Two had real security consequences:
The bootstrap rejection ran on npm dotenv's parser while process.loadEnvFile
applied the file with Node's own. Two independently maintained dialects meant
the check and the thing it guards could disagree: a name Node accepts but the
checker misses would reach process.env unchecked, and BASH_ENV there runs a
file of the project's choosing on every `bash -c` the bash tool issues. Parse
once with node:util's parseEnv — the same engine loadEnvFile uses — and assign
the entries already checked, which also drops the dotenv dependency.
llm-pi-ai still returned a literal profile.apiKey ahead of everything, and it
registers a settings namespace, so the defect removed from llm-deepseek
survived intact in its design twin. The field is gone from the profile schema,
the resolution path, and the tests.
The rest are consistency and documentation defects the review named:
- verify-config-source-ownership did not scan the Python runtime's bundled
cordis.yml, which still inlined apiKey and baseURL. Both are covered now, and
the line-anchored INLINE_DENY documents that it is a tripwire, not a parser.
- The deny list missed NODE_TLS_REJECT_UNAUTHORIZED, the askpass hooks, the
GIT_CONFIG_* redirections, and PYTHONHOME — all implied by its own stated
rule about what a variable does.
- Snapshot lookups folded case on Windows, where environment names are
case-insensitive and an exact-match Map could miss a higher-ranked layer.
- The credentials note claimed a read-time permission check was "not taken"
while this PR implemented it; the credentials-local README still described
two layers, live process.env reads, dotenv-era limitations, and a renamed
anchor; the llm-deepseek README still advertised the removed literal apiKey;
and web.ts and base.cordis.yml kept personal-overlay wording.
- The ownership note's literal-apiKey claim now names its scope: the
web-search providers keep a literal field but register no settings
namespace, so nothing can shadow a stored credential through them.
Master removed the TUI package, the `meta` and `upgrade` subcommands, and
`--config-replace`, and made raw `dsh` require a `--config` overlay. Resolved
onto that shape:
- Dropped this branch's TUI edits with the surface itself, including
`tui.cordis.yml`, `runTui`, and the TUI keyless PTY smoke.
- Dropped the `--config-replace` plumbing rather than reintroducing a flag
master deliberately removed. The gap this branch fixed remains: `dsh -p`
still could not name its composition, so it keeps `--config`.
- Kept this branch's deletion of the personal `$DSH_HOME/config.yaml` layer,
which master still carried, and provided the environment snapshot in the new
raw `runConfig` surface alongside web and headless.
- Ported the headless shutdown PTY test off the personal overlay onto a named
`--config` file, which is what proves that flag now exists on `-p`.
Review found five real defects in the configuration-source work, all confirmed
against the code rather than argued:
1. The note claimed --config outranks settings.yaml. It does not: the settings
seam registers a plugin's cordis entry config as the `base` layer and the
user section layers over it, and the seam cannot tell a shipped value from a
--config one. The note now states shipped reality and names --config-replace
as the lever for a deployment that must win. Separately, a literal `apiKey`
in settings outranked both the environment and .credentials.yaml — the field
is removed, so configuration carries a reference and nothing else.
2. DEEPSEEK_SEARCH_BASE_URL was functionally deleted: the shipped inline went
away without the provider learning to read it. It now resolves from the
environment snapshot, as the README always claimed.
3. The bootstrap deny list missed the interpreter start-up hooks. BASH_ENV is
the sharpest: `bash -c` sources it on every bash tool call, so a project
.env could run a file of its choosing before every command. The list now
covers BASH_ENV and its per-language siblings, the Git hook commands, and
the remaining preload and CA variables, organised by what a variable does
rather than which runtime owns it.
4. YAML parse errors quoted the offending source line — which in a credentials
document is the secret — into boot stderr and the watcher's logger. Only the
error code and position are reported now, in credentials-local and
settings-local alike, pinned by a test that asserts the secret is absent.
