@jimhoyd/urlcode 0.4.2 → 0.4.6

package/docs/archive/2026-09-19/SPIKE-LAMBDA-COMPILE.md

@@ -1,365 +0,0 @@
-# Historical record
-
-Archived 2026-09-19, when the proposal was **declined**. This records an earlier
-proposal, not current instructions. The decision it lost to is
-[one Node deployment per project](../../OPEN-DECISIONS.md#accepted-one-node-deployment-per-project);
-see also the [current roadmap](../../../ROADMAP.md) and
-[current contract](../../SPECIFICATION.md). Remaining acceptance work is not
-declared complete by archiving this record.
-
-<!-- trust-model-prose: historical-file -->
-<!-- guidance-claims: ignore-file -->
-
-# Spike: compiling `function` routes into their own Lambdas
-
-> Review update, 2026-09-19: Current baseline: trusted Node execution is the default, so fresh invocation
-> state is a guarantee of `sandbox: true` only. AWS/Vercel still reject functions
-> and middleware in `src/capabilities.ts`; changing the default did not implement
-> a provider adapter for them. The per-route lowering was weighed against a
-> single trusted Node deployment per project, and **the Node deployment was
-> chosen** (2026-09-19). Removed link APIs in the analysis below are historical.
-
-
-Status: **declined 2026-09-19 — kept as the analysis behind that decision, not
-as a plan.** Nothing here is implemented and nothing here is committed scope.
-The maintainer chose the alternative this document weighs itself against: a
-project that uses `function` or `middleware` deploys as **one trusted Node
-process**, and AWS/Vercel keep refusing those routes at activation as a
-deliberate position rather than a gap awaiting an adapter. See
-[open decisions](../../OPEN-DECISIONS.md#accepted-one-node-deployment-per-project).
-
-Read on for why, and for what a first attempt would look like if real demand for
-`function` routes on AWS serverless ever appears and reopens the question.
-
-AWS already deploys today. `createLambdaHandler` (`src/aws.ts`) runs a project
-as **one** Lambda behind a Function URL or an API Gateway HTTP API, reading the
-same `urlcode.yaml` that runs locally — see [AWS](../../AWS.md). What it cannot serve
-is `function`, `middleware` and `link`, which
-`activateNativeOnly` (`src/adapters.ts`) refuses for the whole deployment at
-activation rather than letting individual routes fail per request.
-
-This spike asks one question: **is the refusal of `function` a fact about
-Lambda, or a fact about the adapter?** It argues the second, sketches the
-lowering that follows, and is deliberate about what that lowering costs.
-
-Section 0 says all of that again without the jargon; sections 1 onward are the
-argument in full.
-
-## 0. In plain terms
-
-This section is the whole spike in ordinary language. Everything after it is the
-same argument stated precisely; if the two ever disagree, the precise version
-wins.
-
-### What a `function` route is
-
-Most of a URLCode project is description, not code: "this URL redirects there",
-"this URL returns that page", "this URL serves that file". You write those in
-YAML and never write a program. A **`function` route** is the escape hatch for
-the cases YAML cannot describe — you write a small piece of JavaScript, and the
-runtime calls it when a request arrives. `middleware` is the same idea, except
-it runs on the way *to* other routes rather than answering by itself.
-
-### Where that code runs today
-
-Two ways, and the project picks per route:
-
-- **Trusted (the default).** The code runs directly in the same Node process as
-  everything else, at full speed, with the same access the process has. This is
-  the default because the person writing the route is usually the same person
-  deploying it. See [the decision](../../SPIKE-DEFAULT-TRUST-MODEL.md).
-- **Sandboxed (`sandbox: true`, opt in per route).** The code runs inside a
-  small, separate JavaScript engine (QuickJS, compiled to WebAssembly) on a
-  worker thread. Inside there it has no filesystem, no network, no environment
-  variables and a completely fresh memory space on every single call. It can
-  only reach the outside world through *bindings* an operator granted by name.
-  See [function security](../../FUNCTION-SECURITY.md).
-
-Think of the sandbox as a sealed room inside your own house. Nothing gets in or
-out except through a hatch you deliberately opened, and the room is wiped clean
-between visitors.
