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P9 — Production Readiness & v1.0 Qualification Program #129

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P9 — Production Readiness & v1.0 Qualification Program#129
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@aetherxeg-source
aetherxeg-source
opened on Oct 3, 2026

Status

OPEN — P9_PRODUCTION_READINESS_CRITERIA_FREEZE

Current public release: v0.1.0-alpha.5
Current main at program start: 88284764c70dddf137e89a34b48519328e530ad9
Parent external-evidence gate: #114 (P8)
Public external review hub: #118
Forward roadmap: ROADMAP.md

Objective

Move ExecSurface from a strong developer-ready public alpha to a production-qualified v1.0 without weakening evidence semantics, hiding negative results, or treating internal CI as external validation.

INTERNAL GREEN CI != PRODUCTION READINESS
PUBLIC RELEASE != INDEPENDENT ADOPTION
FEATURE COUNT != MATURITY

The program optimizes for independent usability, semantic stability, operational reliability, compatibility, supply-chain integrity, and real-world evidence.

Fixed roles

  1. Production Readiness Lead / Systems Architect — owns the end-to-end v1.0 gate chain and removes nonessential scope.
  2. Innovation Scientist — searches for high-leverage improvements that materially reduce adoption friction or strengthen evidence quality; must not expand scope without gate evidence.
  3. Anti-Drift / Scientific Integrity Reviewer — blocks vanity features, unsupported maturity claims, gate skipping, and reinterpretation of historical negative evidence.
  4. Independent Falsifier / Red Team — attacks false PASS, observer incompleteness, upgrade/compatibility assumptions, packaging, provenance, and operational failure modes.
  5. Independent Critical-Milestone Reviewer — independently verifies gate evidence, source identity, release boundaries, and closeout language.

Dynamic specialists

  • Rust release / SemVer and compatibility engineer;
  • Linux runtime / ptrace specialist;
  • developer-experience and onboarding engineer;
  • CI/CD and GitHub Actions practitioner;
  • software supply-chain / SLSA / Sigstore / in-toto specialist;
  • packaging / crates.io / artifact reproducibility engineer;
  • performance / resource-use reviewer;
  • external adoption and open-source community reviewer;
  • documentation / supportability engineer.

Gate chain

P9.0 — Production criteria freeze

Freeze the exact v1.0 qualification contract before feature work. Every criterion must have an evidence source and an explicit closeout rule.

P9.1 — Independent external evidence

BLOCKED on / delegated to P8 (#114).
At minimum satisfy the already-frozen P8 current closeout requirement: one qualifying external execution/use record plus one qualifying challenge/interoperability record from distinct current evidence records.

Internal tests, AETHER X workloads, outbound outreach, downloads, stars, acknowledgements, or assisted demos cannot satisfy this gate by themselves.

P9.2 — Public-consumer reliability

Prove the current supported consumer paths remain durable across the declared support floor:

  • release binary install + checksum;
  • exact crates.io install;
  • stable GitHub Action channel;
  • PASS / REVIEW / BLOCK / ERROR contract;
  • no silent incomplete-evidence PASS;
  • deterministic/reproducible release requirements retained.

P9.3 — Compatibility & stability contract

Freeze what v1.0 promises:

  • CLI / exit-code stability;
  • baseline/policy/report compatibility;
  • machine-readable schema/versioning rules;
  • supported Linux architecture/kernel boundary;
  • migration/deprecation rules;
  • rollback semantics.

No platform support may be claimed from unqualified historical evidence.

P9.4 — Repository & supply-chain production controls

Qualify the repository/release control plane:

  • protected/default-branch or repository-ruleset policy appropriate for release-critical changes;
  • required CI/review gates for release-affecting changes;
  • immutable release identity and provenance;
  • dependency/lockfile discipline;
  • least-privilege Actions permissions;
  • documented release authority and emergency rollback path.

If connector/admin permissions prevent a control from being enabled automatically, preserve that as an explicit human-admin blocker rather than silently marking it complete.

P9.5 — Real-workload adoption evidence

Obtain evidence from workloads not created solely to demonstrate ExecSurface. Record setup friction, runtime/privilege overhead, false REVIEW/incompleteness, policy usability, and abandonment/no-fit outcomes.

A no-fit result is valid evidence and must not be rewritten as adoption.

