Iron Proxy Gateway for NanoClaw

Add Iron Proxy gateway

Install the official iron-control console and PostgreSQL alongside one central Iron Proxy. NanoClaw core supplies the generic gateway seam and human approval flow. Read docs/gateway-seam.md before changing the integration.

Use the bundled setup scripts and the source revisions in versions.json. The console is the upstream Rails application; its UI is not generated or copied into NanoClaw. This is a local Docker installation. Reuse this copy's recorded services and keys when refreshing it.

Install the provider payload

Copy the package's provider, approval middleware, tests, and agent guidance into their normal NanoClaw paths.

payload/src/gateway-providers/iron-proxy.ts -> src/gateway-providers/iron-proxy.ts
payload/src/gateway-providers/iron-proxy.test.ts -> src/gateway-providers/iron-proxy.test.ts
payload/src/gateway-providers/iron-proxy-allowlist.ts -> src/gateway-providers/iron-proxy-allowlist.ts
payload/src/gateway-providers/iron-proxy-local-model.ts -> src/gateway-providers/iron-proxy-local-model.ts
payload/src/gateway-providers/iron-proxy-local-model.test.ts -> src/gateway-providers/iron-proxy-local-model.test.ts
payload/src/gateway-providers/iron-proxy-approval.ts -> src/gateway-providers/iron-proxy-approval.ts
payload/src/gateway-providers/iron-proxy-approval.test.ts -> src/gateway-providers/iron-proxy-approval.test.ts
payload/src/gateway-providers/iron-proxy-credential-scope.ts -> src/gateway-providers/iron-proxy-credential-scope.ts
payload/src/gateway-providers/iron-proxy-credential-scope.test.ts -> src/gateway-providers/iron-proxy-credential-scope.test.ts
payload/src/gateway-providers/iron-proxy-transform.proto -> src/gateway-providers/iron-proxy-transform.proto
payload/container/skills/iron-proxy-gateway/SKILL.md -> container/skills/iron-proxy-gateway/SKILL.md
payload/container/skills/iron-proxy-gateway/instructions.md -> container/skills/iron-proxy-gateway/instructions.md

Register once

The provider file makes the only product registration call. It declares idempotent sessions, typed runtime contributions, owned-resource cleanup, normalized approvals, network access, and agent guidance. NanoClaw core owns approval persistence, cards, clicks, authorization, and timeouts.

import './iron-proxy.js';

Install the bridge dependencies

@grpc/grpc-js@1.14.5
@grpc/proto-loader@0.8.1

Install the console and pinned proxy

Setup pulls the pinned official Iron Control image and database image, starts them on a dedicated Docker network, creates a local operator account, and registers this copy's proxy and principal through Iron's API. It stores credentials and encryption keys in owner-only files under data/session-materials/iron-control/. The database has its own persistent volume and no published port. Neither the console credentials nor its database are mounted into agents.

The installer streams stage names and elapsed-time updates. Source downloads stop after two minutes, the image build after twenty minutes, and console startup after six minutes. It never opens a Git credential prompt. The proxy is built locally from the pinned public upstream source, so installation does not require a GitHub account or access to a private proxy image. The console and build dependencies use their pinned public images. On failure, fix the reported access or service issue and rerun setup; keep existing database volumes and encryption keys together. Raw subprocess output is not streamed because it can contain credentials.

Setup builds unmodified upstream Iron Proxy and a separate NanoClaw approval front in the same image. No Iron fork or source patch is used. The front is the only network-facing listener. It authenticates session identities, inspects each HTTP request inside HTTPS tunnels, checks the allowlist, and waits for an explicit approval before forwarding to Iron on 127.0.0.1:18080. Empty, malformed, rejected or timed-out decisions fail closed. Iron's own dial-time loopback and link-local deny rules prevent DNS aliases from reaching the internal backend. Managed control-plane updates only change Iron's credential transforms; they cannot remove the front's checks.

The front builds and runs the pinned OneCLI helper in gateway-compat/onecli-summary; do not add app-specific rules. Only method, host, path, response status, the resulting OneCLI summary and whether the request sends a body or upgrade reach the approval bridge. Raw bodies, authorization headers, query strings and Iron transform traces do not. The helper sees a bounded pre-injection body prefix; the full original stream is preserved. Read the approval-presentation contract in docs/gateway-seam.md. The build tests stock Iron, the front, and the summary helper, then records an immutable image ID and source hash. NanoClaw's approval service uses a private Unix socket on Linux. On macOS it uses loopback with mutual TLS and a proxy-only client certificate. Credentials pass directly from Iron Control to Iron Proxy.

