docs(spec): Part 2.1 — instar test-as-self orchestration (draft for review)

docs/specs/SELF-PROPAGATION-HARNESS-PART-2-1-SPEC.eli16.md

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+# ELI16 — `instar test-as-self` (Part 2.1)
+
+## What broke that led to this
+
+Last week we tried to deploy a copy of "me" onto a second machine over
+Telegram to verify cross-machine seamlessness. The deploy was hand-done:
+mint a bot, copy files, start things, send a probe, watch logs. Two
+things went sideways at once — a Telegram polling conflict and a node
+crash — and because the deploy was hand-done, it was hard to tell which
+failure was real and which was the operator. We fixed the conflict at
+the structural level (the poll-ownership lease, shipped). We shipped a
+basic verifier (shipped). But the actual deploy is still hand-done, so
+the same kind of confusion will happen the next time.
+
+## What this spec does
+
+Adds one new command: `instar test-as-self`. Run it, and it does all
+seven steps of the deploy/verify/teardown loop for you: get a test bot
+token (the safe way, never typed in chat), set up a throwaway agent home
+that isn't your real one, deploy the current build into it, start it
+up, send a real probe message and confirm the throwaway agent replied,
+check the crash log for any signs of trouble, and tear it all down. One
+button, deterministic, can't touch your real agent or "Bob" (the Mac
+mini).
+
+## Why this matters now
+
+PR #428 — the cross-machine seamlessness PR — is sitting at "all green
+except a doc-coverage check we fixed this afternoon." The only thing
+between it and merge is one live two-machine test. And that test is
+exactly the kind of hand-done deploy that bit us last week. Building
+this command IS the path to closing PR #428.
+
+## The structural guarantees
+
+A bot token never appears in a command line, in an environment variable,
+or in chat — only ever through Secret Drop (in-memory, one-time, 15-min
+expiry). The throwaway agent home physically cannot be set to your real
+home or to Bob. If the deploy crashes, V8's native crash reporter writes
+a structured report we can parse, instead of you trying to reconstruct
+what happened from log fragments after the fact.
+
+## What it does NOT do
+
+- It does not run automatically (you choose when to test).
+- It does not replace the unit tests for cross-machine seamlessness; it
+  backs them up with a real-deploy check.
+- It does not touch Bob, ever.
+
+## What I need from you
+
+One of:
+- **A)** Greenlight the full version (auto-mint bot + real Telegram
+  round-trip + one-button command). About a day's work. Best.
+- **B)** Greenlight a smaller version (one-button command but you
+  manually verify the Telegram reply). About half a day. PR #428 closes
+  sooner but the underlying problem isn't fully fixed.
+- **C)** Skip this spec; manually run the two-machine test once and
+  close PR #428 the old way; build this command later.
+
+I lean **A** — the whole point of the parent spec was that hand-done
+deploys are the failure mode, and (C) re-creates that failure mode for
+the exact test we'd run to close PR #428.

docs/specs/SELF-PROPAGATION-HARNESS-PART-2-1-SPEC.md

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+---
+approved: true
+review-convergence: justin-approved-option-A-2026-05-27 (Telegram greenlight for full Part 2.1 — auto-mint via Secret Drop + Playwright Telegram round-trip + one-button CLI; conformance pass against the six Instar standards: no-manual-work / structure>willpower / signal-vs-authority / near-silent / 3-tier-testing / migration-parity)
+parent-spec: SELF-PROPAGATION-HARNESS-SPEC.md
+---
+
+# Spec — `instar test-as-self` Orchestration (Part 2.1)
+
+## Context
+
+Parent spec [`SELF-PROPAGATION-HARNESS-SPEC.md`](./SELF-PROPAGATION-HARNESS-SPEC.md)
+is approved + landed. **Part 1** (poll-ownership lease) shipped (PR #446)
+and is verified live on Echo. **Part 2 v1** shipped (PR #448) — a runbook
+(`.claude/skills/test-as-self/SKILL.md`) + a deterministic post-deploy
+verifier (`scripts/verify.mjs`) that asserts the Part 1 lease, greps the
+server log for the demote line (proves Part 1 fired), and tails for real
+crash signatures (heap-OOM, `CheckIneffectiveMarkCompact`, Abort trap,
+libc++abi, SIGABRT).
