ether
diff --git a/‎CHANGELOG.md‎
Lines changed: 3 additions & 1 deletion b/‎CHANGELOG.md‎
Lines changed: 3 additions & 1 deletion
diff --git a/‎admin/src/components/UpdateBanner.tsx‎
Lines changed: 17 additions & 0 deletions b/‎admin/src/components/UpdateBanner.tsx‎
Lines changed: 17 additions & 0 deletions
diff --git a/‎admin/src/pages/UpdatePage.tsx‎
Lines changed: 48 additions & 0 deletions b/‎admin/src/pages/UpdatePage.tsx‎
Lines changed: 48 additions & 0 deletions
diff --git a/‎admin/src/store/store.ts‎
Lines changed: 9 additions & 0 deletions b/‎admin/src/store/store.ts‎
Lines changed: 9 additions & 0 deletions
diff --git a/‎doc/admin/updates.md‎
Lines changed: 41 additions & 1 deletion b/‎doc/admin/updates.md‎
Lines changed: 41 additions & 1 deletion
@@ -29,7 +29,9 @@ Both clients hit the **stable 3.x API surface**, so server operators don't need
 - **Self-update subsystem — Tier 3 (auto with grace window).**
   - On a git install, set `updates.tier: "auto"` to have new releases applied automatically after `preApplyGraceMinutes`. During the grace window, `/admin/update` shows a live countdown plus Cancel and Apply now buttons. Schedules are persisted to `var/update-state.json`, so an Etherpad restart during the grace window rehydrates the timer instead of losing the schedule. A new release tag detected mid-grace re-arms the timer; if `adminEmail` is set, a one-shot `grace-start` notification fires per scheduled tag (issue #7607).
   - The terminal `rollback-failed` state continues to disable auto/autonomous attempts globally until acknowledged; manual click stays available because an admin click *is* the intervention the terminal state requires.
-  - Tier 4 (autonomous in a maintenance window) remains designed but unimplemented and will land in a subsequent release.
+- **Self-update subsystem — Tier 4 (autonomous in a maintenance window).**
+  - Set `updates.tier: "autonomous"` together with `updates.maintenanceWindow: {"start":"HH:MM","end":"HH:MM","tz":"local"|"utc"}` to constrain autonomous updates to a nightly window. The scheduler snaps `scheduledFor` forward to the next window opening when grace would otherwise land outside the window, and defers the fire when the window has closed by the timer callback. Cross-midnight windows (`end < start`) are supported; DST transitions are absorbed by the host's wall-clock arithmetic.
+  - A missing or malformed window degrades the policy to Tier 3 with an explicit `policy.reason` of `maintenance-window-missing` / `maintenance-window-invalid`; an admin banner surfaces the misconfiguration so autonomous behavior is not silently disabled. Closes #7607.
 - **Privacy — drop swagger-ui telemetry, document phone-homes, add opt-outs.**
   - Dropped `swagger-ui-express` because upstream injects a Scarf analytics pixel that cannot be disabled at install or runtime (see [swagger-api/swagger-ui#10573](https://github.com/swagger-api/swagger-ui/issues/10573)). `/api-docs` now serves a vendored copy of [Scalar](https://github.com/scalar/scalar) (MIT) configured with `withDefaultFonts: false` and `telemetry: false` so no outbound calls are made.
   - New `privacy.updateCheck` (default `true`) — set to `false` to disable the hourly `UpdateCheck.ts` request to `${updateServer}/info.json`.
 
