baibot is the first bot rather than a bridge, and the shape
differs from the appservices: it is a plain Matrix client that logs in with a
password, sets up its profile and then syncs. It publishes no port, so nothing
can be probed over HTTP; what it says about itself in the journal is the only
window into whether the role's configuration reached the process.
What the scenario proves:
- The unit is active with no automatic restarts, AND baibot got past startup
into its sync loop. The second half is what carries the scenario. baibot never
exits when startup goes wrong - it retries the failing step forever with a
growing delay - so the unit sits there `active` with `NRestarts` at 0 while
the bot is permanently half-started. Pointing `user.avatar` at a file that is
not there reproduces exactly that: the unit assertion still passes, the sync
assertion does not.
- The display name the bot announces it wants is the role's `user.name`, which
is neither the role's default nor what the stub reports the account already
has.
- The rendered `logging` string took effect per target: baibot's own records
appear at DEBUG (the role ships `info`) while everything underneath stays at
the `warn` catch-all. The second half is the control, and raising the
catch-all turns 2 DEBUG records into 161.
- The rendered config carries the scenario's homeserver, identity, command
prefix, admin patterns and user patterns, and uses password authentication
exclusively, with the access-token keys rendered as nulls.
- The statically-defined agent survived the provider templating - the
per-provider template rendered to YAML, parsed, merged and nested into the
list - key by key.
- The container runs as the uid/gid the playbook supplies (1234, not the 1000
the base image already has), on the image version defaults/main.yml pins, and
could write its session into the data path.
No AI provider is contacted and none is needed. baibot calls a provider only
when a message asks an agent to do something, so a static agent with a
placeholder key and a base URL that resolves nowhere still has to survive the
bot's startup parsing - which is the part worth testing.
The shared stub grew what a syncing Matrix client needs and an appservice did
not: /sync (with a `next_batch`, and holding the call open for the timeout the
client asked for, or the bot spins the stub in a hot loop), the media config
and upload endpoints a bot setting its own avatar insists on, /keys/upload with
its key counts, and filter creation. Without the media config in particular,
baibot never gets past profile setup.
The shared stub task gained a STUB_VERBOSE knob. The stub already advertised
the environment variable but there was no way to set it from a scenario, and
for a component with no port of its own its request log is the only place to
see what the component is actually asking for.
Note: molecule-shared/homeserver-stub.py also carries a loosened /login match
from another scenario being written in this same tree at the same time; it was
already in the working copy and is not mine.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01SEH3vxYSQ5SV4N5z61eyGT
A bot rather than a bridge, and not an appservice: it logs into the
homeserver as an ordinary user with a password, and keeps its reminders in
a local SQLite database. That makes it a cheap second data point for the
bot shape, and it is closer to matrix-alertmanager-receiver than to the
bridges - except that it has no HTTP surface at all, so there is nothing to
probe.
What the scenario proves instead:
- The unit is active and has not restarted. The bot parses its config file
before its own catch-all retry loop starts, so anything wrong in what the
role rendered surfaces as a crash loop rather than as a running process.
- The bot reached "Logged in as @molecule.reminder-bot:molecule.local" in
the journal. That line is only reached once the login call came back as
something other than an error, so it covers the homeserver URL, the user
ID and the password the role rendered in one go - a real login round-trip
against the shared stub, which already answers /_matrix/client/v3/login
with an access token. No stub changes were needed.
- The SQLite database landed at the path the role configured, owned by the
role's uid, with the role's own default name (bot.db) absent as a negative
control - so the storage configuration reached the running process and not
just the file on disk.
- matrix-nio populated its encryption store under the role's data path,
inside an otherwise read-only container.
- The container runs as the playbook context's uid:gid with the configured
timezone on TZ, and carries the version defaults/main.yml pins.
- `..._configuration_extension_yaml` was merged over the role's template:
device_name is hardcoded in the template, so overriding it is only
possible through the extension.
Every value the scenario sets differs from both the role's defaults and the
bot's own fallbacks - localpart, command prefix, timezone, database
filename, both the allowlist and the blocklist.
Falsified by pointing the homeserver URL at a dead port. The service stayed
`active` with NRestarts == 0 and that assertion passed, because the bot
catches every exception and retries every 15s rather than exiting - a good
illustration of why `active` on its own proves nothing here. The run failed
at "Assert the bot logged in as the user the role configured", which is the
assertion carrying the weight.
Surprise worth recording: the journal is read through a grep rather than a
`--lines=N` tail. The startup lines are the oldest in the journal, and if
the stub ever answers /sync instantly the bot's sync loop spins fast enough
to bury them under thousands of lines within a minute.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01SEH3vxYSQ5SV4N5z61eyGT
The second scenario, chosen to be a bridge rather than another HTTP
component: bridges are roughly 40 of the 70 roles here, and validating the
shape on role two is cheaper than discovering it on role forty. It found
two things the first role could not.
Bridges read a whole family of variables from outside themselves -
matrix_bridges_relay_enabled, _encryption_enabled, _encryption_default,
_msc4190_enabled, _self_sign_enabled, plus matrix_admin - all defined in
matrix-base. Since every bridge reads them, they belong in shared context
rather than in each bridge's scenario: molecule-shared/playbook-context.yml
now carries them along with the identity and path variables the first
scenario had inline. Note it is loaded through vars_files, which outranks
inventory group_vars, so it is authoritative; a scenario that wants to prove
one of these reaches the rendered configuration should say so explicitly.
Appservices call /whoami while starting and refuse to run if the id returned
is not the bot user they were configured as - mautrix-whatsapp exits 17 with
"Unexpected user ID in whoami call". The shared stub now takes the id it
should claim to be. Expect every bridge and bot to need this.
What the scenario proves: the bridge starts and stays up, opens its
appservice port, its rendered config and appservice registration carry the
scenario's tokens and bot user, it created its sqlite database under the
role's data path as the role's uid, and it runs the version the role pins.
It does not bridge anything and never will.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Not for merging as-is. One role's scenario plus the workflow that would
make per-role testing affordable here, so we can see how it behaves before
deciding whether to do the other 69.
Unlike the MASH repositories, one repository holds every role, so running
everything on every push is not an option. The workflow's first job works
out which roles a push touched and builds the matrix from that; a change to
docs, or to a role with no scenario yet, runs nothing.
Three things this role needed that a MASH role does not:
- The variables matrix-base would supply (matrix_base_data_path,
matrix_domain, matrix_user_name, matrix_group_name and the uid/gid) have
to be provided by the scenario, and the user and group have to exist
before the role's file tasks run.
- The service contacts the homeserver while starting up - it fetches
/_matrix/client/v3/joined_rooms to resolve its room mapping and exits 1
if that fails - so prepare.yml stands up a stub homeserver. Most roles
here are bridges and bots, so this is likely the rule rather than the
exception.
- verify.yml runs as its own play, where role defaults are out of scope, so
the paths it reads are pinned in molecule.yml. The version is deliberately
NOT pinned: it is read from defaults/main.yml so the assertion compares
the running image against what the role ships.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>