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GrandPlan/.claude/memory/packaging-signing-decisions.md
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wall 45f4dc733d Add CLAUDE.md, project memory notes, and token_count
CLAUDE.md points future sessions at .claude/memory/ for accumulated
project context (purpose, SA/MR topology, packaging/signing decisions,
open external dependencies) not fully captured elsewhere in the repo.
2026-07-28 14:27:05 +10:00

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# Packaging & Signing — Key Decisions
Full detail lives in
`docs/superpowers/specs/2026-07-28-flowfile-packaging-signing-design.md`.
These are the non-obvious calls worth remembering, several of which
reversed an earlier direction during design review:
- **No sidecar fronting ingestion.** A claim-check sidecar to bypass
NiFi's content repo for large payloads was considered and rejected —
all content must transit NiFi for routing/content-assurance controls.
The external service's role is post-NiFi only: assembly, stall
monitoring, cleanup, catalog DB maintenance.
- **No external signing service.** Vault Transit / a network-isolated
signer was considered and rejected in favor of in-process signing
(Bouncy Castle OpenPGP, key loaded via a Controller Service) to keep the
architecture self-contained within NiFi. This is a deliberate
non-repudiation trade-off, stated explicitly in the spec — key custody
now depends on host-level protection (sensitive-property encryption,
restricting which instances have the Controller Service) rather than
network isolation.
- **Clear-sign (OpenPGP), not a bespoke signature format.** Chosen
specifically because an operator on the far side of MR can verify an
artifact by hand with stock `gpg --verify` and a public key — no custom
SDK needed. Matters because MR already has a manual-operator recovery
model for missing chunks (adopted from the Phat Files design).
- **HMAC was considered and rejected** as the integrity mechanism — it
detects tampering but can't give non-repudiation, since every verifier
necessarily holds the same shared secret and could in principle have
forged the tag themselves.
- **Content + JSON trailer as one object, not two.** Chosen for
end-to-end loss protection: two separate objects (content, manifest)
have independent failure/lifecycle/replication paths that can diverge.
A single completed write can't end up in a split state.
- **S3 attribute handover defers to an existing, established handover
interface spec**, not this design's own invention — see
[[open-external-dependencies]].
- **S3-vs-XFS storage backend split by file size is unresolved** — open
question whether S3 can serve small files efficiently enough to drop
the XFS tier entirely.