With NANOCLAW_GATEWAY_UNCREDENTIALED_READS=true in .env, a GET or HEAD that sends no body or upgrade skips the card when no Iron credential rule could apply to its host and method. The bridge reads the rules from the proxy's config.yaml and, when managed, from Iron Control's effective config for the principal the proxy is assigned now. It reads them fresh for each such request and keeps every card for 30 seconds after its first read, because Iron applies grant changes on its own 10-second sync. Every rule it has seen stays in scope, recorded in seen-credential-rules.json beside config.yaml, because Iron can keep applying a grant that Iron Control has dropped. Delete that file and restart the host to forget revoked grants. The card also stays when Iron Control cannot be read, when the assignment changes mid-read, when a rule has an unknown shape, when config.yaml or proxy.env is newer than the running proxy (restart it), or when proxy.env sets a custom sync interval. Two gaps remain. A grant created in the moment between that read and the forward can be used without a card. So can a grant created and revoked between two reads, if Iron synced it in between, until Iron drops it. A front built before this change never attests a payload-free request, so re-run setup to rebuild it. See docs/gateway-seam.md for the data-leak trade-off.

NANOCLAW_IRON_PROXY_PORT in .env sets the internal proxy port (default 8080). Setup uses the same value for the front listener and the agent proxy URL. This does not publish a host port. Re-run setup and restart this NanoClaw copy after changing it.

NANOCLAW_IRON_CONTROL_PORT sets the console port (default 10257). Only 127.0.0.1 is published. Set it before setup if another install uses that port; use the URL printed by setup. The official image currently targets linux/amd64; Docker on Apple Silicon runs it with emulation. On another architecture, setup checks the engine before it pulls anything and stops, printing the command that enables amd64 emulation, when the engine cannot run that image.

pnpm exec tsx .claude/skills/add-iron-proxy/scripts/setup.ts --with-control

Troubleshooting

• Source access fails: verify the pinned source is readable from this machine. The installer uses the public source in versions.json and disables interactive Git prompts. Check connectivity and the pinned revision, then retry.
• A command times out: use the last printed stage to identify whether source download, image build, or console startup failed. Check connectivity and Docker health before retrying. The installer terminates the timed-out process group.
• "Iron Control cannot run on this aarch64 Docker engine", or exec format error at the Iron Control step: the pinned console image is amd64 only. Run the printed tonistiigi/binfmt command against the Docker engine, or choose the OneCLI gateway; then re-run setup. The registration lives in the kernel and is gone after a reboot: re-run the command, or register it at boot (a systemd unit or your Docker host's boot script), or Iron Control restart-loops with exec format error. Setup only checks an engine running on this machine's own kernel; a VM or remote engine (Docker Desktop, Colima, a DOCKER_HOST elsewhere) is not inspected and needs emulation enabled inside the engine.
• The database exists but keys are missing: restore its matching control.env. Keep the database volume and encryption keys together; do not generate replacement keys for an existing database. nanoclaw uninstall removes both together: the containers carry this copy's nanoclaw-install and nanoclaw-role=gateway labels (gateway-owned: the gateway role and no session, so the update drain and residue reaping keep them), and the uninstaller removes their Compose project's volume and network with data/. If the folder was deleted by hand, the error prints the docker rm -f and docker volume rm commands that delete the old database; run them only if its credentials can go.

Validate

pnpm run build

pnpm exec vitest run src/gateway-providers/iron-proxy.test.ts src/gateway-providers/iron-proxy-approval.test.ts src/gateway-providers/iron-proxy-credential-scope.test.ts src/gateway-providers/gateway-provider-registry.test.ts src/gateway-approval-coordinator.test.ts .claude/skills/add-iron-proxy/scripts/control.test.ts .claude/skills/add-iron-proxy/scripts/setup.test.ts .claude/skills/add-iron-proxy/scripts/provider-credentials.test.ts .claude/skills/add-iron-proxy/scripts/credential-isolation.test.ts .claude/skills/add-iron-proxy/scripts/install-command.test.ts src/gateway-providers/iron-proxy-local-model.test.ts .claude/skills/add-iron-proxy/scripts/local-model.test.ts

The setup consumer writes NANOCLAW_GATEWAY_PROVIDER=iron-proxy only after every directive succeeds. Restart only this copy's NanoClaw service after an upgrade so its session contribution and approval bridge match the new installation. Check the proxy has synced its assigned principal before reporting the gateway ready.

The request order is front identity and allowlist → human approval → stock Iron credentials → upstream. The front also requires an explicit response decision before returning upstream data. HTTPS tunnels pin the target authority; each inner HTTP request is checked again. Streaming responses and WebSocket upgrades use this same request/response gate. Credentialed application requests use HTTPS; the approval bridge rejects plaintext HTTP destinations, except one keyless model on this machine pinned by host and port (see Serve a local model). Do not rewrite an HTTP request’s approval metadata as HTTPS to bypass that restriction. The bridge forwards every allowed HTTP request to core as a default approval request. Core uses the active agent provider’s model-domain declaration to permit model traffic without a card; other destinations retain human approval. CONNECT verifies identity; the inner HTTP request is the approval point. Existing standalone model credentials are moved into Iron Control during setup and removed from the old secret file after successful storage and grant.