to literal keys — and apply dies if root has no authorized_keys to seed. Root's key lines are copied verbatim, options included: a from=/command= restriction follows the key, and on a Coolify-managed box root's file also carries Coolify's key — on class=server, prefer literal keys.

Public tool, private state, here too. The users file lives in your private infra repo and is passed per invocation — rig never persists it. It holds nothing secret anyway: usernames, roles, and public keys.

role	grants	via group
admin	full NOPASSWD sudo	rig-admin
rig	NOPASSWD sudo for /usr/local/bin/rig only	rig
box	Incus restricted tier, no sudo	incus

The honest limit of the rig role: its sudo grant is binary-scoped, not argument-scoped — it trusts its holder with every rig verb except identity management. The rig users commands gate their invoker: run under sudo by anyone outside rig-admin, they refuse. Without that gate, sudo rig users apply against a file naming yourself admin would make the scoped grant silently root-equivalent through the very tool it scopes. Direct root — a bring-up shell, before any admin exists — proceeds.

box binds where VMs live, and a users file is fleet-wide — its box grants are not. rig never installs Incus — box's setup-host owns the daemon — so when the incus group is absent, the host= trait decides: on host=yes apply dies pointing at box setup-host (a VM host missing Incus is a real problem) rather than conjure a group the (nonexistent) daemon would never consult; on host=no the box role is skipped with a warning and everything else — admins included — still converges, because one box-role user somewhere in the fleet must not stop apply everywhere VMs don't live. incus-admin is deliberately not a role: that group is host-root-equivalent, break-glass by hand only.

All passwords stay locked, always — created or found. The SSH key at the door is the authentication, and NOPASSWD sudo does not weaken it: there was never a password to guess or rotate.

Convergence is exact. Membership in the three rig-managed groups is made to match the file — added and removed — while every other group is left alone: not rig's to converge. authorized_keys becomes exactly the file's keys, and its ownership and mode (and .ssh's) are converged on every run, not just when content changes — sshd's StrictModes treats them as load-bearing, so drifted perms are a broken login that "already converged" would lie about. A user dropped from the file is found via the /etc/rig/users ledger and revoked, never deleted: the account is expired — the switch PAM actually enforces; a locked password alone still lets a pubkey in under Debian's UsePAM — and authorized_keys is renamed to authorized_keys.revoked-by-rig. Access revoked, data kept: deletion frees the uid for reuse and orphans file ownership, so attribution would rot; home stays for the same reason, and re-adding the user to the file brings them back, fresh keys and all. And the sudoers rules land in /etc/sudoers.d/rig-roles only after visudo -c passes on the candidate — a bad file under /etc/sudoers.d can take down all of sudo, locking every admin out of the very escalation path apply just granted.

rig users status

rig users status

Read-only truth: per rig-managed user, the roles derived from the groups the user is actually in — not the ledger's memory of an apply — plus the authorized_keys count (revoked when only the .revoked-by-rig rename remains) and the user's state, active or revoked. The state is the ledger's word corroborated by the account's real expiry — the switch that actually revokes — and a mismatch is flagged loudly as drift: a box someone changed behind rig's back must never read as healthy. Reads the box only; no network, no writes. Run as root (shadow is read).

