Celln tool permission preview

Historical record

This page records a Celln development milestone (September 2026). Interfaces and limits it describes may since have changed or been replaced by the Celln fleet. For current behaviour see Celln Backend and Celln Fleet Installation.

The run dialog displays the current intersection of the tool declaration and the operator, runtime and Agent grant layers. It preserves ordered explicit lending, supports the one-run runtime override, and shows the shared cell memory ceiling after tool limits are applied. No selected tools means none lent.

This is not readiness or execution authorization. It does not resolve model authority, validate host artifacts, prewarm, reserve capacity, issue a grant or submit a run. All execution-time checks still run. The observation refreshes every ten seconds while the panel is mounted; errors hide prior permissions. The preview is not a Kubernetes transaction or a lease.

Administrator configuration

Set CELLN_PERMISSION_PREVIEW_CONFIG on the API server to an absolute path to an operator-owned JSON file with this structure (example names only):

{
  "apiVersion": "sympozium.ai/celln-permission-preview-v1",
  "bindings": [{
    "agent": {"namespace": "tenant", "name": "agent"},
    "operatorSource": {"namespace": "authority", "name": "operator-grants"},
    "runtimeSource": {"namespace": "authority", "name": "runtime-grants"},
    "agentSource": {"namespace": "authority", "name": "agent-grants"}
  }]
}

Use the same trusted grant locations as the catalogue controller. The preview configuration intentionally contains no issuer/router credential or host path. The API server uses its uncached Kubernetes reader. Grant ConfigMaps must deny tenant writes; naming or labelling a ConfigMap cannot establish ownership. Provide narrowly scoped read access to these sources using deployment RBAC. Do not grant approval writes to enable preview. With Helm, set celln.permissionPreviewConfigMap to an existing operator-owned ConfigMap in the API-server namespace containing the config.json key. The chart mounts only that key read-only and sets the environment variable. It neither creates the ConfigMap nor shares the controller's issuer/router credential Secret. The default is disabled; configuring preview does not enable Celln execution. For non-Helm deployments, mount the file and set the variable explicitly. Restart the API server to change its source bindings. Grant document changes are observed on subsequent requests without restart.

Malformed startup configuration refuses startup. An absent Agent binding gives 503; unresolved, withdrawn or stale permissions give 422, without exposing privileged source names or document contents. The UI still allows requesting a run when preview is unavailable: the independent controller/issuer must approve it, and preview availability must never become an alternate admission bypass.

HTTP and YAML

POST /api/v1/celln-selection/preview?namespace=tenant accepts only:

{"agentRef":"agent","cellnSelection":{"toolRefs":[{"name":"uppercase","revision":"v1"}]}}

Optional cellnSelection.runtimeRef is a same-namespace override. An explicit empty toolRefs: [] lends nothing. Omitted lists, duplicate names, oversized requests and caller-supplied authority locations refuse. Successful responses have Cache-Control: no-store, effective limits and frozen subject identities, executionAuthorized: false, and readiness: "not-established".

YAML AgentRuns retain the same spec.cellnSelection fields. A YAML author can preview those fields with this read-only HTTP operation, but cannot attach a preview result as an authority token. The operation creates no Kubernetes object.