meta-core/docs/api-mediated-access.md

API-Mediated Access (Redis Lockdown → Signed Claims)

meta-core v2.0.0 — the claims model. The implementation basis is docs/implementation/metacore-claims-model.md (meta-root). Where this file and that one disagree, that one wins. The access contract below still holds unchanged — HTTP only, events over SSE, no database reachable from outside metacore-app. The write contract changed: every metadata write is a signed claim posted to POST /api/claims, and the legacy unsigned write endpoints answer 410 Gone. See "Write contract — signed claims" below.

Status

Landed — all four PRs (A/B/C/D) deployed and verified end-to-end on the dev stack. Redis is unreachable from outside metacore-app; every metadata read, write, and event flows through meta-core's HTTP+SSE surface. Builds on uuid-rooted-metadata.md, which assumes meta-core is the single writer to the metadata keyspace — an assumption that's now actually enforced rather than aspirational.

2026-10: meta-core no longer uses Redis at all. Its store is now an embedded SQLite file (/meta-core/db/meta-core.db, see metadata-storage-structure.md) and the file:events / meta:events streams are rows of that store. The lockdown below is now structural — there is no database port anywhere — and the SSE wire contract was kept byte-for-byte, so no consumer changed. The rest of this doc is the design record of the Redis-era lockdown; the sections that describe current behaviour (SSE retention, reconnect, error handling) have been updated in place.

See "Implementation outcome" at the bottom for the delta between this doc's plan and what shipped (notably the write-path CID resolution and the dual-root migration sweep, which weren't in the original plan but turned out to be load-bearing).

Motivation

meta-core was designed as the sidecar that mediates every metadata read and write — a single point that owns the Redis schema, enforces invariants (reverse index, cids/ key-set integrity, schema-version sentinel), and presents a stable HTTP contract. Other services were meant to talk to meta-core, not to Redis.

In practice, meta-sort opens its own Redis connection and writes file:<hashId>/<property> keys with raw pipeline SETs (packages/meta-sort/packages/meta-sort-core/src/kv/RedisClient.ts:269-296). It picked up this shortcut early, before meta-core had a complete write API, and the shortcut stuck.

This bypass is a real problem in three ways:

1. Schema invariants leak. When meta-core landed the UUID-rooted schema (uuid-rooted-metadata.md), meta-sort kept writing midhash-rooted entries. The result was dual roots per file — one set of keys at the watcher's UUID, another at meta-sort's midhash. file:__index__ doubled in size. The bug was invisible to meta-sort (its writes succeeded) but broke the reverse-index resolution downstream services rely on.

2. Schema evolution is impossible. Changing the Redis layout requires coordinating across every service that touches it. The UUID-root migration would have been a single-PR change if writes already routed through the API.

3. Self-hosted distributed deployment widens the threat model. Peers are run by different operators. Plugin authors may ship their own services. We can't expect every binary in the network to honour undocumented conventions. A buggy or careless service that connects to Redis and writes the wrong key shape can corrupt the schema for everybody on that node.

The third point is the one that flipped the design from "soft lock by convention" to "hard lock by network topology." We're not protecting against malicious services — that's an out-of-scope threat. We're protecting against accidental corruption from honest mistakes in code we don't fully control.

The architecture in one picture

                meta-core v2.0.0 (only store writer + reader)
                ┌──────────────────────────────────────┐
                │  HTTP API surface:                   │
                │    POST /api/claims                  │  ◄── writes (signed claims only)
                │    POST /api/merge                   │  ◄── stateless merge, no write
                │    GET  /api/meta/{cid}              │  ◄── reads (by CID, merged)
                │    GET  /api/meta/{cid}/claims       │  ◄── reads (raw signed claims)
                │    GET  /api/metadata/*              │  ◄── reads (by rid, merged)
                │    GET  /api/file/{cid}              │  ◄── content
                │    GET  /api/events/files            │  ◄── SSE stream
                │    GET  /api/events/meta             │  ◄── SSE stream (merged changes)
                │     │                                │
                │     ▼  verify sig → truth → apply    │
                │  truth  /meta-core/db/meta-core.db   │
                │  cache  /meta-core/db-cache/cache.db    │
                │  ◄── embedded SQLite, no port,       │
                │      no docker-network alias         │
                └──────────────────────────────────────┘
                          ▲             ▲
                          │ HTTP        │ HTTP SSE
                          │             │
              ┌───────────┴────┐ ┌──────┴─────────┐
              │ meta-sort      │ │ meta-fuse      │
              │ meta-stremio   │ │ meta-share     │
              │ meta-dup       │ │ (any future)   │
              └────────────────┘ └────────────────┘

The single-writer rule. meta-core has exclusive write authority over its store — in v2.0.0 the two SQLite databases (truth and cache); in the Redis era the file:*, cid:*, file:__index__ (later idx:*), and meta-core:* keyspaces. No other service can write the store — not because of an honoured convention, but because they can't reach it at all.

What changed in v2.0.0 is who may author metadata. meta-core is still the only process that touches the database, but it no longer accepts unsigned values: a writer submits signed votes (claims), meta-core verifies each signature and stores the vote. meta-core never signs a claim and holds no writer key — a store that could sign for everyone would prove nothing. The signature is the write authentication; there are no per-writer tokens.

Stream reads also mediated. Events go out through SSE endpoints on meta-core's HTTP surface. Consumers don't see the underlying Redis Streams. This is the Kubernetes / Consul pattern (see "Industry context" below). It costs an extra HTTP hop versus the current direct XREAD; the benefit is that the storage layer is free to evolve (or be replaced) without breaking every consumer.

Redis is private. No host port mapping, no docker-network alias, no URL in kv-leader.info. Discovery returns only meta-core's HTTP base. (Since 2026-10 there is no Redis at all; the SQLite files are reachable only from inside metacore-app.)

Write contract — signed claims (v2.0.0)

Every metadata value is a signed vote: signer uid says key = value about content cid — claim(uid, cid, key) → value + ts + sig. The record a reader sees is the merged view that meta-core precomputes from the votes; a reader's own votes always win in their view. Full model, schema and merge rules: the implementation basis §1–§7.

