wtclaude
bf41105ec0
Protocol 3.0 Part A. Admin-configurable, per-feature and per-field audience control over every shard-derived surface, replacing the static PUBLIC_KINDS allowlist that used to be the whole boundary. - SHARD_VISIBILITY.md (new): the admin-facing guide - the ladder, what each of the ten features exposes, the defaults, the two rules that are code rather than configuration, and worked examples. - BACKEND_DESIGN.md 6.5 (new): the same thing as a security contract - the ladder and how viewerLevel resolves it, the locked acct/webId rule, the fail-closed kind map, the asymmetric ladder fallbacks, and the three enforcement points. Plus the shard_feature_visibility schema, the /public/shard/features route, and the adminOnly tier on /admin/shard/visibility. Defaults reproduce pre-3.0 behavior everywhere, with one deliberate exception which is the leak Part A was written to close: guilds and governors previously returned the raw stored payload, whose leader and governor actors carry acct and webId, to anonymous callers. Co-Authored-By: Claude <noreply@anthropic.com>
125 lines
6.6 KiB
Markdown
125 lines
6.6 KiB
Markdown
# Shard visibility — who sees which shard data
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**Status:** Built (Protocol 3.0 Part A). Admin → Shard Visibility.
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**Audience:** shard owners and admins.
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**Companion to** [`../link/v3.md`](../link/v3.md) §3 (the design) and
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[`BACKEND_DESIGN.md`](BACKEND_DESIGN.md) §6 (the security contract).
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The website surfaces a lot of live shard data. What your players, your staff and the anonymous
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internet may each see is **yours to decide**, per feature, from Admin → Shard Visibility.
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Nothing changes until you change it: every setting ships at the value that reproduces how the site
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behaved before this panel existed.
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---
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## 1. The audience ladder
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Five rungs. Each one includes everyone below it.
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| Rung | In the UI | Who that is |
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|---|---|---|
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| `anonymous` | **Everyone** | Anyone at all, signed in or not. |
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| `logged_in` | **Signed in** | Any registered account, whether or not they've linked a game account. |
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| `player` | **Linked players** | Accounts with a linked in-game account. **Staff always qualify**, linked or not. |
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| `staff` | **Staff** | Admins and moderators. |
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| `admin` | **Admins only** | Admins. |
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Two notes that surprise people:
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- **`editor` is a content role, not a shard role.** Editors write news and wiki pages; they get no
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shard privilege from that. An editor is treated by link status like any other member. This matches
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the rest of the site, where shard staff powers are admin-or-moderator.
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- **Staff satisfy `player` without linking.** Otherwise an admin would be locked out of surfaces
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they'd gated to players, which is how the `/player/*` routes already behave.
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## 2. What you can set per feature
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**Enabled.** Off means gone. The feature's pages return “not found”, not “forbidden” — a disabled
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feature doesn't advertise that it exists.
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**Who can see it.** The minimum rung, from the ladder above.
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**Live updates.** Whether this feature pushes changes to open pages in real time. Turning it off
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doesn't break the page; it just refreshes on load instead of updating in place.
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**Sensitive fields.** Some features expose a field that deserves its own rung — you can publish the
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board while holding back one column. See the table in §3.
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## 3. The features, and their defaults
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| Feature | What it exposes | Default | Sensitive fields |
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|---|---|---|---|
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| **Shard status** | Connection state, online count, gold-supply series | Everyone | — |
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| **Activity feed** | Deaths, kills, skill gains, quests, logins | Everyone | — |
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| **Champion spawns** | The live champion / mini-champ / sea-boss board | Everyone | — |
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| **Guilds** | Guild rosters, alliances, leaders | Everyone | — |
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| **Town governors** | City Loyalty governors, elections, term history | Everyone | — |
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| **Houses / IDOC** | Houses in danger | Everyone | House owner → Staff · House price → Staff |
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| **Players online** | Population aggregate, staff-online widget | Everyone | In-game location → Staff |
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| **Shard rules** | Skill/stat caps, house limits, vet rewards, the ruleset | Everyone | Connect address → Everyone |
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| **Spawn atlas** | Bestiary and spawn locations (static content) | Everyone | — |
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| **Leaderboards** | Point and loyalty standings | Everyone | Character names → Everyone |
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| **Marketplace** | The shard-wide player-vendor index | Everyone, **live updates off** | Vendor owner name → Everyone · Location → Everyone |
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**Why the marketplace ships with live updates off.** A live feed of every vendor's full inventory
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would be the single largest thing the site sends. No page needs it — the marketplace is a search over
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stored data with a “prices last refreshed N minutes ago” stamp. Turn it on only if you want it.
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**Why house owner/price default to Staff.** The public Houses page has always been a "where are the
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falling houses" board — location only. Owner and price are the staff view. That split is preserved.
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## 4. What you cannot change
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Two rules are enforced in code and are not settings. Attempting to set them returns an error rather
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than silently ignoring you.
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**1. Game account names and website user ids are admin-only, always.**
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`acct` and `webId` never appear below the admin rung on any surface. A character *name* is visible in
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game to anyone standing next to them; the **account** behind it is not, and neither is the website
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user it's linked to. Publishing those would disclose something the shard itself doesn't, and would
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tie a player's in-game identity to their forum identity without their consent.
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**2. Unknown event kinds are never broadcast below admin.**
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The live stream maps each event kind to a feature. A kind with no mapping — a new event from a shard
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plugin the site doesn't know yet, say — goes to admins only. It fails closed. This is what keeps the
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stream safe by default when the shard starts sending something new: the worst case is that staff see
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it and players don't, never the reverse.
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## 5. How it's enforced
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Three places, one config:
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- **Page and API requests** are checked before the handler runs, and the response is then stripped of
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any field above the caller's rung.
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- **The live stream** resolves a viewer's rung once, when they connect, and freezes it for that
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connection — a long-open page can't gain privilege because something changed underneath it. Each
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event is then gated and stripped per viewer, so two people watching the same page can legitimately
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receive different versions of the same event, or one of them nothing.
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- **Navigation** hides links a viewer can't follow, so they don't hit a wall. This is presentation
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only — the gate is server-side either way.
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Changes take effect within about five seconds, **including on streams that are already open**. You
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don't need to restart anything.
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If the database is briefly unreachable, the site falls back to the built-in defaults — the pre-v3
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behavior — rather than to "everything is public".
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## 6. Worked examples
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**"I want a private shard — nothing public until people register."**
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Set every feature to **Signed in**. Anonymous visitors still get the site itself; the shard data
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disappears from the nav.
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**"Publish the market, but don't tie vendors to players."**
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Marketplace → Everyone, with **Vendor owner name** → Staff. Prices, items and locations stay public;
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who owns each vendor doesn't.
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**"Leaderboards for members only."**
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Leaderboards → **Linked players**. Anyone who's linked a game account sees the standings; drive-by
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visitors don't.
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**"Let players see house owners."**
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Houses → Everyone, **House owner** → Linked players. Note this is a real disclosure: house ownership
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is visible in game, but the website makes it searchable in a way the game doesn't.
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