Transparent proxy blocks WebSocket and inconsistently returns 403 for policy-allowed domains

[shuq-rgb]

Agent Diagnostic

• Added policy.yaml rules for slack.com and *.slack.com with protocol: rest, access: all
• Ran curl POST to slack.com API through the proxy → got 403 initially
• After policy update, some REST calls work, some still get 403
• Tested WebSocket connection to wss://wss-primary.slack.com → fails (proxy doesn't support WS upgrade)
• Tested globalThis.fetch from Node.js inside sandbox → inconsistent results depending on which fetch implementation is used (fetch-guard vs native)
• Concluded: transparent proxy does not support WebSocket and has inconsistent behavior for allowed REST endpoints

Description

The transparent proxy at 10.200.0.1:3128 has two issues:

1. No WebSocket support. Slack Socket Mode and other real-time services require WebSocket (wss://) connections. The proxy does not support HTTP CONNECT/Upgrade, so these connections fail even when the domain is allowed in policy.yaml.

2. Inconsistent 403 for allowed domains. REST calls to domains listed in policy.yaml with access: all sometimes succeed and sometimes return 403. The behavior varies depending on whether the request goes through Node.js fetch-guard (EnvHttpProxyAgent) vs native fetch vs curl.

This makes it impractical to support any real-time communication channel (Slack, Telegram) inside the sandbox without a custom host-side relay.

Reproduction Steps

1. Add to policy.yaml:
   slack_web_api:
   endpoints:
   - {host: slack.com, port: 443, protocol: rest, access: all}
   - {host: "*.slack.com", port: 443, protocol: rest, access: all}
2. Inside sandbox: curl -X POST https://slack.com/api/auth.test → 403
3. Inside sandbox: attempt WebSocket to wss://wss-primary.slack.com → fails

Environment

• OS: macOS 15.x (Apple Silicon)
• Docker: Docker Desktop 4.x
• OpenShell: latest

Logs

Agent-First Checklist

• I pointed my agent at the repo and had it investigate this issue
• I loaded relevant skills (e.g., debug-openshell-cluster, debug-inference, openshell-cli)
• My agent could not resolve this — the diagnostic above explains why

[johntmyers]

Please see #718

For your REST calls, yes, you should make sure those are going through the CONNECT proxy.