v1.72.0.0 feat: Aside recommended driver for third-party web actions (#2710)

* fix(browse): never chmod shared, symlinked, or foreign-owned dirs to 0700

restrictDirectoryPermissions unconditionally chmodded its target. On hosts
where the process holds CAP_FOWNER (Docker as root, CI sandboxes) that
chmod SUCCEEDS on root-owned /tmp whenever a state file is configured
there (BROWSE_STATE_FILE=/tmp/x.json derives stateDir=/tmp), and a 0700
/tmp breaks access(2)-based checks machine-wide for every other process.

The POSIX branch now refuses shared sticky dirs, world-writable mounts
under root, foreign-owned dirs, and symlinked state dirs; refusals warn
once per process instead of failing silent; owned-but-unreadable dirs
keep their chmod self-repair; and the check-then-act race is closed with
fd-anchored O_NOFOLLOW + fstat/fchmod on a single inode.

Regression tests cover the sticky-dir, foreign-uid, mkdirSecure-reapply,
and symlinked-dir shapes.

* fix: hash with sha256sum before shasum on Linux (config slugs + setup verify)

shasum is perl/macOS; coreutils-only Linux ships sha256sum. Two call
sites hard-coded shasum: gstack-config's sha8_of/sha16 (so
resolve-user-slug exited 127 for any Linux user with a git email, the
Layer-3 fallback) and the generated bun-installer checksum snippet in
the browse/qa NEEDS_SETUP flow (spurious "checksum mismatch" on the
same distros). Both now resolve sha256sum first and fall back to
shasum -a 256.

New shim-PATH tests pin BOTH hasher branches of sha8_of to a known
vector and cover the sha8->sha16 collision escalation end to end.

* feat(contract): Aside is the recommended driver for third-party web actions

The Third-Party Web Actions contract (ship, spec, office-hours,
land-and-deploy, setup-deploy) now names the Aside AI browser as the
recommended driver: it acts across the user's real logged-in sessions,
which is what vendor-dashboard moments need. Supersedes the v1.65.0.0
de-Aside stance by explicit user directive (2026-08-27).

Detection is a runtime probe (command -v + aside --version under a
portable gtimeout/timeout/bare guard; nonzero exit = not detected).
Consent options render per detection state with Aside recommended and
the first-party stack ($B headed + handoff, GStack Browser) as the
universal fallback. Absent on macOS, the contract mentions the
aside.com download (macOS 15+) once per task; gstack never runs an
installer and binary presence is never consent. Drive discipline:
step-wise over whole-task delegation, vendor confirm mode on, vendor
skill/--help text scoped to operational syntax only, secrets minimized
(autofill / human-used copy buttons), Apple credential creation never a
drive target in any skill, failure path quotes redacted errors and
falls back only with fresh consent.

test/third-party-actions.test.ts pins every load-bearing sentence (21
tests) plus repo-wide tripwires: an aside command allowlist
(--version/--help only, code spans AND prose) and a ban on Aside
installer invocations across all generated docs. Budget ratchet
fixture and carve skeleton ceilings refreshed in this commit per the
ratchet protocol.

* chore: regenerate remaining browse-setup snippet consumers

The sha256sum-first checksum fallback in the generated NEEDS_SETUP
snippet renders into every browse-consuming skill, not just browse/qa.
Mechanical regen of the other ten consumers; no template changes here.

* test: consent-gate E2E suite + functional fs-capability probes

Five hermetic gate-tier E2E cases (tpa-present / absent-linux / broken /
absent-darwin / apple-ban) drive the real contract section through
claude -p with PATH shims for aside and uname; the absent cases filter
any REAL aside binary out of the child PATH and assert absence with
Bun.which before spawning, so dev machines cannot leak into detection.
Registered per-case in E2E_TOUCHFILES/E2E_TIERS with template-level
deps (ship/SKILL.md.tmpl, gen-skill-docs.ts) and added to the evals.yml
matrix with tier: gate. eval:bg:periodic's detach timeout rises to
36000s for the grown periodic shard census (floor-enforced by
test/eval-detach-timeout-floor.test.ts); CLAUDE.md doc updated to match.

test/helpers/fs-caps.ts adds canRevokeWrites/canRevokeReads functional
probes; 13 chmod-based tests swap their uid-0-only guards for the
probes so suites skip honestly on CAP_DAC_OVERRIDE containers (this
sandbox: uid 1000 with full caps) instead of asserting revocations the
kernel ignores. path-validation's symlink test targets /etc/passwd
(exists everywhere; /etc/crontab is absent on Amazon Linux).

* docs: file the Aside follow-ups in TODOS

Phase-2 QA logged-in-evidence path (P3), a hostile-vendor-skill E2E for
the contract's override sentence (P2), and fd-anchoring the file-level
permission writes to match the directory hardening (P3).