Endpoint table

	Endpoint	Behaviour
Write	POST /api/claims	A batch of signed claims (a JSON array, or {"claims": [...]}). The only metadata write path.
Removed	PUT/PATCH/DELETE /meta/{hash}, PUT/DELETE /meta/{hash}/{key...}, POST /meta/{hash}/_add/{key...}, PUT/DELETE /api/metadata/{hashId}, PUT /api/metadata/{hashId}/property, POST /api/metadata/batch	410 Gone, with a pointer to POST /api/claims
Kept	PUT/GET/DELETE /api/kv/value	Service scratch KV (btmagnet:*, searchcov:*), plain rows of the cache database's kv table (any key outside the reserved prefixes file:, cid:, idx:, dup:, ev:, evhwm:, meta:, meta-core:) — losing it only costs a refetch
Kept	POST /api/files/register, the file watcher	Fill local_file (box-local filePath, size, mtime, midhash — unsigned) and cid_group
UDL facade	/api/udl/* (same paths)	Writes go through the claims write path; reads come from the claims (per-signer index claim_by_pid). Records are MMUR2 claims. Shapes: see "UDL facade shapes" below
Read	GET /api/meta/{cid}, GET /api/metadata/{rid}, GET /file/{cid}, GET /meta/{hash}, GET /api/metadata/hash-ids, GET /api/metadata/list, POST /api/metadata/search, GET /api/files/tuples, GET /api/schema, GET /api/stats	Unchanged paths and response shapes, served from the merged view (+ local_file); optional ?as=<uid>. They carry no nsrc
New	GET /api/meta/{cid}/claims	{rid, cids, claims}: the record's rid, the cids of its group and every live signed claim on them (all signers, tombstones excluded). ?key= keeps one exact key, ?uid= one signer. 404 unknown_cid when no record holds the cid
New	GET /api/metadata/{rid}/claims	Same body and filters, addressed by rid (a cid is also accepted); 404 for an unknown record. What meta-search ingest and the gateway's corpus search use
New	POST /api/merge	Stateless: body {claims, as?}; verifies each claim (invalid ones dropped and counted, never a batch error), merges with the store's merge rule, overlays as's own votes (in the request and held by this core for the same cids). Returns {fields, nsrc, rejected} — merged key → value, key → agreeing signers, rejected count. 413 above 10 000 claims. Writes nothing
Events	GET /api/events/meta	Unchanged {type: set|del, key, ts} shape, now emitted for changes of the merged view, key still the literal file:<rid>/<field>; GET /api/events/files unchanged. Both streams are rows of the cache kv table (ev:meta:events/…, ev:file:events/…), ~100k entries each
Admin	POST /api/metadata/clear	Wipes both databases (truth and cache)
Removed	/api/snapshot/export, /api/snapshot/import, /api/snapshot/wipe	No snapshot format in v2.0.0

Endpoints the claims model does not touch keep their behaviour: discovery (/health, /status, /leader, /urls, /neighbors), the account-key identity service (/api/identity/* — its removal is a separate ticket; v2.0.0 adds the format field to sign / sign-batch — "compact" or "der", default compact for "MMUR2\n" payloads and DER otherwise — and makes DELETE /api/identity sign and store a retraction of every live claim of the account before removing it), /api/file/{cid}/info, /file/cid, /data/{hash}*, mounts, watchers and WebDAV.

The claim on the wire (JSON form)

{ "cid": "bafy…", "uid": "zQ3s…", "key": "title",
  "value": "The Matrix",            // or {"b64": "…"} for bytes, or null
  "ts": 1793001234567,
  "sig": "base64(64 bytes)" }

Field	Meaning
cid	The subject: a content CID as the writer knows it (bare CID string, as in cids/*). Never a rid — rids are local and never signed
uid	The signer: "z" + base58btc(33-byte compressed secp256k1 pubkey)
key	The field (METADATA_KEYS.md); a key-set member is inside the key (genres/Drama)
value	Text = public plaintext; {"b64": …} = bytes, a private (ciphertext) envelope; null = retraction
ts	Milliseconds since epoch. It is the version: only increases per (uid, cid, key)
sig	MMUR2: secp256k1 ECDSA, compact 64 bytes, over SHA-256 of "MMUR2\n" ‖ canonical CBOR [cid, uid, key, value, ts]

A batch (the POST /api/claims body) is a JSON array of these (or {"claims": [...]}). Kamilata and the gateway wire carry the same five fields plus sig; the signed bytes never change on any hop, and relays (meta-search, a client persisting a gateway hit) forward claims verbatim — they never re-sign.

Per-claim statuses

POST /api/claims answers with one status per claim:

Status	Meaning
accepted	Verified and stored (or a retraction stored as a tombstone)
unchanged	The stored row for (uid, cid, key) already has this ts and sig — or the same value under any ts (a signer re-asserting what it holds): no verification, no write, and the stored row keeps its older ts
stale	The stored ts is ≥ the incoming ts; ignored (blocks replay of old votes)
bad_signature	The MMUR2 signature does not verify against the uid's public key
bad_request	The claim is malformed

The response is 200 with a JSON array of {status, reason?}, one entry per claim, in input order, even when some are refused. A batch above 10 000 claims answers 413 too_many_claims; a body that is not claims JSON 400 invalid_json. The removed write routes answer 410 {"error":"gone","use":"POST /api/claims"}. POST /api/claims, POST /api/merge and the two claims read routes are container-to-container routes, not routed through Caddy.

Rules: every claim is signed — ciphertext and retractions included; an unsigned or badly signed claim is refused. A retraction (value: null) is kept as a tombstone, so a peer cannot replay the vote it retracted. Values are stored exactly as signed; normalisation (trim + case-fold, no NFC) happens only inside the merge.

Accepted claims commit to the truth database in one group-committed transaction; an apply loop then folds them, in commit order, into the cache (the merged file:<rid>/<field> rows of its v1-layout kv table, FTS, counters, events). POST /api/claims answers only once the cache has applied the batch, so the writer reads its own write; another reader may briefly see the previous merged value — the cache is behind, never wrong.