-
-### What happens on AWS today
-
-Nothing, for these routes. If a project contains any `function` or `middleware`
-route, the AWS adapter refuses **the entire deployment at startup** and names
-what it cannot serve. Everything else — redirects, pages, static files,
-downloads — deploys fine as a single Lambda.
-
-That refusal is not a bug or an oversight. It is the runtime declining to
-pretend. The alternative would be accepting the deployment and then failing
-individual requests in production, which is worse.
-
-### Why it refuses
-
-The sealed room is expensive to build. Every time AWS starts a fresh copy of
-your Lambda (a "cold start"), that copy would have to spin up worker threads and
-boot a WebAssembly engine *before* it could answer the first request. One
-process trying to serve every route in a project, rebuilding all that machinery
-on every cold start, is a bad trade.
-
-The key observation of this spike: that reasoning is about **one process serving
-every route**. It is not actually about AWS. Change the unit of deployment and
-the objection evaporates.
-
-### The idea
-
-Stop shipping one Lambda for the whole project. Instead, at build time, emit
-**one Lambda per `function` route** — plus the existing single Lambda for all
-the ordinary declarative routes.
-
-Then you do not need the sealed room at all, because each piece of code already
-has an entire AWS process to itself. The process *is* the wall. This is the same
-move URLCode already makes for Cloudflare: when a platform will not run what the
-adapter needs, compile the project ahead of time instead of adapting at runtime.
-
-### The catch — three of them
-
-1. **It is a different kind of safety, not more of the same safety.** A Lambda
-   is a genuinely separate box, which is good. But out of the box that box has
-   working network access, a writable temp disk, ambient environment variables,
-   and an AWS identity (an "IAM role") that can reach real infrastructure. The
-   sealed room had none of that. So swapping one for the other is a **trade**,
-   not an upgrade — and the documentation would have to say exactly which
-   guarantee changed rather than announcing "functions work on AWS now". One
-   guarantee is simply lost: the sandbox promises fresh memory on every call,
-   and AWS reuses warm containers.
-2. **URLCode would start generating security-critical infrastructure.** To keep
-   each route's permissions tight, the build would have to write out an IAM role
-   per route. A generated permissions file is not an implementation detail you
-   can wave away with "don't rely on this" — if it is too generous, it is a
-   security hole the project authored.
-3. **It would be an unverified claim wearing a capability's clothes.** Right now
-   the project's position on AWS is honest: it reports `deployment: 'unverified'`
-   and tells you to deploy the example yourself. Shipping a compiler that emits
-   cloud infrastructure nobody on the project has ever actually deployed would
-   trade an honest refusal for a bigger unproven promise.
-
-### The alternative already sitting on the table — and now chosen
-
-Run the project as **one ordinary Node deployment** — a container or a VM. That
-supports `function` and `middleware` today, with no compiler, no generated
-infrastructure and no new security surface. It costs you the serverless
-operating model: something is always running, and you scale it yourself.
-
-So the real decision is not "can this be built" — it probably can. It is:
-
-> Is there enough demand for running URLCode `function` routes specifically on
-> AWS serverless to justify this project owning an infrastructure compiler and a
-> second, weaker isolation story?
-
-**That question was answered on 2026-09-19: no.** Nobody has produced the demand
-evidence, and the plain Node deployment does the job today, so the Node
-deployment is the supported model and the compiler is not being built. The
-refusal on AWS and Vercel stays, and is now a position rather than a gap. See
-[open decisions](../../OPEN-DECISIONS.md#accepted-one-node-deployment-per-project).
-If that demand ever shows up, §6 below already scopes what a first attempt
-would be.
-
-## 1. Where the refusal actually comes from
-
-`src/capabilities.ts` gives the reason:
-
-```
-capability === 'function' ? 'isolated functions need worker threads and the WASM engine'
-```
-
-That is true of the runtime's *own* mechanism. Isolation for guest code is
-QuickJS inside WebAssembly, driven from worker threads, with the boundaries
-[function security](../../FUNCTION-SECURITY.md) lists: no `process`, no filesystem,
-no sockets, no `fetch`, a fresh guest heap per invocation, and bindings denied
-unless an operator granted them by exact name.
-
-A single Lambda cannot host that engine cheaply, because every cold start pays
-worker startup and WASM instantiation before the first request. So the adapter
-refuses — correctly, for the shape it is.
-
-But nothing in that sentence is about Lambda. It is about *one process serving
-every route*. Change the deployment unit and the sentence stops applying.
