A provider could stand the MSP bundle up and evaluate it without asking
anyone, but paying still meant emailing its public key to Pulse and
copying a licence file onto the host by hand. With the licence server's
self-serve purchase path (pulse-pro license-server/provider_msp_purchase),
the control plane can do the whole thing itself.
The control plane now signs a challenge with its lease signing key to
fetch the licence its subscription entitles, validates it exactly as
startup does, requires it to bind this platform's key, and keeps it in
the data directory, because the host licence is a read-only secret
mount. Startup prefers that renewed licence while it validates, so a
paying provider keeps starting after the self-issued evaluation on the
host expires. A changed licence restarts the control plane through the
existing graceful shutdown, since the plan version is read at load by
every workspace-limit, backup and status path; client workspaces keep
running. Preflight, proof, recovery and backup accept either signed
source.
The portal gains owner and admin routes for plan state, checkout, the
Stripe billing portal and an immediate licence refresh, and the plan list
comes from the licence server so it shows only what can be bought, at
Stripe's price. Adds the msp_solo plan: 3 client workspaces, the first
paid step above the 2-workspace evaluation.
Two mandatory round-trips stood between an interested MSP and their first
screen, and neither was technical.
setup.sh required four image digests shipped as literal <pin>
placeholders, so the only way to get them was to ask. All four images are
publicly readable, so there was never anything to hand out. setup.sh now
resolves each blank pin to an immutable digest from its published tag via
buildx imagetools and writes it back to .env; hand-set values are left
alone.
setup.sh then died outright without a licence file, so nobody could start
the stack, create a workspace, or see the portal until a human minted a
licence for them. The control plane already ran unlicensed via
ProviderMSPPlanSourceEnvFallback; only the installer refused. A licence
path that is set but missing is still a hard failure, since that is a
misconfiguration rather than a choice.
Unlicensed now means evaluation rather than the cheapest paid tier. The
env fallback defaulted to msp_starter, handing every unlicensed
deployment the full 5-client Starter allowance and leaving no boundary
between evaluating and buying. Adds msp_eval at 2 workspaces: same
capabilities, smaller cap, not purchasable, not on the public ladder.
An isolation guarantee is the one claim a provider cannot evaluate from a
screenshot, and both MSP leads this year went quiet at exactly this step.
Contracts: cloud-paid records the unlicensed plan rule and the
strictly-below-paid invariant; deployment-installability records
credential-free, correspondence-free installability.
Verification: TestMSPEvalCapStaysBelowCheapestPaidTier,
TestCanonicalizePlanVersion_MSPEval,
TestProviderMSPSetupScriptSupportsUnlicensedEvaluation. The last was
negative-tested by reintroducing a <pin> placeholder and confirming it
fails. ensure_image_pins exercised against the live registries.
licensing, cloudcp, control-plane and installtests all green.
Add external_probe to the licensing feature enumeration, Pro tier
membership, self-hosted feature catalog, feature map, upgrade matrix
and pricing handoff, with the entitlement contract goldens updated.
The capability is served by the community binary - the entitlement
alone gates it, like relay. No existing free functionality changes:
local availability checks stay ungated.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
TierBusiness: Pro's feature set, 365-day history retention, uncapped
core monitoring like every self-hosted tier, Business display name, and
a slot in the min-tier ordering. Differentiation is by max_users limit,
retention, and support rather than features (multi-user is already a Pro
capability via RBAC; see specs/pricing-segmentation.md binder findings).
Dormant until the license server issues business plan versions; no
checkout, pricing, or UI surface references it yet. Contract shape
recorded as cloud-paid Extension Point 26 and pinned by
TestBusinessTierContractShape.
Manifest-backed MCP tools, prompts, and resources with surface affordance contracts; agent capability manifest and governance projection; API contract tests and capability route projection; operations-loop and intelligence-funnel telemetry; release-control subsystem documentation, registry, and tooling; licensing and configuration.
Retire runtime/API/UI monitored-system volume enforcement now that infrastructure monitoring is no longer capped.
Keep only legacy metadata scrubbing and purchase-start compatibility for old max_monitored_systems references.
Rename the remaining preview surface to monitored-system impact and make previews explanatory rather than save-blocking.
Update subsystem contracts and RA7 evidence for the caps-retired invariant.
Treat OIDC, SAML, and multi-provider SSO as included Community capabilities while retaining advanced_sso as a compatibility key. Remove SAML-specific paywalls and paid-upgrade copy from runtime, settings UI, entitlement snapshots, docs, journey proof, and subsystem contracts.
Refs #1449
rcourtman