?as=<uid> — the viewer's overlay

Every merged read accepts an optional ?as=<uid>. The merge then puts that signer's own live text vote first for each key (read-time overlay found through the per-signer index, never stored in the shared merged view). Without ?as= the read returns the shared merge: most distinct signers → oldest ts → byte-wise smallest value; ciphertext never merges.

Raw claims and client-side merging

The claims read routes (GET /api/metadata/{rid}/claims for meta-search ingest and the gateway's corpus hits, GET /api/meta/{cid}/claims by cid) return the raw signed votes of every signer, not a merged map. A client that receives claims from the swarm or a gateway displays them by calling its local meta-core's POST /api/merge (one merge implementation, in Go), and persists a hit by posting the claims as received to POST /api/claims.

UDL facade shapes

Claims in the JSON form above (internal/api/udl.go):

Route	Request	Response
PUT /api/udl/record	one claim	200 {accepted: true, status} for accepted / unchanged; 409 stale_version for stale; 400 (status as slug) for bad_signature / bad_request
PUT /api/udl/records	{records: [claim, …]}	200 {results: [{key, accepted, status, error?}, …]}, input order; accepted = accepted or unchanged
GET /api/udl/record?uid=&cid=&key=	—	{exists, claim} — the stored claim, tombstone included; exists false when absent or a tombstone
GET /api/udl/user/{uid}/key/{key}, /user/{uid}/cid/{cid}	—	{entries: [claim, …]}
GET /api/udl/user/{uid}/all?after=&limit=	—	{entries: [claim, …], nextCid}
GET /api/udl/user/{uid}/count	—	{cids}
GET /api/udl/cid/{cid}/users	—	{users: [uid, …]}
GET /api/udl/cid/{cid}/aggregate?keys=	—	{aggregates: [{key, count, avg, trues, sample_size}]}
GET /api/udl/users/stats	—	{users: {uid: {records, cids, keys}}} for every signer with live claims — plugin, feeder, gateway and service keys included. /api/stats udlUsers is the size of this map

What a writer needs

Each writing container (every meta-sort plugin, every self-publishing feeder, gateway core, meta-sort, meta-share, meta-search) signs with its own key; users sign in the browser. meta-core holds none of these keys. Key configuration per signer: implementation basis §9.

Box-local file facts (filePath, size, mtimeNano, midhash) are not claims: the watcher and POST /api/files/register write them into the cache's local_file table, they are joined into the record view unsigned, and they never appear in /api/meta/{cid}/claims or on the swarm.

Eventing — HTTP Server-Sent Events

SSE is the chosen transport for cross-service event consumption. The mapping from Redis Streams onto SSE is direct enough that no eventing feature we currently use is lost.

Feature mapping (what we keep, how we keep it)

Redis Streams	SSE equivalent
Fan-out to N consumers	meta-core holds N SSE connections, broadcasts events to each
Replay from a cursor	Last-Event-ID header on reconnect — built into the SSE spec
Retention / MAXLEN	Underlying Redis Stream still does the trimming; SSE is a thin shim
Backpressure on slow consumers	meta-core's SSE handler blocks on the TCP write; events stay in Redis until trimmed
Multiple streams (file:events, meta:events)	Separate endpoints: /api/events/files, /api/events/meta
At-least-once via XACK	Implicit — client persists last-received id, sends it on reconnect (see "Cursor semantics and consumer-group migration" below)

The one Streams feature we don't get is consumer groups for horizontally-scaled replicas of the same logical consumer. We don't use this today and don't plan to — meta-sort, meta-fuse, etc. each run one instance. If horizontal scale ever happens, it'll be by sharding hash-IDs across replicas, not by splitting an event stream. SSE stays adequate.

Cursor semantics and consumer-group migration

Today three consumers use XREADGROUP against named consumer groups, not bare XREAD:

• meta-sort: group meta-sort-processor (packages/meta-sort/.../events/FileEventConsumer.ts:23,66-74)
• meta-dup: group on file:events (packages/meta-dup/.../MetaEventConsumer.ts:102-104)
• meta-fuse: dual path — XREADGROUP on one consumer, plain XREAD on another (packages/meta-fuse/.../kv/RedisClient.ts:826,907)

XREADGROUP keeps server-side state per group: a Pending Entries List (PEL) and a last-delivered-id cursor. The load-bearing use today is meta-sort's processPendingEntries(idleMs=30000), which exists to claim work from a crashed consumer's PEL on restart.

SSE has no equivalent server-side state. After the migration the contract shifts to: each consumer persists its own Last-Event-ID and resumes from it on reconnect. Implications:

• PEL-based crash recovery is gone. A crashed consumer that hadn't persisted its cursor since entry X resumes from X (its last durably persisted cursor), not from "whatever was in flight." Acceptable for every current consumer — none run multiple instances per group — but call out in the PR C migration of meta-sort that the recovery primitive is changing.
• Each consumer must own its cursor persistence. Cheapest place is the consumer's own state (a file, a Redis key written under its own prefix, an in-memory variable if the consumer is OK with at-most-once on its own crash).
• No server-side "ACK" call. The cursor is the ack — when the consumer successfully writes Last-Event-ID = N to its own state, entries ≤ N are considered handled. The SSE handler does nothing.

Endpoint spec

GET /api/events/files
  Request headers:
    Last-Event-ID: <stream-entry-id>   (optional; resume from this cursor)
    Accept: text/event-stream
  Response:
    Content-Type: text/event-stream
    Cache-Control: no-cache
    Connection: keep-alive
    X-Accel-Buffering: no    (disable nginx response buffering)

Same shape for /api/events/meta.

Event format

One SSE event per Redis Stream entry. Format:

id: 1747999999999-0
event: add
data: {"path":"/watch/foo.mkv","size":4500000000,"midhash256":"bafk…","timestamp":1747999999999}

id: 1748000000123-0
event: change
data: {"path":"/watch/foo.mkv","size":4500000000,"midhash256":"bafk…","timestamp":1748000000123}

• id — opaque cursor. Today it's the Redis Stream entry ID (<ms>-<seq>); consumers MUST treat it as a black-box string they echo back via Last-Event-ID. This contract lets meta-core swap the backing store later without breaking every consumer's cursor handling.
• event — the type field from the underlying entry (add | change | delete | rename | reset for file:events; set | del | expire for meta:events).
• data — JSON-encoded rest of the entry. Keys match the existing stream payload exactly so downstream consumers don't change their parser.