P9.6 — v1.0 release candidate qualification

Only after prior gates:

  • freeze RC source;
  • run source/adversarial/reproducibility/compatibility gates;
  • build and verify release artifacts;
  • consume the exact public RC artifact from clean supported environments;
  • verify upgrade/migration from the current stable alpha path;
  • retain every failed attempt;
  • independent critical reviewer signs off on bounded claims.

P9.7 — v1.0 release decision

Allowed outcomes:

  • RELEASE_V1_0
  • REWORK_REQUIRED
  • REMAIN_ALPHA_BETA

No date-driven release and no maturity label based only on internal confidence.

Current baseline at program start

  • Public state: Alpha.5, Linux x86_64, native ptrace bounded public reference observer.
  • CI on start HEAD is green.
  • Distribution/release chain has strong internal/public-artifact evidence.
  • P8 external validation remains open.
  • Main branch currently reports no enabled branch protection in the GitHub branch metadata; treat repository-rule hardening as a P9.4 item, not as already satisfied.

Non-negotiable invariants

  • incomplete or ambiguous evidence cannot silently become PASS;
  • baseline is not authorization policy;
  • backend identity does not create semantic authority;
  • no hidden deletion/reclassification of negative evidence;
  • no external validation/adoption claim without exact evidence;
  • no reopening closed historical gates unless genuinely new evidence invalidates their closeout rationale;
  • no feature expansion merely to make v1.0 appear larger.

Immediate execution order

  1. Freeze P9.0 criteria in a versioned repository document and link it from the forward roadmap.
  2. Audit P9.4 repository/release controls, recording any admin-only blocker explicitly.
  3. Continue P8 external evidence collection without contaminating independence.
  4. Close only internal gates that can be proved without substituting for P8/P9.5.

Closeout rule

P9 closes only when the exact gate evidence supports a production-qualified stable release. If external evidence or compatibility evidence is insufficient, remain alpha/beta.

Activity

  1. aetherxeg-source commented on Oct 3, 2026

    @aetherxeg-source
    aetherxeg-source
    on Oct 3, 2026 – with ChatGPT Codex Connector
    ContributorAuthor

    P9 progress update — P9.2 closed

    P9.2 Public Consumer Reliability is now CLOSED / PASS via issue #137.

    Implementation: PR #138
    Current merge commit: d74ad1b809fb608e795c6796929928624ffe40ba

    Fresh main evidence:

    • Public Consumer Smoke run 37141862022: PASS across GitHub Release binary, exact crates.io install, and stable @v0.1 PASS/REVIEW/BLOCK/ERROR contract.
    • ordinary CI run 37141862005: PASS.

    P9.3 has a pre-v1 executable harness PASS but remains open until a frozen v1 RC exists.
    P9.4 remains blocked in part by #133 (human-admin branch/ruleset protection).
    The next evidence-bearing work should prioritize P8/P9.5 external evidence rather than adding redundant internal tests.

  2. aetherxeg-source
    added
    v1.0
    on Oct 6, 2026

  3. aetherxeg-source commented on Oct 8, 2026

    @aetherxeg-source
    aetherxeg-source
    on Oct 8, 2026 – with ChatGPT Codex Connector
    ContributorAuthor

    Alpha.6 v1-readiness refresh — 2026-10-08

    Current source of truth after Alpha.6 Productization:
    main@f4c26a204ad139c1920203db96f20fb4fe74c0b9

    Merged gap analysis:
    docs/development/V1_PRODUCTION_READINESS_GAP_ANALYSIS.md

    Decision:

    V1_PRODUCTION_READINESS_GAP_ANALYSIS_COMPLETE — REWORK_REQUIRED_BEFORE_RC

    Current P9 state

    • P9.0 — PASS / refreshed. Frozen criteria remain valid; factual baseline is now Alpha.6.
    • P9.1 — BLOCKED. The challenge/interoperability side has qualifying P8 evidence, but the current supported public product still lacks the required qualified external execution/use record.
    • P9.2 — PASS for Alpha.6 / replay required on v1 RC. Alpha.6 Productization and Public Consumer gates materially strengthen this row.
    • P9.3 — PARTIAL / BLOCKING. Pre-v1 executable compatibility evidence is strong, but v1 still requires stable-contract decisions and exact RC upgrade/rollback replay.
    • P9.4 — PARTIAL / BLOCKING. Main is now protected by active no-bypass ruleset 24429386, so the original unprotected-main finding is historical. Remaining blockers include v1 immutable-tag governance and v1-capable release mechanics.
    • P9.5 — BLOCKED. No qualifying current external real-workload report on the supported public product has been accepted yet.
    • P9.6 — BLOCKED by the rows above and the stable-support decisions.
    • P9.7 — BLOCKED.

