policy: policy records, attached policies, tangled-vouch

• a market policy ALWAYS runs, both sides, both lanes (scope + full), every decision. no skip paths
• the requester publishes the workflow it runs as a record; the RFP strongRefs it; the bidder runs it next to its own
• caching lives inside the engine run, never across parties, never a skip
• index: README.md. sequence steps: S1 (vouches), S3 (record + RFP), S4 (bidder runs), S5 (requester runs)

Records And Fields

NSID / field	type	rkey	written by	read by	Go	step
computer.socialweb.temp.policy.ghalite	record (no lexicon file)	TID (createRecord without rkey); one per contract, kept in state.Policy	requester	bidder (via the RFP strongRef), requester (re-check)	internal/market/requester/policy.go BuildPolicyRecord, internal/market/requester/runner.go, internal/market/participant/policyrecord.go	S3
market.rfp policies[]	array of com.atproto.repo.strongRef	-	requester	bidder	internal/atproto/market/records.go BuildRFP, CreateRFP	S3
computer.socialweb.infra#contract policy, policyArgs	strings	-	owner	requester (via the ComputeContract)	internal/market/requester/runner.go	S2
sh.tangled.graph.vouch	record (outside)	subject DID	operators, users	both policies (trust snapshot)	internal/policyengine/trust/trust.go	S1
computer.socialweb.temp.policy.typescript	record (no lexicon file)	-	nobody	denied	internal/policyengine/registry/registry.go	-
com.publicdomainrelay.temp.market.policies.denoWorker	record (no lexicon file)	-	nobody	denied	internal/policyengine/registry/registry.go	-
computer.socialweb.temp.policy.wasm	test fixture only	-	-	denied as an unknown type	internal/policyengine/controller/records.go	-

• no policy field on market.bid, market.offering or compute.*. the bidder's own Bid object keeps spec.policy {attached, verdict} in kcp only

computer.socialweb.temp.policy.ghalite

field	value
$type	computer.socialweb.temp.policy.ghalite
name	the workflow name, e.g. requester-tangled-vouch
workflow	the full YAML text of the bundled workflow (or its name when there is no text)
args	map[string]string, from policyArgs
requester	the requester's market DID
perspective	requester
policies	[{name, args?}]
createdAt	datetime

• PolicyRecordWorkflow reads workflow as a YAML string or an object and denies any other $type (internal/market/participant/policyrecord.go)
• typescript and denoWorker executors are registered as deny ("the policy engine is gha-lite only")
• OAuth: requester and bidder sets carry create (+ update on requester) for ghalite and typescript; none for denoWorker (outside.md)

Infra Contract Fields

• policy: the workflow name. resolution: cmp.Or(contract.Spec.Policy, cfg.PolicyWorkflow, DefaultPolicyWorkflow)
• PolicyWorkflowName normalizes: "" -> requester-tangled-vouch; only-me -> requester-only-me; mutuals -> requester-mutuals; tangled-vouch -> requester-tangled-vouch
• the name must be a bundled workflow, else the contract fails before the RFP
• policyArgs: a JSON object, parsed to map[string]string (internal/market/participant/policy.go ParsePolicyArgs)

RFP Policy StrongRefs

sequenceDiagram
  autonumber
  participant R as requester
  participant RP as requester repo
  participant B as bidder
  participant E as policy engine (bidder)

  R->>R: policy name from Infra contract / ComputeContract
  R->>RP: S3 createRecord policy.ghalite {workflow text, args}
  R->>RP: getRecord it back: own repo, cid, name, body == bundled workflow
  R->>RP: S3 market.rfp {policies: [strongRef]}
  RP-->>B: market.rfp
  B->>E: own workflow (bidder-tangled-vouch), scope lane (DIDs only)
  B->>RP: getRecord each policies[] ref
  B->>E: own workflow + each attached workflow, full lane
  E-->>B: allow only if all allow
  B->>B: S4 bid or no bid

