ADR-004: Persistent metadata cache and identity hub

• Status: Accepted
• Date: 2026-08-29

Context

Operators manage multiple Entra identities and many subscriptions. A full network scan on every launch prevents fast search and obscures identity-specific failures.

Decision

Persist non-secret identity, scope, machine, access-path, favorite, recent, session-history, and mapping metadata in local SQLite. The estate opens from cache and refreshes per identity in the background or on demand. Azure remains authoritative and every row displays freshness/provenance.

Passwords remain in Windows Credential Manager and Azure tokens remain in each Azure CLI profile's Windows-encrypted MSAL cache. Neither is copied into SQLite.

Consequences

• Startup and search are immediate.
• Failure in one identity/tenant does not erase other cached results.
• Removing an identity can atomically remove its Azure CLI profile and related cached access paths.