deepseek-harness/docs/rfc/implemented/testing/2026-06-19-real-api-e2e-ci.md

RFC: Real-API e2e in CI against the external DeepSeek API

Status: implemented

Problem

The harness leans hard on real-API tests by policy: docs/testing.md argues that a no-key suite proves the plumbing but not the product, and the ACP inject postmortem is the standing proof — 178 keyless tests stayed green while a real editor session crashed instantly. The real-API e2e suite (pnpm run test:e2e, the *.e2e.ts files) exists precisely to close that gap: it drives the agent against the live DeepSeek API — real model calls, real bash tools, multi-turn, resume, ACP-over-stdio.

The default gate (.github/workflows/ci.yml) is deliberately keyless: it carries no secret and runs for forks. test:e2e self-skips without a key (describe.skipIf(!process.env.DEEPSEEK_API_KEY)), so adding it there would report green without exercising the real suite. A separate secret-bearing workflow is required to make real-API coverage a merge signal.

This RFC records the decision to add a second, secret-consuming workflow that runs the real-API suite in CI, and — because introducing the first CI secret into a repo that may later go public is a security/isolation decision — the threat model it relies on and what changes when the repo becomes public.

Decision

Add a dedicated workflow, .github/workflows/e2e.yml, separate from ci.yml. It runs only pnpm run test:e2e against the external API using a repo secret, on trusted events, with a preflight that converts a missing secret into a loud failure instead of a false green. The keyless workflow remains separate so forkable quality gates and secret-consuming real-API gates keep different trigger and credential policies.

A separate workflow, not a job in ci.yml

ci.yml's value is that it is keyless, forkable, and always-green: any contributor (including an outside fork) gets a complete keyless signal with no secret in the blast radius. Adding a secret-consuming job there would couple that always-green gate to credential availability and a different trigger policy. Keeping the secret-bearing work in its own file isolates the secret, trigger, and concurrency policy, and preserves ci.yml's property for forks. Different lifecycles → different files.

Cost is not the constraint; reliability is

Internal inference cost is not the limiting constraint, so the workflow optimizes for coverage and signal. It runs every matching *.e2e.ts file on multiple triggers and every trusted PR, implementing the docs/testing.md with-key policy.

Triggers: trusted events only

workflow_dispatch + push to main/master + nightly schedule (17 0 * * *, 08:17 Asia/Shanghai) + pull_request. Push gives a post-merge signal; schedule catches external-API drift; dispatch is the manual escape hatch; and trusted pull requests get a pre-merge gate. That pre-merge signal deliberately accepts the larger key-exposure surface described under § Security.

The untrusted-PR gate

GitHub withholds repo secrets from two kinds of PR: those from forks, and Dependabot PRs (same-repo branch, so head.repo.fork == false, but secrets are still withheld). A job-level if: skips the whole job for both:

github.event_name != 'pull_request'
  || !(github.event.pull_request.head.repo.fork || github.event.pull_request.user.login == 'dependabot[bot]')

The Dependabot clause keys on the PR author (pull_request.user.login), not github.actor (the run trigger): a maintainer who reopens or re-runs a Dependabot PR would make github.actor a human while the PR is still keyless, and an author-based test stays correct across that. A job skipped by a job-level if: reports as a successful check (unlike a workflow/trigger-level skip, which stays pending), so this workflow is safe to mark as a required status check if desired — a fork/Dependabot PR's skipped-but-green check does not block the merge.

The gate is a clean-skip nicety, not the secret's security boundary (see § Security — the boundary is GitHub's own fork-secret withholding under pull_request). Without the gate, forks still could not read the key; they would just hit a confusing preflight hard-fail and waste compute.

Preflight: fail loud, never false-green

Because the job only runs on trusted events where the secret is expected, the preflight is an unconditional presence check: empty key → exit 1 with a ::error:: annotation naming the secret to configure. This is the crux that makes a self-skipping suite safe to gate on. Without it, a deleted/renamed/misconfigured secret would make test:e2e skip every real suite and report all-green — a silent regression of the entire safety net. The guard turns "secret missing" from an invisible false pass into a visible failure. (Its correctness was verified live: the run before the secret existed failed at exactly this step.)

Secret mapping and hygiene

The repo secret is named DEEPSEEK_API_KEY_EXTERNAL; it is mapped to the DEEPSEEK_API_KEY env var the adapters and tests read (process.env.DEEPSEEK_API_KEY). The distinct secret name documents intent (this is the external public-API key, not an internal-endpoint key) and lets an internal-endpoint key coexist later without collision. Hygiene choices, each defensive:

• Step-scoped secret. DEEPSEEK_API_KEY is set in the env: of only the preflight and e2e steps, never job-level — so checkout/setup-node/install never see it. A compromised install-time lifecycle script in a dependency cannot read a secret that isn't in its environment.
• permissions: contents: read. The job only reads the repo to run tests; it needs no write scopes (no PR comments, no status writes), so the GITHUB_TOKEN is dropped to least privilege.
• DEEPSEEK_BASE_URL pinned to https://api.deepseek.com on the e2e step. The adapter would default to this when unset (packages/llm/llm-deepseek/src/index.ts PUBLIC_BASE_URL), but pinning is self-documenting and hermetic — a stray repo-root .env (which vitest.e2e.config.ts loads if present) cannot silently redirect the run to another endpoint.
• No secret echoed. The preflight prints only DEEPSEEK_API_KEY present. — not the value or its length.

