plan: add Vision.md (why we extract auth + success criteria)
Patrick Plate
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# Vision
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**Status:** Draft v1
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**Date:** 2026-06-24
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**Owner:** Patrick (plate-software)
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---
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## Elevator pitch
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> **plate-auth** is the authentication, identity, and multi-tenancy layer that every plate-software product
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> ships with — so we never write the same `JwtAuthenticationFilter` twice.
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One library, two artifacts:
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- **`de.platesoft:plate-auth-starter:0.1.x`** — a Spring Boot 4 auto-configuration starter.
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Drop the dep in, configure four properties, get Google SSO + JWT + memberships + invites + access requests + admin audit.
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- **`@platesoft/auth:0.1.x`** — a NextAuth v5 wiring kit for Next.js 15+ App Router.
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Drop the package in, set three env vars, get the full sign-in / token exchange / proxy flow.
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Together they form the canonical answer to *"how do plate-software apps do auth?"* — backed by a single Postgres
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schema, a single set of JWT semantics, and a single mental model.
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---
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## Why we are building this
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### The forcing function: Sparkboard
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Sparkboard is plate-software's second product. It is greenfield, starts in Sprint 0, and must ship with the
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same caliber of authentication that took InspectFlow six sub-sprints (14.1 – 14.6) to build.
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We have two options:
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1. **Copy-paste InspectFlow's auth code into Sparkboard.** Fast on day 1, painful forever — two divergent
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forks of `JwtService`, two `signIn` callbacks to keep in sync, two security review surfaces, two breaking
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changes whenever Spring or NextAuth ships a new major.
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2. **Extract auth into a shared library.** Slower on day 1 (one extra sprint), cheaper for the rest of time.
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Sparkboard's existence forces option 2. Once a second consumer exists, the maintenance cost of duplication
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exceeds the cost of the abstraction.
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### The strategic bet
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Every plate-software product over the next five years will need:
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- Sign in with a social/work identity provider (Google, Microsoft, optional email magic-link).
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- Stateless server-side auth (JWT, no Spring session cookies).
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- Multi-tenancy where one user can belong to many organizations with different roles.
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- Invitations and access requests so admins don't manually wire every new user.
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- An audit trail because some products will face regulated customers.
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If we make this a library, *every product* benefits from *every security fix* and *every UX improvement* —
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automatically, on the next minor bump.
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---
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## Who consumes plate-auth
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### v0.1 (Sprint 0 ship target)
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| Consumer | Status | Role |
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| **InspectFlow** | Existing product, refactor target | First reference consumer. Validates that extraction is non-lossy by replacing in-tree code with the library. |
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| **Sparkboard** | New product, greenfield | First day-1 consumer. Validates that *integration* (not migration) is ergonomic. |
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### v0.x (future plate-software apps)
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Anything else we build. The library is **internal** — distributed via the plate-software Gitea Package Registry.
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We are not open-sourcing it. We are not building it for external customers. The audience is "us, six months
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from now, starting product #3."
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---
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## Non-goals
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To keep v0.1 shippable, the following are explicitly **out of scope**:
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| Out of scope | Why |
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| External SSO for end-customer tenants (B2B SAML, SCIM provisioning) | No product needs it yet. Revisit in v0.4+. |
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| Passwordless / WebAuthn / passkeys | Standards are stabilizing but the InspectFlow flow already has email magic-link. Add as v0.2 if a product asks. |
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| OIDC server (plate-auth as identity provider for third parties) | We are an OAuth *consumer*, not a provider. Don't build this. |
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| User self-service profile UI components | UI is per-product. We ship hooks and APIs, not React components. |
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| Mobile native apps (iOS / Android SDKs) | Web-first. Mobile can call the same `/api/auth/exchange` endpoint and reuse the JWTs. |
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| Audit log analytics / dashboards | Library emits `login_events` + Envers revisions. Visualization is a per-product concern. |
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---
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## What success looks like
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### Sprint 0 success (ship v0.1.0)
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1. ✅ A new Spring Boot 4 app can add the starter, set `plate.auth.jwt.secret` + `plate.auth.exchange.secret`
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+ Google client id/secret, and have working Google SSO with JWT in under 30 minutes.
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2. ✅ A new Next.js app can `npm install @platesoft/auth`, configure three env vars, and have a working
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sign-in page in under 30 minutes.
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3. ✅ InspectFlow's auth feature set is bit-for-bit reproducible from the library — no regression.
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4. ✅ Sparkboard adopts the library on day 1 without ever seeing the InspectFlow code.
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### Six-month success (post-v0.1, calibration period)
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5. ✅ At least one security finding has been fixed *centrally* in plate-auth and propagated to both consumers
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via a version bump (not a code-copy).
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6. ✅ No consumer has needed to fork the library or shadow-override a service to ship a feature. (If they
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have, the library has the wrong extension points and we fix them in v0.2.)
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7. ✅ The library has shipped at least one minor version (v0.2) without breaking InspectFlow's `current`
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branch — proving the SemVer policy is workable.
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### Long-term success (the dream)
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8. ✅ Product #3 launches with auth as a *checklist item*, not a *sub-sprint*.
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9. ✅ When a CVE drops against jjwt / NextAuth / Spring Security, we patch *one* library and *all* products
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are mitigated within a release cycle.
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10. ✅ The decision *"how should this app do auth?"* never has to be made again.
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---
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## Heritage
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plate-auth's design is not theoretical. It is the literal extraction of InspectFlow Sprint 14, which shipped
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six sub-sprints of production-grade auth functionality:
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| Sub-sprint | Codename | What it added |
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| 14.1 | Octopus Camouflage | OAuth providers, JWT filter, NextAuth signIn callback, HMAC exchange envelope |
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| 14.2 | Cell Membranes | Memberships decoupled from users — `Membership(user, org_type, org_id, role, status)` |
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| 14.3 | Pheromone Trails | Invitations with single-use tokens, expiry, audit trail |
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| 14.4 | Honeybee Quorum | Access requests with admin review, rate limiting, justification |
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| 14.5 | Tardigrade Cryptobiosis | Onboarding state machine (T3 — stays in consuming apps) |
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| 14.6 | Tree Rings | Admin panel, login events, Envers revision actors |
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Every line of plate-auth v0.1 is code that has already shipped to production once. We are not designing —
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we are *refactoring*.
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---
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## Trade-offs we are accepting
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| Trade-off | Why we accept it |
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| Slightly more upfront cost than copy-paste | Pays back the moment we touch auth code twice. |
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| Plate-software-internal only, not open source | We do not want to support external users yet. Internal velocity > community. |
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| Tight coupling to Spring Boot 4 + NextAuth v5 | These are the stacks we've committed to. Cross-framework abstraction would be over-engineering. |
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| Postgres-only (Flyway migrations) | All plate-software products are Postgres. H2 is dev/test only. |
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| Single tenant model per app (one user has memberships to many orgs *of the same type*) | InspectFlow has `org_type=COMPANY`, Sparkboard will define its own. Multi-org-type-per-user is theoretically supported by the schema but not exercised in v0.1. |
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---
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## What this document is not
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- ❌ Not an architecture spec → see [`Architecture.md`](Architecture.md)
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- ❌ Not a release plan → see [`Roadmap.md`](Roadmap.md)
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- ❌ Not an extraction plan → see [`Sprint-0-Plan.md`](Sprint-0-Plan.md)
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- ❌ Not an integration manual → see [`Integration-Guide.md`](Integration-Guide.md)
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It is the **why** that the rest of the wiki points at.
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---
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*"Two products is a forcing function. Three products would have been a crisis. We are doing this now."*
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