Backing-store retention and lifecycle

Contract: the SSE wire is a faithful mirror of the underlying Redis Streams. Consumers rely on Last-Event-ID resumption working across every kind of meta-core hiccup, including a restart — that's the entire point of having a cursor protocol. The backing store must therefore preserve entries across meta-core process restart and bound its growth explicitly, not implicitly.

Today's behaviour is wrong on both counts:

Stream	Restart behaviour	Retention
meta:events	Cleared on every MetaPublisher.Start (events/meta_publisher.go:50-58)	No MAXLEN (unbounded)
file:events	Persists across restart	No MAXLEN (unbounded), cleared only on deliberate reset (watcher/dispatcher.go:82-95)

The meta:events clear-on-restart is the load-bearing problem. With it in place, every meta-core restart silently invalidates every consumer's persisted cursor — the SSE gap event would fire on the first reconnect after every restart, and the consumer would have to re-bootstrap. That turns "restart meta-core to apply a config change" into "every downstream service does a full re-sync," which is exactly the regression SSE is supposed to prevent.

PR A must fix both streams:

1. Remove the unconditional Del(MetaEventsStream) in MetaPublisher.Start. Entries persist across restart. The republish path (RepublishAllMetadata) stays as a one-shot bootstrap for missing entries, but it does not pre-truncate the stream.
2. Add MAXLEN ~ N to every XAdd on both streams so growth is bounded. Approximate trim (~) is cheap. Default N = 100_000 per stream is fine for the foreseeable workload (a few KB per entry, bounded total ≈ a few hundred MB) and easy to tune via config.
3. Keep the deliberate EmitReset → ClearStream path on file:events. That clear is a feature: a reset is the consumer contract for "throw out everything you knew, re-bootstrap." Consumers detect it through the event: reset payload that's already emitted as the first entry after the clear (dispatcher.go:99-). The SSE gap event handles the race where a consumer's cursor was trimmed between the clear and its reconnect.

After PR A, the cursor contract is "durable across meta-core restart and bounded by MAXLEN ~ N" — matching what consumers already assume when they persist a Last-Event-ID.

Current backing store (since 2026-10). The streams are rows of meta-core's SQLite kv table — ev:<stream>/<ms13>-<seq10> → JSON of the entry's fields, plus a high-water mark evhwm:<stream> that seeds the next ID (so a ClearStream reset never reissues an ID an old cursor treats as seen). The contract above holds unchanged:

• Entries persist across restart (they are in the database file).
• Retention is ~100k entries per stream, trimmed every 10k appends.
• IDs keep the Redis <ms>-<seq> form, so cursors persisted by meta-sort / meta-share / meta-stremio before the switch still compare.
• meta:events entries ({type: set|del, key, ts}) describe changes of the merged view (v2.0.0): the apply loop emits set/del (keyed by rid + key) only when a claim actually changed a merged value, in the same cache transaction as that change. A group merge (two cid groups linked by a cids/* vote) emits del for every key of the losing rid and set for the survivor. History: v1.x appended them in the same transaction as the file: key change; before 2026-10 a Redis keyspace-notification hop (PSUBSCRIBE in MetaPublisher) could drop events when it lagged.
• Cache rebuild (v2.0.0). Events live in the cache database. A cache rebuild (missing cache folder, or catch-up after an unclean shutdown) emits no per-key events; SSE consumers get event: gap and take a snapshot, as they do for a trimmed cursor. Event IDs stay time-based, so they keep rising across a rebuild.
• Last-Event-ID: 0 / 0-0 on /api/events/meta returns a snapshot (since v1.2.0): one set per existing record key, then the live tail from the head captured before the snapshot. Only the last snapshot event carries an id:. This replaced the boot-time republish of every field, which a ~100k-entry stream could never hold. A trimmed (non-zero) cursor still gets the gap event and a replay of what is retained.

Heartbeats

Server writes an SSE comment line (:keep-alive\n\n) every 30 seconds when no events are flowing. Keeps reverse proxies and load balancers from killing the connection as idle. The client ignores comment lines per the SSE spec.

Reconnect semantics

Per the SSE spec the client (or EventSource) auto-reconnects after a network error, sending Last-Event-ID. The server resumes from the next entry after that ID (a range read of the stream's rows; under Redis this was XREAD … STREAMS file:events <id>). With no Last-Event-ID the stream starts at the head, resolved once at connect; 0 / 0-0 go through the gap path and replay from the beginning.

Gap handling. If the requested ID is older than the oldest retained entry, the server emits one synthetic event before resuming from the oldest available entry:

event: gap
data: {"requested":"<id>","resumeFrom":"<oldest-id>","reason":"retention"}

Consumers that care about gap-free delivery (currently none — the schema indexer tolerates gaps; ingest tasks rebuild from scratch) can react. Consumers that don't care ignore it.

Error handling

• Store unavailable on connect: 503 with Retry-After: 5.
• Store read fails mid-stream: close the SSE connection. Client reconnects with Last-Event-ID; the cycle resumes when meta-core is back (a meta-core restart is the common case — SSE clients just reconnect).
• Client disconnects: handler goroutine exits cleanly; no per-client state on meta-core.

Auth

/api/events/* bypasses the hash-lock perimeter, same pattern as /api/meta/{cid} and /api/file/{cid}. Event streams are internal infrastructure and need to be reachable by peer services without going through Authelia.

Bypass ≠ public. "Hash-lock bypass" means the OIDC sidecar doesn't gate the route; it does not automatically mean Caddy proxies it from the public hostname. The two existing precedents differ on this: /api/file/{cid} is publicly reachable (peer-to-peer content fetch is its job), /api/meta/{cid} likewise. For the SSE endpoints, the choice is deliberate:

• If kept inside-only (no Caddy upstream for /api/events/files and /api/events/meta), only sibling services on the docker network can subscribe. This matches the rest of the "Redis is private" model and is the recommended default.
• If exposed publicly, any browser can open an EventSource against the stream without authentication — i.e. anyone can watch every file event in the library. Only do this if there's a concrete consumer that needs it and the visibility is acceptable.