-
-## 2. The lowering
-
-Cloudflare already establishes the pattern: where a platform forbids what the
-adapter needs, URLCode **compiles ahead of time** instead of adapting at
-runtime. `urlcode build --target cloudflare` (`src/build-cloudflare.ts`) emits
-an artifact the Worker reads, and refuses at build time anything it cannot
-serve, with the route named — see [Cloudflare](../../CLOUDFLARE.md).
-
-The same move for AWS: a build step emits **one Lambda per `function` route**,
-plus the existing native-handler Lambda for everything else.
-
-```
-urlcode build --target aws --project . --out dist
-
-dist/
-  routes/            the native handler Lambda (redirect, respond, page, static, download)
-  fn/<route-id>/     one directory per function route
-  template.yaml      the generated stack
-```
-
-The guest source becomes the Lambda's handler. There is no QuickJS in the
-request path, because the request never crosses a guest boundary inside a
-process — the process *is* the boundary.
-
-This is not a smaller change than it looks. Three things follow from it.
-
-## 3. What changes, stated plainly
-
-### 3.1 The isolation guarantee is replaced, not preserved
-
-This is the claim most likely to be made too early, so it goes first.
-
-> **Plainly:** both are real walls, but they are different walls, and neither
-> one is strictly stronger. Read the table as a trade, not a scorecard.
-
-QuickJS-WASM and a Lambda are both real isolation. They are **not the same
-isolation**, and neither strictly contains the other:
-
-| | QuickJS-WASM | per-route Lambda |
-| --- | --- | --- |
-| Network | unavailable unless a binding is granted | available by default; must be removed |
-| Filesystem | unavailable | a writable `/tmp`, and the deployment package |
-| Environment | not exposed to the guest | ambient unless scrubbed |
-| Blast radius of an escape | the guest heap | the function's IAM role |
-| Per-invocation state | fresh heap, guaranteed | a warm container may be reused |
-
-The two rows that matter most are the last two. A guest that escapes QuickJS
-reaches a heap. A guest that misbehaves in a Lambda reaches **whatever that
-Lambda's execution role can reach** — so the compiler would have to emit a role
-per route that grants exactly the route's declared bindings and nothing else,
-and that emitted role becomes a security-critical generated artifact.
-Warm-container reuse is the other: the runtime currently *guarantees* fresh
-state per invocation, and Lambda does not.
-
-The honest framing, and the one the docs would have to carry: per-route Lambdas
-are **a substitute for the sandbox, not the sandbox**. Anything that says
-"functions now work on AWS" without saying which guarantee changed is a claim
-this project should not make.
-
-### 3.2 `middleware` is the hard part, not `function`
-
-> **Plainly:** a `function` is a dead end — it answers and the request stops
-> there, so giving it its own Lambda is easy. Middleware is a queue of steps
-> every request walks through on its way somewhere else, and a queue split
-> across separate Lambdas has to be either copied into each one or wired up as
-> a chain of calls. Both hurt, so this spike does not attempt middleware.
-
-`function` lowers cleanly because it is a leaf. `middleware` is a per-request
-chain, and there are only two ways to lower it, both with a real cost:
-
-- **Inline** the chain into each function Lambda at build time. Cheap at
-  runtime; duplicates the middleware into every function's package, and a
-  middleware change rebuilds every function.
-- **Orchestrate** — a hop per middleware. Composable; adds a Lambda invocation
-  of latency and cost to every request, on the hot path.
-
-Neither is obviously right, which is exactly why this spike scopes middleware
-out rather than picking one under time pressure.
-
-### 3.3 `link` does not fall out of this at all
-
-Stored live links need a durable writable store that instances share. That is
-the same refusal before and after this change. DynamoDB is the natural lowering,
-but it is a store implementation with its own export and restore discipline, not
-something a compile step produces. (Note: the native `link` handler this
-section describes was later removed from core; see
-`docs/SPIKE-CORE-LAYERING.md`.)
-
-## 4. Emitting infrastructure is a new kind of output
-
-> **Plainly:** up to now URLCode has only ever produced things that run *inside*
-> a server it was given. Emitting a CloudFormation stack means it starts
-> producing the cloud account's own configuration — including permissions — and
-> becomes responsible for that being correct as AWS changes underneath it.
