theta-suite/docs/MULTI_SITE_SPEC.md

Theta Suite Multi-Site Architecture & VPN Specification

Specification Version: 2.2.0 Status: Mostly shipped. Read the status table at the bottom before trusting any section's detail as current behavior — this document accumulated across several build passes and earlier sections describe things that were aspirational when written and real by the time later sections were added. Target Suite Version: v1.50.0+ Repository: theta-suite

Shipped today

• Join, live replication, promotion (sso-manager-node): a spoke joins via a one-time export over a site join key (POST /api/site/join-keys / /export / /join), then registers its own endpoint so the master can push live resync pings on every catalog write — no longer a one-time snapshot. Promotion (POST /api/directory-admin/site-promote) coordinates a real handoff, demoting the old master as one action. Identical agent-signing keys ride the same export/resync path. Read sso-manager-node/docs/site-join.md and directory_spec.md §11 for the endpoint-level detail.
• Gateway-to-gateway WireGuard mesh (theta-gateway): real site-to-site tunnels via POST /api/mesh/register//join, kernel WireGuard with a userspace wireguard-go fallback. Verified with an actual two-container encrypted tunnel passing traffic, not a mock.
• Not yet connected to each other: the mesh is a transport layer that exists on its own; sso-manager-node's HTTPS-based join/replicate calls don't route over it yet. That wiring, plus the no-inbound relay it would enable (mechanism verified, automation not built — see status table), is the next layer.
• mDNS local-discovery, Linux: shipped and verified end-to-end — theta-gateway announces (services/mdns_announce.js), theta-agent discovers and applies a hosts-file override, cleanly reverts when the announcement disappears. Windows/macOS remain unbuilt — see the TODO list.

Design scale: a handful of sites (dozen max, 254 hard ceiling — see §4), a few hundred users/hosts total. This is a deliberate, small, trusted-operator deployment, not a hyperscale/adversarial-tenant one — several decisions below (fire-and-forget replication, identical directories) trade blast-radius for simplicity because the scale allows it. Don't generalize these choices past that scale without re-deriving them.

---

1. High-Level System Architecture

flowchart TB
    subgraph ControlPlane["Master Site (write authority)"]
        ssoM["sso-manager-node (isMaster=true)"]
        ldapM["OpenLDAP (MMR write node)"]
        baoM["OpenBao (local, replication source)"]
        proxyM["theta-proxy"]
        gateM["theta-gateway"]
        agentM["theta-agent"]
    end

    subgraph SiteB["Spoke — inbound (has a public IP)"]
        ssoB["sso-manager-node (isMaster=false)"]
        ldapB["OpenLDAP (MMR read replica)"]
        baoB["OpenBao (local replica)"]
        proxyB["theta-proxy — serves this site's public traffic directly"]
        gateB["theta-gateway"]
        agentB["theta-agent"]
    end

    subgraph SiteC["Spoke — no inbound (CGNAT)"]
        ssoC["sso-manager-node (isMaster=false)"]
        ldapC["OpenLDAP (MMR read replica)"]
        baoC["OpenBao (local replica)"]
        proxyC["theta-proxy — LAN-local traffic only"]
        gateC["theta-gateway"]
        agentC["theta-agent"]
    end

    gateM <==>|"WireGuard mesh tunnel"| gateB
    gateM <==>|"WireGuard mesh tunnel"| gateC

    ssoM -.->|"fire-and-forget push: catalog + secrets + signing key"| ssoB
    ssoM -.->|"fire-and-forget push"| ssoC
    ldapM <==>|"OpenLDAP MMR syncrepl"| ldapB
    ldapM <==>|"OpenLDAP MMR syncrepl"| ldapC

    proxyM -->|"TLS-terminate + relay (no direct path exists)"| gateM
    gateM ==>|"WG tunnel"| gateC

---

2. Every Directory Is Identical

Master and every spoke run the same LDAP data, the same OpenBao secrets, and the same agent-signing key. Hitting any site's sso-manager-node for read/auth purposes is equivalent to hitting any other. The only asymmetry is write authority (§3).

This is a deliberate tradeoff, not a default: it means compromising any single spoke — including the smallest, least-secured one — grants an attacker the same agent-command authority (update_binary, arbitrary_bash, service control) as compromising the master, because every site holds the same Ed25519 signing key (sso-manager-node/nodejs/utils/agent_keys.js). Accepted here because the deployment scale is small and trusted. Do not extend this pattern to a larger/adversarial-tenant deployment without revisiting it.

