Operator walkthrough

A repeatable, one-page proof path for the complete Praxis lifecycle story, suitable for evaluations, support reproductions, and release checks. It runs against a synthetic, secret-free demo fixture, so it’s safe to run on any local dev stack and re-run as often as you like.

The demo data is fictional. Hosts (demo-web-01, demo-db-01, demo-edge-01), IPs (RFC 5737 198.51.100.0/24), and the credential are display-only: no SSH is opened, no secret is stored, and the patch execution and compliance finding are seeded synthetic rows.

1. Bring up the stack and seed the demo

# Start the stack (build if needed; --profile proxy is the browser ingress).
# Do NOT pass -v/--volumes; keep your data.
docker compose -f docker-compose.yml -f docker-compose.prod.yml --profile bundled --profile proxy up -d --build

# Load lifecycle/EOL reference data (idempotent). On an existing DB this
# reconciles the seed; on a fresh DB the migration already loaded it.
docker compose exec -T backend python -m app.scripts.update_eol_data

# Seed the synthetic demo fleet (idempotent, so re-run any time).
docker compose exec -T backend python -m app.scripts.seed_demo_fixture

The seeder prints the plan id and confirms the compliance finding + remediation were created. It survives docker compose down and a fresh up; just re-run it.

2. Capture / verify the story (Playwright)

npx playwright test e2e/demo-walkthrough.spec.ts

This visits each screen in story order, asserts stable headings and the seeded demo data (so it doubles as a release-QA gate), and writes screenshots to test-results/demo-walkthrough/ (ignored, not committed). Add --headed to watch it drive the browser.

3. The story (what to show)

Step	Screen	What the demo proves
Fleet health	Fleet > Dashboard (/fleet-dashboard)	The Distro Lifecycle card shows the three demo hosts as Supported (not an unexplained “unknown” tile).
Inventory & facts	Fleet > All Systems (/system-management/all-systems)	demo-web-01 (Ubuntu 24.04), demo-db-01 (AlmaLinux 9), demo-edge-01 (Debian 13) with collected facts and lifecycle state.
Content	Content > Profiles (/content-profiles/all)	A content profile per host (e.g. demo-ubuntu-web) composed from a mirror + channel.
Patch policy	Patch > Patch policies (/patch-policies/all)	The Demo baseline patch policy (reboot-if-required, immediate cadence).
Update plan	Patch > Patch Update Plans (/patch-update-plans/all) > open Demo baseline patch plan	An approved plan with the demo hosts; the plan detail carries the approval, execution, reboot, and rollback surfaces.
Patch success	Plan detail > Execution	A succeeded execution upgraded curl on each host (before > after versions).
Reboot	Plan detail (reboot policy + per-host reboot state)	The reboot path is policy-driven (if_required); the execution surface shows per-host reboot handling.
Rollback	Plan detail > Rollback > click Evaluate rollback	Rollback feasibility resolves because each host’s mirror is indexed with the old curl version. Then drive request-approval > vote > start > dispatch-next > verify-due to demo the full governed rollback.
Compliance	Compliance > Dashboard (/compliance)	The Demo baseline compliance policy and its per-host evidence, including a failing finding (auditd not installed) on demo-web-01.
Remediation	Compliance > Remediation (/compliance/remediation)	A requested remediation for the failing finding, through the governed request, approve, and plan flow.

The rollback feasibility rows and the interactive rollback/remediation state transitions are produced by clicking through the UI during the demo, so the fixture deliberately leaves them for you to drive so the walkthrough shows the real, governed flow rather than pre-baked terminal states.

4. Reset / re-run

The fixture is idempotent: re-running seed_demo_fixture reconciles the same rows (same plan id, same hosts) without duplicating. To start clean you can restart the stack with the canonical command above (drop --build if you don’t need a rebuild; this keeps named volumes) and re-seed. Do not pass -v / --volumes unless you intend to wipe all data.

See also: Auditor demo walkthrough, Support Matrix, and EOL data.