Scope, runtime shape

The job runs only test:e2e on Node 24; keyless gates and version compatibility belong to the main CI workflow. Tests run unbuilt through the workspace paths map with a bounded configurable worker pool, per-test retries, and a job timeout. Superseded PR runs are cancelled, while push and scheduled runs complete for post-merge signal.

Security

The repository's first CI secret requires a recorded threat model because access differs between same-repository, fork, and Dependabot pull requests and changes when the repository becomes public.

Who can reach the secret today (private repo)

• No write access (fork PRs): cannot. Two independent facts block it. First, the workflow uses pull_request, not pull_request_target — GitHub does not pass repo secrets to fork-PR runs of pull_request, so secrets.DEEPSEEK_API_KEY_EXTERNAL resolves to empty on a fork runner. Second, the if: gate skips fork PRs entirely. The withholding is the real boundary; the gate is defense-in-depth and UX.
• Write (push) access: can. A same-repo branch PR receives secrets, so a write-access author could modify test code (or an install lifecycle script, or the workflow YAML on their branch) to exfiltrate the key. This is inherent to GitHub Actions, not introduced here: anyone with push access to any repo can already exfiltrate any of its Actions secrets by authoring a workflow. Write access ⇒ secret access, always. The mitigation lives in who is granted write and in branch protection, not in this file.

So "everyone who could open a PR can steal it" is false: only the write-access set can, and that set could already steal any secret the repo holds.

The residual exposure the pull_request trigger adds

Because PR runs are enabled, the key is handed to the code on a write-access author's PR branch before merge. This is a larger surface than push + schedule + workflow_dispatch, accepted for a pre-merge signal within the trusted write set. If that calculus changes, drop the pull_request trigger while retaining post-merge, nightly, and on-demand coverage.

What changes when the repo goes public

The secret stays protected from the public through this workflow: pull_request behaves identically on a public repo — fork PRs (now openable by anyone) still receive no secret, and on public repos GitHub additionally gates fork-PR runs behind maintainer approval, where even an approved run gets no secret (approving the run is not the same as handing over the key). The write-access set is unchanged by visibility, so the insider reality is also unchanged.

What gets worse is the surrounding model, and these are the things to address before flipping visibility:

• Logs become world-readable. A careless secret echo that today leaks to org members would leak to the entire internet and be scraped within minutes. Secret-handling discipline (no value/length echoes — already done) matters far more.
• The pull_request_target footgun becomes catastrophic. If anyone ever "fixes" PR runs by switching the trigger to pull_request_target, the workflow would run untrusted fork code in the base-repo context with secrets — a full key-leak vector. This is benign-ish on a private repo and disastrous on a public one. A SECURITY — comment on the trigger in e2e.yml forbids the change and points here.
• Rotate on flip. The key lived in a private repo's CI; treat going-public as "assume exposed" and rotate DEEPSEEK_API_KEY_EXTERNAL at that moment.
• Settle the secret behind controls. Confirm Settings → Actions → "Send secrets to workflows from fork pull requests" stays off (the one setting that would actually break the fork boundary), and consider moving the key into a GitHub Environment with required reviewers so even merged code uses it only under controlled conditions and rotation has a single home.

None of these require changing the workflow to go public; they are operational steps plus the already-added pull_request_target guard comment.

Alternatives considered

• A secret-consuming job inside ci.yml — rejected: it would couple the keyless, forkable, always-green gate to credential availability and a different trigger/concurrency policy; different lifecycles, different files.
• Omitting the pull_request trigger (the smaller key-exposure surface) — rejected for the pre-merge signal; the Security section carries the accepted exposure analysis.

Consequences

A second CI workflow and the first repo secret to maintain. The real-API suite now gates merges (pre-merge on trusted PRs, post-merge on the main branch) and runs nightly, so a real break in the agent's interaction with the external API surfaces in CI rather than only in a developer's local run — at the cost of real (but internally free) API calls on every trusted PR and merge. The preflight makes secret misconfiguration self-announcing instead of silently disabling the net.

The design carries a documented constraint surface: the pull_request trigger's key-exposure tradeoff (drop it to harden), the if: gate's dependence on the author-based Dependabot test, and the hard prohibition on pull_request_target. The going-public checklist above is the operational companion — this RFC is the place a future maintainer should re-read before changing the trigger set or flipping repo visibility, rather than re-deriving the fork/secret model from scratch.

The scheduled trigger auto-disables after 60 days of repo inactivity (a GitHub behavior); push/PR/dispatch are backstops, and an active monorepo will not hit it. Runner egress to https://api.deepseek.com is assumed — GitHub-hosted ubuntu-latest has it; an egress-restricted self-hosted runner would need connectivity confirmed before relying on the nightly.