-
-`examples/aws/template.yaml` is hand-written today. Generating a stack means
-this project starts owning a surface it has never owned:
-
-- The generated template is only as correct as the provider's current
-  behaviour, which changes without asking.
-- A generated IAM role is a security artifact (3.1), so "the template is
-  internal, don't rely on it" is a weaker disclaimer here than it was for the
-  Cloudflare artifact.
-- The gap simply *moves* unless the emitted stack is checked against the
-  project. `urlcode verify-deployment --target <url>` already probes a running
-  deployment; it would need to cover the multi-Lambda shape, or the build gains
-  a new unverified claim while retiring an honest refusal.
-
-That last point is the one worth holding onto. The project's current position on
-AWS is **honest**: the capability catalog reports `deployment: 'unverified'` for
-every target that is not self-hosted, and [AWS](../../AWS.md) tells a reader to treat
-the limits as unverified until they deploy the example themselves. A compiler
-that emits infrastructure nobody has deployed would be a larger unverified claim
-wearing the clothes of a capability.
-
-## 5. The capability model already has the right shape
-
-`src/capabilities.ts` (from the target-capability centralization) is where this
-lands with no new concept:
-
-```
-function / aws:  refused  →  compiled
-```
-
-`compiled` already exists as a `CapabilitySupport` value and already means what
-is needed here — Cloudflare uses it. `deployment` stays `'unverified'` until
-something is actually deployed. The catalog would tell the truth about the new
-lowering without anything else in the model changing, and `urlcode capabilities
---target aws` would report it.
-
-## 6. Proposed scope for a first spike
-
-Narrow, so that the isolation story stays clean and the win is real.
-**Plainly: build the smallest version that proves the idea, and resist every
-tempting extra.**
-
-**In:** `function` routes, Function URL only, one Lambda per function route,
-a generated role per route carrying exactly that route's granted bindings,
-and the existing native-handler Lambda unchanged for everything else.
-
-**Out:** `middleware` (3.2), `link` (3.3), API Gateway, VPC, custom domains,
-warm-start tuning, and any claim about cost.
-
-**Done looks like:** a project in `examples/` that builds, a generated template
-a reader can inspect, `urlcode capabilities --target aws` reporting `function`
-as `compiled`, and a written comparison of the two isolation models that a
-reviewer can disagree with.
-
-**Not done by that:** a deployment. Everything above can pass without anyone
-having run it on AWS, and the spike should say so rather than imply otherwise.
-
-## 7. Prior art worth reading before building this
-
-- **Cloudflare target in this repository** — the closest precedent, and the one
-  that establishes compile-not-adapt as a thing URLCode already does.
-- **SST, Serverless Framework, AWS CDK** — all generate per-function
-  infrastructure from a declaration. The interesting question is not how they
-  emit it but how they keep the emitted stack honest as the provider moves.
-- **Deno Deploy and Vercel functions** — isolate-per-request models, the closest
-  commercial thing to the guarantee QuickJS-WASM gives today.
-
-## 8. Open questions
-
-These are the things a reviewer should press on. In plain terms: *is losing the
-fresh-state guarantee acceptable at all; should URLCode write the permissions or
-merely describe them; does splitting into many Lambdas quietly weaken the
-policies a project already declares; and is one Lambda per route even the right
-size of piece?*
-
-- Is warm-container reuse acceptable at all, given the runtime currently
-  *guarantees* fresh per-invocation state? If not, this lowering is wrong for
-  any route that relies on that guarantee, and there is no build-time way to
-  tell which ones do.
-- Does the generated IAM role belong in URLCode's output, or should the build
-  emit a *description* of the permissions each route needs and leave the role to
-  the operator — closer to how [function security](../../FUNCTION-SECURITY.md) already
-  keeps grants operator-controlled and outside the checkout?
-- Does a per-route Lambda change what `policies` can promise? `throttle` on AWS
-  is already `conditional` — "counters are per instance" — and more instances
-  make that weaker, not stronger.
-- Is one Lambda per route the right granularity, or one per *project* with a
-  route parameter, which keeps deployment small but reintroduces a shared
-  process?
-- What happens to the 6 MB Lambda response limit ([AWS](../../AWS.md)) for a function
-  route that returns a large body — refuse at build time, as the Cloudflare
-  target refuses what it cannot serve?