itsgoin/sessions.md

Contributor Sessions Log

Rolling log of active sessions on the ItsGoin repository. Every contributor — Lead or Jr — appends an entry on session start and updates it on session end. Newest entries at the top.

See CONTRIBUTING.md for the protocol. See AGENTS.md for the Claude-specific session-start checklist.

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2026-04-24 — primary Claude (Lead) — docs/fof-spec-layer1-bio-grants

Started: April 24 UTC Instance: Scott's primary Claude (Lead) Issue: none (spec refinement) Branch: docs/fof-spec-layer1-bio-grants Scope: Fold Scott + Opus's Layer 1 design answer into the spec. Vouch distribution moves from DM-wrapped VouchGrant to HPKE-sealed per-recipient wrappers carried in the voucher's bio post, leveraging existing bio-post CDN propagation and HPKE (RFC 9180) key privacy for recipient anonymity.

Key design commitments added to Layer 1:

• HPKE RFC 9180 (DHKEM X25519 + HKDF-SHA256 + ChaCha20Poly1305) for per-recipient wrappers; one ephemeral pubkey per batch; 48B per wrapper.
• HKDF info = "itsgoin/vouch-grant/v1/" || bio_post_id — recipient-free (non-negotiable for key privacy).
• No prefilter tag on grants (no prior shared secret); full X25519 trial at ~60µs per wrapper per persona is tolerable (≤90ms even at 512×3 worst case).
• Scan policy: auto-scan bio posts of followed personas; manual "check bio" gesture for non-followed; scan cache keyed by (scanner_persona, bio_author, bio_epoch).
• Bucket-padding (64/128/256/512) and per-publish wrapper shuffle for size/position opacity.
• No separate vouches_issued table on the wire; bio post IS the authoritative record. Local-only own_vouch_targets tracks what the persona has granted.
• Incremental grant-as-comment path (Scott's suggestion for avoiding full republish) deferred; v1 ships with full republish per change.

Completed:

• Rewrote docs/fof-spec/layer-1-vouch-primitive.md end-to-end.
• README updated: Layer 1 scope line + added bio-post integration bullet.
• Self-merged to master.

Pending:

• Opus confirmation passes still open on other layers (WrapSlot byte layout, AEAD choice for body, padding schemes).
• Layer 2–6 untouched in this pass.

Stopping point: Scott asked to hold merges until Layers 2–6 iterations complete. Branch stays open locally and on Forgejo; continuing to stack commits on it.

Update 2026-04-24 — Layer 2 rewrite (CDN-level verification)

Scope: Scott shared Opus's Layer 2 design answer. Folded in.

Design commitments added:

• Per-V_x signing keypair (pub_x, priv_x) — replaces single per-post pub_post/priv_post. CDN can now verify comment signatures against a published pub_post_set before forwarding, killing the bandwidth-amplification DoS an admitted FoF member could otherwise mount.
• Dual-derivation wrap slot: read_slot → CEK, sign_slot → priv_x. One unwrap yields both capabilities. Slot structure is shared with Layer 3 (canonical form lives here).
• Comment body encrypted under CEK_comments = HKDF(CEK, "comments") — Mode 2 comments are genuinely FoF-read-gated now, not just FoF-sign-filtered at render (strengthening vs skeleton).
• Propagation-node four-check accept rule: valid pub_x_index, not in revocation_list, group_sig verifies, identity_sig verifies. Any fail → drop without forwarding.
• Author-signed revocation diff appended to post header; CDN honors on next sync. Per-chain revocation at propagation layer.
• pub_x_index is a per-post pseudonym — leaks "these N comments came through the same chain" within a single post; re-randomizes across posts. Accepted tradeoff for CDN-level DoS resistance.
• v1 ships Ed25519 inline (~77KB header at 500 vouchees). PQ future requires Merkle-commit over pub_post_set with per-comment inclusion proofs; deferred but spec shape doesn't preclude.

Files touched:

• docs/fof-spec/layer-2-mode2-fof-comments.md — rewritten end-to-end.
• docs/fof-spec/layer-3-mode1-fof-closed.md — prominent "partially superseded" banner added; body retained pending reconciliation when Scott + Opus review Layer 3.
• docs/fof-spec/README.md — glossary updated (pub_x/priv_x, pub_post_set, revocation_list); integration bullet updated for new InlineComment fields + CDN accept rule.

