feat: persist permissions in postgres, default messaging to ALWAYS, hide from UI#956
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feat: persist permissions in postgres, default messaging to ALWAYS, hide from UI#956
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… from UI
Three connected fixes to the permissions system.
1) PERMISSIONS.json is now a DB-backed workspace document.
ApprovalStore used to write data/users/<user_id>/PERMISSIONS.json to
the local filesystem, so every Railway redeploy or docker-compose
restart wiped every override a user had granted ("Always" decisions,
per-resource overrides, the lot). New user_permissions table (one
row per user, JSON blob in a TEXT column) backs the store; alembic
migration 015 creates it and best-effort backfills any surviving
files on disk.
workspace_tools (read_file / write_file / edit_file) also routes
PERMISSIONS.json through the same DB row, so the chat's
"read_file PERMISSIONS.json" and the approval system share a single
source of truth. No more drift between what ApprovalStore thinks is
saved and what the agent reports when the user asks.
2) Dropped ToolName.UPDATE_PERMISSION. When ALWAYS_ALLOW / ALWAYS_DENY
fires, core.py now emits a synthetic write_file(path="PERMISSIONS.json",
content=<new snapshot>) record instead of a bespoke "update_permission"
tool. One vocabulary for "the file changed", whether the agent did
it via edit_file, the user edited it on the Permissions page, or the
approval gate persisted an Always.
3) send_reply / send_media_reply now default to ALWAYS and are hidden
from the dashboard Permissions page. Normal conversational replies
don't go through send_reply (they return as the agent's final text),
so the ASK default was a safety valve for a narrow path the user
shouldn't have to babysit. New SubToolInfo.hidden_in_permissions
flag flows through SubToolEntry / SubToolEntryResponse to the
frontend, which filters hidden sub-tools and drops any card left
with none visible.
Tests cover: ApprovalStore round-tripping through the DB, write_file
on PERMISSIONS.json flowing back into the store, write_file synthetic
records on ALWAYS_ALLOW and ALWAYS_DENY (replacing the old
update_permission assertions), messaging defaults now ALWAYS +
hidden_in_permissions=True.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
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… Always Two follow-ups on the in-review PR: 1. ApprovalStore._save and _permissions_write_sync wrote to DB rows but never called db.commit(). db_session() context does rollback on error but otherwise leaves it to the caller -- so every "Always" in chat rolled back on session close and vanished. Adds the commit() the rest of the codebase already uses with db_session(). 2. Switched the synthetic permissions record from write_file (single 'content' arg, wholesale overwrite semantic) to edit_file with a full-file old_text / new_text pair. edit_file is the semantically right verb for "this file changed", and old/new lets the UI show a diff instead of opaque replacement. The snapshot is taken before set_permission so the record shows what was there plus what it became. Tests updated to assert the edit_file record shape. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
…ctions PR #956's synthetic edit_file record -- combined with instructions.md telling the agent "To change a permission: edit_file(PERMISSIONS.json, old_text, new_text)" -- had the agent duplicate what the approval gate already does. User says "always" to a prompt, the gate persists the resources override, then the agent reads the system's synthetic edit_file record in history, thinks it needs to do the edit itself, and runs its own edit_file / write_file chain that overwrites the resources block with a minified tool-level-only version. Next turn the permission is effectively "ask" again and the gate re-prompts. Four fixes, narrower than what I had: 1. Drop the synthetic edit_file / write_file / update_permission record entirely. ApprovalStore persists to the DB silently; visible feedback is the absence of future prompts plus the Permissions dashboard. 2. Rewrite the "## Permissions" section of instructions.md. Say explicitly that the system saves Always/Never automatically and the agent must NOT follow up with edit_file on PERMISSIONS.json. The agent only touches PERMISSIONS.json when the user asks in plain chat ("what are my permissions?" -> read_file; "set qb_query to ask" -> edit_file). 3. Normalize JSON in workspace_tools._permissions_write_sync: parse + re-serialize with indent so every reader sees the same shape regardless of what the caller passed in. Breaks the cascade where one minified write invalidated every later edit_file's old_text. 4. Tests: drop the synthetic-record assertions, add a negative test that ALWAYS_ALLOW does NOT produce any PERMISSIONS.json tool record, add a normalization test for write_file with minified content. Kept from the earlier PR: DB-backed permissions, workspace dispatch of PERMISSIONS.json to the same DB row, messaging-tools-to-ALWAYS + hidden from UI, per-turn approval cache. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
CI failed with ForeignKeyViolation on every test that exercised
ApprovalStore directly: tests use ad-hoc string user ids ('1',
'backfill-user', etc.) to keep the approval store tests lightweight.
The previous FK to users.id rejected those inserts.
Drop the FK plus the ORM relationship. The store is fine with a plain
String primary key:
- User deletion in the premium layer is soft-delete (is_active=False),
never a hard row delete, so cascade cleanup would never have fired
anyway.
- If orphan hygiene is ever needed (it isn't today), handle it at the
call site explicitly.
