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.
rcourtman