@@ -52,6 +52,23 @@ export const UpdateBanner = () => {
     );
   }
 
+  // Tier 4: tier is autonomous but the maintenance window isn't usable.
+  // Surface that before the generic "update available" banner so the admin
+  // knows the autonomous behavior is sitting idle.
+  const policyReason = updateStatus.policy?.reason;
+  if (updateStatus.tier === 'autonomous'
+      && (policyReason === 'maintenance-window-missing'
+          || policyReason === 'maintenance-window-invalid')) {
+    return (
+      <div className="update-banner update-banner-window" role="status">
+        <strong>
+          <Trans i18nKey={`update.banner.${policyReason}`}/>
+        </strong>{' '}
+        <Link to="/update">{t('update.banner.cta')}</Link>
+      </div>
+    );
+  }
+
   // Tier 3: scheduled update — show countdown banner instead of the plain
   // "update available" one.
   if (updateStatus.execution?.status === 'scheduled') {
 
@@ -192,6 +192,54 @@ export const UpdatePage = () => {
               values={{tag: scheduled.targetTag, remaining: fmtRemaining(remainingMs)}}
             />
           </p>
+          {/* Tier 4: only surface the deferral subtitle when `scheduledFor`
+              was actually snapped forward to the next window opening. The
+              backend keeps `scheduledFor = now + grace` whenever that lands
+              inside the window, so we can't use a fixed time-distance
+              heuristic (a normal 15-min grace would falsely match). Instead,
+              compare against `nextWindowOpensAt` with a small tolerance — the
+              two are computed seconds apart at request time, so an exact-ish
+              match is the only safe signal that the schedule was deferred. */}
+          {us.tier === 'autonomous' && us.nextWindowOpensAt
+              && Math.abs(new Date(scheduled.scheduledFor).getTime()
+                          - new Date(us.nextWindowOpensAt).getTime()) < 60 * 1000 && (
+            <p className="update-scheduled-deferred">
+              <Trans
+                i18nKey="update.page.scheduled.deferred_until"
+                values={{at: us.nextWindowOpensAt}}
+              />
+            </p>
+          )}
+        </section>
+      )}
+
+      {us.tier === 'autonomous' && (
+        <section className="update-maintenance-window">
+          <h2><Trans i18nKey="update.window.title"/></h2>
+          {us.maintenanceWindow ? (
+            <>
+              <p>
+                <Trans
+                  i18nKey="update.window.summary"
+                  values={{
+                    start: us.maintenanceWindow.start,
+                    end: us.maintenanceWindow.end,
+                    tz: us.maintenanceWindow.tz,
+                  }}
+                />
+              </p>
+              {us.nextWindowOpensAt && (
+                <p>
+                  <Trans
+                    i18nKey="update.window.next_opens_at"
+                    values={{at: us.nextWindowOpensAt}}
+                  />
+                </p>
+              )}
+            </>
+          ) : (
+            <p><Trans i18nKey="update.window.unset"/></p>
+          )}
         </section>
       )}
 
 
@@ -25,6 +25,12 @@ export type LastResult = null | {
   at: string;
 };
 
+export interface MaintenanceWindow {
+  start: string;
+  end: string;
+  tz: 'local' | 'utc';
+}
+
 export interface UpdateStatusPayload {
   currentVersion: string;
   latest: null | {
@@ -44,6 +50,9 @@ export interface UpdateStatusPayload {
   execution: Execution;
   lastResult: LastResult;
   lockHeld: boolean;
+  // Tier 4 additions:
+  maintenanceWindow: MaintenanceWindow | null;
+  nextWindowOpensAt: string | null;
 }
 
 type ToastState = {
 
@@ -5,7 +5,7 @@ Etherpad ships with a built-in update subsystem.
 - **Tier 1 (notify)** — default. A banner appears in the admin UI when a new release is available, and pad users see a discreet badge if the running version is severely outdated or flagged as vulnerable. No execution.
 - **Tier 2 (manual click)** — admins on a git install can click "Apply update" at `/admin/update`. Etherpad drains active sessions, runs `git fetch / checkout / pnpm install / pnpm run build:ui`, and exits with code 75 so a process supervisor restarts it on the new version. Auto-rolls back on failure.
 - **Tier 3 (auto with grace window)** — opt-in. On a git install, a newly detected release transitions execution state to `scheduled` and is applied after `preApplyGraceMinutes`. During the grace window, `/admin/update` shows a live countdown plus Cancel and Apply now buttons; an admin email (if `adminEmail` is set) fires once per scheduled tag.
-- **Tier 4 (autonomous in maintenance window)** — designed, not yet implemented.
+- **Tier 4 (autonomous in maintenance window)** — opt-in. Tier 3 + `updates.maintenanceWindow` is required; the scheduler only fires while the wall clock is inside the configured window. Updates detected outside the window queue for the next opening.
 
