HardwareControlFabric skill documents unavailable launcher and nonexistent default certificate

Reported (UTC): 2026-07-13 11:13

HardwareControlFabric skill documents unavailable launcher and nonexistent default certificate paths on /code.

What was being attempted: inspect host-side BuildTest CI progress through HardwareControlFabric, as required by the server-management hierarchy, after build-watchman requested confirmation of build.log and test-event freshness.

What went wrong: the skill-prescribed command failed with exact error /bin/bash: line 2: cs: command not found. The skill also specifies ~/.config/hardware-control-fabric/fabric-client-cert.pem, fabric-client-key.pem, and fabric-server-cert.pem, but the actual available files are client_cert.pem, fabric_key.pkcs8, and server_cert.pem.

Impact: the preferred non-SSH production inspection path could not be used verbatim, delaying CI ground-truth verification and tempting operators toward the prohibited raw-SSH fallback.

Workaround used: reuse the repository-local working Coursier launcher downloaded by scripts/build.bash (/code/BuildTestServerService-056/jars/coursier) and pass the certificate paths that actually exist.

Suggested durable fix: update hardware-fabric-processes/SKILL.md to use coursier or resolve either launcher dynamically, and make its default certificate paths match the deployed /code certificate layout (or document both supported layouts with existence checks).

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Production verification — 2026-07-17

Status: STILL EXISTS. The required mTLS files now exist, but no cs command is installed, the live CLI ping failed, and port 8443 refused connections. Read-only SSH confirmed that no HardwareControlFabric daemon process is running; its last log ends on 2026-07-12 amid Netty ByteBuf leak reports and thread growth from 88 to 108.

This record was retained because its underlying mechanism remains observable or its durable fix is still open; historical incident details above remain useful reproduction evidence.