Skip to content

Implement The Tier B Isolated Execution And Quarantine Workflow #129

Description

@PSchmiedmayer

Use Case

An approved research project should be able to run a bounded agent task against a read-only data snapshot in an isolated environment, review its quarantined outputs, and release only explicitly approved artifacts.

Problem

Heartwood can run without network access and records reviewed actions, but it is not an infrastructure security boundary.
It does not currently provision or verify read-only inputs, enforced egress denial, ephemeral execution, output quarantine, or steward-controlled release.

Solution

  • Define typed platform evidence for read-only input snapshots, network policy, execution identity, ephemeral workspace, encrypted storage, quarantine, and release authority.
  • Reuse OpenHands remote-workspace and agent-runtime contracts behind Heartwood platform adapters rather than adding another agent engine.
  • Fail closed before execution when a required platform control cannot be established.
  • Keep outputs unavailable to the main project until a steward approves an exact manifest.
  • Record allocation, execution, review, and release decisions through content-minimized session, provenance, and checkpoint contracts.
  • Provide a synthetic reference deployment and require separate qualification for each controlled-data platform.

Acceptance Criteria

  • Tests prove that inputs cannot be changed, denied egress fails, and unapproved outputs cannot enter the main project.
  • Approval releases only the files and digests in the reviewed manifest.
  • Cancellation, timeout, process loss, and release retry cannot bypass quarantine or repeat an uncertain action.
  • The same lifecycle and recovery state is visible in terminal and browser clients.
  • Synthetic zero-egress validation is repeatable; no protected data is used in source control, CI, or public logs.
  • Documentation does not claim institutional approval from implementation or synthetic validation alone.

Alternatives considered

Application-level network flags and file permissions cannot establish the required platform boundary.
A Terra-specific workflow engine would duplicate the shared gateway and make other managed environments harder to support.

Additional context

This is the main remaining implementation work for Aim 1.3 Tier B.
It depends on approved platform controls, a data-steward process, and the experiment-provenance foundation in #125.

Code of Conduct

  • I agree to follow this project's Code of Conduct and Contributing Guidelines

Activity

Sign up for free to join this conversation on GitHub. Already have an account? Sign in to comment

Metadata

Metadata

Assignees

No one assigned

    Labels

    enhancementNew feature or request

    Type

    No type

    Projects

    • Status
      Backlog

    Milestone

    No milestone

    Relationships

    None yet

    Development

    No branches or pull requests

    Issue actions