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Open a Standard, Elevated, or Break-Glass shell session

POST
/api/devices/{device_id}/sessions
 
curl --request POST \
  --url 'https://example.com/api/devices/2489E9AD-2EE2-8E00-8EC9-32D5F69181C0/sessions?organization_id=2489E9AD-2EE2-8E00-8EC9-32D5F69181C0' \
  --header 'Authorization: Bearer <token>' \
  --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --data '{ "justification": "example", "tier": "standard" }'

Create a new shell session record for a device (Standard, Elevated, or Breakglass).

After creating the session DB row, calls the gateway to mint a short-lived WS upgrade token and includes ws_url, ws_token, and ws_expires_at in the response.

Tier dispatch

The AND-gate (device.shell.<tier> role + Shell Access Group membership) is enforced at runtime via enforce_shell_access_for_tier because the tier is read from the request body. All three tiers use the same single endpoint and the same single shell session constructor call.

Justification policy

Standard: optional. Elevated/Breakglass: required (validated by OpenSessionRequest — Pydantic 422 before this function is called).

Break-Glass incident

For breakglass sessions a ShellIncident row is created immediately after the session commits, BEFORE the gateway call, to ensure the audit trail is intact even when the gateway is down.

Graceful degradation

  • If the gateway is not configured (dev/test, no GATEWAY_INTERNAL_URL), ws_url / ws_token / ws_expires_at are returned as None and the session row is still created (HTTP 201).
  • If the gateway IS configured but returns an error → HTTP 502 Bad Gateway.

Errors

403 — caller lacks the required tier role or Shell Access Group membership. 404 — device not found in this organisation. 409 — device tunnel is offline; cannot open a shell session. 422 — validation error (unknown tier, justification missing/too-long, etc.). 502 — gateway configured but returned an error.

Authorizations

Section titled “ Authorizations ”

Parameters

Section titled “ Parameters ”

Path Parameters

Section titled “ Path Parameters ”
device_id
required
Device Id
string format: uuid

Query Parameters

Section titled “ Query Parameters ”
organization_id
required
Organization Id
string format: uuid

Request Bodyrequired

Section titled “ Request Bodyrequired ”
Media type application/json
OpenSessionRequest

Request body for opening a new shell session.

Tier validation

tier must be one of "standard", "elevated", or "breakglass". Unknown values are rejected with HTTP 422.

Justification policy (TASK-S17-004)

  • standard: justification optional (unchanged behaviour).
  • elevated: justification required (after .strip(), non-empty). Empty/whitespace-only → 422 "justification is required for elevated sessions".
  • breakglass: justification required (same enforcement as elevated). Empty/whitespace-only → 422 "justification is required for breakglass sessions".
object
justification
Any of:
string
<= 1000 characters
tier
Tier

Session tier: ‘standard’, ‘elevated’, or ‘breakglass’. Elevated and Breakglass require a non-empty justification.

string
default: standard
Allowed values: standard elevated breakglass

Responses

Section titled “ Responses ”

201

Section titled “ 201 ”

Successful Response

Media type application/json
SessionResponse

Public representation of a shell session.

Secret / sensitive fields (client_ip, user_agent, recording_uri, recording_sha256) are intentionally EXCLUDED from this schema.

WebSocket connection fields (ws_url, ws_token, ws_expires_at) are populated only when the gateway is configured and the session was opened via POST /devices/{id}/sessions. They are None in list/get responses and in dev environments where the gateway is not running.

ws_token is included so the browser can supply it as a WebSocket subprotocol (Sec-WebSocket-Protocol) when opening ws_url — never appended to the URL query string, so it does not land in proxy access logs (GAP-FE-007). It is short-lived (~60 s) and single-use; do NOT persist it.

object
created_at
required
Created At
string format: date-time
device_id
required
Device Id
string format: uuid
ended_at
required
Any of:
string format: date-time
exit_reason
required
Any of:
string
id
required
Id
string format: uuid
justification
required
Any of:
string
organization_id
required
Organization Id
string format: uuid
recording
Recording
boolean
started_at
required
Any of:
string format: date-time
status
required
Status
string
tier
required
Tier
string
user_id
required
Any of:
string format: uuid
ws_expires_at
Any of:
string format: date-time
ws_token
Any of:
string
ws_url
Any of:
string
Example 
{
  "recording": false
}

422

Section titled “ 422 ”

Validation Error

Media type application/json
HTTPValidationError
object
detail
Detail
Array<object>
ValidationError
object
ctx
Context
object
input
Input
loc
required
Location
Array
msg
required
Message
string
type
required
Error Type
string
Example generated 
{
  "detail": [
    {
      "ctx": {},
      "input": "example",
      "loc": [
        "example"
      ],
      "msg": "example",
      "type": "example"
    }
  ]
}