    Newly isolated hard blocker

    Opened #172:

    V1-R1 — Stable release control plane, @v1 channel and immutable v1 tags

    Current durable release mechanics are intentionally Alpha-line specific:

    • promote-release.yml requires stable_channel == v0.1;
    • release.yml promotes only v0.1;
    • GitHub Releases are marked --prerelease unconditionally;
    • current immutable-tag ruleset is Alpha.5-specific rather than predeclared for v1.

    Stable-contract decisions still required

    Before a v1 RC:

    1. resolve/freeze target-outcome semantics under Alpha.5 qualification finding — target outcome is report-only, not verdict-bearing #143;
    2. explicitly classify opt-in policy schema v3 in the v1 contract;
    3. decide the supported build/test workload boundary under M9 follow-up — exact baseline stability on ephemeral build/test surfaces #59;
    4. freeze the Linux x86_64 environment floor;
    5. freeze performance-claim/operational envelope;
    6. document stable support/deprecation/rollback lifecycle.

    Explicit anti-drift decision

    Do not open a general v1 feature sprint.

    Windows, ARM64, public eBPF authority, backend auto-selection and a new general variance mechanism are not prerequisites for a bounded v1 unless a later evidence-backed scope decision explicitly adds them.

    The strongest next internal gate is V1-R0 Stable Contract Freeze. In parallel, external Alpha.6 real-workload evidence should continue because independence cannot be manufactured by internal engineering.

    Project classification remains runtime behavioral verification / execution semantics / semantic-evidence correctness, not cybersecurity research.

  4. aetherxeg-source commented on Oct 8, 2026

    @aetherxeg-source
    aetherxeg-source
    on Oct 8, 2026 – with ChatGPT Codex Connector
    ContributorAuthor

    V1-R0 completed — next internal gate is V1-R1

    Current main after merge:
    84bdf7b03b3a67d5765178abd93b7741ef649aff

    V1-R0 decision:
    V1_R0_STABLE_CONTRACT_FROZEN_BOUNDED

    P9 impact:

    • P9.0: frozen / current.
    • P9.1: still BLOCKED on qualified external execution/use evidence.
    • P9.2: strong for Alpha.6; replay on exact v1 RC still required.
    • P9.3: contract now frozen; exact-RC evidence still pending.
    • P9.4: partial; v1 release-control plane and immutable v1 tag governance remain blockers.
    • P9.5: still BLOCKED on qualified external real-workload evidence.
    • P9.6/P9.7: remain blocked.

    No general v1 feature sprint is authorized.

    The next internal engineering gate is #172 V1-R1 — Stable release control plane, @v1 channel and immutable v1 tags.

    In parallel, external Alpha.6 execution/use evidence should continue independently because internal engineering cannot substitute for P9.1/P9.5.

  5. aetherxeg-source commented on Oct 8, 2026

    @aetherxeg-source
    aetherxeg-source
    on Oct 8, 2026 – with ChatGPT Codex Connector
    ContributorAuthor

    Governance amendment merged — internal qualification path is now authoritative

    Merge commit:
    14536e58692157fdb45186a266eb2c5487bae523

    Decision:
    EXTERNAL_VALIDATION_NOT_REQUIRED_FOR_V1_RELEASE_DECISION — INTERNAL_QUALIFICATION_REQUIRED_AT_MAXIMUM_RIGOR

    P9.1 and P9.5 are now:
    WAIVED_AS_RELEASE_BLOCKER_BY_GOVERNANCE / EVIDENCE STILL INCOMPLETE

    They are not PASS and external independent validation is not claimed.

    Release eligibility now requires the strengthened IQ0-IQ9 internal qualification chain defined in:
    docs/development/V1_INTERNAL_QUALIFICATION_GOVERNANCE.md

    The next internal engineering gate is #172 V1-R1 stable release control plane.

    Any eventual v1 release under this path must state that it is internally qualified under the documented AETHER X gates and that independent external validation is not claimed.

  6. aetherxeg-source commented on Oct 8, 2026

    @aetherxeg-source
    aetherxeg-source
    on Oct 8, 2026 – with ChatGPT Codex Connector
    ContributorAuthor

    v1 Internal RC1 reaches admin-blocked qualified state

    Qualified source:

    1c8d7a8204b38c0c0992d4144fecd325188e144e

    Decision:

    INTERNAL_RC1_QUALIFIED_ADMIN_BLOCKED

    Under the merged internal-qualification governance amendment:

    • P9.1 external evidence status remains incomplete but is waived as a release blocker;
    • P9.5 external real-workload status remains incomplete but is waived as a release blocker;
    • independent external validation is not claimed.