Open questions I raised back to Scott (awaiting his answer before finalizing):

1. (pub_x, priv_x) lifecycle: generated at V_x genesis (Layer 1) and stable across posts, vs regenerated per-post by author. Lead leaning per-post. Needs confirmation.
2. pub_post_set padding vs wrap_slots padding — real/dummy alignment when dummies shouldn't be indexable by pub_x_index.
3. Non-FoF rendering of comment count (reveal engagement? suppress?).
4. Who holds priv_me (author) — generated alongside V_me at Layer 1, vs per-post regeneration. Same as #1 but for author's own entry.

Pending:

• Scott reviews / answers open questions.
• Layer 3 reconciliation when Scott + Opus get to Mode 1.
• Layers 4–6 iterations.

Stopping point: commit b8b38a6 (Layer 1) + new commit for Layer 2 both on branch; not merged. Awaiting Scott.

Update 2026-05-13 — Layer 4 written (rotation + revocation + key lifecycle)

Iterative session with Scott. Recap of where the model landed:

Rotation/revocation model (now in spec):

• Default narrowing of comment authority on a post = Layer 2 revocation (existing mechanism). No new wire primitive.
• Advanced narrowing of read access = full re-issue with supersedes_post_id link. Discouraged due to network overhead.
• V_me rotation = the persona-wide revocation primitive. Generate new V_me, distribute via next bio-post batch to non-revoked vouchees only. Revoked person retains old V_me.
• Receiver-chain model: receiver appends new V_me to vouch_keys_received (does NOT overwrite). Trial-unwrap iterates the chain. UX-wise the "current" key is the newest; older epochs are archived but kept for historical decrypts.
• Grandfather-by-default: CDN is V_me-blind, so rotation does NOT auto-cascade comment deletion. Revoked vouchee keeps comment authority on old posts unless the author opts to cascade per-pub_x revocations.
• Per-post cascade is opt-in: author can query a local own_post_slot_provenance table to find pub_x's sealed under V_me_old in any of their posts, then publish per-pub_x RevocationEntries to cascade.
• Key-burn primitive (new, optional): signed KeyBurnDiff swaps an old wrap_slot for a new one in-place on a specific post. Used when V_me leaked and the author wants to scrub it from the CDN copy of old posts. Body CEK unchanged; affects future fresh-decrypts only.

Cryptographic stack confirmed (Scott reconfirmed):

• Body encryption: symmetric ChaCha20-Poly1305 under CEK. PQ-safe.
• Wrap_slots: AEAD under V_x. PQ-safe.
• Comment signing: asymmetric Ed25519 (per-V_x per-post (pub_x, priv_x)). NOT PQ-safe; ML-DSA-65 migration deferred. Scott confirmed the asymmetric-for-signing tradeoff is intentional — it's what makes CDN-level bandwidth-DoS filtering work.

Files touched in this round:

• docs/fof-spec/layer-4-keypair-rotation.md: full rewrite from skeleton.
• docs/fof-spec/layer-1-vouch-primitive.md: rotation language updated to point at Layer 4's append-only model; multi-epoch UI hook added.

Branch state: docs/fof-spec-layer1-bio-grants (despite the name, holds all Layer 1–4 spec work). Commit pending. Not merged per Scott's standing instruction.

Pending:

• Layer 5 (unlock cache + prefilter): existing skeleton text still reflects single per-post keypair model. Needs reconciliation with per-V_x model from Layer 2.
• Layer 3 (Mode 1): partially-superseded banner still present. Needs Scott/Opus reconciliation pass.
• Layer 6 (revocation): stub still. Largely obviated by Layer 4 work.

Update 2026-04-24 — Layer 3 round 2 (last two open questions)

Two follow-up questions resolved:

• Access-grant slot ordering: append at tail (not re-shuffle). I'd initially overcorrected to a "switch comments from index to pub_x bytes so shuffles are free" change; Scott reverted that and clarified the choice. Append-at-tail preserves pub_x_index stability across the post's lifetime — already-stored comments stay verifiable, no write amplification on grant. Accepted positional-recency leak (tail = newest grants).
• Minimum slot bucket: 8. Singleton/tiny-set posts pad up to 8 slots. Brand-new personas don't publish "I have no vouchees" headers.

Files touched:

• docs/fof-spec/layer-2-mode2-fof-comments.md: access-grant lead decision made explicit about append-at-tail and index stability.
• docs/fof-spec/layer-3-mode1-fof-closed.md: minimum-8 floor added to padding lead decision; both open questions moved to Resolved.
• sessions.md: this entry.

