feat(cli): validate env vars up front in init and configure

[aliasunder]

Summary

• Moves server-side env var validation earlier so bad inputs surface as CLI
  errors during init/configure instead of a crash-looping container
• Adds five checks mirroring server-side guards: PUBLIC_URL credentials,
  VAULT_PATH glob chars, MEMORY_DIR traversal/absolute, DAILY_NOTES_FOLDER
  traversal/absolute, DAILY_NOTES_FORMAT traversal/separator/digits

Approach

Alternative 1 (re-state simple rules in CLI) — the CLI and server are
separate compilation units with no shared import path. The gaps are trivial
predicates that match existing CLI validation patterns (askPort,
askTimezone).

Changes

cli/src/vault.ts: Glob char rejection (*, ?, [) in
validateVaultPath — mirrors server.ts GLOB_CHARS.

cli/src/init.ts: Extracts validatePublicUrl with credential check
and query/fragment rejection (raw-string check — url.search/url.hash
return "" for bare delimiters per the WHATWG spec). Refactors
askPublicUrl to use it.

cli/src/optional-settings.ts:

• askFolder: traversal (..) and absolute path (/) rejection — mirrors
  config.ts vaultFolderName Zod refinements
• validate? callback on OptionalSettingBase for per-setting validation
  on generic prompt types
• DAILY_NOTES_FOLDER: traversal/absolute guard via callback
• DAILY_NOTES_FORMAT: traversal, boundary separators, and
  digit-outside-brackets rejection (bracket-escape-aware split using the
  same regex pattern as the server's momentToLuxonFormat)

Test plan

Unit tests (npm test)

• validateVaultPath rejects *, ?, [ glob chars (3 tests)
• validatePublicUrl rejects user:pass@, user@, :pass@
  credentials, query strings, hash fragments, bare ?/# delimiters,
  non-http URLs, /mcp suffix; accepts valid URLs (13 tests)
• askFolder rejects traversal and absolute paths via
  askOptionalSettings flow (2 tests)
• DAILY_NOTES_FOLDER validate callback rejects traversal and absolute
  (2 tests)
• DAILY_NOTES_FORMAT validate callback rejects traversal, leading /,
  trailing /, digits outside brackets, digits with mixed brackets; accepts
  digits inside brackets and valid formats (8 tests)
• Mutation check: broke each validator, verified each test fails for the
  right reason (4 mutations, all caught)
• Full suite: 3546 pass, 1 pre-existing DST failure (carded
  ^oauth-sliding-expiry-dst-test)

PTY integration tests (npm run test:cli-pty)

• Glob chars in vault path: enters /path/to/*vault → error
  "must not contain glob characters" → re-prompts → valid path accepted
• Credentials in PUBLIC_URL: enters https://user:pass@vault.example.com
  → error "must not contain credentials" → re-prompts → valid URL accepted
• Query string in PUBLIC_URL: enters https://vault.example.com/?tab=2
  → error "no query string" → re-prompts → valid URL accepted
• MEMORY_DIR traversal: enters ../secret → error "Path traversal (..)
  is not allowed" → re-prompts → valid folder accepted
• DAILY_NOTES_FORMAT digits: enters 2024-MM-DD → error "use Moment
  tokens" → re-prompts → valid format accepted
• All 17 PTY tests pass (12 existing + 5 new)

Live beta testing (vault-cortex@beta 0.13.1-beta.64)

Live-validated all five rejection flows against the published beta via the
pty-cli-driver (gitHead 4fe3a5a8 matches PR head at publish time). Each
scenario entered a bad value, verified the error message in the
ANSI-stripped transcript, and confirmed the re-prompt accepted a valid value.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

[umm-actually]

umm-actually re-reviewed at 9f2c65b

1 new finding(s) posted (9 tracked finding(s) across all runs).

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umm-actually · deepseek/deepseek-v4-flash-0731

[aliasunder]

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📝 Walkthrough

Walkthrough

The CLI adds public URL validation, optional setting validators, and vault path glob rejection. Tests cover accepted values, normalization, invalid input, re-prompting, and validation error messages.