    Internal IQ0-IQ8 are GREEN on the RC1 candidate, including two separated destruction rounds, Alpha.6 <-> v1 semantic upgrade/rollback, environment/MSRV qualification, packaging chain, productization regressions and performance characterization.

    The remaining hard release blocker is P9.4/IQ6 administrator tag governance:
    no active no-bypass deletion+update ruleset currently protects immutable v1.0.0.

    No public v1 tag/channel/release/registry version has been created.

    The next permitted action is administrator configuration + re-verification of immutable v1 tag protection, followed by final release-source review.

  7. aetherxeg-source commented on Oct 8, 2026

    @aetherxeg-source
    aetherxeg-source
    on Oct 8, 2026 – with ChatGPT Codex Connector
    ContributorAuthor

    v1 program state update — RC1 ready for explicit release decision

    Current RC head: f18d6e952e3215ffd07fede8ad882159d93bec05

    Closed since the previous program state:

    • P9.3 stable compatibility contract: PASS_BOUNDED;
    • IQ6 immutable-v1 tag governance: PASS and verified from GitHub ruleset 24717518;
    • final exact-source release review: PASS_BOUNDED.

    Current RC evidence:

    • all 10 required workflows SUCCESS on exact current PR head;
    • package candidate identity 1.0.0;
    • intended immutable tag v1.0.0;
    • release request still Alpha.6;
    • no public v1 / v1.0.0 ref;
    • no v1 GitHub Release;
    • no crates.io v1 publication;
    • retained fail-first/RED history preserved.

    The next state transition is an explicit release decision. No merge/tag/channel/publication is authorized by this status update alone.

    Under the recorded governance amendment, external independent validation is not a release blocker, and is not claimed.

  8. aetherxeg-source commented on Oct 8, 2026

    @aetherxeg-source
    aetherxeg-source
    on Oct 8, 2026 – with ChatGPT Codex Connector
    ContributorAuthor

    P9 closeout — stable v1.0.0 released

    Final program decision:

    RELEASE_V1_0

    Published release:

    • version: v1.0.0
    • release source: e70169b959f2163715090c371335fa6c5591e3e4
    • immutable tag: v1.0.0
    • moving stable Action channel: v1
    • GitHub Release workflow: 37771109825 — SUCCESS
    • crates.io publication workflow: 37771295572 — SUCCESS
    • release asset SHA-256: 6892dc54e6f3f842cfecffa77ae0814c9e30aec219f2251c7c39a9f19f02ca7b

    Post-release synchronization:

    • PR docs(v1): synchronize published stable state #179 merged as 794179fbd39c2de27a67bded1f0a2f5cb53bc69c;
    • README / STATUS / support / evaluation docs now identify v1.0.0 as the stable public release;
    • V1 Post-Release Metadata Sync — SUCCESS;
    • CI — SUCCESS;
    • Stage-2 Final Internal Gate — SUCCESS;
    • Adversarial Regression — SUCCESS;
    • Public Consumer Smoke — SUCCESS;
    • Technical Evaluation Pack — SUCCESS;
    • V1-R0 Stable Contract Freeze — SUCCESS;
    • Alpha.6 Productization regression — SUCCESS.

    The one post-release RC1 failure was a shallow-checkout ancestry harness defect. It was corrected with full fetch depth without changing any acceptance rule; the rerun passed.

    Frozen bounded support state:

    • Linux x86_64;
    • native ptrace reference observer;
    • prebuilt release boundary remains Ubuntu-24.04 / glibc-2.39-class;
    • source/crates.io local-build path retains Ubuntu 22.04 + 24.04 qualification;
    • Rust source floor 1.82;
    • target exit/signal remains report metadata rather than drift-verdict input;
    • Alpha.5 profile-3 remains explicitly incompatible with profile-4 rather than silently reinterpreted;
    • independent external validation is not claimed.

    P9.1/P9.5 external-evidence tracks remain valuable follow-on evidence programs, but were waived as release blockers under the recorded governance amendment and are not being relabeled PASS.

    Project classification remains runtime behavioral verification / execution semantics / semantic-evidence correctness, not cybersecurity research.

  9. aetherxeg-source
    closed this as completedon Oct 8, 2026
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