Pilot Protocol — App Catalog

Signed bundle releases for the Pilot Protocol app store.

Status

RC1: local-bundle install only. The signed-Merkle-root catalog protocol is RC2 territory. For RC1, apps are distributed as bundle tarballs attached to GitHub Releases, fetched manually by operators, and installed via:

pilotctl appstore verify <bundle-dir>
pilotctl appstore install <bundle-dir>

Each bundle is a directory containing:

• manifest.json — the app's manifest (id, version, declared grants, sha256 pin)
• bin/<binary> — the binary at the path specified by manifest.binary.path

The pilotctl verify subcommand runs both the binary's sha256 against the manifest's pin AND the manifest's semantic Validate before any install is accepted.

Components

Repo	Description
pilot-protocol/app-store	App store plugin: supervisor + broker + audit
pilot-protocol/wallet	Reference wallet (io.pilot.wallet)
pilot-protocol/catalog (this repo)	Bundle release distribution

Trust chain (RC1)

1. Bundle author pins binary sha256 in manifest.json
2. pilotctl verify checks pin + runs manifest Validate
3. pilotctl install re-verifies, stages atomically, atomic-renames
4. Supervisor re-verifies sha256 on every spawn
5. Failures audit-logged with both expected + actual hashes

The compile-time-embedded EmbeddedCatalogPubkey is the all-zeros fail-closed placeholder in RC1 (signed catalogs cannot yet be authenticated). Production builds for RC2+ must replace it.

Known RC1 gaps

See app-store/CHANGELOG.md for the full list. Headlines: no catalog fetch + Merkle proof yet, partial resource limits (Linux RLIMIT_NOFILE only), no encrypted-at-rest identity, macOS + Linux only.