Consequence: theta-agent needs no change to support multi-site — it already does TOFU pairing against a single trusted key (websocket.go:341-351), and since that key is identical everywhere, any site's sso-manager-node can validly sign a command for any agent, anywhere, without agents needing a keyring.

2.1 What Replicates, and How

Data	Mechanism	Direction
LDAP (users, groups)	OpenLDAP MMR syncrepl	master (write) → spokes (read-only)
OpenBao secrets (incl. agent-signing key at secret/agent/signing-key)	New: custom replicator (OpenBao has no built-in multi-site replication — Performance Replication is Vault-Enterprise-only, confirmed absent from OpenBao as of this writing)	master (write) → spokes (read-only)
Directory catalog (Resources: hosts, apps, sites)	Existing catalog change events	master (write) → spokes (read-only)
Audit log	Async batch worker, already speced (§6)	spokes → master

2.2 Replication Delivery: Fire-and-Forget

Master is the sole writer (§3), so there is exactly one producer per data type — no conflict resolution, no consensus, no vector clocks needed. On every write, master pushes the change to all connected spokes concurrently (not sequentially — spokes are independent WG peers, none blocks on another) and does not wait for acks. A spoke that's offline queues nothing on the master's side; on reconnect, the spoke pulls (or master replays) missed versions.

This is a deliberate choice over "wait for all spokes to ack": with a dozen spokes, concurrent push completes in low hundreds of milliseconds on the happy path, but waiting for acks makes every write's latency bounded by the slowest/offline spoke — reintroducing the split-brain-adjacent stall that §3's explicit-promotion design exists to avoid. Never make a master write block on spoke reachability.

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3. Explicit Master Control & Human god_admin Authority

Automatic failover across WAN is explicitly disabled — 0% split-brain risk by design:

                          WAN OUTAGE DETECTED
                                   │
                                   ▼
             Spoke Node Unconditionally Retains SPOKE Mode
                                   │
                                   ▼
             Requires Human god_admin Promotion Action

1. Unreachable master: a spoke that loses the master unconditionally stays a spoke. No auto-election.
2. Promotion is a single coordinated action, not two steps: POST /api/directory-admin/site-promote (god_admin-gated) calls out to the current master over the WG tunnel and demotes it as part of the same operation — there's never a window with two masters. (Requires the old master to be reachable; if it isn't, that's an operator-visible failure to resolve manually, not a silent partial-promotion.)
3. Because every directory is identical (§2), promotion carries no agent re-keying cost — this was the main risk in earlier drafts of this design and is now moot.
4. Site state (name, slug, isMaster, masterUrl, wanConnected) lives on the site's own kind:'site' Resource (metadata.multiSite), not in server memory — it must survive restarts and be visible via the same directory API as everything else.

---

4. spoke.env vs setup.env

A spoke shares almost none of setup.env's concerns (it doesn't mint LDAP admin/JWT/service-account secrets — those arrive via replication, §2) so it gets its own, much shorter file:

CFG_DOMAIN=theta42.com          # REQUIRED, must match the master's exactly — this is the shared LDAP base DN (dc=theta42,dc=com). Never per-site.
CFG_SITE_NAME=staten-island     # this site's name/slug
CFG_SPOKE_INBOUND=false         # true: this site has a public IP and serves its own traffic directly (standalone-style). false: no inbound path exists; master relays (§5).
CFG_PUBLIC_DOMAIN=              # only used when CFG_SPOKE_INBOUND=true — this site's own domain, own DNS, own ACME cert, independent of the master's domain.
CFG_JOIN_TOKEN=                 # one-time token from the master, used for WG mesh auto-registration (§4.1) and initial catalog/secret pull.
CFG_MASTER_ENDPOINT=            # master's WG endpoint (host:port) to join through.

CFG_DOMAIN is the identity namespace (LDAP DN) and must be identical across every site — MMR replicas cannot diverge on base DN. CFG_PUBLIC_DOMAIN is a web-hostname concern, unrelated to LDAP, and only exists at all for inbound spokes.