Migration 015 updated to match.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
User reported the double-approval prompt was still happening: the LLM ignored the "don't edit PERMISSIONS.json after an approval" instruction and kept calling write_file, wiping the resources section and re-triggering the approval gate. Stop relying on the LLM to follow the rule -- make writes structurally impossible. - workspace_tools write_file / edit_file on PERMISSIONS.json return a PERMISSION error with a message explaining that the approval system and dashboard manage the file. - Dropped the unused _permissions_write / _permissions_write_sync helpers. ApprovalStore still writes the DB row directly through its own path (and the dashboard's PUT /api/user/permissions endpoint still writes through ApprovalStore._save). - instructions.md updated: PERMISSIONS.json is read-only for the agent. If the user asks to change a permission, redirect them to reply "Always" on the next prompt or to use the dashboard. - test_permission_tools.py: test_write_permissions_json and test_edit_permissions_json flipped to assert the read-only rejection; test_read_permissions_json unchanged. - test_media_staging.py: replaced the old "writes flow back into ApprovalStore" and minified-normalization tests with read-only regression tests. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
CI lints alembic/ too; my local run had been lint-checking only backend/ and tests/. Ruff's I001 auto-fix sorted the imports.
- alembic/015 docstring notes the relative-CWD quirk of settings.data_dir and the Postgres-specific ON CONFLICT dependency. - workspace_tools._is_permissions_path now case-insensitive (filename compared via .casefold()) so a lowercase permissions.json can't fall through to the disk write path. - ApprovalStore._save drops the redundant explicit updated_at writes; ORM default/onupdate already handle it. Unused datetime import gone. - Add test_always_deny_does_not_emit_synthetic_tool_record as the symmetric twin of the ALWAYS_ALLOW test. - Add test_permissions_path_match_is_case_insensitive covering the path-match casefold behavior. Per-test transaction rollback in conftest._isolate_stores already cleans user_permissions rows, so no fixture change needed for that.
The original LLM misbehavior (agent rewriting PERMISSIONS.json after Always replies) was stale-conversation bias, not a real adherence failure. Old chat history showed the agent editing the file from before instructions.md got the "don't do that" guidance, and the LLM pattern-matched its own past behavior. Clearing the session fixes it; locking writes is too aggressive and breaks the legitimate uses (user says "set qb_query to ask" in plain chat, or the dashboard writes through ApprovalStore._save which was always independent of this path). Restore: - workspace_tools write_file / edit_file on PERMISSIONS.json route through the UserPermissionSet DB row (ApprovalStore and workspace tools share the same backing). - _permissions_write / _permissions_write_sync with JSON normalization so minified agent writes can't break later edit_file old_text matching. - Tests: test_write_permissions_json / test_edit_permissions_json assert the happy path; test_permissions_json_write_flows_into_ approval_store verifies the typed store sees edit_file updates; case-insensitive path match test now asserts dispatch (not rejection). Instructions.md keeps the "don't double-manage after an approval reply" guidance but no longer claims the file is read-only. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Closes the lost-update race on UserPermissionSet:
- Approval gate persists an Always via ApprovalStore.set_permission
- Dashboard PUT /api/user/permissions hits ApprovalStore._save
- Agent edit_file or write_file on PERMISSIONS.json hits workspace
tools' _permissions_write / _permissions_edit
All three read-modify-write in their own transactions with no row
lock, so interleaved writers can overwrite each other.
Fix: every writer acquires a pg_advisory_xact_lock keyed on
"user_permissions:{user_id}" before touching the row. Lock is
transaction-scoped (auto-released on COMMIT/ROLLBACK) and serializes
concurrent writers across workers.
- approval.py: new _lock_user_permissions helper + _parse_row_data
dedup. set_permission now runs the whole read-modify-write in one
locked transaction instead of ensure_complete() + _save() across
two.
- workspace_tools: _permissions_write_sync acquires the same lock.
New _permissions_edit_sync replaces the old read-then-write
sequence with a single locked transaction that handles
text_not_found / ambiguous / ok atomically.
- edit_file on PERMISSIONS.json routes through _permissions_edit.
Postgres-only. Project's tests and production are both Postgres.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
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Description
Three connected fixes to the permissions system. User reported: "I redeployed on Railway and now the QuickBooks special overrides were gone as were some other permissions updates I made."
1. PERMISSIONS.json now lives in postgres
`ApprovalStore` used to write `data/users/<user_id>/PERMISSIONS.json` to the local filesystem. On Railway — and in local docker-compose — that path isn't on a persistent volume, so every redeploy wiped every override the user had granted.
So the typed `set_permission` API and the agent's `read_file("PERMISSIONS.json")` share one source of truth. No more drift.
2. Dropped `ToolName.UPDATE_PERMISSION`
Previously, ALWAYS_ALLOW / ALWAYS_DENY emitted a synthetic `update_permission` tool record so the chat would show "Saved: X will always run". Separate vocabulary for the same concept — the file changed.
Now `core.py._record_permissions_edit` emits a synthetic `write_file(path="PERMISSIONS.json", content=)` record instead. One verb for "the file changed", whether the agent did it via `edit_file`, the user edited it on the dashboard, or the approval gate persisted an Always.
3. Messaging tools default to ALWAYS and are hidden from the UI
Normal chat replies return as the agent's final text string — they don't go through `send_reply`. That tool is only called for proactive / cross-channel sends (heartbeat, different-channel delivery). ASK was a safety valve for a narrow path the user shouldn't have to babysit on the Permissions page.
Type
Tests
Local pytest was hanging in the sandbox, so I stopped re-running it and am letting CI do the final check per your call.
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