Files
channel-exit/README.md
T
nirpa e4d6230dd1 The estate's one channel exit
Services that need to reach a person hand the message here instead of each
carrying a SendGrid key. Email goes to SendGrid, SMS to Twilio; whatsapp and
push answer 501 rather than pretending.

It binds loopback and the docker bridge only. An authenticated relay on the
public internet is an open spam relay the moment the token leaks, and that
token is copied into every consumer's environment.

The log names a channel, a redacted address and the provider's answer. Never
the subject, never the body.
2026-08-18 15:41:28 -04:00

2.4 KiB

channel-exit

The estate's one way out to a person's inbox or phone.

Services that need to reach a human POST here instead of carrying a SendGrid key of their own. Credentials live in one place, one service can be turned off or rate-limited, and a bug in some worker cannot become a bill.

The contract

POST /send
Authorization: Bearer <CHANNEL_EXIT_TOKEN>
Content-Type: application/json

{"channel": "email|sms|whatsapp|push", "to": "...", "subject": "...", "body": "..."}
Reply When
200 the provider accepted it — {"ok": true, "provider_status": 202, "id": "..."}
400 unknown channel, or to is not an email / not E.164, or nothing to send
401 missing or wrong bearer token
501 whatsapp and push — no provider for them in this estate
502 the provider refused or was unreachable; its status is in the body
503 that channel's credentials are not configured here

GET /healthz needs no token and reports which channels are wired.

The shape is fixed by its first consumer, reminders-service (app/alerts.py: gateway_sender), which treats any 2xx as delivered.

Two rules

It listens on loopback and the docker bridge, and nowhere else. An authenticated relay reachable from the internet is an open spam relay the moment the token leaks — and that token is copied into every consumer's environment. It gets no 0.0.0.0 binding and no cloudflared route, ever.

It does not log what it was asked to send. The log records channel, a redacted address, the provider's status and message id. Never a subject, never a body, never a credential.

Consumers

From the host: http://127.0.0.1:<CHANNEL_EXIT_PORT>/send

From another container: http://172.17.0.1:<CHANNEL_EXIT_PORT>/send — a consumer's own 127.0.0.1 is that consumer, so a loopback gateway URL fails every delivery while looking correctly configured.

Running it

cp .env.example .env && chmod 600 .env    # fill in, then
docker compose up -d --build

Every value in .env is required except PROVIDER_TIMEOUT. CHANNEL_EXIT_TOKEN has no default: the service refuses to start without one rather than coming up as an unauthenticated relay.

Tests

pip install -r requirements-dev.txt && python -m pytest -q

The suite replaces urllib.request.urlopen with something that raises, so no test can send a real message however it is written.