Update 2026-04-24 — Layer 3 round 1 + cross-cutting padding rule (corrected)

Scott talked to Opus and resolved Layer 3 open questions + introduced a unified padding rule that supersedes Layer 2 round 2's rand(32..=128).

First-pass misread (corrected by Scott): I initially wrote the rule as "power-of-2 up to 256, then real + rand(0..=256) above." That's wrong — the rule is bucketed throughout, not random above the threshold.

Bucketed padding rule (applies to both slot count and body size):

• ≤256 real units → next power-of-2 bucket (8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256).

• 256 real units → next linear-step bucket: +128 step for slots (384, 512, 640, …), +256KB step for body bytes (512KB, 768KB, 1024KB, …).

• Deterministic. Author publishes next_bucket(real); dummies fill the gap.

Why this is stronger than random: observers learn the bucket but never the position within it. Across multiple posts from the same author, the bucket is stable until the author crosses a boundary — so no "min over many posts" attack converges tighter than the bucket bound. Random padding would have leaked min(observed) - max_noise as a floor.

Linear-step above 256 vs pure power-of-2: avoids the 2× waste of jumping 256→512 for an author with 257 vouchees. Above 256, step buckets are 128 (slots) or 256KB (body) so worst-case in-bucket overhead is bounded (~33% at the worst spot).

Applies uniformly to slot count and body size.

Other resolved Layer 3 questions:

• Custom mode UI deferred. v1 ships three presets only: Public / Friends-only / FoF.
• Slot dedup at V_x byte level. One slot per unique key.
• Body-length padding adopted.

Files touched:

• docs/fof-spec/layer-3-mode1-fof-closed.md: Lead decisions updated (hybrid padding, dedup, three-preset UI); open questions split into still-open + Resolved; ship criteria updated.
• docs/fof-spec/layer-2-mode2-fof-comments.md: padding rule promoted to hybrid scheme; size budget rewritten with three regime examples; privacy section rewritten for two-regime analysis; Resolved bullet superseded with pointer.
• sessions.md: this entry.

Still-open Layer 3 questions worth flagging to Scott:

1. Access-grant ordering — does appending a new slot re-shuffle the full wrap_slots / pub_post_set (preserves the random-order privacy property but invalidates pub_x_index values in already-stored comments), or is it append-only (pub_x_index is stable but tail-positional leak says "these are recent grants")? Lead leaning: append-only; index stability matters for revocation and stored-comment verification.
2. Minimum slot-count floor for tiny authors. Power-of-2-of-1 = 1, which leaks "this persona has one vouch (probably just themselves)." Lead leaning: minimum bucket of 8.

Pending: Layers 4–6 iterations. Scott to confirm two flagged questions.

Update 2026-04-24 — Layer 2 round 2 (Scott answers all 5 questions)

Scott resolved all five open questions:

1. Per-post (pub_x, priv_x) — confirmed.
2. Random-count dummy padding (rand(32..=128)) replaces power-of-2 buckets, with dummy pubkeys in pub_post_set so .len() == wrap_slots.len(). Across multiple posts from the same author, an observer cannot even establish a reliable floor for the real vouch-set size.
3. Non-FoF comment UX: "Comments are private" affordance with optional "Request access via DM" button. No count leak.
4. Author's own entry in pub_post_set — confirmed.
5. Revocation is retroactive delete + forward. File-holders delete locally-stored comments signed by the revoked pub_x, then propagate the diff. Stronger than stop-forwarding — prior garbage is cleaned up as the diff sweeps the mesh.

New primitive: access-grant author comment. Author can retroactively widen a post's read-set by publishing an author-signed special comment appending a new WrapSlot + pub_post_set entry. Lets a newly-vouched persona gain read + comment access without republishing the whole post. Answers the "non-FoF requests access via DM, author approves" UX loop.

Files touched:

• docs/fof-spec/layer-2-mode2-fof-comments.md — updated Lead decisions, post-header, revocation flow (retroactive), added Access-grant author comment section, updated Privacy tradeoff (size-leak analysis with random padding), Open questions split into unresolved + Resolved, size budget, ship criteria.
• sessions.md — this entry.

Commit pending.

