The docblock argued for one definition by describing a control plane
showing "2 of 3 seats used" next to an application refusing the fourth,
and the two disagreeing. That was written as a thing to avoid. As of
today it is a screen: the hosted fleet console reads these numbers per
tenant out of projectsend:status --json.
Which makes two rules here load-bearing somewhere nobody editing this
file would think to look -- a deactivated staff account still holds a
seat, a client awaiting approval does not. Changing either changes what
a support person is told before it changes what a customer hits, and
the note is here so that is a decision rather than a surprise.
On a managed installation with its staff seats full, /users/create opened
as though there were room. You typed a name, an address and a password
you had to invent, pressed Save, and the plan limit came back as a
validation error under the email field -- which reads as a complaint
about the address rather than a fact about the plan.
A full installation is an ordinary state on a plan sold by the seat, so
it is now stated up front. The list carries the seat position, the
button goes dead once the last seat is taken and says why, and the
create screen turns away anyone who reaches it by link or bookmark. The
guard in store() is untouched: that is still the rule, this is only the
door.
The refusal is worded once, in SeatAllowance, and the screen is handed
that sentence rather than writing its own -- two wordings of one limit
is how somebody ends up believing there are two limits. `full` is
derived there too, from the same comparison the guard refuses on, so a
screen cannot disagree with it about the edge (used > limit, after an
operator lowers a limit) and offer a button for a form that cannot be
submitted.
Clients get the same treatment: the cap exists there too, and reached it
the same way. Self-hosted installations have no limit, so they are shown
nothing about one.
It read "limited to 1 staff accounts" -- the number sat directly in front
of a countable noun, which is the message a free-tier customer meets the
first time they try to add anybody.
Adding plural forms would fix English and not much else. Polish, Czech and
Russian inflect the noun by the number in front of it, on a three-way split
that a two-form string cannot express, so ':count kont' cannot be right for
every value however many variants it carries. Ending the sentence on the
number means no language has to agree with it -- the same shape the other
counted strings here already use.
Both strings rewritten in all sixteen locales rather than left to the next
translation pass, since the old key would otherwise go missing and block a
build. Checked at 1 and at 25 in English, Spanish, German, Polish and
Russian.
Opening user management on cloud (623ad68) left a managed tenant able to
create staff accounts without limit. This is the other half, and the two
belong in the same release.
max_clients and max_staff_users are numbers the platform sells and does
not enforce — grep finds them only being passed to screens. The
application is the only process that can count against them, so it
accepts the number from the environment and refuses to exceed it. That is
not the same as inventing a plan tier, which is what config/api.php
declines to do when it will not key a rate limit off billing: nothing
here knows what a plan is.
## One definition
staffUsed() and clientUsed() are public and are what the guards read. A
control plane showing "2 of 3 used" from its own query, beside an
application refusing the fourth from a different one, disagrees
eventually — over an inactive account, or a deleted one — and the
disagreement reads as a billing fault rather than a counting one.
## What counts, and the consequences somebody has to explain
An inactive staff account occupies its seat. Excluding it would make
deactivation a way around the cap rather than a way to revoke access,
since reactivating is one click. The cost is an awkward incentive —
deactivating is the safe removal and keeps paying, deleting frees the
seat and asks what happens to the files — and it is better explained than
hidden.
A client awaiting approval does not. Self-registration is open to
strangers, and counting a pending request would let anybody exhaust a
paid limit from the outside, turning a pricing tier into an availability
control. The seat is spent at approval, which is where the guard sits.
A soft-deleted account frees its seat, though not its address —
AvailableEmailRule holds that until erasure. So a seat can be free while
re-adding the same person is still refused, which is the address rule
rather than this one.
## Eight doors, eight tests
There is no single User::create() to guard. StaffAccounts::create()
covers both staff controllers, but a promotion takes a staff seat without
creating anything, a demotion takes a client seat, ClientProvisioning
serves registration and LDAP and social sign-in alike, and approval turns
an uncounted request into a counted client.
A cap is only a cap if every door asks, so there is a test per door and
each was verified to fail without its guard — eight red, with the two
"must not change" cases green either way. DownloadAllowance's shape for
DownloadAllowance's reason: the failure mode is one of them quietly not
asking, invisible from everywhere except the door that forgot.
projectsend:admin is deliberately uncapped and has a test saying so. It
is the recovery path, and anyone who can run it can also edit the
environment the cap comes from.
ignacionelson