Release-Readiness — Operational Gate Before Production

Register: DISCIPLINE Goal: Distinguish code complete from release ready. Core principle: production failures often happen during rollout, not implementation.

Announce: "Using release-readiness to verify operational safety before release."

Required for

• C3/C4 tasks before merge or deploy;
• migrations or data backfills;
• feature flag enablement;
• external integration rollout;
• payment, auth, PII, secrets, payment/regulated data, compliance, or irreversible changes.

Checklist

[ ] Rollback path exists and is realistic.
[ ] Feature flag / kill switch considered.
[ ] Migration reversible, backed up, or explicitly accepted as irreversible.
[ ] Smoke test commands defined.
[ ] Observability exists for the changed behavior.
[ ] Alerts or watch signals link to ADR volatility/assumptions.
[ ] Post-deploy verification planned.
[ ] Owner/on-call/runbook identified.
[ ] External dependencies checked.
[ ] User/data impact assessed.
[ ] `privacy-secrets-gate` completed when data sensitivity is 2/3, secrets/PII/payment/regulated data may appear, or external disclosure is planned.
[ ] Known residual risk is labeled with claim grammar.

If any C4 item is missing, do not release until explicit acceptance is recorded.

Output

RELEASE READINESS
Status: READY | READY_WITH_ACCEPTED_RISK | NOT_READY
Evidence:
Rollback:
Smoke tests:
Observability:
Post-deploy verification:
Residual risk:

Completion language must distinguish:

• code complete;
• verified locally;
• release ready;
• deployed and verified.

Gotchas — Observed Failure Points

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