Diagnose the vault directly, then the broker.

The runbook starts with files and keys because an API cannot explain why the keyring or encrypted document beneath it is unavailable.

Direct diagnosis#

  1. Run status for configured paths and non-sensitive counts.
  2. Run key-doctor to compare vault recipients with locally available private keys.
  3. Run verify-chain against the audit journal.
  4. Run doctor for the combined vault, audit, endpoint, WORM receipt, and consumer-grant report. The grants check names a grant whose item was trashed, purged, or renamed away, and one naming a field the item's kind refuses outright, in the same words routes verify uses for a broken route.

Authorization refusal#

consumer not authorized to read item field means the presented grant does not cover the exact item#field. It deliberately does not reveal whether an ungranted item exists. grant verify answers whether a named consumer, action, item, field, and bearer match.

Recovery order#

  • Do not initialize over a missing-looking production path.
  • Identify the canonical vault and keyring before importing or migrating anything.
  • Prove a recovery key against the deterministic canary before an incident.
  • Use rotate-owner to rewrap current and historical ciphertext; copying a new public key into configuration is not rotation.