Signed team configuration and encrypted sync

Switchyard can share portable project templates, policy packs, curated plugin metadata, and enterprise configuration without a hosted account. This feature is optional: a fresh installation has no trusted publisher, bundle, sync key, registry, or remote dependency.

Trust model

Every switchyard.bundle/v1 document is signed with Ed25519 over a canonical envelope. Installation succeeds only when all of these checks pass:

1. the publisher’s exact public key was trusted with explicit confirmation;
2. the publisher ID is the SHA-256-derived identity of that key;
3. the bundle signature, schema, kind, ID, timestamps, and expiration pass;
4. its JSON payload is bounded, kind-specific, and portable; and
5. the payload contains no secret-bearing fields, private keys, or absolute host paths.

Signing private keys and age identities are CLI-owned files and are never sent to the daemon. Generate a new owner-only signing key, verify its public identity, and trust the public half through an independently authenticated channel:

switchyard team key generate --output maintainer.signing-key.json
switchyard team key show maintainer.signing-key.json
switchyard team publisher trust --name "Maintainers" \
  --public-key <reviewed-base64-public-key> --yes

Do not commit private signing-key or age-identity files. Rotate a compromised publisher by ceasing to install its bundles and distributing a newly generated public identity out of band. The current v1 trust store is additive; removing a publisher is deliberately not an unaudited shortcut.

Bundle workflow

Payloads are ordinary bounded JSON documents. Sign and install them as separate reviewed operations:

switchyard team bundle sign policy-pack org-policy \
  --name "Organization policy" --version 1.0.0 \
  --payload policy.json --key maintainer.signing-key.json \
  --output org-policy.bundle.json

switchyard team bundle install org-policy.bundle.json --yes
switchyard team bundle list
switchyard team policy
switchyard team registry

Project-template payloads contain a manifest and a bounded variable catalog. Rendering replaces only declared {{variable}} placeholders and validates the complete result with the normal project-manifest validator before it can be written:

switchyard team template render template.go-service \
  --set name=payments --set root=/work/payments \
  --output switchyard.project.json

Policy packs use allowlists. Multiple packs and enterprise configurations are combined by restrictive intersection, so an empty allowed list denies that optional capability. Team policy can restrict remote inventory and lifecycle actions, registry publishers, and whether a user may opt in to anonymous metrics. It never broadens the built-in permission model.

A signed plugin registry supplies metadata, HTTPS download locations, and SHA-256 digests only. Registry discovery does not download, install, trust, enable, or grant capabilities to a plugin. The normal exact-fingerprint and least-privilege plugin review remains mandatory.

Encrypted configuration sync

Sync exports only trusted public publishers and their verified portable bundles. It excludes projects, repository paths and contents, machine or tunnel credentials, fleet registrations, operations, logs, terminals, environment values, settings, and runtime state.

Create an age X25519 identity on the receiving machine and share only its recipient string:

switchyard team sync key-generate --output receiving-machine.agekey
switchyard team sync export --recipient age1... --output team-config.age
switchyard team sync preview team-config.age \
  --identity receiving-machine.agekey
switchyard team sync import team-config.age \
  --identity receiving-machine.agekey --yes

The encrypted file uses the standard armored age format. Preview decrypts only in memory, validates every public identity and signature, lists bundle IDs, and warns about replaced publisher metadata or signed bundle revisions. Import requires a second explicit confirmation. Encryption protects confidentiality; signature verification and the review step establish publisher trust.

Back up signing keys and age identities with the same controls used for other developer credentials. Losing an age identity makes its encrypted exports unrecoverable. Losing a signing key does not affect installed bundles, but new revisions must use a newly trusted publisher.