Database access and network

Two tabs on every database give you the controls you would expect from a managed database service: Access (who can log in, and who can manage it) and Network (who can reach it, and how far).

Users and temporary credentials are available for PostgreSQL. Network scope, allowed sources and the reachability map work for every engine.

Access

Database users

Create a login for a teammate or a reporting tool instead of sharing the main password. Pick a preset:

Preset	What it can do
Read only	Read every table. Writes are refused even if a client asks for them.
Read and write	Read and change rows. Cannot change the schema.
Owner	Everything on this one database, including schema. No server level rights.

The password is generated, shown once and never stored. You can set a connection limit and an expiry. Rotate, disable (ends open sessions) and delete are one click each. The platform's own admin role and any superuser are protected and cannot be changed here, and a name that collides with a system role is refused.

Your apps keep using the platform's credentials, so a user here never breaks them.

Temporary credentials

Get temporary credentials mints a short-lived read-only or read-write login for a developer or a one-off job. Lifetime is 15 minutes to 24 hours (default 1 hour). It shows the connection string once and removes the role at expiry.

Expiry is enforced twice: the role carries VALID UNTIL so the server refuses logins even while the control plane is down, and a sweeper drops the role and ends its sessions. The sweeper runs at boot and on a timer, claims each credential atomically so it is revoked exactly once, and writes an audit entry as the database-access-sweeper system actor.

Who can manage this database

Lists the users and tokens with abilities on this database, from their own abilities and from IAM policies, and the policies that mention it. Grant access applies one of three database scoped IAM templates to a user or token, previews the exact policy, and records an audit entry:

• database-read-only: read the database and its data, any change denied.
• database-operator: read plus day to day operations, not users, restore or the write console.
• database-owner: everything on this one database.

Network

Reachability

A plain language verdict ("Private: only these 3 apps can reach it", "Exposed to the internet on 5432"), the internal host and address, the Docker networks it is attached to, which apps connect (with project and environment), and whether a port is published and to which address.

Make private stops publishing the port and removes any rule that guarded it.

Allowed sources

An inbound rules editor for a published port: source IP or CIDR plus an optional description. Rules are applied through the same host firewall integration as the exposure audit: tagged, idempotent, previewed first, guarded against locking out the platform or SSH, and removable. Drift (a rule missing from, or extra in, the firewall) is shown inline. Rules can only be applied on the control plane's own Linux host.

Network scope

Whole platform (default), Same project only or Same environment only. Check impact first: it lists which referencing apps would lose reachability. Applying a scope that cuts apps off needs confirmation. Out of scope apps are detached from the database on the next reconcile and show the reason on their status. Setting the scope back to the whole platform reverses it.

Scope limits which apps the platform attaches to the database. Containers on Docker's default bridge on the same host can still reach it by its bridge address; the reachability map says so. See ADR 029.

Require TLS

Refuses connections that are not encrypted. The connection strings this platform hands out already ask for TLS. Clients configured with sslmode=disable are refused once this is on.

CLI

levelrail-cli databases users list <database>
levelrail-cli databases users create <database> <name> --preset read_only --expires-in-days 30
levelrail-cli databases users rotate|disable|enable|delete <database> <name>
levelrail-cli databases access temp <database> --preset read_write --minutes 60
levelrail-cli databases access list|revoke|who|grant <database> ...
levelrail-cli databases network show <database>
levelrail-cli databases network allow <database> --source 203.0.113.7/32 --description laptop --confirm
levelrail-cli databases network deny <database> --source 203.0.113.7/32 --confirm
levelrail-cli databases network scope <database> --scope project --dry-run
levelrail-cli databases network tls <database> --require

Every command takes --json.

MCP

Three read-only tools: list_database_users, get_database_access and get_database_reachability. None returns a secret, and there is no tool that creates users, issues credentials or changes rules.

Permissions and audit

Reading role names and platform access needs read:sensitive on the database. Creating, rotating, disabling, deleting, issuing credentials, granting access and every network change need root on the database, which a database scoped IAM policy can grant. Each change is written to the audit log with an action name (database.user.create, database.temp.issue, database.network.scope.set, and so on). Passwords never appear in the audit log, application logs or API list responses, and are sent to the database as SCRAM verifiers, so even a failed statement logged by the server carries no plaintext.

Configuration

Variable	Default	Meaning
APP_DB_TEMP_TTL_MIN_MINUTES	15	Shortest temporary credential lifetime
APP_DB_TEMP_TTL_MAX_MINUTES	1440	Longest temporary credential lifetime
APP_DB_TEMP_TTL_DEFAULT_MINUTES	60	Lifetime when none is requested
APP_DB_TEMP_SWEEP_SECONDS	30	How often expired credentials are removed