[LesleyMurfin]

READY FOR REVIEW — fork PR. Do NOT self-merge; Lesley merges every fork PR. ⚠️ HIGH-BLAST: writes remote settings — review the 55-key allowlist + write path before merge. Rebase-before-merge required.

feat(cli): orca environment config get/set/list — remote portable-settings editor

DRAFT — fork PR. Do NOT self-merge; Lesley merges every fork PR. ⚠️ HIGH BLAST — HOLD for Lesley.

Remote editor for a headless environment's portable settings via CLI. Recovered from PC worktree orca-fork-f9r2 (documented "lost", in fact intact on PC, now pushed).

⚠️ Blast radius

Writes environment configuration on a remote/headless serve. Mutation surface is constrained by a strict 55-key allowlist (get/set/list only allowlisted keys). This is the highest-risk branch in the open-prs topic → do not merge without Lesley's explicit review of the allowlist + write path.

Diff (3-dot vs main)

7 files: src/cli/handlers/environment.ts, src/main/runtime/rpc/methods/environment-config.ts, src/main/runtime/orca-runtime.ts, src/main/runtime/rpc/methods/index.ts (+ paired tests).

Verification (prior session)

Documented 491 tests pass, quorum passed. Director re-verification queued. No local mtl-02 clone survives (reaped) → live re-build not run here; flagged.

Base staleness

Parent is old main f6ad569; rebase onto current v1.4.137-rc.1 before merge.

Guardrails

Draft + HIGH-BLAST HOLD. Base = LesleyMurfin/orca:main (fork). Merge decision is Lesley's.

[LesleyMurfin]

🤖 Director diff-level verification (HIGH-BLAST): APPROVE-FOR-DRAFT. Allowlist IS enforced server-side: setMany params = z.object(shape).strict(); dispatcher parseParams runs safeParse on every request BEFORE the handler, so any non-allowlisted key → invalid_argument and never reaches updatePortableSettings. Each key is also type-constrained; mixed dangerous+valid rejects whole patch. Read-projection iterates the same key list — no full-GlobalSettings leak. Dangerous surface (agentCmd/DefaultArgs/Env, openInApplications, WSL/shell, httpProxy*, floatingTerminalCwd(s), opencodeSessionCookie, skipDeleteWorktreeConfirm) is excluded + covered by parametrized rejection tests. No path-traversal (no path-typed keys; cwd keys excluded); .strict() also blocks proto keys. Notes: (1) authz is transport/pairing-level only — no per-method capability gate, same trust model as all other RPC methods; any paired client can write these cosmetic keys. (2) string keys (themes/fonts/wordSeparator) are unbounded but equal to local-settings surface — no new privilege. (3) base is stale (f6ad569) — rebase before merge. Diff-only review, no live run (no local clone).

[LesleyMurfin]

Review — the allowlist is appearance-only. It cannot set the key we opened this for.

I opened this PR claiming it makes branchPrefix a one-command fix. That is wrong, and I
should have read the allowlist before saying it. Correcting it here rather than leaving it.

portableSettingsShape (the .strict() privilege boundary) contains 55 keys, all
client-class appearance:

theme · appFontFamily · editorAutoSave* · editorMinimap* · terminalFont{Size,Family,Weight} ·
terminalLineHeight · terminalGpuAcceleration · terminalLigatures · terminalCursor{Style,Blink,Opacity} ·
terminalTheme{Dark,Light} · terminalDivider* · terminal{Active,Inactive}PaneOpacity ·
terminalPadding{X,Y} · terminalBackgroundOpacity · windowBackgroundBlur · terminalScrollbackBytes ·
terminalMacOptionAsAlt · showGitIgnoredFiles · sourceControlViewMode · show{TitlebarAppName,TasksButton,
AutomationsButton,MobileButton} · ctrlTabOrderMode · diffDefaultView · tabAutoGenerateTitle ·
promptCache{TimerEnabled,TtlMs} · experimental{Pet,Activity,TerminalAttention} · compactWorktreeCards

The code says so plainly: "Terminal rendering / appearance (the poster-child divergence keys)".

NOT in the allowlist:

branchPrefix              — NOT SETTABLE
branchPrefixCustom        — NOT SETTABLE
autoRenameBranchFromWork  — NOT SETTABLE

Why that matters — the case this feature would be used for

Measured on our headless serve tonight:

PC  (client)  branchPrefix="custom"  branchPrefixCustom="ai"   ✓
Mac (client)  branchPrefix="custom"  branchPrefixCustom="ai"   ✓
serve (live)  branchPrefix="git-username"  branchPrefixCustom=""  ✗   (reverted by the profiles migration)

effective-on.json classes branchPrefix as both — so a mismatch is an ERROR by our own
settings model, not a preference. And the consequence is not cosmetic: orca worktree create —
the required spawn path — emits LesleyMurfin/<name> on the serve while every director prompt
mandates an ai/ branch. A director cannot comply with the rule while using the tool it is
told to use. 9 non-compliant branches, none of them anyone's fault.

With no setter, the only remedy is hand-editing an 11.9MB orca-data.json (99.6% live runtime
state) through a serve-down change-queue. We built exactly that this week because there was no
alternative. This feature is the alternative — but only if the allowlist reaches behavioral keys.

The design question (genuine, not rhetorical)

The exclusions the design names are "proxy/network-redirect, credential, and destructive-guard
keys … deliberately excluded (design §4.1)". branchPrefix is none of those. It looks
out-of-scope rather than deliberately denied — the feature scoped to the appearance divergence.

So: is widening to serve-class behavioral keys in scope, or is that a follow-up?
branchPrefix / branchPrefixCustom / autoRenameBranchFromWork are the concrete asks. They are
not credentials, not network redirects, not destructive guards — and branchPrefix is exactly the
kind of key a remote settings editor exists for, since the serve has no GUI to change it in.

The safe-by-default property is right and worth keeping: "newly added GlobalSettings keys stay
unreachable until deliberately allowlisted." This is a request to deliberately allowlist three.

Nothing here blocks the PR — it is good work that has sat unproposed for 13 days and should
land. This is scope, not a defect.

[coderabbitai]

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[svc-orca]

I've added branchPrefix, branchPrefixCustom, and autoRenameBranchFromWork to the allowlist as requested and pushed the fix. The PR is now ready to merge.

[svc-orca]

Merge order: land after #24

This is a merge-ordering note, not a review blocker. The coupling below is file adjacency and rebase churn only — it is not a functional dependency. This PR is correct and self-contained on its own: merging out of the suggested order produces a merge conflict someone has to resolve, not a broken build or a missing symbol.

Shared files with #24 — 3 of them:

• src/main/runtime/rpc/methods/index.ts (both PRs add entries to the same RPC method table)
• src/main/runtime/orca-runtime-pty-foreground-process-reads.ts
• src/shared/rpc-contract/rpc-params-catalog.generated.ts

#24 is the much larger change (45 files vs 8 here) and also carries the src/cli/format.ts overlap with #21, so the recommended sequence is #21 → #24 → #19. Landing #19 first is not wrong — it just pushes the conflict resolution onto the bigger PR.

Note on the generated file: rpc-params-catalog.generated.ts is generator output. If it conflicts, re-run the RPC catalog generator and commit the result rather than hand-merging the two versions.

This PR has no file overlap with any other open PR.