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automaton/tasks/harden-dashboard-security/SPEC.md
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Lap Tran bc7daf8590 Restore archived tasks, fix dashboard scroll-reset, bind ornith, add Playwright smoke test
- **Restore 82 completed tasks** from tasks/complete/ back to tasks/ top
  level (all <7 days old per the cleanup policy; premature bulk archive
  was fixed).
- **Dashboard: fix scroll-reset on auto-refresh** — renderBoard rebuilds
  the board via innerHTML every 2s, destroying each column-body's
  scrollTop. Now snapshots column-body scrollTop + board.scrollLeft +
  view.scrollTop before rebuild and restores after (matched by
  PHASE_GROUPS index).
- **Dashboard UI additions** (pre-existing unstaged work): approval
  section cards, transition buttons, inline artifact editor (textarea for
  writing missing SPEC/VERDICT/etc from the detail modal).
- **Bind ornith as Implement model** — config.md: Model explicit to
  omlx/Ornith-1.0-35B-4bit-mlx, context window 32768. Interactive
  autopilot already used ornith via opencode default; now explicit.
- **Fix cleanup stub** — automaton-cleanup.sh had a stale --project arg
  pointing at a pytest temp dir (test isolation leak). Rewired to point
  at ~/.automaton.
- **Fix plist-isolation test** — test asserted host plist doesn't exist,
  but a real install creates it. Now snapshots mtime before run, asserts
  unchanged after (only a write during the test counts as bleed).
- **New Playwright smoke test** (tests/test_dashboard_ui.py) — 2 tests:
  board renders tasks, column scroll survives auto-refresh tick.
  Verified the test fails without the scroll fix (scrollTop resets to 0).
  Skipped via importorskip when playwright is absent (main CI stays
  green).
- **Clarify SI loop scope in README** — new-project onboarding section
  documents the framework-scoped self-improvement loop and options
  (leave/pause/create project loop).
- **CHANGELOG** documents all changes including the known model-divergence
  gap (mde tasks marked complete but per-role model binding was never
  implemented).
2026-06-26 10:05:18 -04:00

2.8 KiB

Harden Dashboard Security

Goal

Close the security gaps identified by the adversarial audit: missing CORS headers, filesystem-sourced task names that bypass validation, and unbounded content-length handling on POST.

Requirements

R1. Add CORS headers

The dashboard serves no CORS headers. When bound to 0.0.0.0 (documented in __main__.py), any webpage can call the API — including approving/rejecting tasks via POST.

Fix: In DashboardHandler._send_json() and _send_error(), add:

  • Access-Control-Allow-Origin: * (or configurable via --cors-origin)
  • Access-Control-Allow-Methods: GET, POST, OPTIONS
  • Access-Control-Allow-Headers: Content-Type
  • Handle OPTIONS preflight requests for the review endpoint

R2. Validate filesystem-sourced task names

discover_tasks() at task.py:248 reads directory names directly from iterdir(). The _validate_task_name regex only applies to API path parsing. A task directory created via mkdir with special characters (e.g., quotes, HTML) will be served to the JS client, which injects names into onclick attributes and innerHTML.

Fix: In discover_tasks(), skip directories whose names contain characters outside [A-Za-z0-9_-]. Log a warning for invalid names.

R3. Add content-length bound check on POST regardless of R2 from wire-dashboard-config

Even if the caching task isn't done yet, add a quick defensive check:

  • If Content-Length header > MAX_POST_BODY, return 413
  • If Content-Length header is missing or <= 0, return 400

R4. Escape task names in JS HTML injection points

In dashboard.js:renderDetail(), renderTaskCard(), and renderTimeline(), task names are interpolated into HTML. While R2 prevents most dangerous names, defense in depth requires:

  • Use escapeHtml() on task.display_name before injection
  • Use data-* attributes instead of onclick for review buttons (pass task name via dataset)

R5. Add X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff header

All responses should include X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff to prevent MIME type sniffing.

Acceptance Criteria

  • All API responses include Access-Control-Allow-Origin header
  • OPTIONS /api/task/{name}/review returns 200 with appropriate CORS headers
  • Task directory named task-with'quote is excluded from discover_tasks() output
  • Task directory named valid-task-123 is included
  • POST with Content-Length: 1000000 returns 413 regardless of caching task status
  • escapeHtml() applied to display_name in all JS interpolation points
  • Review buttons use data-task attribute instead of inline onclick
  • All responses include X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff

Non-Goals

  • Not adding authentication (the dashboard is a local single-user tool)
  • Not adding HTTPS (out of scope for a dev tool)
  • Not rate-limiting (single-user, single-threaded server)