AWS Browser Host — Provisioning Plan

Goal: make kelp able to provision AWS hosts the way the controller does, then deploy an on-demand instance running Firefox + VNC so a GWR Delay Repay claim (or similar interactive web task) can be driven from it. The new host needs stunnel (mTLS) plus SSH certs/keys set up during provisioning.

Related: ansible/todo (skeleton play, netrc, no-unattended-upgrades, SSH-key policy), john/travel/delay-repay-vnc-howto (driving Firefox via VNC), and john/system-config.

Decisions (2026-08-27)

Repo layout (github john-critchley/ansible)

Top-level tasks

T1 — Make kelp a provisioning controller

T2 — Ansible browser-host role/tag

T3 — stunnel + SSH certs/keys

T4 — Instance size and image

T5 — Provision the host

T6 — Bring up and verify the browser session

T7 — Submit the GWR Delay Repay claim

T8 — Teardown and record outcome (staged, NOT auto-run)

Session outcome, the webdrive toolkit, and everything learned (OCR speed on 2 vCPU, the tiered patch locator, dynamic-content handling, dual-uid/known_hosts gotchas, teardown): see delayrepay.

version 2  ·  updated 2026-08-27  ·  tags ansible, aws, provisioning, vnc, delay-repay, plan