Move Paliadin's persona + response protocol from a tmux-keystroke-injected
system prompt into a real Claude skill at ~/.claude/skills/paliadin/SKILL.md
(repo source: scripts/skills/paliadin/SKILL.md, install script:
scripts/install-paliadin-skill). Claude's skill router auto-matches the
[PALIADIN:<uuid>] envelope on every turn, so the protocol contract
survives /clear, fresh sessions, and pane restarts — root-cause fix for
the post-/clear stuck-spinner that triggered this task.
Per-user tmux session keying: each Paliad user gets a session named
<prefix>-<userid8> (first 8 hex chars of UUID). One persistent session
per user, conversation history accumulates per visit, ResetSession kills
the session entirely. Health-check cache becomes per-session.
Service-side simplifications:
- paliadin_prompt.go (paliadinSystemPrompt) deleted; trailer parser stays
in paliadin.go.
- paliadin_remote.go: ensureBootstrapped removed; healthGate takes a
session arg + caches per-key; ResetSession derives session from UserID
and shells out to 'reset <session>'.
- paliadin.go (LocalPaliadinService): per-user pane cache, ensurePane
takes UserID, no more in-process system-prompt send.
- Paliadin interface: ResetSession now takes UserID.
Shim refactor (scripts/paliadin-shim):
- All verbs accept the tmux session as their first positional arg.
- 'bootstrap' verb removed (skill replaces it).
- 'reset' kills the named session via tmux kill-session.
- Session name validated against [A-Za-z0-9_.-]{1,64}.
Env var rename: PALIADIN_TMUX_SESSION -> PALIADIN_SESSION_PREFIX (semantic
shift from literal session name to per-user prefix); CLAUDE.md updated.
Tests cover per-session health caching, session-name derivation,
ResetSession kill-session shape, and health-cache eviction on reset.
Phase B step 1 of the Tailscale-SSH route to mRiver. Splits the existing
local-tmux PoC into a Paliadin interface with two implementations; the
remote-SSH backend lands in a follow-up commit (paliadin_remote.go).
Surface:
- Paliadin interface — RunTurn, ResetSession, ListRecentTurns, Stats,
IsOwner. The handler at internal/handlers/paliadin.go now talks to
this instead of the concrete struct.
- paliadinDB — embedded base type carrying the audit-table I/O
(insertTurnRow, completeTurn, markTurnError, markTurnAbandonedOrError)
plus the read-side queries (IsOwner, ListRecentTurns, Stats). Both
Local and Remote impls inherit these by embedding paliadinDB so the
remote path doesn't have to duplicate any DB code.
- LocalPaliadinService — the renamed PoC backend. Identical behaviour
to the previous PaliadinService; only the type name and method
receivers change. Method receivers split: tmux-specific operations
(RunTurn, ResetSession, ensurePane, sendToPane, pollForResponse, etc.)
stay on *LocalPaliadinService; DB-only operations promote to
*paliadinDB.
Wiring:
- internal/handlers/handlers.go — Paliadin field becomes the interface
type; Register() unchanged.
- cmd/server/main.go — calls NewLocalPaliadinService instead of
NewPaliadinService. The remote-vs-local switch on PALIADIN_REMOTE_HOST
lands in B5.
Tests in paliadin_test.go all green — they test package-level functions
(splitTrailer, countChips, approxTokenCount, sanitiseForTmux,
PaliadinOwnerEmail) and don't touch the renamed struct. No behaviour
change on the local-tmux path.
Refs m/paliad#12
m's call (2026-05-07 21:52): "remove the export variable, that is bad
form. It should be connected only to my account."
The PALIADIN_ENABLED env var was a deploy-time toggle: easy to
mis-flip, splits prod/dev behaviour, and reads as "could be turned on
for anyone." Replaced with a per-request gate in code:
services.PaliadinOwnerEmail = "matthias.siebels@hoganlovells.com"
handlers/paliadin.go now gates every entry point through
requirePaliadinOwner, which looks up paliad.users.email by the caller's
UUID and returns 404 (not 403 — pretend the route doesn't exist) for
anyone else.
Routes register unconditionally; the gate is in the code, not the
deploy. main.go wires PaliadinService whenever DATABASE_URL is set and
logs the owner identity at boot. CLAUDE.md drops the PALIADIN_ENABLED
row and gains an explanatory note about the in-code gate.
Sidebar entries (Paliadin under Übersicht; Paliadin Monitor under
Admin) now render with display:none, revealed by sidebar.ts after
/api/me confirms the caller's email matches PALIADIN_OWNER_EMAIL —
same fail-closed pattern the Admin group already uses.