4.1 WireGuard Mesh Auto-Registration

1. A new theta-gateway boots with CFG_JOIN_TOKEN + CFG_MASTER_ENDPOINT, generates its Curve25519 keypair, and calls POST /api/mesh/gateway/register on the master over an initial bootstrap tunnel.
2. Master assigns the next free site index (one octet, used identically in both 172.24.<site>.0/16 and 10.<site>.0.0/16 per the reference topology in Appendix A) and returns full mesh peer config.
3. Site index ceiling is 254 (0 and 255 excluded) — a hard technical limit of this addressing scheme, not an arbitrary cap. Real deployments target a dozen or fewer; no need to cap lower than the real ceiling.
4. Each theta-gateway applies the new peer set to its running wg0 via wgctrl without dropping existing connections.

---

5. Inbound vs. No-Inbound Spokes

Whether a spoke has a public IP determines everything about how its traffic reaches the outside world — these are two distinct, documented operating modes, not a single universal mechanism.

5.1 Inbound Spoke (CFG_SPOKE_INBOUND=true)

Behaves like a standalone install. Own CFG_PUBLIC_DOMAIN, own DNS pointed at its own public IP, own ACME cert. theta-proxy and theta-gateway serve public web + SSH traffic directly — no relay involved. The only WAN-facing traffic to the master is replication (§2) and audit shipping (§6).

5.2 No-Inbound Spoke (CFG_SPOKE_INBOUND=false)

No public IP exists, so any external access must go through the master:

1. Master mints a public hostname for the spoke's services (e.g. sso-{slug}.{master's public domain}) and creates the corresponding theta-proxy route (already dynamic/DB-backed — proxy/nodejs/models/host.js — no new plumbing needed there).
2. Master terminates TLS for that hostname and relays to the spoke over the WG tunnel — both theta-proxy (any site-hosted web app) and theta-gateway (SSH jump) traffic relay this way, not just SSO.
3. Terminating at the master (rather than SNI passthrough) is fine here specifically because master↔spoke already rides an encrypted WG tunnel — there's no unencrypted hop being introduced.

5.3 Local-Direct Resolution (Skip the Relay On-LAN)

A client physically on a no-inbound spoke's LAN would otherwise hairpin out to the master and back to reach its own local site. Solved via mDNS local-service-discovery, not directory-side network topology:

1. The spoke's theta-gateway/theta-proxy announces itself on the local segment via mDNS (_theta-suite._tcp.local, TXT records: site slug, public hostnames it fronts, local IP).
2. theta-agent, when a config flag (preferLocalDiscoveredDirectory or similar — see the agent-side spec, Appendix B) is enabled, listens for this announcement and overrides local resolution for matching hostnames to the discovered local IP.
3. No match (off-site, or flag disabled) → normal public DNS → master relay. Multicast is link-local by nature, so "on-site or not" needs no explicit detection logic — presence/absence of the announcement is the signal. This also solves roaming-admin access (§ formerly "5", folded in here) for free: same laptop, same flag, local-fast-path at the office and relay-path everywhere else.
4. Hard rule: mDNS is unauthenticated on a LAN. It may only ever change where the agent connects, never whether it trusts what answers — TLS/hostname validation against the redirected IP must stay intact, so a spoofed rogue announcement produces a TLS failure, not a silent MITM.

This piece needs Windows/Mac-specific implementation and testing that can't be done from this (Linux) environment — see Appendix B for the standalone spec handed off for that work.

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6. Non-Canonical Audit Logging

Unchanged from prior draft: OAuth logins, SSH session events, proxy access, and agent execution events write to local site audit tables without blocking on WAN. An async worker flushes batches to master via POST /api/directory-admin/audit/ingest when reachable.

---

Appendix A: Production Reference WireGuard Topology Config

Site 10.2 (Staten Island LAN Node) Gateway Reference (wg0.conf)

[Interface]
Address = 172.24.0.2/32
PrivateKey = <SITE_10_2_PRIVATE_KEY>
ListenPort = 51820
Table = off

# Mesh Subnet Routes
PostUp = ip route add 10.0.0.0/8 dev %i
PostUp = ip route add 172.24.0.0/13 dev %i

# Policy Routing Exits
PostUp = ip route add default via 10.5.0.1 dev %i table offshore
PostUp = ip route add default via 172.24.0.1 dev %i table us_vps
PostUp = ip rule add from 10.2.254.0/24 lookup offshore
PostUp = ip rule add from 10.2.253.0/24 lookup main preference 1000

