The evaluation mode added earlier today was hollow. An unlicensed control
plane starts, but release-build client runtimes only trust entitlement
leases chained to a Pulse-signed licence, so its client workspaces ran
without the capabilities the provider was evaluating. Standing the stack
up proved the portal and the isolation boundary and nothing else.
setup.sh now requests a capped evaluation licence from the licence server
when no licence path is set, sending only the public half of the key it
generated locally. It degrades rather than blocks: a missing key, an
unreachable server, or a licence-free response leaves the install
unlicensed with an explicit warning, an existing licence on disk is
reused, and PULSE_PROVIDER_MSP_SKIP_EVAL_LICENSE skips it for air-gapped
hosts. Guarded with an if-test rather than a trailing true inside the
command substitution, because the derive helper calls die and exit in a
subshell is not a status that can be caught, so setup.sh aborted under
set -e.
Second fix. The lease capability ceiling was selected by licence
presence, so an unlicensed provider control plane fell through to the
Pulse-hosted branch and minted leases claiming relay, mobile and push,
which a provider deployment cannot serve and which previously caused
repeating relay registration failures in client runtimes. The ceiling now
follows hosting via SetProviderHosted. providerChained keeps its narrower
meaning of having a licence available to embed.
Third. Corrects a sentence I wrote into cloud-paid.md this afternoon
claiming msp_eval carries the same MSP capabilities. A plan version
selects the workspace cap; it does not entitle a workspace.
The regression test was negative-tested by reverting the ceiling selector
and confirming it catches relay. All three setup.sh degradation paths
were exercised directly. Licence server side is pulse-pro 7f6a319 and is
not live until the next deploy-license-server run.
Exercised the full provider portal as a pilot MSP would and fixed what
made it feel broken:
- The signed-out portal promised "a sign-in link is on the way" even when
the control plane has no email provider (the bundle default), and team
invitations silently sent nothing. The portal bootstrap now carries
email_sign_in_available and provider_hosted_mode; the sign-in page shows
the host command that actually prints a link, and the invite panel says
invitation emails are not sent and how to hand over a link instead.
- New "provider-msp portal-link --email" CLI mints a one-time portal link
for an account member or pending invitee, so teammates can sign in at
all on email-less installs (bootstrap only covers the owner).
- Portal sessions were fixed at 12h; CP_SESSION_TTL now configures them
and provider-hosted MSP mode defaults to 7 days.
- Creating a client past the license cap showed a generic "Failed to
create workspace." toast: the limit error is now a JSON payload with
current/limit, the API client no longer drops non-JSON error bodies
(double body read), and the toast explains the license limit.
- Copy polish: provider-mode sign-in intro (no refunds/privacy register),
least-privilege default invite role, queue tile label matches "Client
onboarding", softer Support tab with a docs/MSP.md pointer, setup.sh
summary now prints the bootstrap next step and day-2 sign-in commands,
.env.example and docs/MSP.md document portal sign-in and sessions.
Contracts updated (cloud-paid, api-contracts, deployment-installability,
security-privacy) with verification pins in tenant_handlers_test,
config_test, magiclink_test, and provider_msp_deploy_test.
Verified live against a dockerless control plane: portal-link for an
invitee redeems, promotes the invitation, and sets a 7-day session;
the at-cap toast shows the license copy; portal vitest suite and
cloudcp/auth/account/installtests Go suites pass.
Provider-hosted MSP client workspaces previously sat at Community tier
forever: the runtime refreshed leases against the built-in Pulse Cloud URL
(hibernated, 522) instead of the provider control plane, and release-build
images verify leases only against the embedded Pulse key, which an
operator-generated CP_TRIAL_ACTIVATION_PRIVATE_KEY can never satisfy.
- Inject PULSE_PRO_TRIAL_SIGNUP_URL=CP_BASE_URL into client containers so
lease refresh targets the provider control plane.
- Chain trust through the Pulse-signed provider MSP license: the license
binds the provider's lease signing public key
(entitlement_signing_public_key claim); the control plane embeds the
license in every lease (provider_license claim); release-build runtimes
verify embedded Pulse root -> provider license -> lease signature.
- Cap chain-verified leases at ProviderChainedLeaseCapabilities: MSP tier
plus white_label (branded per-client reports), minus Pulse-service-backed
relay/mobile_app/push_notifications, which otherwise loop doomed
registrations against Pulse's relay.
- Fail fast at control-plane startup when the license does not bind the
configured signing key, instead of provisioning silently unlicensed
client workspaces.
Verified live on a Colima harness: release-tagged tenant image with test
embedded root, Traefik TLS, full provider-msp proof, tenant reports
valid=true plan_version=msp_growth with white_label and zero relay
failures.
Hosted tenant containers received PULSE_TENANT_ID but not
PULSE_TENANT_NAME, so alert webhook payloads from provider-hosted client
runtimes fell back to the raw tenant ID instead of a human-readable
workspace label. Resolve the display name from the tenant registry at
container-create time via a ManagerConfig resolver and stamp it
alongside the tenant ID. Display-name changes after creation apply on
the next runtime rollout, which recreates the container with freshly
resolved env.
Tighten v5-to-v6 upgrade safety, release installability, provider MSP mode handling, AI cost accounting, metrics flushing, and frontend guardrails for the v6.0.0 GA candidate.
pulse-triage[bot]