flex-auth/SCOPE.md

flex-auth Scope

One-liner

flex-auth is a policy-as-code authorization registry and control plane for NetKingdom-aligned systems.

Core Idea

flex-auth turns verified identity claims, resource manifests, relationship facts, policy packages, and request context into inspectable authorization decisions. It is intentionally separate from identity providers and from the applications that enforce decisions.

The product should start as a useful standalone local authorization system, then grow into delegated mode where Topaz, OpenFGA, SpiceDB, OPA, Cedar, Keycloak Authorization Services, Entra, Graph, SCIM, LDAP, and similar systems can be coordinated behind a stable flex-auth API.

In Scope

• Protected-system registration.
• Resource namespaces, resource hierarchy, and action vocabularies.
• Subject, group, team, tenant, role, and service-account records needed for authorization.
• Relationship facts and inherited access.
• Versioned policy packages with metadata, fixtures, validation, tests, and activation state.
• Deterministic check, batch-check, list-allowed, explain, and decision-record capabilities.
• Local decision logs with policy version and provenance.
• CLI and service entry points for local development and integration tests.
• Markitect as the first concrete protected-system consumer.
• Delegated PDP and directory adapter boundaries after the standalone core is stable.

Out of Scope

• Acting as an identity provider.
• Replacing key-cape, NetKingdom SSO, Keycloak, Entra, or other identity systems.
• Owning login, MFA, PKCE, token issuance, token lifecycle, or canonical identity profile behavior.
• Embedding protected-system enforcement logic inside flex-auth.
• Making Markitect-specific assumptions part of the generic authorization model.
• Forcing a single PDP backend or directory provider.
• Hiding policy behavior behind opaque administrative toggles.

Relevant When

• A protected system needs resource-specific authorization decisions.
• A team needs policy-as-code packages that can be reviewed, tested, versioned, and explained.
• Authorization must combine identity claims, groups, roles, tenants, relationships, context, and resource metadata.
• A local development workflow needs deterministic authorization behavior before enterprise PDP integrations exist.
• Markitect resources need central authorization decisions and durable audit records.
• A delegated backend needs to be introduced without changing the protected-system-facing API.

Not Relevant When

• The task is only about authentication, login, token issuance, or MFA.
• The desired outcome can be handled by coarse identity-provider roles alone.
• The protected system only needs local development labels and no central policy administration.
• A team is choosing identity-provider configuration rather than resource-specific authorization.

Current State

The repository contains the intent baseline, authorization landscape research, initial workplans, and the pre-implementation assessment and ADR set produced on 2026-05-15. FLEX-WP-0001 is complete. Implementation now proceeds through FLEX-WP-0005 Foundations and Topaz Alignment — which lands the Go skeleton, pins the FlexAuthResourceManifest schema, runs the Topaz mapping spike, and records ADR-001/002/003 — before the standalone policy-as-code core in FLEX-WP-0002. Markitect consumer integration and delegated PDP/directory adapters are planned after the core contracts stabilize.

State Hub integration is present through:

• .custodian-brief.md
• state_hub_workstream_id fields in workplans
• state_hub_task_id fields in task blocks
• active State Hub dispatch for the flex-auth repo

How It Fits

flex-auth sits between identity and protected systems:

key-cape / NetKingdom SSO
  -> verified identity claims
  -> flex-auth authorization registry and policy decisions
  -> protected systems such as Markitect

Identity systems establish who the caller is and provide coarse claims. flex-auth decides what that caller can do to a specific resource under a specific context. Protected systems enforce the decision and keep their own local diagnostics.

Terminology

• Subject: Human, service account, group, team, tenant, role, or emergency principal.
• Resource: Protected object registered by a system.
• Namespace: Resource type and ownership boundary.
• Action: Operation requested against a resource.
• Context: Request, environment, assurance, workflow, or runtime attributes.
• Policy package: Versioned policy-as-code bundle with metadata and tests.
• Relationship fact: Subject-resource or resource-resource relation.
• Decision: Allow, deny, redact, audit-only, or not-applicable outcome with reason and provenance.
• PDP: Policy decision point, either flex-auth standalone logic or a delegated backend.
• PEP: Policy enforcement point in the protected system.

Related / Overlapping

• key-cape / NetKingdom SSO: identity source and coarse claims provider; flex-auth consumes the NetKingdom IAM Profile (~/net-kingdom/canon/standards/iam-profile_v0.2.md).
• Markitect: first protected-system consumer and policy enforcement point.
• Topaz: aligned evaluator. Per ADR-003 the standalone core is shaped to match Topaz's Rego + directory model from day one; the Topaz adapter in FLEX-WP-0004 is therefore a small step rather than a conversion.
• OpenFGA and SpiceDB: candidate relationship authorization backends.
• OPA and Cedar: candidate rule and typed-policy engines.
• Keycloak Authorization Services: adapter path for Keycloak-centric deployments. Default architecture is "Keycloak as SSO only, flex-auth owns authorization"; Keycloak AuthZ is one optional delegated PDP.
• Entra, Graph, SCIM, LDAP, and Keycloak APIs: directory and group resolver sources.

Disjoint From

• ops-warden signs short-lived SSH certificates for ops actors (adm/agt/atm). That is a separate identity surface — SSH certs, not OIDC subjects — and ops-warden disclaims being a resource-policy engine. flex-auth and ops-warden therefore do not overlap. (A future flow could surface an agt actor as a flex-auth subject; nothing in the current design requires it.)
• ops-bridge owns SSH reverse-tunnel connectivity and explicitly disclaims being a credential authority or policy engine. No overlap.

Provided Capabilities

type: orientation
title: Agent orientation
status: current
description: Repo intent, boundaries, research, workplan map, and State Hub agent brief are available for new coding agents.

type: workplan
title: Standalone policy core plan
status: planned
description: Workplan for schemas, local registry, policy packages, check APIs, list/explain, decision log, CLI/service skeleton, tests, and examples.

type: workplan
title: Markitect consumer integration plan
status: planned
description: Workplan for Markitect resource namespace, manifest import, action vocabulary, check fixtures, contract tests, and integration flow.

type: workplan
title: Delegated adapter plan
status: planned
description: Workplan for Topaz evaluation, relationship PDP adapters, rule PDP adapters, Keycloak AuthZ path, directory resolvers, and operations docs.