# NETMAP Shadow Network (10.2.168.x -> 192.168.1.x)
PostUp = iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -i %i -d 10.2.168.0/24 -j NETMAP --to 192.168.1.0/24
PostUp = iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o %i -s 192.168.1.0/24 -j NETMAP --to 10.2.168.0/24
PostUp = ip route add local 10.2.168.0/24 dev lo

# Forwarding & NAT
PostUp = iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -s 192.168.1.0/24 -o %i -j MASQUERADE
PostUp = iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o eth0 -j MASQUERADE
PostUp = iptables -A FORWARD -i %i -o eth0 -j ACCEPT
PostUp = iptables -A FORWARD -i eth0 -o %i -m state --state RELATED,ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT

# System Kernel Options
PostUp = sysctl -w net.ipv4.ip_forward=1
PostUp = sysctl -w net.ipv4.conf.all.rp_filter=0
PostUp = sysctl -w net.ipv4.conf.eth0.rp_filter=0
PostUp = sysctl -w net.ipv4.conf.%i.rp_filter=0

# --- PEERS ---
[Peer]
# Site 10.1: US Hub / VPS Exit
PublicKey = QZCvR3N1CdUabC2xWfc1lmYKHfSiXYs1UoVINIMftws=
Endpoint = gg-si1.wgnode.com:51820
AllowedIPs = 172.24.0.0/16, 10.0.0.0/8, 0.0.0.0/0
PersistentKeepalive = 25

[Peer]
# Site 10.5: Netherlands Offshore Exit Node
PublicKey = MlF6h3YI1MIvOlgyNozCMoa/rICoLNtc7r/pseKiHQQ=
Endpoint = nl-alexhost.wgnode.com:51871
AllowedIPs = 172.24.0.5/32, 10.5.0.0/16, 0.0.0.0/0
PersistentKeepalive = 25

Site 10.5 (Netherlands Exit Node) Gateway Reference (wg0.conf)

[Interface]
Address = 172.24.0.5/32
PrivateKey = <SITE_10_5_PRIVATE_KEY>
ListenPort = 51871

PostUp = ip addr add 10.5.0.1/16 dev %i
PostUp = iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o eth0 -j MASQUERADE
# Dynamic Return Path Masquerading (SOURCENAT)
PostUp = iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o %i ! -s 172.24.0.0/13 -j MASQUERADE
PostUp = sysctl -w net.ipv4.ip_forward=1

[Peer]
# Site 10.2: Staten Island LAN
PublicKey = AsS7aikCUrXpdfSvwFnMs0yUaoQ7ZCkoUVOmNdl7NS8=
AllowedIPs = 172.24.0.2/32, 10.2.0.0/16

[Peer]
# Site 10.1: US Hub VPS
PublicKey = QZCvR3N1CdUabC2xWfc1lmYKHfSiXYs1UoVINIMftws=
AllowedIPs = 172.24.0.1/32, 10.1.0.0/8

---

Appendix B: Agent-Side Work

See AGENT_LOCAL_DISCOVERY_SPEC.md — split out because it needs Windows/Mac implementation and testing that a Linux-only dev environment cannot meaningfully do. That doc is the handoff: it specifies behavior precisely enough to implement and test independently, without needing to re-derive the reasoning in this file.

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Status of This Spec vs. Code (as of this revision)