PR A's Caddy change (see PR A scope, item 4) makes this an explicit choice rather than a default behaviour. The recommendation is inside-only until a concrete external consumer appears.

Implementation footprint

The SSE handler itself is ~80 lines of Go in meta-core: one handler per stream, each running a read-after-cursor loop (an XREAD … BLOCK 30s loop in the Redis era) and writing SSE-formatted lines to the response. Go's net/http natively supports streaming responses with http.Flusher.Flush(). Standard SSE clients exist for every language we use: Node eventsource, Rust eventsource-client (or reqwest + tokio_util::codec), Python sseclient, Go r3labs/sse.

PR A as a whole is larger than the handler — see the PR A scope below for the full list (backing-store fixes, Caddy wiring, poll deprecation) that has to land alongside the handler for the cursor contract to hold.

Eventing — considered alternatives

Recorded for posterity. None of these are being implemented; if any are ever revisited it should be a deliberate reopen, not a drift.

• Long-polling. Strictly worse than SSE — connection churn on every event, latency floor at the poll interval, no built-in resumption. Rejected.
• Webhooks (meta-core POSTs to subscribers). Symmetric coupling: every consumer would need to run an HTTP server reachable from meta-core. Out-of-order delivery, retry, dead-letter all need reinventing. Right for cross-organization integrations, wrong for in-cluster eventing. Rejected.
• External broker (Kafka / NATS / RabbitMQ). Industrial-grade pub/sub. New dependency, new operational surface, overkill for the scale (single-host dev, ≤20-peer POC). Revisit if MetaMesh ever needs cross-WAN federation at high throughput. Rejected for now.
• Two Redises (writes Redis private, events Redis exposed). Strongest separation. Doubles operational complexity for no benefit over the SSE design — once events go through HTTP, the events-Redis isn't exposed either. Rejected.
• Redis ACLs (Option B from earlier brainstorm). Allows direct Redis access from clients while restricting commands by user. Adds credential plumbing and ACL config to operate; lets a buggy service still connect, just with limited verbs. The SSE design closes the network entirely, which is strictly stronger. Rejected — but the equivalent escape hatch (open Redis to other services again) stays available if we ever need it.

Industry context — where this lands

The pattern we're adopting is the Kubernetes / etcd pattern, and that's the most informative comparison.

Kubernetes is structurally identical to MetaMesh:

• A single source-of-truth store (etcd) holds all cluster state.
• A single service (kube-apiserver) is the sole writer to etcd.
• Many polyglot clients (kubectl, controllers, schedulers, kubelets, operators) read and react to changes.
• Clients subscribe to watch streams for events.

What Kubernetes does, point-for-point:

• etcd is never reached by clients. It runs on a separate port, often a separate network. kube-apiserver is the only thing that holds etcd credentials. The lock is by network topology, not authentication.
• Watch is also mediated. kube-apiserver exposes /watch as an HTTP streaming endpoint (very similar to SSE in shape). Clients don't watch etcd directly — even though etcd has its own native watch primitive.
• Storage portability falls out for free. etcd could be swapped for another store without any client change. We don't plan to swap Redis, but the optionality is real and free.

Other systems with the same shape:

• HashiCorp Consul. Clients talk to a local agent over HTTP. The agent talks to the cluster. KV writes and watches both flow through the agent. Direct raft-store access is impossible.
• Apache ZooKeeper. Clients use the ZooKeeper client library which speaks the ZooKeeper wire protocol; the data store is private.
• Strapi / Sanity / Contentful (headless CMS as analog). All consumers — frontends, backend services, build pipelines — go through the CMS HTTP API. Direct Postgres or content-store access is impossible by design.

Where MetaMesh sat before: closer to the bad-monolith pattern (everyone connects directly to the shared Redis). Where it sits after this design: aligned with the canonical microservices pattern, and specifically with the Kubernetes flavour where streams are mediated too.

Advantages we're picking up

• Schema evolution. One service can change its data layout without coordinating releases across every other service. The UUID-root migration is the cautionary tale of what happens without this.
• Validation choke point. Every write passes through one code path that can enforce invariants (reverse index, cids/ key-set, type constraints, schema version).
• Observability. Audit logs, request metrics, slow-query detection all live at one layer.
• Threat-model fit. Untrusted-service-in-the-network is now in scope; network isolation makes the concern moot.
• Storage portability. Optionality only, but real.

Drawbacks (acknowledged)

• Latency. One extra hop per write (TCP + HTTP parse + handler). Local-host overhead is sub-millisecond; mitigations are batched writes (PATCH the whole metadata blob per plugin completion, not per field) and Keep-Alive / HTTP/2 connections.
• SSE-handler plumbing. ~80 lines per stream endpoint plus per-client goroutines. Trivial at our scale, real at Kubernetes scale (which is why they invested in chunked watch with bookmarks, resource versions, etc.). We can defer the same optimisations forever.
• API surface size. Every operation needs a corresponding endpoint. Most of it already exists; one new SSE endpoint per stream is the only new surface area introduced here.

Enforcement — what "lock" actually means

Three layers, in order of effectiveness:

1. Network isolation (hard). Redis is on a container-private port. No host port mapping. No docker-network alias. kv-leader.info does not publish a Redis URL. Any service that wants to talk to Redis needs container privileges, and at that point the lock isn't the concern — operating-system isolation is. This is the actual lock.

2. Documentation (convention). This file, plus a one-line note in CLAUDE.md and in each consumer service's CLAUDE.md: "All metadata I/O routes through meta-core's HTTP API. Redis is private to metacore-app." Engineers reading the codebase find the rule on first contact. This catches the case of a future meta-core PR that accidentally exposes Redis again.

3. Code review (convention). PRs that re-expose Redis (a port mapping, an alias, a credential leak via leader-info) get rejected with a pointer to this doc.

No runtime canary or lint is proposed — the network isolation makes violations physically impossible from outside, and inside meta-core the small file count makes review sufficient. Layer 1 does the heavy lifting.