rig users close-root

rig users close-root

Shuts the root SSH door — class=human boxes only, and only once a named admin can already get in. The gates run in order: the /etc/rig/role marker must say class=human — an absent marker refuses (never shut the root door blind; re-run bootstrap so the box knows what it is), and class=server refuses with no --force, because root there is the control plane's automation identity and closing it severs fleet management. Then at least one rig-admin member must hold a login sshd would plausibly accept — a non-empty authorized_keys alone proves a file, not a door: the gate checks the StrictModes shape (home, .ssh, and authorized_keys owned by the user and not group/world-writable), a real login shell, and an unexpired account — and then two reachability proofs (#17): sudo -n true under runuser must answer, so NOPASSWD sudo is effective rather than merely written, and sshd -T -C user=<admin> must resolve a per-user effective config that accepts the login (pubkeyauthentication yes, no DenyUsers hit — where any pattern or USER@HOST entry counts as a hit, fail closed, since DenyUsers dan* really denies admin dan and rig will not re-implement sshd's pattern engine to prove a miss — AllowUsers, if set, names them literally, and the same fail-closed pair for DenyGroups/AllowGroups judged against the admin's actual groups), so a Match block elsewhere cannot quietly exclude the admin while every file looks right. The refusal names which check failed, per candidate. What no local check can prove: that you hold the private key, and how a Match Address rule treats your real client address (the probe resolves against a synthetic addr=127.0.0.1) — which is why the separate-session verification below stays load-bearing. Never close the only door.

Before running it, prove the admin door in a separate session — ssh <admin>@<box> while this one stays open. Root SSH is being welded shut; the admin login must be proven, not presumed.

The drop-in's name is the entire mechanism. close-root installs /etc/ssh/sshd_config.d/00-rig-users.conf carrying exactly PermitRootLogin no. sshd_config is first-wins, Include expands its glob lexically, and - (0x2D) sorts before . (0x2E) — so 00-rig-users.conf is read before bootstrap's 00-rig.conf and beats its prohibit-password. Bootstrap's effective-config assertion accepts the closed state (no is strictly harder than what it installs), and by the same first-wins order its own drop-in can never reopen it — a bootstrap re-run on a closed box leaves it closed. Validate-then-apply as everywhere: sshd -t before the restart, rollback on failure, and success is only claimed once sshd -T resolves permitrootlogin no.

Convergent — once root is closed, a re-run says "root already closed; nothing to do" and exits 0.

On class=server, root stays — so lock its key instead. This is README guidance, deliberately not automation: prefix Coolify's line in root's authorized_keys with a from="<control-plane-addr>" clause, so the automation identity only opens from the one address supposed to use it. rig will not write that file — Coolify owns its key material on the servers it registers, and two tools converging one file is drift by construction (the same argument that keeps rig's hands off Incus).

What rig deliberately does NOT do

• Provider firewalls — Docker publishes ports past host firewalls, so the real boundary is your cloud provider's firewall, configured outside this tool.
• Fetch your config — boxes never receive repo credentials. Everything rig needs arrives as arguments or an interactive prompt.
• Manage deployments — deploy manifests/executors are separate concerns. (Planned: the apply/diff executor half joins rig as commands that run on operator machines, never on boxes.)

Testing

bash test/cli.sh (dependency-free assertions) + shellcheck run in CI. The versioned install is proven by REAL installer runs: RIG_INSTALL_SOURCE points install.sh at the tree under review and the harness drives it against throwaway RIG_HOME/RIG_BIN roots — fresh install, converge, reinstall, side-by-side upgrade, use/rollback, flat-tree migration, symlink healing, the bootstrapped-host warning (via RIG_ROLE_MARKER fixtures), and both uninstalls with their absence asserts. The rig users family is covered the same way: the harness drives its refusal matrix — users-file parsing, the marker gates, the lexical drop-in-name assertion, the validate-then-apply ordering — through the sourced lib functions, non-root and network-free. The tenant family follows the same split: the harness proves the arg/refusal surface, the marker guards (off fixture markers), the pure parameter table, and the rendered agent-context file — guard note included — plus absence-greps for the creds-free contract; the real converge belongs to the rehearsal. The end-to-end rehearsal is a throwaway VM/container: pristine Debian → install → bootstrap workload with a real single-use key → assert the sshd drop-in, tailnet join, and a no-op second run → destroy, remove the node from the tailnet. The tenant rehearsal is the same shape, creds-free: container + seed user → rig bootstrap claude / staging → assert the CLI answers, docker answers, sshd -T, the context file — then re-run and watch it no-op.