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2026-04-23 — primary Claude (Lead) — docs/fof-spec-skeleton

Started: late April 23 UTC Instance: Scott's primary Claude (Lead role) Issue: none (spec-drafting work; hand-off to Opus for crypto fill-in) Branch: docs/fof-spec-skeleton Scope: Skeleton spec for Friend-of-Friend (FoF) post gating. Lays out the per-person vouch-key (V_me) primitive, four visibility levels (Public / Friends-only / FoF / Custom), Mode 1 (FOF_CLOSED) and Mode 2 (public post + FoF comments), and a six-layer implementation plan. Crypto byte layouts and algorithm specifics are marked TBD — OPUS for Opus to fill in.

Completed in this session:

• docs/fof-spec/README.md — top-level overview, user-facing model, design properties, layering plan, out-of-scope, glossary, integration with existing primitives.
• docs/fof-spec/layer-1-vouch-primitive.md — V_x keys, per-persona keyring, VouchGrant wire format (DM-wrapped).
• docs/fof-spec/layer-2-mode2-fof-comments.md — CommentPolicy::FriendsOfFriends, pub_post / priv_post / wrap-slot primitives, group_sig + vouch_mac on comments.
• docs/fof-spec/layer-3-mode1-fof-closed.md — PostVisibility::FoFClosed, wrap-slot byte layout, anonymous 2B prefilter, power-of-2 slot padding.
• docs/fof-spec/layer-4-keypair-rotation.md — PostKeyRotation record, explicit pub_post_index on comments, per-post re-gating.
• docs/fof-spec/layer-5-prefilter-and-cache.md — vouch_unlock_cache, vouch_unreadable_posts, author-direct fast path, keyring-change retry sweep.
• docs/fof-spec/layer-6-revocation.md — stub; candidate designs A–D; Lead leaning is coarse-rotation with UX polish (Candidate D); revisit after 30 days of production data.

Pending after this PR merges:

• Opus review pass: fill in TBD — OPUS markers (AEAD specifier, key sizes, WrapSlot byte layout, prefilter tag algorithm confirmation, epoch granularity, etc.).
• Lead re-review after Opus fills in crypto.
• Per-layer branch schedule for implementation (Layer 1 ships first, independently exercised).

Stopping point: session ending after Lead self-merges docs/fof-spec-skeleton to master. Branch to be deleted locally + remote.

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2026-04-23 — primary Claude (Lead) — chore/workflow-adoption

Started: late April 23 UTC Instance: Scott's primary Claude (Lead role per feedback_senior_role.md) Issue: none yet (inaugural PR; this is the chicken-and-egg case noted in CONTRIBUTING.md) Branch: chore/workflow-adoption Scope: Introduce the multi-contributor workflow to the repo. Creates CONTRIBUTING.md, AGENTS.md, and this file (sessions.md) with a seed entry.

Pre-existing state at session start:

• v0.6.2 shipped end-to-end earlier today: APK, AppImage, CLI, anchor (PID 3475521, up since ~17:39 UTC).
• Last merged-to-master commit before this branch: 2ce668a — People-tab rewrite (recency sort, profile-post Discover, bio modal, ignore primitive, per-author feed filter).
• Active artifacts on itsgoin.com/public_html/: itsgoin-0.6.2.apk (183.7 MB), itsgoin_0.6.2_amd64.AppImage (177.7 MB), itsgoin-cli-0.6.2-linux-amd64 (40.8 MB).
• No other contributors active.

Completed in this session (before this commit):

• Designed the Lead role + amendments to the base workflow (hotfix carve-out, partnered build/deploy go-no-go, Lead-pulls-queue review pattern, re-evaluation triggers, Scott's contributor-alignment role, Lead self-merge authority).
• Saved feedback_senior_role.md to instance memory.
• Wrote CONTRIBUTING.md, AGENTS.md, sessions.md (this file). Originally drafted the agent guide as CLAUDE.md but that filename is .gitignored at the repo root because it has historically been a credential-leak vector; switched to AGENTS.md with an explicit security banner.
• Iterated on Scott's role: initial draft put him in the PR-routing / build-authorizer position; revised to watch contributor alignment + partner on ship, Lead self-merges.

Pending after this PR merges:

• Phase 0 prereqs from CONTRIBUTING.md: Forgejo CI (cargo check --workspace + cargo test -p itsgoin-core on push + PR), branch protection on master (require PR + 1 review + green CI), second Forgejo account + SSH key for Jr Claude(s). Scott coordinates.

Stopping point: session ending — Lead self-merged this PR to master (inaugural exercise of the self-merge authority the PR itself establishes, per Amendment 6). Branch chore/workflow-adoption deleted locally + remote.

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