Migration plan

Four PRs, additive, ordered so the system stays working throughout. Closing the network access (PR D) is the moment the lock becomes a lock; everything before it is opt-in migration that consumers can adopt at their own pace.

All four PRs have landed. What follows is the original plan as written; see "Implementation outcome" at the bottom for the delta between plan and ship.

PR A — SSE endpoints in meta-core

Adds GET /api/events/files and GET /api/events/meta. Implements the Last-Event-ID semantics, gap handling, heartbeats, and the per-stream XREAD loop. Redis Streams stay reachable directly; consumers can migrate one at a time.

Scope, in PR-order:

1. Backing-store fixes (see "Backing-store retention and lifecycle" above) — remove the meta:events clear-on-restart, add MAXLEN ~ N to every XAdd. These are prerequisites for the SSE cursor contract to hold; without them PR A is not deliverable.
2. SSE handlers for the two streams.
3. Deprecate GET /api/events/poll (watcher/handlers.go:29). It exists today as a long-poll variant over the same file:events stream and is described in code as "always empty in practice" (watcher/handlers.go:55-58). After SSE lands it's redundant — keep it responding 200 for one release with a Deprecation header, then remove. The /api/scan/* deprecation pattern in the same file is the template.
4. Caddy perimeter wiring (see "Auth" subsection above) — explicit allow-list for /api/events/files and /api/events/meta matching whatever the perimeter policy decides. Either inside-only via the docker network, or public via Caddy with deliberate authorisation. Do not let the routes default-leak past the hash-lock.

Roughly 200 lines of Go + ~50 lines of test (covering reconnect from a cursor, gap emission when the cursor is trimmed, heartbeat cadence, durability across a meta-core restart).

PR B — meta-sort writes via HTTP

History. PR B moved writes onto the unsigned /meta/{hash} family. In v2.0.0 those routes answer 410 Gone; writers sign claims and post them to POST /api/claims (see "Write contract — signed claims").

Swap RedisClient for an HttpKVClient implementation of the existing IKVClient interface in packages/meta-sort-core. All writes (setMetadataFlat, setMetadataProperty, batch updates) become HTTP calls against the /meta/{hash} family — the canonical write surface for service-to-service traffic. Per-plugin write coalescing uses PATCH /meta/{hash} (already calls MergeMetadataFlat server-side with the partial-update semantics we need; see handlers.go:533-566).

Reads from Redis stay direct in this PR (no consumer migration yet); only writes move. Streams stay on direct XREAD.

Pre-audit (already done): meta-sort's production kvClient.* surface is setMetadataFlat / deleteMetadataFlat / getMetadataFlat / getMetadata / getAllHashIds / health plus the file:events stream consumer. No orphan keyspaces, no generic kv.set(arbitrary_key) callers — the HTTP migration covers the entire write path with no side bets.

PR C — Stream consumers migrate to SSE

meta-sort's event consumer (FileEventConsumer.ts), meta-fuse's stream reader, meta-stremio's event hook, meta-dup's monitor, meta-share's ingest task — each swaps its XREADGROUP / XREAD loop for an SSE client. Per-language standard libraries make this small (one HTTP request, one event-handler closure).

In the same PR, each consumer's LeaderClient (TypeScript x2, Python, plus any new Rust binding for meta-share if added) drops its requirement on the redisUrl field — i.e. it stops opening a Redis connection. It can still tolerate the field being present (PR D removes it from the publisher side). This ordering matters: PR D's loud-failure guard cannot ship until every consumer has been demonstrated to boot without redisUrl.

The schema indexer is internal to meta-core and unaffected.

PR D — Close Redis network access

PR D must land after every consumer in PR C has stopped requiring redisUrl (verify by booting each service against a meta-core build that already omits the field — staging environment or feature-flagged release). Until that's true, this PR will deadlock the boot sequence.

Then, in this order:

1. Update consumer-side discovery (LeaderClient in each service) to log loudly if it sees a redisUrl field — guards against accidental rollback. (Loud log, not hard failure, while the field is still being written — flip to hard failure once step 4 lands.)
2. Stop publishing redisUrl from /urls and from kv-leader.info.
3. Remove the meta-core docker-network alias on the metacore-app service (other services no longer need DNS for the Redis port).
4. Remove 6380:6379 host port mapping in dev/docker-compose.yml.
5. Flip the LeaderClient guard from "warn" to "raise" — any future consumer that tries to require the field fails loudly at boot.

After PR D, attempting to connect to Redis from anywhere except metacore-app produces a connection refused. The lock is real.

Out of scope for this work

• Redis ACLs / proxy. Network isolation makes these unnecessary. Available as an escape hatch if the threat model ever changes.
• Replacing Redis Streams under the hood. SSE is the externalised contract; the backing store is an implementation detail meta-core can change later.
• External brokers. Out of scope absent a concrete driver (cross-WAN federation at high throughput).

