Catalog lifecycle: immutable until restart¶

Status: Decided and enforced Decision: A running cMCP process never reloads or mutates its approved catalog.

The catalog binds tool names to upstream identities, TLS pins, measured stdio executables, and approved schemas. Changing it at runtime can redirect a permitted call to different code or a different network authority. That blast radius is larger than changing a policy decision over an otherwise stable route.

CMCP_CATALOG_HASH therefore means exactly one approved catalog artifact for the process lifetime. To change it, an operator writes the new artifact, computes and pins its hash, restarts the gateway, and obtains fresh attestation evidence naming that hash. There is no polling interval, reload endpoint, filesystem watcher, or signing-key exception for the catalog.

This does not hide upstream drift. CATALOG_DRIFT_DETECTED compares advertised tool definitions with the sealed catalog and fails closed; it reports that reality moved rather than silently rewriting the authority.

Executable guard¶

Configuration keys implying runtime mutation, including catalog_reload_interval_seconds and catalog_reload_path, are reserved and rejected with CATALOG_RESTART_REQUIRED. A future implementation cannot make one valid by only adding a parser field. Changing this lifecycle requires deliberately removing the guard, revising this decision, and replacing its tests with a complete authorization and attestation model.