Track product definition-of-done audit closure

[jonathanKingston]

Purpose

Track closure and explicit release waivers for the product definition-of-done audit introduced by #1368. The audit is an evidence register, not a claim that every partial capability is a GA blocker.

Existing release-critical owners

• Thread durability and scale: Thread store: make finalized writes truly append-oriented and restore the scalability benchmark #1153, Catalog-based lazy thread loading: project open folds and ships every message #998, appendMessage rewrites the whole spine on every message (quadratic, synchronous, mid-stream) #1222
• Runtime authority and permission audit: Durable permission-decision audit trail (approvals, sandbox scope, hook verdicts) #656, ACP terminal/*: client-owned shell with native sandbox + unsandboxed retry #623, Make shell autonomy modes explicit and platform-aware #1248
• Aged-profile and migration evidence: Aged-profile startup e2e: CI only ever boots pristine profiles #994
• Semantic-index scale: Semantic index: guard against large vendored/nested repos in umbrella workspaces #795
• ACP production probes: ACP eval: Tier-2 behavioral probes (write routing, permission payloads, resume, MCP forwarding, cancel) #832
• Distribution and signed-update evidence: Establish a public stable distribution and auto-update channel for GA #802, Validate the first signed, notarized macOS pre-release and auto-update path #507, Set an artifact-size budget and reduce the packaged app footprint #806

Cross-cutting gaps created from the audit

• Accessibility release acceptance lane: Add an accessibility acceptance lane to release gates #1369
• Production-boundary contract lane: Add scheduled production-boundary contract tests #1370
• Release-level task-quality gates: Define release-level agent task-quality gates #1371
• Stability/capability disclosure beyond packs: Disclose stability and capability gaps beyond feature packs #1372

Triage acceptance criteria

• Every uncatalogued gap in the audit has an owning issue and milestone, or an explicit rationale for deferral/waiver.
• Every missing performance-budget or production-boundary cell in docs/product-release-evidence.md links to its owner.
• GA blockers, release-readiness work, and post-GA product work remain distinct; this tracker does not silently promote all partial grades to blockers.
• Release-cut evidence uses immutable commits/runs/artifacts and records time-bounded exceptions.
• The register is reviewed and updated before closing the release-readiness milestone.

Related

• Declare feature pack stability #1367
• Add capability release-evidence register to product audit #1368
• docs/product-definition-of-done-audit.md
• docs/product-release-evidence.md

SDLC delivery roadmap — 20 September 2026

This tracker also owns the current SDLC improvement roadmap. Historical audit checklists above remain as recorded; reconcile live evidence before marking them complete. Complexity is independent of urgency (1 low → 5 very high).

Work	Complexity	Tracker / next step
R01 Task briefs, PR evidence, active ownership	1	#2718 — first implementation in progress; adoption remains open
R02 Current readiness register and beta support	1	This issue + #802 — reconcile artifacts, blockers, and support wording
R03 Test exclusion inventory and governance	2	#2719 — first implementation in progress; #1680 retains runtime repair
R04 Durable security finding triage	2	Define a bounded follow-up here after foundations
R05 CI health and full-run freshness	2	Define a bounded follow-up here after exclusion inventory
R06 Independent high-risk acceptance	3	Design for actual maintainer/author workflow; no rules changed yet
R07 Candidate release evidence manifest	3	This issue + #802; consume existing acceptance lanes
R08 Aged-profile upgrade and restore	3	#994
R09 Accessibility acceptance	3–4	#1369
R10 Minimal support diagnostics	3–4	Later scoped follow-up; no automatic telemetry
R11 Cancellation, retarget, stale-base gate integrity	4	#2520 — critical; reproduce cases before changing authorization
R12 Approval-path runtime failures	4	#1680 — reinstatement validated in #2731; review, merge, and full-run evidence pending
R13 Real-integration contracts	4	#1370 + #832
R14 Shipped-agent release-quality evaluation	5	#1371 + #1272

Start critical R11/R12 investigations alongside the small R01–R03 foundations. Then establish reliable validation and independent acceptance, build candidate evidence, and make publication consume it. Do not close this tracker or create blanket release waivers merely because the first templates/checks land.

The first implementation PR will add docs/sdlc-review-2026-09-20.md and docs/plans/sdlc-improvement-roadmap.md, including dependencies and closure criteria. Link merged implementation and validation evidence here as it becomes available.

First implementation proposed

Draft PR #2720 implements the first R01–R03 slices and contains the assessment, complexity-ranked roadmap, and current release-evidence register. Local pnpm run check passed (9,311 tests, zero failures, plus all prechecks). The PR is awaiting review; adoption, per-exclusion disposition, waiver enforcement, #2520, and #1680 remain open.

R11 cancellation slice proposed

Draft PR #2722 addresses #2520 independently of the R01–R03 foundations in #2720. A live synthetic Actions probe using the production gate reproduced success after dependency cancellation; the new gate rejects it and runs on fixed hosted capacity. It also removes the screenshot job's cancellation-resistant queue behavior. Validation and immutable run links are in the PR and docs/plans/ci-cancellation-gate.md. Current-base enforcement and retarget-only triggers remain separate R11 work; #1680 remains the next critical runtime investigation.

R12 runtime coverage slice validated for review

PR #2731 restores GitHub write approval, shell agent-task approval, and Guarded YOLO to CI. Fresh macOS runs found a stale GitHub prompt assertion rather than session death. The terminal test now requires both approval and successful execution with actual stdout, closing an additional false-positive assertion found during visual review.

Local pre-commit checks passed (9,396 tests). Four related macOS Electron specs passed, and the strengthened terminal suite passed again. Linux CI run 35539848897 is fully green at d4cf7c433ad27e201c90e3eca435076eb125a293: all seven restored runtime tests passed on their first attempt, with no skips, alongside the full unit tier and static checks.

Review, merge, and post-merge full-run evidence remain pending under #1680. The historical runner-memory hypothesis remains unproven; this tracker and #1680 remain open.