Side-effect for ops: paliad.de production now serves the routes too,
but only to m, and only successfully if the host has tmux + claude
in PATH (which Dokploy doesn't). m hitting /paliadin from prod gets a
"tmux unavailable" — clear failure mode, not a security concern.
One new test (TestPaliadinOwnerEmail_IsLowercaseStable) keeps the
constant aligned with migration 023's seed so a future rename of m's
account doesn't silently strand the gate. All existing tests pass.
Phase 0 of the Paliadin design (docs/design-paliadin-2026-05-07.md
§0.5). m-only laptop scope, gated behind PALIADIN_ENABLED=false on
prod. Lifts the goldi/mVoice tmux-Claude pattern (mVoice/server.py:
250-380) into a Go service: long-lived `claude` pane in a tmux
session, prompts in via `tmux send-keys -l`, responses out via a
per-turn file (/tmp/paliadin/{turn_id}.txt) the system prompt
instructs Claude to write.
What landed
-----------
- migration 058_paliadin_poc — paliad.paliadin_turns audit table
(full prompt + response stored at PoC scope; redaction returns
at production v1 per design §3.3). RLS: user sees own,
global_admin sees all.
- internal/services/paliadin.go — the orchestrator. ensurePane()
finds-or-creates the tagged tmux window, sendToPane sends the
framed [PALIADIN:turn_id] envelope, pollForResponse reads the
per-turn file, splitTrailer parses the [paliadin-meta] block
Claude appends to every reply (used_tools, rows_seen,
classifier_tag).
- internal/services/paliadin_prompt.go — the system prompt sent
once to a fresh Claude pane. Defines the response protocol
(Write-to-file + meta trailer), the action-chip marker syntax,
the visibility-gate rule (paliad.can_see_project required in
every project-scoped query), and 9 SQL recipes covering m's
paliad data + cross-schema youpc case-law lookup.
- internal/handlers/paliadin.go — POST /api/paliadin/turn kicks
off the work in a goroutine and returns an SSE URL; GET
/api/paliadin/stream/{id} relays per-turn channel events
(meta/content/end/error/ping) to EventSource. Routes register
ONLY when PaliadinService is wired — paliadinSvc nil → no
handlers exist, prod surface is clean.
- /admin/paliadin dashboard — global_admin-only. Shows total
turns, last-7-days, median/p90 duration, tool-use rate (the
load-bearing §0.5.7 metric), abandon rate, classifier
histogram, daily sparkline, top prompts, recent turn log.
Powered by PaliadinService.Stats() + ListRecentTurns().
- frontend: paliadin.tsx + client/paliadin.ts (chat panel with
starter prompts, EventSource consumer, typewriter render of
one-shot content blob, citation-chip parser, "Stop" + "New
conversation" buttons, localStorage history); admin-paliadin
pair (read-only stats dashboard).
- Sidebar: Paliadin entry under Übersicht (ICON_SPARKLE);
Paliadin Monitor under Admin.
- 36 i18n keys (DE+EN), CSS for chat panel + dashboard.
- main.go: PaliadinService wires only on PALIADIN_ENABLED=true,
with PALIADIN_TMUX_SESSION + PALIADIN_RESPONSE_DIR overrides.
Logs visibly so the operator can confirm at boot.
- CLAUDE.md: ANTHROPIC_API_KEY row updated (PoC doesn't need it
— Claude CLI uses m's subscription; key reserved for future
production-v1). New rows for the three PALIADIN_* env vars.
Tests
-----
- 7 unit tests on the trailer parser, chip counter, token approx,
and tmux-input sanitiser. All pass. The trailer parser is
load-bearing for monitoring; an unobserved parser bug = silent
dashboard rot.
What's NOT in v1 (stays deferred)
---------------------------------
- The Anthropic API client (production v1, gated on PoC success
per §0.5.7).
- BYO-AI / OpenAI adapter.
- Per-user rate limiting.
- Multi-replica SSE bus.
- Mascot / avatar SVG.
- Persistent threads (history is browser localStorage only).
How to use locally
------------------
$ export PALIADIN_ENABLED=true
$ ./paliad
# browse /paliadin → type a question → answers stream back
# /admin/paliadin shows the monitoring dashboard
Migration: 058 (skips fritz's t-147 on 057). Safe on prod
because PALIADIN_ENABLED defaults to false; the table is created
but no routes touch it until the env var flips.
