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Session: Zenith ops recovery + sprint tracking truth-up

Date: 2026-04-08 Host: Zenith (Windows / WSL2 Ubuntu 24.04) Agent: Claude Sonnet 4.6 Operator: Matt Outcome: Cluster fully green; website shipped; sprint tracking reconciled; two PRs (one merged, one open)

What happened

Session began with the user asking me to orient on Zenith from scratch, then SSH into the icn-dev VM in the homelab and audit state. That cascaded into three compounding workstreams: website docs cleanup, full homelab SSH orientation, and emergency ops recovery after discovering two coop pods and the central Prometheus instance were all crashlooping.

What shipped

PR #1512 — docs(website): add OVERVIEW manual + fix docs explorer titles + refresh roadmap

Status: ✅ Merged as aaa87b3f Changes:

  • docs/OVERVIEW.md (+289 lines) — comprehensive project manual covering architecture, eight primitives, Meaning Firewall, receipt chain, mutual credit terminology discipline, honest current-state breakdown. Auto-renders in the docs explorer Core section.
  • website/src/pages/docs/index.astro (+56 lines) — replace filename-derived titles with a fallback chain (YAML frontmatter → first H1 → filename transform). ADR and strategy doc titles now render human-readable.
  • website/src/data/roadmap.json — currentSprint was stale at Sprint 27; initially updated to Sprint 23, but that was also wrong (see PR #1513 below).

PR #1513 — docs(roadmap): truth-up sprint tracking to post-Sprint-28 Governance Dispatch Tranches

Status: 🟡 Open, all required checks green, claude-review pending (infra-flaky 15m job — non-blocking per CLAUDE.md) Changes:

  • website/src/data/roadmap.json — Sprint 23 → Sprint 28 "Governance Dispatch Tranches" with detailed status block.
  • docs/strategy/ICN-Roadmap-Live.md — prepended a "Current state (2026-04-08)" block summarising Sprints 24–28 and listing active Governance Dispatch Tranches 9–16 (merged), 17 (UpdateJurisdictionTier, local on icn-dev), 18 (TerminateClearing + RevokeVouch, next). Per-sprint sections below are flagged as historical; git log and docs/architecture/agent-handoff-current.md named as canonical source of truth.

Ops recovery

icn-coop-delta + icn-coop-gamma keystore crashloops (fixed)

  • Symptom: Both coops in CrashLoopBackOff, delta 10h / gamma 12d, identical error Not a v3 keystore, trying legacy format → Decryption failed.
  • Root cause: Pods use a copy-keystore init container running cp -n /data/.icn/identity.age /data/identity.age (no-clobber). Canonical keystore at /data/.icn/identity.age was written 2026-02-28 07:14 in sync with the K8s *-secrets passphrases. Something rewrote /data/identity.age in place on gamma (Mar 27) and delta (Apr 5) with passphrases that didn't match the secrets. The no-clobber init never restored the canonical because the file already existed. File sizes coincidentally matched canonical (3330/3302) but md5 differed.
  • Fix: For each pod, started a debug pod with the PVC mounted RW, preserved the broken file as identity.age.broken-20260408, removed identity.age, killed the coop pod. Init container copied canonical back on restart. Both pods now Running 1/1, 0 restarts, clean gossip handshakes visible in logs.
  • Forensic artefacts left in place: /data/identity.age.broken-20260408 on both delta and gamma PVCs for post-mortem.

Prometheus CrashLoopBackOff (fixed)

  • Symptom: prometheus-prometheus-kube-prometheus-prometheus-0, 654 restarts over 6 days, panic: series ID exceeds 5 bytes.
  • Root cause: TSDB head chunk reference overflow — the 40-bit chunk ID space on the head block was exhausted, so every head GC attempt panicked. Known Prometheus bug in long-running instances.
  • Fix: Pod uses emptyDir: {} for prometheus-db (no PVC, no persistent metric history configured anywhere). kubectl delete pod was the entire fix — fresh emptyDir on next reschedule. Pod now 2/2 Running, 0 restarts, 22/22 scrape targets up.
  • Separate caveat flagged for followup: kube-prometheus-stack on this cluster has zero persistent storage for metrics. Every pod reschedule already wiped history silently. One-line Helm values fix (add a PVC template) recommended.

k3s-worker-1 SSH host key (fixed)

  • Old key removed from known_hosts, scanned and trusted new key. Worker reachable: load 0.01, 51% disk, healthy.

