New section 9a - five design rules, each from a bug fixed on 2026-08-06 and each
cheap to honour in a new design but expensive to retrofit:
Absent and empty are different. Four scripts tested config as
"not null AND Count > 0", so an explicitly empty list fell through to a
hardcoded default - a kiosk configured with "desktopApps": [] was given the
full machine-tool set. Configuring "none" produced "everything".
Deny by default. preinstall.json had 16 of 21 entries at PCTypes ['*'] and the
SMB manifest 18 of 25 unfiltered. Both filters worked perfectly; they just were
not applied.
Gate at the point of action. Call-site gates on PC type were bypassed by the
finalization phase, silently.
The image carries configuration. WJ Shopfloor.lnk is inside the WIM, so no
pipeline change removes it.
The ppkg is a hard boundary. Chrome, RealVNC, Tanium, CyberArk and the rest come
from the package - thinning the image does not thin them.
Also corrects a premise in section 4.2: a first-boot selection UI cannot assume
the API is reachable, because ShopDB needs the AESFMA wifi SSID and the imaging
LAN has no route to it. Points at Install-ShopdbKiosk-WhenOnline.ps1 as the
reusable shape - arm a task at imaging, do nothing until the API answers, act
once, verify, self-remove.
Plus two risks, the diagnostics collector in the reference map, and a gotchas
section: HardwareDriver.json defeats ConvertFrom-Json on every PowerShell
version, Compress-Archive caps at 2 GB against an 8 GB package, and PowerShell
Core normalises backslashes on Linux so bay scripts can be tested here.
REFERENCES (section 13, was six lines, now a map)
Where every referenced thing lives, so the document is usable by someone without
today's context: this repo, the PXE server share, shopdb-flask, the on-bay log
locations, and the evidence bundles each claim came from. Plus re-derivation
recipes - pulling startnet out of boot.wim, extracting customizations.xml from an
8 GB .ppkg without unpacking it, reading the provisioning evtx, and the two
validation commands - and the 2026-08-06 commit list.
LTSC AUTOSTART - CORRECTED
Section 7.1 previously argued PESetup might already auto-start: AutoStartCountDown
is 31, disableauto.json is absent, and the operator on 579C144 clicked Next at 11
seconds, so nobody had waited long enough to find out.
Per the team's operational experience that is wrong for our media. LTSC builds
cannot autostart - the SELECT OS confirmation is mandatory regardless of the
countdown, and every image we produce is Windows 11 LTSC 24H2.
So the countdown is not a route to zero-touch. That promotes re-implementing the
imaging step from a contingency to the actual decision, and the risk table and
open questions now frame it as "re-implement, or accept one click per build" -
zero-touch being the only thing that requires it. The hands-off test is kept, but
only to confirm and record the behaviour first-hand.
Design proposal, nothing built. Two ideas in one architecture: the image becomes
thin (partition, apply, join Entra, install the enforce client - everything else
is data pulled from the API and enforced by GE-Enforce), and imaging becomes a
job rather than a menu (open a machine in ShopDB, click Create this PC, pick the
zeroed box waiting in WinPE, and it images start to finish reporting progress
onto that machine's record).
Every claim about current behaviour is sourced from 2026-08-06 evidence -
decompiled binaries, live logs off bay 579C144, and the live share - and where
something is inferred it says so.
Covers: why the current early-decision chain fails silently (five worked examples
from one day); what already exists to build on; per-machine configuration records
replacing 147 .reg files and two CSVs, referencing payloads rather than embedding
them; the dual-NIC design with the firewall work that gates it; whether PESetup
needs replacing at all; the BPRT token shelf-life constraint on pre-imaged stock;
an ownership table; six delivery phases each useful alone; risks; and seven open
questions.
Two findings in here are worth acting on before any of it:
disableauto.json is ABSENT from the media and AutoStartCountDown is 31, while
the operator on 579C144 clicked Next at 11 seconds. PESetup may already
auto-start and nobody has waited long enough to find out. One bay, hands off
the keyboard, count to 40.
dnsmasq is already safely bound (listen-address + bind-dynamic) so DHCP will
not leak onto a GE-side NIC - but Samba binds to all interfaces and every ufw
rule is ALLOW IN Anywhere, including SSH on a pxe/pxe account. That work gates
dual-homing.