Changes

CLI validation

Layer / File(s)	Summary
Public URL validation cli/src/init.ts, cli/src/__tests__/init.test.ts	validatePublicUrl rejects invalid protocols, credentials, /mcp paths, queries, and fragments. It trims input and trailing slashes. askPublicUrl uses the helper and re-prompts on errors.
Optional setting validation cli/src/optional-settings.ts, cli/src/__tests__/optional-settings.test.ts	Optional text settings support validators. Folder settings reject traversal and absolute paths. Date formats reject invalid path separators and unescaped digits while accepting bracket-escaped digits.
Vault path glob validation cli/src/vault.ts, cli/src/__tests__/vault.test.ts	validateVaultPath rejects *, ?, and [ before filesystem validation. Tests cover each character.

Estimated code review effort: 3 (Moderate) | ~20 minutes

Merge Risk: 🟡 Moderate · up to bd0f5

Configure can retain unsafe existing daily-notes settings, and some accepted public URLs produce an unusable MCP endpoint. Fix these validation gaps before merge.

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 5

✅ Passed checks (5 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Docstring Coverage	✅ Passed	No functions found in the changed files to evaluate docstring coverage. Skipping docstring coverage check. Docstring coverage is scoped to functions touched by this diff. Analyzed 0 functions across 6…
Linked Issues check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.
Out of Scope Changes check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.
Description Check	✅ Passed	Check skipped - CodeRabbit’s high-level summary is enabled.
Title check	✅ Passed	The title clearly summarizes the main change: upfront environment variable validation for the CLI init and configure flows.

✨ Finishing Touches

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• Create PR with unit tests
• Commit unit tests in branch worktree-cli-env-upfront-validation

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Actionable comments posted: 2

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Inline comments:
In `@cli/src/init.ts`:
- Line 167: Update validatePublicUrl to reject raw trailing ? and # delimiters,
not just rely on url.search or url.hash being non-empty, so the generated
${baseUrl}/mcp URL remains correct. Add tests covering bare query and fragment
delimiters.

In `@cli/src/optional-settings.ts`:
- Line 419: Update askSettingValue so setting.validate receives value ??
currentValue rather than only value, ensuring retained optional-text values are
validated while unchanged valid settings still return undefined.

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📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between 990cf6c and bd0f52f.

📒 Files selected for processing (6)

• cli/src/__tests__/init.test.ts
• cli/src/__tests__/optional-settings.test.ts
• cli/src/__tests__/vault.test.ts
• cli/src/init.ts
• cli/src/optional-settings.ts
• cli/src/vault.ts

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[umm-actually]

Validate VAULT_PATH and PUBLIC_URL from .env on start/restart/upgrade
Medium severity · correctness · high confidence

cli/src/lifecycle.ts:80 — beyond the diff's line ranges, in code the changes touch or depend on.

The new glob/credential/query validators run only when a value is typed in an init/configure prompt. start/restart/upgrade reconstruct the deployment from the on-disk .env via resolveDeployment, which checks only presence (VAULT_PATH non-empty, PUBLIC_URL present), never the new predicates. A hand-edited bad value therefore still reaches docker run and the container crash-loops at the server's own validation — the exact failure mode this PR set out to surface at the CLI. No test exercises the new validators through the start/restart/upgrade paths.

Failure scenario: User hand-edits .env to VAULT_PATH=/data/my*vault (or PUBLIC_URL=https://user:pass@vault.example.com), then runs npx vault-cortex@latest start. resolveDeployment passes (path non-empty, URL present), the container is created with the bad env, and the server rejects it at boot — the container crash-loops with no CLI error, despite the validators existing in the same codebase.

Suggested fix

In resolveDeployment (or requireInitializedDir), run validateVaultPath on the resolved VAULT_PATH and validatePublicUrl on the read PUBLIC_URL, reporting the error via prompts and returning undefined instead of proceeding to docker run.

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umm-actually · deepseek/deepseek-v4-flash-0731

[aliasunder]

Re: umm-actually issue comment ("Validate VAULT_PATH and PUBLIC_URL from .env on start/restart/upgrade"):

The lifecycle commands (start, restart, upgrade) have zero interactive prompts — they read .env from disk and pass it to Docker. No user input enters through those paths. Values in .env were either written by init/configure (already validated by this PR) or hand-edited by the user. Hand-edited values are caught by the server at boot — the same surface they had before this PR.

This PR's scope is validating values the user enters interactively. The lifecycle paths have no interactive input surface.

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🔍 ship-check · pr-monitor · Opus 4.6 (1M context)