`claude -p` in the VM failed with "Not logged in". The credential now travels on
the exec op: `env` on `vm_exec` → fcagent → the command's environment. An env var
rather than a file because the per-VM rootfs dies with the VM but an env var
never touches the guest disk at all.
**Every problem in an env entry fails the exec.** The tempting alternative —
skip the entry we cannot use and run anyway — produces a `claude -p` with no
credential, and that does not error, it HANGS. A phase stuck at `running` for
ten minutes with nothing in the logs is exactly what a missing token looked like
on the container path. Names are validated ('=' or NUL would define a different
variable than the one asked for via putenv semantics), values must be strings,
and errors name the key and never the value — an error string travels back over
the wire and into logs.
One list of which credentials travel: `forwarded_provider_env` reuses
`forwarded_provider_keys`, and the container path now reads it too. If the two
execution paths diverged, a mission would behave differently depending on where
it landed — including the expensive way, where one path forwards
ANTHROPIC_API_KEY and bills it while the other uses the subscription. A blank
value is omitted rather than forwarded empty, so `claude` reports having no
credential instead of failing authentication with one.
Verified on tank (`--vm-selftest` backend=claude, 13/13, create 1532 ms): an
injected var reaches the guest command over the real vsock wire, and an
unusable entry comes back ok:false with no rc.
FINDING — the CLI leg remains UNPROVEN, and deliberately so. The guest has no
network interface: `create` writes boot-source, drives, machine-config and vsock
and no `network-interfaces` key, and a booted guest has no routes, no
resolv.conf, no DNS and no TCP. So `claude -p` cannot reach the API whatever
credential it holds. Injecting the real token would have proven nothing, because
the failure would have been network and not auth. Filed as B4.6 (task #49) with
the TAP-vs-vsock-proxy trade-off; B4.5 is now blocked on it.
444 tests pass, clippy clean.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <[email protected]>