Document what the proxy and cert collectors guarantee

2026-08-25 16:37:25 -04:00
parent 6b9fda76db
commit 68c835f33b
3 changed files with 103 additions and 0 deletions
@@ -25,6 +25,39 @@
 # that, this monitor becomes fifty thousand requests a day in the logs it reports on.
 #
 # ==============================================================================================
+# DESIGN PRINCIPLES
+# ==============================================================================================
+#
+# Probe what is served, not what was visited.
+#   The domain list comes from NPM's own proxy hosts, so a host nobody has requested is measured
+#   exactly like a busy one. Deriving the list from traffic would leave the quietest hosts — the
+#   ones most likely to be broken without anyone noticing — permanently unmonitored.
+#
+# The probe is excluded from the statistics it feeds.
+#   Every request carries Varaverk-Uptime/1.0, which npm_access_stats.sh filters out. Without
+#   that the monitor would be the largest single source of traffic in the logs it reports on,
+#   and every access figure would be measuring this script.
+#
+# The wrapper holds no logic.
+#   Flags are forwarded verbatim and nothing is interpreted here. Two places that both know what
+#   --dry-run means is two places that can disagree about it.
+#
+# ==============================================================================================
+# OPERATIONAL SAFEGUARDS
+# ==============================================================================================
+#
+# UPTIME_PROBE_ENABLED gates the whole run. Off means no probes and no writes.
+#
+# Bounded per domain by UPTIME_PROBE_TIMEOUT, so an unresponsive host costs one timeout rather
+# than stalling the pass — the probes run in parallel, so one slow domain never delays the rest.
+#
+# --dry-run probes and reports without writing. --status and --events read stored history and
+# probe nothing, so neither can alter what it is describing.
+#
+# Read-only against NPM. The domain list is read; no proxy host, certificate or setting is
+# touched by anything in this path.
+#
+# ==============================================================================================
 # RUNTIME MODES
 # ==============================================================================================
 #