HIPsHanzo Proposals
Back to HIPs
HIP-0305FinalStandards TrackInfrastructure

esign: shared-DB tenancy via team-where, not file-per-tenant

Zach Kelling ([email protected])
Created: 2026-06-21
Requires: HIP-0302

HIP-0305: esign: shared-DB tenancy via team-where, not file-per-tenant

Abstract

The canonical database architecture (hanzoai/.github → profile/ARCHITECTURE-DATABASES.md) mandates one Base SQLite file per (org, user, project) for every internal app — "the file is the tenant boundary. Do not add a tenant column." Decision #7 of that document is explicit that "Deviation needs a HIP, not a Slack thread." This is that HIP.

esign (a Documenso fork) is being migrated SQL → Base SQLite (PR hanzoai/esign#7). Its data shape does not fit file-per-tenant:

  1. Bootstrap paradox. validateSessionToken reads the global Session table to discover which user is calling — this happens before any org is known. A per-org file cannot be selected at request entry because the org is only learned by first reading a global table.
  2. Global identity. A User owns and belongs to many organisations (ownedOrganisations[], organisationMember[]). Session, Account, Passkey, ApiToken carry no organisationId. Splitting identity by org would shard a single user across files.
  3. Relation-scoped tables. Only 8 of 47 tables carry an organisationId column (EmailDomain, OrganisationEmail, OrganisationGroup, OrganisationMember, OrganisationMemberInvite, RateLimit, Subscription, Team). The other 39 scope through relations (Envelope → Team → Organisation) that a per-file split would make un-joinable.
  4. No routing-layer escape hatch. esign has no hostname/subdomain tenant resolver, so there is no request-time hook at which a file could be chosen the way a multi-tenant edge router would.

Specification

esign uses ONE Base SQLite file shared across orgs. Tenant isolation is enforced in-query at the buildTeamWhereQuery({ teamId, userId }) layer — the single predicate every cross-org read in packages/lib/server-only/* funnels through. A team is reachable only when the authenticated user is a member via teamGroups → organisationGroup → organisationGroupMembers → organisationMember.userId. The predicate is keyed on the server-trusted user id, never on a client-supplied value. The auth boundary is unchanged: tenancy is still the IAM OIDC owner claim; this HIP changes the file count, not the scope. Encryption-at-rest and S3 replication (HIP-0302) apply to the single file exactly as to a per-tenant one.

Proof

  • tenant-isolation.test.ts (6/6 pass) — stands up the real 0_init migration, seeds two independent org graphs through the real Prisma client, and proves: owner reaches own team (1 row); org B owner reaches org A's team (0 rows); a forged/non-member userId reaches it (0 rows); the same predicate filters Envelopes so B sees 0 of A's documents.
  • Defense in depth (the file is not the only guard):
    • The list-field codec (json-array.ts) throws — fails closed — on any non-array / corrupt roles rather than silently degrading.
    • 68 BEFORE INSERT/UPDATE enum/domain triggers reconstruct the SQL enum domains SQLite drops, including a User.roles shape guard (json_type != 'array') + a domain guard (every element ∈ Role). A fabricated privilege string, or a non-array masquerading as roles, can never persist. (enum-constraints.test.ts, 14/14 pass.)
  • Full prisma suite: 38/38 pass. Backfill crash-resume is separately proven (backfill-resume.itest.ts): kill mid-copy, resume, end with every row exactly once, no gaps — for both the integer-PK and composite-PK keyset cases.

Tradeoffs

File-per-tenant gives stronger isolation: an in-process bug (a handler that forgets buildTeamWhereQuery) can leak across orgs in a shared file, whereas a per-tenant file makes cross-org reads physically impossible. We accept this weaker boundary because per-tenant files would have required re-architecting global identity (sessions, accounts, passkeys, the many-orgs-per-user model) — out of scope for, and orthogonal to, a SQL→SQLite storage migration. The codec-throw + trigger layers are the compensating controls that keep a forgotten predicate from silently corrupting or leaking auth-relevant state.

Reversibility

File-per-tenant remains future work iff global identity is also refactored to be org-addressable at request entry (a tenant resolver before validateSessionToken, and a sharding story for User/Session/Account). Until that work is scoped, the shared file + team-where boundary is the settled position for esign. A follow-up HIP supersedes this one if/when global identity is reworked; this HIP is the authority in the interim.

Conformance status

Measured against hanzoai/esign at 643d0fd3e on 2026-09-09. The deviation this HIP argues for is the one that shipped, and the schema says so in the datasource block — it cites this HIP by number as the reason the estate's file-per-tenant rule does not apply here:

datasource db {
  // Single shared SQLite file via Hanzo Base. Tenancy is enforced at the
  // query layer via buildTeamWhereQuery keyed on the authenticated user
  // (see ./tenant.ts). DATABASE_URL points at one sign.db file shared
  // across all orgs. See HIP-0305 for the architectural deviation ...
  provider = "sqlite"
  url      = env("DATABASE_URL")
}

provider = "sqlite" closes the SQL → Base migration the abstract describes. buildTeamWhereQuery is defined in packages/prisma/tenant.ts and reached from 54 files, including every handler under packages/trpc/zap/server/handlers/ (envelope, team, organisation, webhook, admin) — so the predicate is the boundary in practice and not only in the proposal. esign serves at esign.hanzo.ai, which redirects an anonymous caller to /signin.

Edit on GitHubView Raw