5. 0600 governed only files the harness wrote. A hand-created 0644 document was
read normally. POSIX now checks the mode before reading contents, at boot
and on every reload; Windows has no mode to inspect and is skipped rather
than faked.
The project a session is launched in is trusted by default, with no prompt and
no stored trust record: it may supply its own endpoint, ordinary variables, and
a key ranked below the managed store. Trust stops at the harness itself — a
discovered file still cannot set DSH_PERMISSION_MODE, PATH, BASH_ENV, or the
rest, because those take effect with no user action, before any turn, outside
the permission policy and the sandbox.
$DSH_HOME/.env had just become an ordinary environment layer, which left the
harness resolving user-facing values from a flattened process.env that could
no longer say where a value came from. A key stored through the web page
stayed shadowed by an older key in the user's own .env. An endpoint could be
redirected by the project: the invoking directory's .env is materialized like
every other layer, and a base URL decides where a resolved API key is sent, so
a DEEPSEEK_BASE_URL written into a model-editable workspace would send the
user's credential — and the prompts carrying their code — to whatever host
that file named.
Give every user-facing value one ordering, with four kinds of source:
explicit for this run per-operation override, CLI argument
> authored by deployment --config / --config-replace
> this launch's shell inherited process environment
> product-managed store settings.yaml, .credentials.yaml
> discovered file $DSH_HOME/.env
> defaults schema default, shipped base, public default
The domains differ only in which tiers exist. The earlier split — credentials
ranking the environment over the managed file while settings ranked over the
environment — was inconsistent: the distinguishing fact is who authored the
source, not the domain.
packages/util/environment owns an immutable snapshot with per-layer
provenance. getFrom(name, sources) searches only the layers a caller names,
and omitting one is a refusal rather than a demotion: the adapters ask for
['process', 'user-env'], so no reordering can let a project file back into a
decision it was excluded from.
isBootstrapOnly rejects, before anything is materialized, any .env setting a
variable that governs how a process launches (PATH, SHELL, NODE_OPTIONS,
LD_PRELOAD), where code or model-visible instructions load from (the whole
DSH_* namespace, HOME, XDG_*), or how the network is reached (proxy and CA
variables). The namespace is denied wholesale so a switch added later cannot
become settable by being forgotten, and there is no opt-out.
verify-config-source-ownership keeps both rules: no unregistered process.env
read under packages/*/*/src (26 allowlisted with reasons), and no apiKey,
baseURL, or headers inlined from the environment in shipped Cordis config —
removing those inlines is what makes the deployment tier meaningful.
$DSH_HOME/config.yaml was an implicit composition layer: if the file existed,
every launch applied an arbitrary Loader patch graph over the shipped tree,
kept live by a dedicated HMR watcher. Three costs came from the implicitness,
not the capability. A patch replaces its target row's whole config, so a file
written months ago pins that row to the field set it knew and every default
the shipped tree later adds silently stops applying. It competed with the
typed settings namespaces llm-deepseek and llm-pi-ai already register, so
which one wins was a function of layer order rather than meaning. And the
explicit escape hatch it was supposedly redundant with did not exist on every
surface: dsh -p, dsh meta, and dsh upgrade all rejected --config, so for them
the implicit file was the only composition route at all.
Complete the explicit layer first: --config and --config-replace now work on
every booting surface. A headless --config-replace tree must still mount a
webserver row, because that surface reaches its own agent over the same HTTP
gateway the browser uses; AppCLIEntry names that contract in the failure
instead of reporting a bare missing service.
Then delete the implicit one. PERSONAL_CONFIG_FILENAME, loadPersonalPatches,
watchPersonalPatches, and the config-only HMR row mounted for it are gone; a
file left at that path is inert, and --dump-config no longer reads the Harness
home. --config therefore stops *replacing* the personal overlay and simply
*is* the user overlay.