* chore: bump version and changelog (v1.72.0.0)

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

* docs: update project documentation for v1.72.0.0

docs/skills.md: Third-Party Web Actions subsection under /ship (Aside
recommended driver, consent rules, credential boundaries). BROWSER.md:
"Aside and third-party drives" subsection under Real-browser mode + ToC
entry, including the no-gstack-side-audit-trail caveat (ship adversarial
finding 12). TODOS.md: mark the finding-12 doc note done.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

* docs: apply cross-model doc review fixes for v1.72.0.0

docs/skills.md: restore the /ship closing line above the new subsection.
BROWSER.md: ToC label matches the heading; BROWSE_STATE_FILE env row
documents the new dir-hardening refusal + one-time warning. CHANGELOG:
correct the hasher precedence wording (sha256sum first, shasum fallback)
and the fs-caps count (14 test files, verified against the diff).

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

* docs: close cross-model doc-review gaps for v1.72.0.0

setup's manual bun-verify instruction gets the same sha256sum-first
fallback the automated snippet got (coreutils-only Linux); BROWSER.md's
BROWSE_STATE_FILE row now lists the under-root world-writable refusal;
test-cost ceilings in CLAUDE.md/CONTRIBUTING.md updated for the five
new gate E2E cases (~$4.20 E2E / ~$4.35 evals).

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

* fix(test): gate the symlink-refusal test to POSIX and drop the umask assumption

The symlink regression test exercised the POSIX O_NOFOLLOW branch but ran
on Windows, where restrictDirectoryPermissions takes the icacls branch and
stat has no POSIX modes (0o666 always) — windows-free-tests failed on
mode 493 vs 438. Early-return on win32 like every sibling test in the
file, and assert the target's mode is UNCHANGED (captured post-mkdir)
instead of hardcoding 0o755, which a strict umask would also break.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

---------

Co-authored-by: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

BROWSER.md

@@ -49,7 +49,7 @@ $B connect                       # headed Chromium + Side Panel extension
 5. [Snapshot system + ref-based selection](#snapshot-system)
 6. [Browser-skills runtime](#browser-skills-runtime)
 7. [Domain-skills (per-site agent notes)](#domain-skills)
-8. [Real-browser mode (`$B connect`)](#real-browser-mode) — including [`--headed` + `--proxy` + `--navigate` (v1.28.0.0)](#headed-mode--proxy--browser-native-downloads-v12800)
+8. [Real-browser mode (`$B connect`)](#real-browser-mode) — including [`--headed` + `--proxy` + `--navigate` (v1.28.0.0)](#headed-mode--proxy--browser-native-downloads-v12800) and [Aside and third-party drives (v1.72.0.0+)](#aside-and-third-party-drives-v17200)
 9. [Side Panel + sidebar agent](#side-panel--sidebar-agent)
 10. [Pair-agent — remote agents over an ngrok tunnel](#pair-agent)
 11. [Authentication + tokens](#authentication)
@@ -569,6 +569,21 @@ with your tabs and bookmarks stays untouched.
 - **Demos** where you're sharing your screen
 - **Pair-agent** sessions (the remote agent drives your local browser)
 
+### Aside and third-party drives (v1.72.0.0+)
+
+For third-party website moments (registering an API key, configuring a vendor
+dashboard), the workflow skills (`/ship`, `/spec`, `/office-hours`,
+`/land-and-deploy`, `/setup-deploy`) recommend the Aside AI browser when it's
+installed — it acts across your real logged-in sessions — with `$B` headed
+mode + handoff as the universal fallback. Consent is per-task and explicit;
+gstack never installs Aside for you, and a detected binary is never treated
+as consent.
+
+One observability caveat: drives through Aside happen entirely inside Aside,
+so they leave no gstack-side audit trail — no egress receipts, no
+browse-daemon logs. The audit trail for those drives lives in Aside itself.
+Drives through `$B` keep the normal daemon logs and egress receipts.
+
 ### CDP-aware skills
 
 When in real-browser mode, `/qa` and `/design-review` automatically skip
@@ -1254,7 +1269,7 @@ the global `~/.gstack/browser-skills/foo/` only inside project-a.
 |----------|---------|-------------|
 | `BROWSE_PORT` | 0 (random 10000–49151) | Fixed port for the HTTP server (debug override) |
 | `BROWSE_IDLE_TIMEOUT` | 1800000 (30 min) | Idle shutdown timeout in ms |
-| `BROWSE_STATE_FILE` | `.gstack/browse.json` | Path to state file |
+| `BROWSE_STATE_FILE` | `.gstack/browse.json` | Path to state file. Its parent dir gets owner-only (0700) hardening only when gstack owns it — shared sticky dirs (`/tmp`, `/var/tmp`), foreign-owned dirs, symlinked dirs, and (under root) any world-writable dir are left untouched with a one-time warning (v1.72.0.0+) |
 | `BROWSE_SERVER_SCRIPT` | auto-detected | Path to `server.ts` |
 | `BROWSE_CDP_URL` | (none) | Set to `channel:chrome` for real-browser mode |
 | `BROWSE_CDP_PORT` | 0 | CDP port (used internally) |