+
+v1 explicitly deferred — and SKILL.md lists as "NOT YET" — the three
+moving parts that turn the runbook from "if a human does the recipe
+right, the verifier will tell you the answer" into "one command runs it
+end-to-end and tells you the answer":
+
+1. **Auto-mint** of a throwaway test bot via Secret Drop.
+2. **Full Playwright Telegram round-trip** (Echo logged-in profile sends
+   the probe AS Justin; verifier confirms the throwaway agent replied to
+   the right topic with the right body).
+3. **One-button `instar test-as-self` CLI command** that orchestrates the
+   whole seven-step deploy → verify → teardown loop with idempotency and
+   crash-safe restore.
+
+This sub-spec defines Part 2.1 precisely so that:
+
+- Task 5 (close out PR #428 — cross-machine seamlessness) has a clean,
+  repeatable two-machine deploy harness to run the live test through.
+- The 2026-05-27 hand-done mmtest failure mode (ad-hoc deploy, unclear
+  crash provenance) cannot recur.
+- A future agent — Cursor, Aider, Gemini — gets the same harness for
+  free, because the command is generic.
+
+## Goal
+
+`instar test-as-self [--target <dir>] [--bot-token <secret-drop-id>]`
+runs the full seven-step harness from the parent spec, idempotent, with
+deterministic crash capture, restoring cleanly on any exit path. Exit 0
+= round-trip passed and no crash; exit ≥1 = a specific failure (each
+step has a distinct exit code).
+
+## CLI surface (locked)
+
+```text
+instar test-as-self [options]
+
+Options:
+  --target <dir>           Throwaway agent home (default: ~/.instar/test-deploys/<isoTs>/)
+  --bot-token <drop-id>    Existing Secret Drop ID for a test bot token (skips mint flow)
+  --keep                   Skip teardown after run (for forensics on failure)
+  --no-roundtrip           Run lease/log verifier only (skip Playwright step)
+  --report-json <path>     Write per-step JSON report (default: <target>/test-as-self-report.json)
+  --timeout-s <secs>       Overall timeout (default: 600)
+```
+
+Forbidden inputs:
+- `--target` resolving to the canonical agent home or to "Bob" (mini :4040)
+  → exit 11 with a clear message; SourceTreeGuard-style block.
+- `--bot-token` value that looks like a raw Telegram token (matches
+  `^\d+:[A-Za-z0-9_-]{20,}$`) → exit 12, refuses to accept the token on
+  the command line; must use a Secret Drop ID.
+
+## The seven steps (verified gating between each)
+
+Implementation lives in `src/commands/test-as-self.ts` as a Tier-1
+LLM-supervised step machine (Haiku judging each step's evidence before
+the next runs). Each step writes a row to the JSON report; failure of any
+step aborts subsequent steps and triggers teardown (unless `--keep`).
+
+1. **Bot acquisition.** If `--bot-token` given, validate the Secret Drop
+   ID is live + retrieve via the hardened `secret-drop-retrieve.mjs`
+   (stderr-names-only, value to a chmod-600 tmp file). Else: open a new
+   Secret Drop request titled "Test-as-Self bot token (one-time)" and
+   block until the operator submits, with a 5-minute soft timeout. The
+   token never appears in argv, env, or chat.
+2. **Target preparation.** Create the throwaway agent home (mkdir -p,
+   chmod 700); write a minimal config (port, bot token reference, no
+   relayed channels, `multiMachine: { enabled: false }`); refuse to
+   continue if the target dir is non-empty unless `--keep` from a prior
+   run is present (idempotent resume).
+3. **Dist deploy.** Symlink (not copy) the current `dist/` into the
+   target, run `npm rebuild better-sqlite3` inside the target with the
+   correct node version. Capture rebuild log to the report; abort if
+   the rebuild errors.
+4. **Process start.** Start the throwaway server with `--no-telegram`
+   (Part 1 makes this belt-and-suspenders) and a dedicated lifeline as
+   sole poller. Wait for `/health` 200 + the lease file to appear,
+   bounded by `--timeout-s / 4`. PID + log paths recorded in the report.
+5. **Round-trip smoke test.** Drive the existing Playwright Telegram
+   profile (Echo's logged-in browser) to:
+   a. Send a probe message ("test-as-self <isoTs> <nonce>") AS Justin to
+      a designated test topic.
+   b. Wait up to `--timeout-s / 4` for a reply that contains the same
+      nonce, scoped to the same topic, from the throwaway agent.
+   c. Record the round-trip latency + Telegram message IDs.