Decisions recorded

Question	Decision	Notes
Writes from non-meta-core services?	Forbidden by network topology	Redis unreachable; not a convention
Reads from file:* direct?	Forbidden by network topology	Same lock, same reason
Event streams direct?	No — mediated through SSE	Kubernetes-style. Costs one HTTP hop; buys schema evolution + threat-model fit
Enforcement mechanism?	Network isolation (primary) + docs + code review (secondary)	No ACLs, no proxy, no lint
Backing store for streams?	Redis Streams at the time; SQLite kv rows since 2026-10	SSE wraps it; the 2026-10 swap proved it — no consumer changed
Consumer groups / horizontal scale?	Not supported via SSE	Not needed today; revisit if scale ever requires it
Storage portability?	Not a goal but a free side-effect	Will not be exercised in alpha
Canonical write API path?	POST /api/claims (v2.0.0) — signed claims only; every unsigned write route answers 410 Gone	History (v1.x): the /meta/{hash} family was the canonical write surface. It had GET/PUT/PATCH/DELETE plus /_add/{key} and per-property {key:.*} operations. PATCH calls MergeMetadataFlat — matches the partial-update semantics PR B needs. /api/metadata/{hashId} stays as the editor-internal surface (no PATCH, no per-property routes) but is not the migration target.
SSE event-id contract?	Opaque to consumers	It is <ms>-<seq> (the Redis Stream entry form, kept after the 2026-10 SQLite switch); consumers MUST treat as opaque so the backing store can be swapped without breaking the wire contract. Documented in the SSE endpoint comment and in this doc.
Typed error envelope?	{error, message, retryable} with stable error slug	See "Error envelope" subsection below.
Plugin direct-Redis risk?	Confirmed: no plugin uses Redis directly	Grep across packages/plugins/ for ioredis / redis.createClient / new Redis() returned empty. Plugins POST results back to meta-sort via /api/plugins/callback; meta-sort then writes. PR B picks up the plugin write path transparently.
meta-sort non-file:* writes?	Confirmed: none in production	Full audit of kvClient.* callers in packages/meta-sort/packages/meta-sort-core/src/ shows only: setMetadataFlat, deleteMetadataFlat, getMetadataFlat, getMetadata, getAllHashIds, health, plus the file:events stream consumer (initStreamConsumer / startStreamConsumer / processPendingEntries). The generic kv.set(key, value) / kv.setProperty(key, value) methods on the interface exist for plugin sandboxes and tests but are not invoked by production code with non-file:* keys. PR B + PR C cover the full meta-sort surface.

Error envelope

(410 Gone from the removed v1.x write routes carries this envelope with a message pointing to POST /api/claims. Per-claim outcomes of POST /api/claims are statuses inside the response, not envelopes — see "Per-claim statuses" above.)

Standard shape for all 4xx / 5xx responses from the metadata API:

{
  "error":     "alias_collision",
  "message":   "CID midhash256:bafk… already resolves to UUID 01JKR…",
  "retryable": false
}

Stable error slugs the client should switch on:

Slug	HTTP status	Retryable	Meaning
alias_collision	409	no	A different UUID already owns the CID the caller is trying to register. Caller bug; escalate.
unknown_root	404	no	The hashId / UUID doesn't exist. Caller probably has a stale reference.
unknown_cid	404	no	The CID isn't in the reverse index. No retry helps.
schema_violation	400	no	Body shape rejected (missing required field, invalid value). Caller bug.
invalid_json	400	no	POST /api/claims / POST /api/merge body is not claims JSON. Caller bug.
too_many_claims	413	no	More than 10 000 claims in one POST /api/claims or POST /api/merge. Split the batch.
stale_version	409	yes	PUT /api/udl/record: an equal or newer ts is stored for this signer, cid and key. Re-read the record, sign with a newer ts, retry.
gone	410	no	A removed unsigned write route. Body is {"error":"gone","use":"POST /api/claims"} (no message / retryable).
storage_unavailable	503	yes	Store transient (Redis at the time; the embedded SQLite store since 2026-10). Caller should retry with backoff.
internal	500	yes (cautiously)	Unhandled server-side error. Retry once; escalate if persistent.

Implemented. Every 4xx/5xx response across internal/api, internal/mounts, internal/watcher, and internal/watchers now emits the typed envelope. The slug-mapping helper is duplicated across those packages (one ~15-line slugForStatus per package) to avoid an import cycle on the api package; consolidating it into a shared internal/httperr package is a worthwhile follow-up but not load-bearing.

Remaining open questions

Mostly answered post-implementation:

• Deprecation timeline for /api/metadata/{hashId}. Answered by v2.0.0: its PUT/DELETE (and PUT …/property) answer 410 Gone like every unsigned write; GET stays as a merged read.

• Initial bootstrap flood on /api/events/files. Resolved in practice: meta-fuse uses initialCursor: '0-0' to deliberately replay every entry on each restart and the StreamingStateBuilder handles the resulting burst (~2.5k property events on a 50-file library) without issue. meta-sort persists its cursor so only sees the flood once per fresh deploy. meta-stremio filters to "interesting fields" before triggering cache invalidation, so the burst is mostly no-ops.

• meta-dup SSE port. Still pending — meta-dup is in no active compose file. When revived, copy meta-fuse's pattern wholesale (SSEEventClient + MetaCoreApiClient). Tracked separately.

Non-goals

• Authentication between internal services. The hash-lock OIDC perimeter handles external clients; internal service-to-service trust is by network isolation (docker network for dev, equivalent isolation in prod deployments). Since v2.0.0 metadata writes carry their own authentication — the claim signature — so meta-core needs no per-writer tokens; transport-level service auth remains out of scope.
• Replacing the public HTTP API surface. This proposal exercises what already exists; the only new endpoints are the two SSE streams.
• Introducing new transport, broker, proxy, or sidecar. Everything builds on what's deployed today.
• Migrating meta-fuse / meta-stremio / meta-dup direct Redis reads via XSCAN/GET (separate from event-stream reads). Was a non-goal ended up being required for PR D's network closure to be safe. meta-fuse and meta-stremio migrated; meta-dup deferred (not deployed). See PR C / "Implementation outcome" for details.

Implementation outcome

What actually shipped vs. what this doc planned.

Delta against the original plan

• Read-path migration for meta-fuse and meta-stremio is now in scope and done. The original "out of scope" carve-out was wrong: closing the Redis network port doesn't just break stream consumers, it also breaks every kvClient.get / redis_storage.get_all_videos call. Both services grew their own MetaCoreApiClient (TS for meta-fuse, Python for meta-stremio) and now route reads through /meta/{hash}
  • /meta + /api/file/{cid}/info.
  • meta-stremio's HTTP mode auto-recovers from transient meta-core outages. is_connected re-probes meta-core's /health on every call (cheap; a stateless GET), so a metacore-app restart no longer latches the addon into a permanent disconnected state. The background reconnect thread is only needed for legacy Redis mode where the socket itself is sticky.
• Hard redisUrl guard is gated by ALLOW_LEGACY_REDIS_URL=1. All three consumer LeaderClients (TS x2 + Python) throw on seeing the field by default. Setting the env var downgrades to a warn — escape hatch for a deliberate temporary rollback to a meta-core that still publishes the field.
• Write-path CID resolution turned out to be a hard prerequisite for the lockdown to work in practice. Documented separately below.
• PR D ordering matched the doc (consumer migration first, then publisher stops emitting, then network closure). The meta-core docker-network alias and the 6380:6379 host port mapping are both removed; sibling services reach the HTTP/SSE/WebDAV surface via the canonical metacore-app hostname.
• meta-dup is the one service that didn't migrate. It's in no active compose file. The TS port is straightforward when needed: copy meta-fuse's pattern (SSEEventClient for streams, MetaCoreApiClient for reads).

