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plans: five rose-ash subsystem plans + three loop briefings
Plans for acl-on-sx (Datalog), flow-on-sx (Scheme), feed-on-sx (APL),
mod-on-sx (Prolog), search-on-sx (Haskell). Each is a 4-phase queue
sitting on its respective guest language, targeting rose-ash needs:
access control, durable workflows, activity feeds, moderation, search.
Federation extension in Phase 4 of each (plugs into fed-sx).

Briefings for the three loops we're kicking off now: acl-loop,
flow-loop, feed-loop. mod-sx and search-sx briefings will follow
once the first three have surfaced any shared infrastructure
worth extracting to lib/guest/.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-06-06 15:55:39 +00:00

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# acl-on-sx: Access Control on Datalog
rose-ash needs fine-grained, explainable, federation-aware access control. Subjects
(users, groups, roles, services) × actions (read, edit, comment, moderate, federate)
× resources (pages, posts, threads, peers). Decisions must come with a trace — not just
permit/deny, but **why**.
Datalog's bottom-up rule engine produces transparent permit/deny chains: the proof tree
is the audit trail. Inheritance over groups + resource hierarchies is recursive Datalog
in one rule. Federation extends naturally — fed-sx replicates ACL facts, peers reason
over the union.
End-state: a Datalog-on-SX layer specifically for ACL, with explanation API, audit log,
and federation extension. Reuses `lib/datalog/` evaluator and term model where possible.
## Status (rolling)
`bash lib/acl/conformance.sh`**0/0** (not yet started)
## Ground rules
- **Scope:** only touch `lib/acl/**` and `plans/acl-on-sx.md`. Do **not** edit `spec/`,
`hosts/`, `shared/`, `lib/datalog/**`, or other `lib/<lang>/`. You may **import**
from `lib/datalog/` (its public API in `lib/datalog/datalog.sx`); do **not** copy or
modify Datalog code.
- **Shared-file issues** go under "Blockers" with a minimal repro; do not fix here.
- **SX files:** use `sx-tree` MCP tools only.
- **Architecture:** thin layer on top of `lib/datalog/`. Define schema, surface API,
audit + federation hooks. The rule engine itself is Datalog's.
- **Watch for shared patterns** going into `lib/guest/` — both acl-sx and mod-sx need
rule-engine plumbing. If you find shared shape, flag it for extraction (don't
extract yet — wait for mod-sx to start).
- **Commits:** one feature per commit. Keep Progress log updated and tick boxes.
## Architecture sketch
```
ACL declarations (SX) User query
│ │
▼ ▼
lib/acl/schema.sx lib/acl/api.sx
— subject sorts — (acl/permit? subj act res)
— resource sorts — (acl/explain subj act res)
— action sorts — (acl/audit subj act res :allowed?)
— fact schema │
│ ▼
▼ lib/acl/engine.sx
lib/acl/facts.sx — builds Datalog query
— actor(id, kind) — invokes lib/datalog/
— resource(id, kind) — extracts proof tree
— member_of(actor, group) │
— child_of(res, parent) ▼
— grant(actor, act, res) lib/acl/audit.sx
— deny (actor, act, res) — persistent decision log
— query API
```
## Phase 1 — Direct grants
- [ ] `lib/acl/schema.sx` — sorts: subject {user, group, role, service}, action,
resource {page, post, thread, peer}
- [ ] `lib/acl/facts.sx``actor`, `resource`, `grant`, `deny` predicates as Datalog
EDB
- [ ] `lib/acl/engine.sx``(permit? subj act res db)` reduces to Datalog query
- [ ] `lib/acl/api.sx` — public `(acl/permit? ...)` taking implicit current db
- [ ] `lib/acl/tests/direct.sx` — 15+ cases: direct grant, missing grant, explicit deny
- [ ] `lib/acl/scoreboard.{json,md}` baseline
- [ ] `lib/acl/conformance.sh` runs the suite
## Phase 2 — Inheritance
- [ ] `member_of(actor, group)` chain — group grants apply to members (transitive)
- [ ] `child_of(res, parent)` chain — parent grants apply to children (transitive)
- [ ] role expansion — role contains list of (action, resource) tuples
- [ ] deny-overrides — explicit deny wins over inherited allow
- [ ] `lib/acl/tests/inherit.sx` — 25+ cases: nested groups, deep resource trees,
conflict resolution, deny precedence
- [ ] document the deny-overrides choice in plan
## Phase 3 — Explanation + audit
- [ ] `(acl/explain subj act res)``{:allowed? T :proof <tree>}`
- [ ] proof tree extracts from Datalog's derivation
- [ ] `lib/acl/audit.sx` — append-only decision log (in-memory + serializer for disk)
- [ ] `(acl/audit-tail n)` for recent decisions
- [ ] `lib/acl/tests/explain.sx` — proof correctness, audit completeness
## Phase 4 — Federation
- [ ] peer trust facts — `peer(addr, kind)`, `trust(peer, level)`
- [ ] delegated grants — `delegate(peer, actor, action, resource)`
- [ ] cross-instance permit chain — query asks local + queries trusted peers via fed-sx
- [ ] revocation propagation — fact retraction across federation
- [ ] `lib/acl/tests/fed.sx` — federated grant chains (mock fed-sx transport in tests)
## Progress log
(loop fills this in)
## Blockers
(loop fills this in)