No migration: a user who wants the old behavior names the same file
(dsh --config ~/.dsh/config.yaml), which a shell alias makes permanent.
A catalog entry may now carry its own `maxTokens`, matching the shape the
pi-ai adapter already exposes. Exact-model resolution prefers it over the
profile value, so capping one model no longer means capping the route.
Defaults are unchanged: an entry without a cap, and any unlisted
pass-through id, still resolve to the profile `maxTokens` (256,000), and the
shipped catalog keeps its context windows.
$DSH_HOME/.env carried two incompatible jobs. As credentials-local's writable
secret store it could not be hoisted into process.env — hoisting makes every
stored key read as a read-only launch override and blocks rotation from the
TUI and the web page. But its name and dotenv format promise an environment
file, so a DEEPSEEK_BASE_URL sitting beside a working DEEPSEEK_API_KEY in the
same file was silently ignored: only the credential provider read the
document, and it addresses credential references alone.
Split the two jobs into two files.
.credentials.yaml is the provider-managed store: a strict YAML mapping of
CredentialRef to non-empty string, no version field, no wrapper level. Because
it holds credentials and nothing else, a non-mapping root, a non-identifier
key, a non-string value, an empty string, a duplicate key, and malformed YAML
are all rejections rather than skipped entries — loud at boot and at a write,
warn-and-keep-last-good on a live reload. The dotenv physical-line editor
gives way to a patch of the parsed document, so comments and untouched entries
keep their formatting and any string value round-trips, multi-line included.
Writer lock, read-modify-write, atomic 0600 write under a 0700 directory,
watcher, self-write suppression, and quiescent disposal are unchanged.
$DSH_HOME/.env becomes the user's ordinary environment layer. app-boot's new
loadLayeredEnv loads the invoking directory's .env then the Harness home's,
giving user < project < inherited; the home resolves from the inherited
environment first, so a project .env cannot redirect it.
Credential precedence is unchanged: the live environment still wins read-only
over the file, and shadowed writes still reject. Whether a provider-managed
store should instead win over the environment is a separate decision.
No migration: a key already in $DSH_HOME/.env keeps resolving through the new
environment layer, as a read-only env source that shadows the stored one.
`./.dsh-tmp-profile/config.json` was the web config-tree boot's user-config
plane, but never gained a writer: no production code created or edited it, no
test exercised it, and no user documentation named it. The fields it mapped
have owners elsewhere — provider/model are the api-gateway's default route and
persistenceRoot is an assembly fact, while typed user preferences live in
$DSH_HOME/settings.yaml.
Delete PROFILE_DIR, PROFILE_FILE, ProfileMapping, PROFILE_MAPPINGS, and
readProfile() with the patch source that consumed them. AppCLIEntry now
composes patches from CLI flags and the resolved frontend distIndex only; the
surrounding layers are unchanged. A file on disk is ignored completely — no
migration, replacement format, or deprecation diagnostic, per the pre-release
stance.
Resuming a long session (196k events, 2.2k steps, 1.8k tool cards) took
~12s to render and ~800ms to echo one keystroke:
- Every step's timing footer called stepTimingAt, which replayed the whole
event log per footer - O(steps x events) on the initial render.
- pi-tui re-renders every component each frame and relies on per-component
line caches, but ToolCardComponent/ContextCardComponent built throwaway
Text/Markdown instances inside render(width), re-wrapping every settled
card's output on every keystroke.
Replace the per-footer replay with one shared StepTimingTracker per chat
mount (single O(events) cursor over the append-only log), and cache card
rows by width via CardLineCache, dropped by every state mutator and
invalidate().
Measured (tmux 200x50, 196k-event session): resume prompt-ready ~12s -> ~7.6s;
per-keystroke echo ~800ms median -> ~11ms.
Yichen Jiang
Turtle
imccyu
Wenlu Wang
imccyu
xjt
Huanqi Cao
Hypatia May
fz