Piece	Status
Site role persisted (not in-memory)	Shipped — /config/site.json on sso-manager-node, survives restarts (v2.2.0)
Join key issuance + one-time directory adoption	Shipped — /api/site/join-keys, /api/site/export, /api/site/join, fresh-install-gated (v2.2.0–v2.3.0)
Spoke read-only enforcement	Shipped — directory-write routes 403 toward the master once joined (v2.3.0)
WAN health check	Shipped — /api/site/ping, live in the Master Site modal (v2.2.0–v2.3.0)
setup.env / setup.sh join wiring	Shipped — CFG_MASTER_DIRECTORY_URL / CFG_MASTER_DIRECTORY_JOIN_KEY, bootstrap/site-join.js (theta-suite v2.2.0)
Continuous/live replication (vs. one-time export-on-join)	Shipped (sso-manager-node) — a spoke registers its own endpoint at join time (POST /api/site/spokes), and every successful master catalog write fires a fire-and-forget push (utils/site_replicate.js) at every registered spoke, which re-pulls a fresh export. Verified end-to-end in docker-compose.multisite-e2e.yml.
Identical-directory signing key	Shipped — POST /api/site/export includes the master's agent-signing key; a spoke adopts it via agent_keys.adopt() on join and every resync. OpenBao secret replication beyond this one key is still not built.
Coordinated master promotion (demote the old master as one action)	Shipped — POST /api/site/demote + site-promote's handoff logic. Fixed two real pre-existing bugs while wiring this in: site-promote's god_admin check read a req.user.groups field nothing ever populated (permanently 403'd for everyone), and the read-only write-gate 403'd site-promote itself before the handler could run.
WireGuard gateway-to-gateway mesh (theta-gateway)	Shipped — POST /api/mesh/register//join (join-token bootstrap), utils/wg_iface.js (kernel WireGuard, falls back to userspace wireguard-go). Verified with a real two-container test: actual encrypted tunnel, real ICMP traffic across it, 0% loss. This is the mesh transport layer only — nothing in sso-manager-node's replication yet routes traffic over it; today's site-to-site HTTPS calls (join/export/resync) still go over whatever network path already reaches the target, same as before this layer existed.
No-inbound-spoke relay (master proxies a spoke with no public IP)	Mechanism verified, automation not built. Confirmed with a standalone test (not theta-proxy's actual Lua/Redis engine, which needs its own dedicated pass to wire safely): a spoke with zero published ports, reachable only via its WG mesh IP, served a request that an external client sent to the master's public port — the master terminated the connection and relayed over the tunnel. So the underlying idea works; what's missing is theta-proxy automatically creating that relay route when a no-inbound spoke registers (needs a real service-to-service credential between sso-manager-node and theta-proxy/theta-gateway that doesn't exist yet — a new integration, not a small wiring task), and today's HTTPS-based join/replicate still requires the spoke to reach the master's API directly (and vice versa for export), so a spoke with zero inbound and zero outbound path still can't join at all.
mDNS local-discovery (Linux)	Shipped — theta-gateway announces (services/mdns_announce.js, opt-in via THETA_LOCAL_DISCOVERY_HOSTS), theta-agent discovers and applies a hosts-file override (local_discovery.go, opt-in via prefer_local_directory). Verified end-to-end with real containers over real multicast: announce → discover → apply → clean revert on disappearance, all confirmed. Caught two real bugs along the way (mdns.Lookup()'s IPv6 query aborting the whole lookup even after a valid IPv4 response arrived; rename() failing with EBUSY over a bind-mounted /etc/hosts, common in every container runtime) — see the commit messages in theta-agent.
mDNS local-discovery (Windows, macOS)	Not built — needs platform-native testing this environment can't do (hosts-file vs. stub-resolver tradeoff, elevation, DNS-cache behavior per OS — see Appendix B §3). This is now the only unbuilt piece of the original design.

TODO — what's actually left, in rough dependency order

1. mDNS local-discovery, Windows + macOS — needs platform-native testing this Linux environment cannot do (hosts-file vs. stub-resolver tradeoff, elevation, DNS-cache quirks per OS — see Appendix B §3). Blocked on a Windows/Mac dev environment, not on design. The Linux side (announcer + agent listener) is done and verified — this is the only remaining piece of the original design with no Linux-buildable path forward.
2. Route sso-manager-node's HTTPS traffic (join/export/resync) over the WireGuard mesh instead of the open internet, now that the mesh exists as its own transport layer. Currently the two subsystems don't know about each other.
3. theta-proxy automation for the no-inbound relay — mechanism is verified (see status table), but nothing creates the relay route automatically when a no-inbound spoke registers. Needs a new service-to-service credential between sso-manager-node and theta-proxy/theta-gateway — a real design decision (who mints it, what it authorizes), not just wiring.
4. OpenBao secret replication beyond the one agent-signing key — LDAP admin creds, JWT secret, other per-deployment secrets that currently differ per site.
5. theta-proxy/theta-gateway service-to-service auth model in general — items 2 and 3 both need it; worth designing once rather than inventing a credential per integration.
6. Mesh peer removal cleanup — wg_iface.removePeer() doesn't remove the kernel routes setPeer() adds (flagged in code, not yet exercised because nothing removes a mesh peer today).

Committed under docs/MULTI_SITE_SPEC.md.