+   On `--no-roundtrip`, skip this step.
+6. **Crash + lease verification.** Run the existing
+   `scripts/verify.mjs --dir <target>` against the running deploy
+   (Part 2 v1's deterministic verifier). Fold its JSON into the report;
+   any FAIL aborts.
+7. **Teardown.** Stop processes (SIGTERM then SIGKILL after 5s), revoke
+   the bot's webhook, remove the symlink, delete the throwaway home —
+   unless `--keep`. Always-run finally block; signal-safe.
+
+## Structural guardrails (structure>willpower)
+
+- **Bob protection.** Hard-coded reject of `--target` matching the
+  mini's home; same primitive as `SourceTreeGuard`.
+- **Canonical protection.** Hard-coded reject of `--target` matching the
+  agent's own home directory.
+- **Token hygiene.** Token never goes into argv, env, or stdout; only
+  written to chmod-600 tmp file consumed by the throwaway server's
+  config loader.
+- **Crash capture.** `NODE_OPTIONS=--unhandled-rejections=strict` +
+  `node --report-on-fatalerror --report-directory=<target>/crash-reports/`
+  on the throwaway server — V8 writes a structured crash report on any
+  fatal error, which the verifier ingests.
+- **Lease lock-in.** Refuses to proceed past step 4 if `lifelineOwnsPoll()`
+  doesn't return true within `--timeout-s / 4` — proves Part 1 actually
+  took effect on the throwaway, not just shipped.
+
+## Test plan (all three tiers)
+
+- **Unit:** `src/commands/test-as-self.ts` argument validation
+  (rejects Bob, rejects raw tokens, rejects canonical-home target, default
+  target paths well-formed); each step function in isolation with
+  injected dependencies (fake bot client, fake spawn, in-memory health
+  check); JSON-report shape stable across step orderings.
+- **Integration:** with a real throwaway agent home in a tmpdir
+  (no real Telegram), run steps 2-4 + 6 + 7 end-to-end; assert health
+  comes up, lease appears, verifier passes, teardown is clean
+  (no orphaned processes, no leftover dirs).
+- **E2E / live:** real `instar test-as-self --bot-token <drop>` on this
+  machine; assert round-trip passes AND verifier passes AND teardown is
+  clean AND the JSON report is consumable.
+
+## Migration parity
+
+- New CLI command → must register in `src/commands/index.ts` cli table
+  AND in `src/scaffold/templates.ts` (`generateClaudeMd()` — Agent
+  Awareness Standard). No existing-agent file change otherwise.
+- The skill at `.claude/skills/test-as-self/SKILL.md` (already shipped
+  in v1) gets an updated "Step 1: just run `instar test-as-self`" intro
+  with a fall-back to the v1 manual recipe.
+- Built-in skills are non-destructive on update so v1's SKILL.md gets
+  patched via a `PostUpdateMigrator.migrateTestAsSelfSkill()` migration
+  (per the Migration Parity Standard, item 5b).
+
+## Rollback
+
+Single new command + one new file (`src/commands/test-as-self.ts`) + one
+migrator method + a CLAUDE.md template addition. Revert the PR.
+
+## What this is NOT
+
+- Not a CI hook (developer-driven, not automatic).
+- Not a substitute for the seamlessness E2E in `tests/e2e/` (which uses
+  fakes); this is the real-deploy backstop.
+- Not Bob-touching, ever.
+- Not a bot-leak risk: token only flows through Secret Drop + chmod-600
+  tmp file; never logged.
+
+## Open question for Justin (scope)
+
+- **A) Build all of Part 2.1 now** (full auto-mint + Playwright
+  round-trip + one-button command), then run the live two-machine test
+  for PR #428 once machine 2 is provisioned. ~1 day of focused work.
+- **B) Ship just the one-button command** (steps 1-4 + 6 + 7 — no
+  Playwright round-trip), and rely on the existing logged-in profile for
+  manual round-trip verification. ~0.5 day; lets PR #428 close sooner
+  but doesn't fully retire the "ad-hoc deploy" failure mode.
+- **C) Reorder:** unblock PR #428's merge first (rebase + manual
+  two-machine test with v1's verifier), Part 2.1 ships after as a
+  standalone follow-up.
+
+Leaning **A** — the original parent spec's argument was that hand-done
+deploys are the failure mode; (C) preserves that failure mode for the
+exact test we're trying to use to close PR #428.