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+# API Agent Trust Model
+
+The API is the authority for user identity, ownership, billing, plan limits, and platform policy. The Agent is an internal executor inside a game/dev container.
+
+This means the API must protect the platform from unsafe Agent invocation. The Agent should not be user-facing, and Portal should never call Agent directly.
+
+## Launch / short term
+
+For launch, use static `ZLH_AGENT_TOKEN` as the API-to-Agent control-plane secret.
+
+Required launch behavior:
+
+- API refuses to start in production without `ZLH_AGENT_TOKEN`.
+- API injects `ZLH_AGENT_TOKEN` into every Agent request.
+- API centralizes Agent calls through the shared Agent client rather than ad hoc `fetch()` calls.
+- Agent refuses protected requests in production without a configured token.
+- Portal never receives or constructs the Agent token.
+- Normal user requests are authenticated and ownership-checked before API calls Agent.
+
+## API responsibilities before calling Agent
+
+Before sending work to Agent, API must verify:
+
+- the user is authenticated, unless the caller is an internal/admin service
+- the requested server/container belongs to the user
+- billing/account state allows the operation
+- plan limits allow create/upgrade operations
+- the requested operation is valid for the server type (`game` vs `dev`)
+- no conflicting operation is already in progress
+- request payloads are bounded and normalized
+
+The Agent may validate filesystem/runtime safety, but it does not own customer authorization.
+
+## What API must not do
+
+- Do not expose `ZLH_AGENT_TOKEN` to Portal or browser-visible code.
+- Do not let Portal call Agent IPs or `:18888` directly.
+- Do not treat Agent responses as authorization proof.
+- Do not let users supply arbitrary VMID/IP and proxy directly to Agent.
+- Do not leave active-looking DB rows after provisioning fails.
+- Do not allow duplicate provisioning retries to create duplicate LXCs.
+
+## Error handling
+
+Agent failures should be mapped to safe API responses:
+
+- Agent unreachable -> `502 Agent unreachable`
+- Agent not ready -> `503 agent_not_ready`
+- Agent operation in progress -> `409 operation_in_progress`
+- Agent unauthorized -> internal misconfiguration, not user-auth failure
+
+Do not leak Agent URLs, IPs, stack traces, tokens, or raw internal error bodies to Portal.
+
+## Longer-term target
+
+Static `ZLH_AGENT_TOKEN` is a launch hardening layer, not the final trust model.
+
+The better long-term model is short-lived signed API-to-Agent request tokens.
+
+In that model:
+
+1. API keeps a signing secret or private key.
+2. Agent knows only a verification secret or public key.
+3. API signs a short-lived token per Agent request, usually 30-120 seconds.
+4. Agent verifies issuer, audience, expiry, VMID, and scope before executing.
+
+Example claims:
+
+```json
+{
+  "iss": "zpack-api",
+  "aud": "zlh-agent",
+  "vmid": 5202,
+  "scope": "files:read",
+  "iat": 1714500000,
+  "exp": 1714500060,
+  "jti": "request-id"
+}
+```
+
+This limits blast radius if a token is exposed. A stolen short-lived `files:read` token for VMID `5202` cannot be reused later to stop another server, restore a backup, or mutate files on a different container.
+
+## Roadmap
+
+- Phase 1: static `ZLH_AGENT_TOKEN`, fail-closed in production.
+- Phase 2: token rotation and deployment validation so stale or missing tokens are caught before traffic.
+- Phase 3: short-lived API-signed request tokens for API-to-Agent calls.
+- Phase 4: optional mTLS between API and Agent for transport-level service identity.
+
+## JWT vs HMAC request signatures
+
+JWT is useful when explicit claims and public-key verification are desired.
+
+A compact HMAC request-signing scheme may be simpler operationally:
+
+```text
+X-ZLH-Agent-Timestamp: <unix timestamp>
+X-ZLH-Agent-Vmid: <vmid>
+X-ZLH-Agent-Scope: lifecycle:stop
+X-ZLH-Agent-Signature: HMAC(secret, method + path + timestamp + vmid + scope + bodyHash)
+```
+
+Either approach is better than a forever bearer token once the launch system is stable.
+
+## Not a launch blocker
+
+Do not jump directly to short-lived signed tokens before launch unless required. They add operational complexity:
+
+- clock drift
+- issuer/audience mismatch
+- token scope bugs
+- signing-key/config drift
+- harder provisioning debugging
+
+For launch, static token plus fail-closed production behavior is the correct low-risk hardening step. For scale, short-lived signed API-to-Agent tokens are the cleaner end state.