ADR-0004: Opt-in rule and secret handling of the shared wiki publisher

Metadata

Key	Value
ID	ADR-0004
CrossReference	MIL-006, ADR-0003, ADR-0002

Version History

Date	Status	Author	Reviewer	Change	Commit
2026-10-10	Deprecated	Jens Tirsvad Nielsen	S01	Initial version	b22a2cd
2026-10-10	Accepted	Jens Tirsvad Nielsen	S01	Reviewed (RC-018): the `prune` variant added to the evaluated options	b22a2cd

Allowed Status values: Proposed, Accepted, Rejected, Deprecated, Superseded by ADR-NNNN.

Context

MIL-006 turns the Publish wiki workflow into a scoped workflow, which Gitea runs in every repository of every organisation on the instance (verified, issue #9). The publisher writes to a repository's wiki and removes pages that are not in wiki/. Without a gate, any of the 26 repositories of Tirsvad-Udemy-100-days-of-code, or any other repository, that happens to have a wiki/ folder would have its wiki overwritten or emptied by a workflow it never asked for. The secret is also per organisation, so the shared workflow must say what happens where it is missing, and ADR-0003 let this repository fall back to TOKEN_FOR_GITEA.

Options for how a repository opts in:

A marker file wiki/.publish on the default branch. Visible in the repository, reviewed in a pull request, and nothing to configure in an organisation. It comes in two forms:
- (a) the marker alone makes the wiki equal wiki/, so pages that are not in the folder are deleted, as in ADR-0003;
- (b) the marker plus the word prune in it: without the word the workflow only creates and updates pages, and deleting is a second, explicit choice.
A repository variable (for example PUBLISH_WIKI=true). Not part of the repository content, so it is not reviewed or versioned, and it has to be set in the web interface once per repository.
An allow list in this repository. One place to read, but every repository in every organisation has to ask this repository for a change.
Publish whenever wiki/ exists. No setup, which is the risk the gate is meant to remove.

Option 1(b) is chosen for the reason in the first paragraph: a repository that adds wiki/ to a wiki it wrote by hand should not lose that wiki by opting in.

Options for the secret:

TOKEN_FOR_GITEA_WIKI of the organisation only. The sync token stays read-only everywhere.
Fall back to TOKEN_FOR_GITEA as in ADR-0003. A missing wiki secret is hidden until a write is refused (HTTP 403).

Decision

A repository opts in by committing wiki/.publish on its default branch; the file may contain the single word prune, which is the only thing that lets the workflow delete wiki pages that are not in wiki/, and without the marker the workflow ends successfully without any request. The shared workflow uses the organisation's TOKEN_FOR_GITEA_WIKI only, and fails with a configuration error when a repository has opted in and the secret is missing.

The rules that follow from it:

Without prune the workflow only creates and updates pages.
An empty wiki/ (no Markdown page) never deletes anything, with or without prune.
A repository that has not opted in is skipped with one log line, so its runs stay green.
This repository commits wiki/.publish containing prune, because its wiki must equal wiki/ (ADR-0001, ADR-0003).
The fallback to TOKEN_FOR_GITEA of ADR-0003 is removed from the shared workflow; the sync token is read-only everywhere.

Consequences

Positive:

A repository that did not opt in is never written to, and the marker is a reviewed change in the repository that wants it.
Deleting pages is a second, explicit choice, so adopting the workflow in a repository with hand-written wiki pages loses nothing.
A missing wiki secret is reported where it happens, in the repository that opted in, and the sync token never gets write access.

Negative:

Each organisation that wants this needs its own TOKEN_FOR_GITEA_WIKI; it cannot borrow the sync token.
A repository that opts in without prune keeps pages that were removed from wiki/, so its wiki can drift from the folder until someone adds prune.
Anyone with write access to a repository can opt it in and, with prune, make the workflow delete its wiki pages; that is the intended scope of write access, but it is not a separate approval.
The change supersedes the fallback part of ADR-0003, so the credentials guide and the wiki pages that mention it need an update (MIL-006 task 5).

Affected Artifacts

MIL-006 — tasks 2, 3 and 4 (issues #57 to #59) implement and pilot this decision.
ADR-0003 — its fallback to TOKEN_FOR_GITEA no longer applies to the shared workflow.
ADR-0002 — the stand-in rule applies to the review of this ADR.

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