content/manual/explanation/api-key-scoping.md (lines 77-88) explicitly argues that fine-grained scopes "would add token management friction without meaningful security benefit" and defends one-scope-per-category as intentional.

This directly contradicts the shipped implementation. Fine-grained scopes (extensions:push, extensions:promote, extensions:read) are live, enforced, and selectable in the UI. The reference doc (api-key-authentication.md) already lists all 22 scopes correctly. This explanation page is the only doc still arguing against the feature.

What needs to change

Rewrite the "scope granularity" section to explain the current two-tier model:

Fine-grained scopes for extensions — extensions:push, extensions:promote, extensions:read let CI tokens follow least-privilege (the core ask from #960)
Category-level wildcards for infrastructure — serve:*, datastore:*, vault:* are single scopes because these are binary capabilities (you either run a serve instance or you don't)
Wildcard expansion — extensions:* grants all fine-grained extension scopes

The explanation should help users understand why some categories have fine-grained scopes and others don't, rather than arguing against fine-grained scopes entirely.

Context

Part of #960. The reference table in api-key-authentication.md was updated in PR #981. The how-to in authenticate-with-api-keys.md was updated in the same PR. This explanation page was missed.

02Bog Flow

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7/24/2026, 12:43:16 AM

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03Sludge Pulse

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worker daemon enable: relative/missing --cache-dir fails launchd EX_CONFIG while daemon status reports running

vault extensions: emit OTel spans for vault operations (AWS SM, Azure KV, 1Password)

azure-kv error wrapping loses original error type — ERROR_TYPE always 'Error' in traces

aws-sm deleteAnnotation removes all non-aws: tags, not just swamp-specific ones

Docs: document datastore directory relocation during setup

--quiet mode does not suppress in-process extension logger output

Expose resource attributes in DataHandle for workflow report stepExecutions

Expose workflow inputs in WorkflowReportContext

Issue redactor corrupts reports: dotted code identifiers masked as hostnames, loopback and RFC 5737 documentation IPs masked, angle-bracket placeholders half-eaten

data prune resolves auto-definitions at the local path, not the datastore path — deletes live models' data (verified: destroyed a working server token and an active grant)

workflow/job-lifetime data is never reclaimed — expiry check requires an ownerDefinition.workflowId that step execution never sets

runModel breadth limit (MAX_INVOCATION_BREADTH=100) is never enforced — tracking object is never written back to the caller context; verified 150/150 calls succeeded

serve daemon enable is ungated — it reports success, then the account gate fires inside the detached daemon, which crash-loops invisibly

Purely local operations require a swamp-club account: local-token serve is gated while deprecated --auth-mode none is not, third-party OIDC is gated, and 'Local_Encryption' is paywalled by capitalization

A collective token stored in auth.json (rather than SWAMP_API_KEY) is permanently scope-less — resolution only runs for the env var, and scopes are never persisted for collective tokens

An empty stored apiKey counts as authenticated — saveIdentityCache writes apiKey:'' on a virgin machine, permanently satisfying the mandatory-account gate with no credential

Account/scope gates fire before argument, type and repo validation — 'swamp vault create env my-vault' (the command's own example, an invalid type) returns a paywall instead of 'Unknown vault type'

auth token create advertises a 'collective:write' scope that does not exist, and following its advice hits 'collective tokens cannot create other collective tokens'

requireScope does exact string matching — fine-grained scopes fail gates that demand the literal wildcard, and minted scopes are never validated or normalized

Collective-token scope cache never expires, is never refreshed by whoami, and cannot be cleared via the CLI — scope changes and revocations never take effect

Collective-token scope cache is keyed on a 12-char token prefix — only 2 chars distinguish org tokens, so a rotated token silently inherits another token's scopes

Misleading 'Your collective token lacks the X scope' when scope resolution failed — startup whoami errors are silently swallowed

Community points / reputation: award points for upvoting extensions, feature requests, comments, and feed posts

globalArgs fields leak into method arguments when a method's arguments schema is a bare z.record()

swamp serve --auth-mode oauth: crash during first-run admin resolution discards the OAuth token, forcing full device-flow re-registration

