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Release Gates Runbook

Use this runbook before a customer demo, release review, restore-drill review, or production-readiness handoff.

For the difference between sample and current evidence, see Evidence and validation.

Gate Definition

Release gates are declared in platform/slo/release-gates.yaml. The default local customer-handoff gate checks:

  • eval evidence has the required number of passing cases
  • load evidence stays inside latency and error-rate limits
  • restore-drill evidence passed validation
  • strict toolchain evidence has no missing required tools
  • SLO evidence has no failed objectives or config errors
  • quota and chargeback evidence has no errors
  • model provenance evidence covers approved models
  • supply-chain evidence has validated SBOMs, SARIF, and checksums
  • egress and retention governance evidence has no errors
  • evidence-pack controls have no failures

Generate Required Evidence

Run:

make toolchain-install
make validate-full
make toolchain-report TOOLCHAIN_PROFILE=strict
make slo-report
make quota-report
make model-provenance-report
make egress-report
make retention-report
make eval-local
make loadtest-local
make image-scan
make supply-chain-check
make restore-drill RUNTIME=local
make evidence LIVE=1

Use GATEWAY_URL=<url> make eval and GATEWAY_URL=<url> make loadtest when a live local or customer gateway is already running. Use make eval-local and make loadtest-local to produce current local gateway-path evidence with an ephemeral mock runtime.

Check The Gate

Run the default gate for local development and configuration checks:

make release-gate

Write JSON and Markdown release-gate evidence:

make release-report

Reports are written under results/release-gate/.

For customer demos, release reviews, restore-drill reviews, and production-readiness handoff, run the strict gate after generating the required evidence:

make release-gate-strict

Write a strict JSON and Markdown release-gate report:

make release-report-strict

The strict gate fails when a required gate falls back to checked-in sample-* evidence or when selected evidence is older than RELEASE_GATE_MAX_EVIDENCE_AGE_HOURS hours. The default freshness window is 24 hours:

make release-gate-strict RELEASE_GATE_MAX_EVIDENCE_AGE_HOURS=48

Interpreting Failures

A failed release gate means the handoff evidence is incomplete or below the defined threshold. Do not promote the lab to a customer handoff until the failed gate has been rerun and the report passes.

If the strict gate reports sample evidence, rerun the matching evidence command from the previous section. Sample artifacts prove report shape only; they do not prove the current build is ready for a customer handoff.

Tune thresholds only through reviewed changes to platform/slo/release-gates.yaml; do not edit generated evidence to make a gate pass.