• requester write path: runner.go step creatingRfp: BuildPolicyRecord -> CreateRecord -> attachedPolicy -> rfpOptions.Policies -> market.CreateRFP
• requester re-check attachedPolicy (internal/market/requester/policy.go): the record is in the requester's own repo, the cid matches, the name matches the contract, the body equals the bundled workflow byte for byte. rfpPolicyRef requires exactly one policy
• bidder: EvaluatePolicies (internal/market/bidder/policy.go) runs its own workflow (default bidder-tangled-vouch), then each RFP ref via RepoStore.Resolve (local getRecord or a foreign resolver), PolicyRecordWorkflow, runs.Request{Workflow, Source: uri}. first deny wins
• the bidder runs the attached workflow with perspective=bidder (internal/market/bidder/bids.go)
• a restarted runner reuses state.Policy; it does not write a second record

Lanes And Modes

lane	input	where
scope	DIDs only, RFP nil, mode: scope	bidder bids.go, internal/policyengine/executor/ghalite.go Scope
full	self, subject, counterparty, root requester DIDs, rfp, bid, accept, args, mode: full	bidder bids.go fullInput, adapters.go; ghalite.go Execute

• executor: GhaLite (internal/policyengine/executor/ghalite.go), default timeout 30 s
• run path: runs.Client.Run creates a PolicyWorkflowRun and waits (internal/policyengine/runs/client.go)
• missing engine, evaluator or a non-boolean allow = deny

Caching (inside the run)

cache	key	TTL
trust snapshot seed	trust/<counterpartyDid>	per run
record	rec/<uri>/<cid> (internal/policyengine/cache/cache.go)	-
verdict	policy/<name>/<rfp>|<bid>|<accept>[:argsHash]	30 s default
scope verdict memo	internal/policyengine/controller/scopememo.go	30 s, plus a negative TTL
vouch, operator lookups	trust.Resolver ttlcache	5 min, errors 5 s

Bundled Workflows

• embedded: internal/policyengine/bundled-actions/embed.go (workflows/, tangy/), looked up by Workflow(name) and Lookup(uses)
• every workflow is a workflow_dispatch wrapper with inputs self-did, rfp, bid, accept, policy-args, mode, counterparty-did, perspective, subject-did, root-requester-did, cache-key; it calls tangy/policy-<name>@v1 and outputs allow, violations

workflow	kind	decides
bidder-tangled-vouch	trust (bidder default)	the requester or its operator is vouched by the bidder or its operator
requester-tangled-vouch	trust (requester default)	the same, for the bidder, from the requester side
bidder-mutuals, requester-mutuals	trust	operators follow each other on Bluesky
bidder-only-me, requester-only-me	trust	the counterparty resolves to the own operator
open	trust	no restriction. only when named, never prod
bid-payload	work (requester)	the bid payload NSID is in allowedPayloadNsids (default market.bids.free)
under-4-cpus	work	the VM asks at most maxCpus vCPUs

• the action infers its perspective from the bidder- prefix unless the perspective input says otherwise
• defaults: api/v1alpha1/types_computevm.go BidderDefaultPolicy, RequesterDefaultPolicy

Tangled-Vouch

• default on both sides everywhere; open only if the user sets it
• a vouch is sh.tangled.graph.vouch at rkey = the subject DID in the voucher's repo; it counts when it exists and kind != "denounce": outside.md
• both directions are needed for a deal: the bidder side vouches for the requester side and the requester side for the bidder side

flowchart LR
  SELF["self"] --> T["trusted = self + operator(self)"]
  CP["counterparty"] --> OPC["operator(counterparty) via identity.md"]
  T --> Q{"one getRecord per pair: trusted vouches counterparty or operator(counterparty)?"}
  OPC --> Q
  Q -->|yes| ALLOW["allow"]
  Q -->|operator(counterparty) is trusted| ALLOW
  Q -->|no| DENY["deny"]

• snapshot: trust.BuildSnapshotWith (internal/policyengine/trust/trust.go); depth 1, no transitive walk
• operator resolution (claims, associations, mirror proofs): identity.md
• who writes vouches: market networks declare operator vouches both ways (internal/app/marketnetwork/vouches.go, compose ApplyOperatorVouch); people write them from any client. the requester OAuth scope offers vouch write as an optional scope
• requester discovery lists the vouches of its trusted DIDs (internal/market/requester/discovery.go vouchedBy, a listRecords that skips denounce and takes rkeys starting did:)

See Also

• README.md, identity.md, outside.md, market.md
• ../SYSTEM.md, docs/ARCHITECTURE.md (open by heading: policy engine)