 ## Settings
 
@@ -192,3 +192,43 @@ The right way to give docker admins an in-product Apply button is to delegate to
 - **Deploy webhook.** New setting `updates.dockerWebhook`. When set, the Apply button on a docker install POSTs to the configured URL and trusts the orchestrator (Render / Railway / Fly / Portainer / Coolify / GitHub Actions — they all expose redeploy webhooks) to do the actual pull-and-recreate.
 
 Direct Docker-socket access (mount `/var/run/docker.sock` into the container) is **out of scope** — anyone who escapes the Etherpad process via that socket gets root on the host. Admins who want fully autonomous docker updates should run [Watchtower](https://containrrr.dev/watchtower/) alongside Etherpad rather than bake equivalent privilege into Etherpad itself.
+
+## Tier 4 — autonomous in a maintenance window
+
+Tier 4 layers a wall-clock window on top of Tier 3 so autonomous updates only run while it is safe to drain sessions (typically nightly).
+
+To enable, on a git install:
+
+```jsonc
+{
+  "updates": {
+    "tier": "autonomous",
+    "preApplyGraceMinutes": 15,
+    "maintenanceWindow": { "start": "03:00", "end": "05:00", "tz": "local" }
+  }
+}
+```
+
+`start` and `end` are 24-hour `HH:MM` wall-clock times in the configured `tz` (`"local"` or `"utc"`). `end` is exclusive; `end < start` denotes a cross-midnight window (`22:00–02:00` runs from 22:00 through 01:59).
+
+### How the window gate works
+
+1. `evaluatePolicy` returns `canAutonomous: true` only when the install is `git`, tier is `"autonomous"`, no terminal `rollback-failed` is set, and `updates.maintenanceWindow` is set and parse-valid. Missing/malformed windows return `canAutonomous: false` with `policy.reason` equal to `maintenance-window-missing` / `maintenance-window-invalid`, and the rest of the policy degrades to Tier 3 (`canAuto: true`). An admin banner surfaces the misconfiguration so the autonomous behavior is never silently disabled.
+2. When the scheduler picks up a new release while `canAutonomous: true`, it computes `scheduledFor = now + preApplyGraceMinutes`. If that timestamp falls **outside** the window, it is snapped forward to the **next opening** of the window.
+3. When the timer fires, the scheduler re-checks the clock. If the window has already closed (long grace, clock skew, host suspend), the fire is **deferred**: `var/update-state.json` is updated with a new `scheduledFor` pointing at the next opening, the timer is re-armed, and the actual apply runs at the next valid moment.
+
+### DST and timezone notes
+
+- `tz: "utc"` is recommended for hosts running across DST boundaries — the window is interpreted against the same wall clock every day of the year.
+- `tz: "local"` follows the host's local time. On DST spring-forward days, a window starting at a non-existent local time (e.g. `02:30` in `America/New_York` on the second Sunday of March) silently lands at the next valid wall-clock minute via the host JS `Date` constructor's normalization. On fall-back days, the first occurrence of the wall-clock start time is used.
+- Cross-midnight windows (`end < start`) span at most 24 hours; longer "windows" should be split into two settings, e.g. by running Tier 3 instead.
+
+### Admin UI
+
+`/admin/update` shows a "Maintenance window" section when `updates.tier == "autonomous"`:
+
+- Configured: summary `HH:MM–HH:MM (tz)` plus "Next window opens at …".
+- Not configured: a clear "Not configured" message and a top-of-page banner that links back to the page.
+- During a deferred-grace schedule, the scheduled panel shows both the countdown to `scheduledFor` and an explanatory "Outside maintenance window. Update will start when the window opens at …" line.
+
+Admins edit `updates.maintenanceWindow` via the parsed JSONC settings editor at `/admin/settings`. Saving an invalid shape is caught at boot — the warning is logged via the `updater` log4js category and the policy downgrades to Tier 3.