Write-path CID resolution (storage.ResolveRoot)

History (v1.x). In v2.0.0 a claim names a cid, never a rid, and the hidden rid comes from cid_group (a cids/<other> vote links two groups; the older rid survives). The dual-root failure below cannot recur: there is no write that addresses a root.

Not in the original plan but load-bearing.

The problem. meta-sort's PATCH-via-HTTP migration (PR B) routed every write through /meta/{hash}. But {hash} is the midhash256 CID that meta-sort received via file:events, not the watcher's minted UUID. With no resolution step in the handler, every write went to file:<midhash>/* — a parallel root the watcher's UUID never saw. The auto-alias hook on cid_midhash256=<value> then OVERWROTE the watcher's cid:midhash256:<value> → UUID alias to point at the midhash itself, leaving the UUID stranded with only the watcher's sparse fields (filePath, sizeByte, mtimeNano, duplicates) and the midhash root carrying the rich plugin output. This is the exact "dual roots per file" failure the doc's Motivation section listed as the prior bug — it just moved from "convention violation" to "API contract violation."

The fix. Three layers in internal/storage/cid_resolution.go:

1. ResolveRoot(hash) — at the entry of every /meta/{hash} read/write handler, look up cid:<hash> in the reverse index (bare CID — no algorithm prefix). If found, use the UUID as the storage root. Falls through to the bare hash for direct-UUID writes / legacy entries.
2. Self-pointing alias guard in addAliasLocked — refuse to register cid:<v> → <v>. The dual-root bug's chicken-and- egg is: meta-sort writes first, registers self-pointing alias, watcher then can't recover. Refusing the self-write keeps the watcher's legitimate alias intact.
3. MigrateDualRoots sweep (POST /api/admin/migrate-dual-roots). One-shot fixer for already-stranded entries: walks every UUID's midhash256 field to build the orphan index, merges each stranded file:<midhash>/* into the matching UUID via MergeMetadataFlat, deletes the stranded root, and re-points the alias. Removed in 2026-10 with the SQLite switch, together with the other one-shot Redis migrations; it had been run on watch.nsl.sh before the migration.

Verified on the dev stack: 48 stranded entries were reunited; the editor now shows every file with its full plugin metadata under one UUID; future writes stay unified.

Typed error envelope

Done across all four handler packages (api, mounts, watcher, watchers). Each has its own writeError returning {error: <slug>, message, retryable}. The slug-mapping helper is duplicated in each to avoid an import cycle on the api package.

What's NOT done

• meta-dup SSE + read migration. Not deployed, no test harness. When revived, copy meta-fuse's pattern.
• Editor writes (resolved in v2.0.0). PUT /api/metadata/{hashId} answers 410. meta-sort-editor's manual edits go through meta-sort's backend, which signs them as meta-sort (its own key) and posts them to POST /api/claims. The editor's reads keep using /api/metadata/{hashId}.
• Consolidated internal/httperr package for the typed envelope helpers (currently duplicated 4× to avoid the import cycle). Code hygiene; functionally a no-op.

Verification done

• All four service dashboards load cleanly with no console errors.
• meta-sort SSE consumer + HTTP write path verified end-to-end by delete + inject + reprocess of Sintel.
• meta-fuse SSE consumer rebuilds VFS to 48 files on each boot.
• meta-stremio catalog API now surfaces the full library (47 videos, 1 movie + 5 series + 46 episodes — was 0/0/0 before the Python read-path migration because LeaderStorage broke when it tried Redis).
• redis-cli from any container other than metacore-app produces a connection refused; cid:midhash256:<H> aliases all point to UUIDs (no self-pointing); file:__index__ has only UUID-style hashIds.
• ALLOW_LEGACY_REDIS_URL=1 escape hatch present in all three consumer LeaderClients (TS x2 + Python).

Known test-suite gaps (post-implementation bats run)

Running docker exec meta-test-runner /app/test/test.sh after the lockdown shipped reveals a number of failing suites, almost all of which are pre-existing test/environment drift unrelated to this work:

Failure	Root cause	Relation to lockdown
meta-stremio (~35 tests), stremio-tmdb (6 tests)	Tests call /manifest.json directly; dev .env sets STREMIO_HASH_API_SEED=dev-stremio-secret which puts the addon behind a path-token prefix	Unrelated — pre-existing env mismatch
meta-fuse FUSE-mount (3 tests)	Tests use docker exec meta-fuse but the container is named metafuse-app (Yundera prod-parity rename)	Unrelated — predates this work
meta-fuse WebDAV PROPFIND (4 tests)	Tests use Caddy URL with WebDAV basic-auth credentials that no longer match the hash-lock perimeter	Unrelated — predates this work
meta-sort "API integration tests" (1 test)	Test runs docker exec meta-sort pnpm test; container is metasort-app	Unrelated — predates this work
meta-core "create and delete mount config" (1 test)	Test creates an NFS mount; production code dropped NFS support ("NFS mounts are no longer supported")	Unrelated — predates this work
service-discovery (9 tests)	Cascading from meta-stremio breakage (test expects unauth /api/services on stremio)	Unrelated to lockdown directly
meta-share / share-1c (multiple)	Tests assert "phase":"1f" in /health; meta-share has moved past that phase	Unrelated — meta-share evolution
flat-keys: "filePath field exists" (1 test)	Test SRANDMEMBERs file:index; if it lands on a UUID with no filePath (e.g. a manual test write) it fails	Was hit transiently after my interactive testing left stub entries; resolved by cleanup

No failure traceable to a real regression from this work was found. The dev-environment test harness needs an unrelated refresh to catch up with the prod-parity container renames, the NFS removal, the STREMIO_HASH_API_SEED default, and meta-share's current phase.