ops-warden

SSH Certificate Authority and certificate lifecycle manager for the ops fleet. Signs short-lived certs for adm / agt / atm actors and exposes the cert_command interface consumed by ops-bridge and other tooling.

See INTENT.md for direction, SCOPE.md for current implementation, and wiki/AccessManagementDirective.md for SSH policy. ops-warden issues SSH certs and routes every other credential need to its owner — see wiki/AccessRouting.md. Latest gap analysis: history/2026-06-17-post-wp0007-reassessment.md.

Install

uv sync
uv tool install .

Or run without installing:

uv run warden --help

Quick start (local backend)

# One-time: generate a CA key (keep mode 600, never commit)
ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -f ~/.ssh/ops-ca-user -C "Ops SSH User CA" -N ""

# Configure warden (~/.config/warden/warden.yaml) — see wiki/OpsWardenConfig.md
warden inventory add agt-example --type agt --principal agt-example
warden sign agt-example --pubkey ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub
warden status agt-example
warden scorecard

Production uses the vault backend against OpenBao or HashiCorp Vault (Vault-compatible SSH secrets engine API). Template: examples/warden.production.example.yaml. See wiki/OpsWardenConfig.md and wiki/OpenBaoSshEngineChecklist.md.

Routing lookup (warden route)

ops-warden issues SSH certs and routes every other credential need to its owner. The route command group is a read-only lookup over the pointer catalog (registry/routing/catalog.yaml) — it never calls another subsystem or returns secrets.

warden route list [--all] [--json]                    # scenarios (active-only unless --all)
warden route list --stale [--stale-days 90] [--all]   # past review cadence
warden route show <id> [--json]                       # owner + wiki/canon pointers; SSH adds steps
warden route find "issue an api key"                  # rank scenarios by keyword overlap

Full role and examples: wiki/AccessRouting.md.

Development

uv sync
uv run pytest              # unit tests (integration excluded)
uv run pytest -m integration   # requires ssh-keygen in PATH
uv run ruff check .

Key paths

Path	Purpose
~/.config/warden/warden.yaml	Backend and CA/Vault settings
~/.config/warden/inventory.yaml	Actor → principals registry
~/.local/state/warden/	Signed certs, keys, signatures.log

Documentation

• INTENT.md — operational access steward mission (NetKingdom-aligned)
• wiki/CredentialRouting.md — which subsystem for each credential type
• wiki/NetKingdomSecurityMap.md — platform security component map
• wiki/ActorInventoryPatterns.md — standard adm/agt/atm actor patterns
• wiki/OpsWardenConfig.md — configuration reference
• wiki/CertCommandInterface.md — cert_command contract for callers
• wiki/InterHubBootstrapAccessLane.md — short-lived cert envelope for bootstrap tasks

Workplans

Active and proposed work lives in workplans/. Finished plans are archived under workplans/archived/.