Critical alerts can no longer be silently dropped by a transient
notifier failure. Failed notification attempts now ride an exponential
backoff retry loop, with a 5-attempt budget before promotion to the
dead-letter queue for operator intervention.
Schema (migration 000016, idempotent):
- retry_count INTEGER NOT NULL DEFAULT 0
- next_retry_at TIMESTAMPTZ
- last_error TEXT
- idx_notification_events_retry_sweep partial index
(next_retry_at) WHERE status='failed' AND next_retry_at IS NOT NULL
Dead rows clear next_retry_at so the index stops matching them.
Service contract:
- NotificationService.RetryFailedNotifications drives 2^n-minute
exponential backoff capped at 1h (notifRetryBackoffCap) with
5-attempt budget (notifRetryMaxAttempts).
- Exhaustion (RetryCount >= notifRetryMaxAttempts-1) promotes to
status='dead' via MarkAsDead.
- Non-terminal failures record via RecordFailedAttempt.
- Success path promotes to 'sent' without touching retry_count
(audit preserves "delivered on attempt N").
- Missing-notifier branch defensively promotes to 'sent' to avoid
wedging a row on a deleted channel.
- RequeueNotification operator escape hatch atomically resets
retry_count -> 0, next_retry_at -> NULL, last_error -> NULL,
status -> pending via notifRepo.Requeue.
Scheduler:
- New always-on notificationRetryLoop wired into the base loop set at
CERTCTL_NOTIFICATION_RETRY_INTERVAL (default 2m).
- sync/atomic.Bool idempotency guard.
- sync.WaitGroup shutdown drain via WaitForCompletion.
StatsService:
- SetNotifRepo setter pattern preserves 9 pre-existing
NewStatsService call sites (main.go + stats_test.go + 8 digest
tests) without touching the constructor signature.
- DashboardSummary.NotificationsDead populated via
notifRepo.CountByStatus(ctx, "dead") — nil-safe when unwired
(reports zero on systems without a notification repository).
- CountByStatus error is non-fatal (dashboard summary is
best-effort for this field).
- Prometheus certctl_notification_dead_total counter emitted from
the same snapshot.
Handler:
- New POST /api/v1/notifications/{id}/requeue endpoint.
- dead status surfaces to MCP + CLI.
Frontend:
- NotificationsPage gains two-tab toolbar ("All" / "Dead letter")
with queryKey: ['notifications', activeTab] so switching tabs
doesn't serve stale data until the 30s refetch.
- Dead rows surface "Retry {n}/5" + truncated last_error with
full-text title tooltip.
- Requeue mutation wrapped as
mutationFn: (id: string) => requeueNotification(id)
to prevent react-query v5's positional context argument from
leaking into the API client — pinned against future refactors
by strict-match toHaveBeenCalledWith('notif-dead-001') in
NotificationsPage.test.tsx:181.
Closes I-005.
Runtime fixes:
- Fix env var mismatch (CERTCTL_DB_URL → CERTCTL_DATABASE_URL)
- Fix table name mismatches (certificates → managed_certificates, notifications → notification_events)
- Add renewal_policy_id to certificate queries
- Remove non-existent created_at from notification queries
- Add env var fallback for agent CLI flags
- Graceful degradation for missing notifiers/issuers in demo mode
- Copy web/ directory in Dockerfile for dashboard serving
Service layer:
- Implement handler-service interface pattern across all services
- Wire up certificate, agent, job, policy, team, owner, audit, notification services
Documentation:
- Add concepts.md: beginner-friendly guide to TLS, CAs, private keys
- Rewrite quickstart.md with accurate API examples matching actual handlers
- Add demo-advanced.md: interactive demo with cert issuance and automated script
- Update architecture.md with correct table names and connector interfaces
- Update connectors.md to match actual Go interface signatures
- Update demo-guide.md with cross-references to new docs
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>
shankar0123