Docs: document extension runtime permissions and device I/O workaround in user manual

datastore setup extension drops 'namespace' from --config, making extensions that require it impossible to configure

Kiro CLI v3 permissions: no capability covers disclose_context (skill loading)

CLI: swamp invite <email> to drive the platform-invite API

api-key-scoping explanation doc contradicts shipped fine-grained scopes

Fine-grained scopes for swamp.club access tokens

End-to-end UAT for fine-grained collective token scopes (#960)

Docs: document swamp auth token create command for collective tokens

open method fails for password-auth hosts: SSHPASS env set but ssh call never wrapped in sshpass

docs: update swamp skills for setup extension --namespace

apps sync/lookup fail with 'partial() cannot be used on object schemas containing refinements'

Docs: update autoGc documentation to reflect write-time version pruning

model search/list doesn't enumerate auto-created definitions under .swamp/auto-definitions/

CLI command to create scoped collective tokens (phase 8 of #960)

docs: document auth gates for team features (datastores, vaults, serve)

`datastore setup filesystem` never transfers content when leaving a sync-based (remote) datastore — copies only the catalog and hardcodes `filesPulled: 0`

Workflow/CLI output uses red text for non-error/informational lines, contradicting standard error-color convention

Support end-user timezones on https://swamp-club.com/u/shelson/activity

Document doctor datastores --repair for namespace contamination cleanup

version-drift check (from #236) is a raw string-inequality, false-positives on multi-model manifests and metadata-only bumps

Pre-flight checks receive unresolved vault.get() expression text, not the resolved secret

Invite people who have never used swamp to a collective (email invite flow)

docs: update giga-swamp manual pages for setup extension --namespace

Docs: update extension push output examples to include channel and visibility

Collective management API for extension-based automation

Remote --server wss:// fails through an HTTP/2 TLS reverse proxy (WS client ALPN is h2-only)

uat: add namespace isolation and shard resilience test coverage

docs: update giga-swamp guides and skills for setup extension --namespace

Quest page: all leaderboard usernames show 'Swamp Baby' title

Website extension search ignores API relevance — exact name match "good-planning" ranks #10 (API ranks it #1)

Extension/type search at method granularity — find capabilities, not just packages

data query and data get return the same payload under different keys

forEach leaves self.* unresolved in target

It is possible for a member to be a member of a collective twice

swamp-club: score-reads tierTotals GET overflows URL with inline param_ownerIds (Invalid URL, mislabeled clickhouse-network-error) for large collectives

Docker-related model types/workflows would benefit from first-class dry-run/plan support

Hide enterprise (SSO) operatives from announcements and leaderboard by default

Worker queries need a safe connected-worker filter for fleet fan-out

Published extension scores dependency-trust as "missing" (0/2) while client `extension quality` earns it (2/2); no verdict exposed

Add a :micdrop: emoji / reaction shortcode (swamp-native art included)

namespace unset --migrate silently deletes artifact history via catalog-rebuild GC (~484k files lost)

serve: workflow.approvals and workflow.run.search still full-scan the workflow-run store after the #1284 data.query pushdown

Bugs filed by a team-subscription user are not tagged "team" in the Lab

Bundled extension model cannot deserialize AWS SDK S3 XML that works in direct Deno

gcp/sheets spreadsheets-values: batch_get crashes with "Request with GET/HEAD method cannot have body"

Token creation API and UI scope selector for collective tokens (phase 4 of #960)

Make Cloudflare CRUD methods factory-aware so list-discovered resources can be managed in-place

[sc] quest-grant Mongo ops (recentHeartbeat/signalCounts/countIssueShipped) regressed to ~5s timeouts — missing index

Add @swamp/kubernetes/statefulset model type

Sync guard skips bound namespace directory during push — 0 files pushed after namespace migrate

Flaky #1052 preparePush test: mtime-granularity race on Linux tmpfs

command/shell renders JSON-object stdout lines as the literal string 'undefined'

Issue redactor treats the MongoDB authSource parameter as a secret, corrupting reproduction steps

Docs: document repo root resolution from subdirectories

Expose the swamp.club feed as an RSS feed

Grant revoke is never applied to the running server — under `--grant-reload auto` and `manual` alike, a revoked grant stays in force until an explicit `access reload`