Zenith state cleanup

  • Worktrees: 4 orphaned dirs under .claude/worktrees/ (dazzling-jones, elastic-germain, sleepy-wright, sleepy-wright-1f68). Git metadata was stale (pointed at UNC paths; actual gitdir is WSL-native). git worktree prune cleared registry; rm -rf removed directories. 4.2 GB reclaimed (elastic-germain contained a full target/ dir from a killed cargo session).
  • Stashes: Dropped stash@{0} (local claude system before sync — proven duplicate of current main; verified by comparing the stash's new_string against HEAD:.claude/agents/icn-architect.md). Left 11 other stashes in place — they reference deleted feature branches and contain potentially-recoverable work (demo/scripts/load-sample-data.sh, web/pilot-ui/*, icn-federation/src/clearing_manager.rs) that I wasn't confident enough to silently drop.

Environment gotchas discovered

MSYS path mangling on Zenith. The outer shell is MINGW64 (Git Bash) which by default converts /home/matt/... → C:/Program Files/Git/home/matt/... when invoking wsl.exe. Set MSYS_NO_PATHCONV=1 for any wsl.exe command that passes WSL-native paths as arguments. This broke several commands early in the session before I figured it out.

zsh on icn-dev. The remote shell is zsh, not bash. Shell constructs like === section === trip zsh's history expansion. Wrap multi-line SSH commands in "..." on the outer shell and single-quote the zsh side, or use heredoc scripts dropped onto WSL /tmp and run via bash.

Loopback protocol on icnctl. kubectl exec ... -- icnctl network peers fails inside the daemon pod because icnctl defaults to http://[::1]:5601/ but icnd binds IPv4-only. Known cosmetic issue, doesn't block anything. Use the gateway API or direct HTTP calls for diagnostics instead.

Active state when this session ends

  • Branch: docs/sprint-tracking-truth-up (PR #1513 open, pending claude-review)
  • Local main: fully caught up with origin (d3cee4cb + merged #1512 = aaa87b3f)
  • Cluster: fully green. 4/4 coops, all monitoring, all NFS mounts, all P2P mesh, all scrape targets.
  • icn-dev VM: another Claude session actively working Tranche III (UpdateJurisdictionTier executor wiring) on branch fix/steward-bond-semantics. Per session transcript shared by user, local implementation complete: StewardRecord.jurisdiction_tier field added, CommonsHandle::update_jurisdiction_tier plumbed, SdisService trait extended, executor arm replaced, 4 new unit tests pass, fmt + clippy clean, 381/381 icn-core tests pass. Not yet pushed to origin.

Remaining for next session

  1. Watch PR #1513 to merge. Check gh pr view 1513; if claude-review has come in (or timed out into "skipped"), merge. If still pending, safe to --admin merge once all non-flaky gates are green.
  2. Pull icn-dev's Tranche III work when pushed. Look for feat(sdis): Tranche 17 — UpdateJurisdictionTier … commit on origin (or a new PR from fix/steward-bond-semantics). After merge, git pull on Zenith, rebuild website stats so the Tranche 17 entry in the roadmap can be marked ✅ merged (tiny follow-up PR).
  3. Investigate Mar 27/Apr 5 keystore rewrites. Two coop identity files were rewritten with bad passphrases on distinct dates. Broken files preserved at /data/identity.age.broken-20260408 on delta and gamma PVCs for forensic inspection. Probably an icnctl id rotate test job or operator action that didn't update the K8s secret. Next time this happens it should be caught automatically — either a sidecar that syncs the secret when the keystore rotates, or a nightly CronJob that sanity-checks decryption.
  4. Add persistent storage to kube-prometheus-stack. Currently emptyDir: {} — every pod reschedule silently wipes metric history. One-line Helm values fix.
  5. .claude/mcp.json path portability. The icn-ops MCP server path bakes in /home/ubuntu/projects/icn/ops/mcp/dist/index.js which is correct for icn-dev but wrong for Zenith (/home/matt/...). Need host-specific override or a local build of the MCP server.
  6. Investigate docs/development/sessions/undated/ — probably needs sweeping into dated subdirs.

Followups left alone intentionally

  • Dropping stashes @{1–11}. They reference branches that no longer exist but contain real code I didn't author and shouldn't silently discard.
  • Sprint history for Sprints 24–27. I summarised from git log; writing authoritative close notes would be fabrication.
  • icn-dev's fix/steward-bond-semantics working tree. Other Claude session is mid-implementation; I stayed out.
  • icn-ops state/sprint/current.json on icn-dev. Lives outside this repo, maintained separately.

Stats at session end

  • Website: 662 pages, 35 crates, 439,875 LoC, 4,320 tests, 750 PRs, 654 doc files. Latest commit reflected: d3cee4cb.
  • Cluster: 4/4 coops Running, 22/22 Prometheus scrape targets up, 0 crashlooping pods.
  • Disk reclaimed: 4.2 GB (worktree cleanup).
  • PRs shipped: 1 merged, 1 open pending claude-review.

End of handoff.

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