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PHASE 7 READINESS — COMPLETION CRITERIA AND LAUNCH GATE

Project: AeroDB Phase: Phase 7 — Control Plane, Admin UI, and Operator Tooling Status: AUTHORITATIVE · PRE-FREEZE

1. Purpose of This Document

This document defines what it means for Phase 7 to be complete and ready.

Phase 7 readiness is not subjective. It is not based on feature count, UI polish, or perceived usability.

Phase 7 is ready only when it is provably incapable of violating AeroDB’s correctness guarantees.

This document is the formal gate between:

  • “Phase 7 exists”
  • “Phase 7 is safe to freeze and ship”

2. Readiness Philosophy

A control plane is ready when it can do nothing safely, not everything conveniently.

Phase 7 readiness prioritizes:

  1. Safety over completeness
  2. Explicit rejection over implicit behavior
  3. Auditability over convenience
  4. Operator responsibility over system autonomy

If any readiness requirement is ambiguous, Phase 7 is not ready.

3. Mandatory Readiness Preconditions

Phase 7 may be considered ready only if all conditions in this section are met.

Failure of any single condition blocks readiness.

3.1 Documentation Completeness

The following documents MUST exist, be complete, and be internally consistent:

  1. CONTROL_PLANE_VISION.md
  2. CONTROL_PLANE_SCOPE.md
  3. CONTROL_PLANE_INVARIANTS.md
  4. CONTROL_PLANE_AUTHORITY_MODEL.md
  5. CONTROL_PLANE_FAILURE_MODEL.md
  6. CONTROL_PLANE_STATE_MODEL.md
  7. CONTROL_PLANE_CONTROL_PLANE_ARCHITECTURE.md
  8. CONTROL_PLANE_COMMAND_MODEL.md
  9. CONTROL_PLANE_CONFIRMATION_MODEL.md
  10. CONTROL_PLANE_OBSERVABILITY_MODEL.md
  11. CONTROL_PLANE_ERROR_MODEL.md
  12. CONTROL_PLANE_AUDITABILITY.md
  13. CONTROL_PLANE_TESTING_STRATEGY.md
  14. CONTROL_PLANE_READINESS.md

Missing or contradictory documentation blocks readiness.

3.2 Invariant Enforcement

All Phase 7 invariants MUST be:

  • Enforced in code
  • Enforced by tests
  • Impossible to bypass via UI or CLI

Any invariant that exists only on paper blocks readiness.

3.3 Command Surface Closure

The Phase 7 command surface MUST be:

  • Finite
  • Fully documented
  • Fully tested

No ad-hoc, experimental, or undocumented commands are permitted.

3.4 Confirmation Safety

All mutating and override commands MUST:

  • Require explicit confirmation
  • Reject execution without confirmation
  • Produce auditable confirmation records

Any path that executes without confirmation blocks readiness.

3.5 Failure Safety

Phase 7 MUST demonstrate:

  • Fail-closed behavior under all tested failures
  • No partial execution under crash or timeout
  • Deterministic outcomes under retry and reconnect

Any ambiguous execution outcome blocks readiness.

3.6 Auditability Guarantees

Phase 7 MUST demonstrate:

  • Every action produces audit records
  • Failures produce audit records
  • Crashes do not erase audit records
  • Audit records allow full reconstruction

If an action cannot be reconstructed, readiness is blocked.

3.7 Non-Interference Proof

Phase 7 MUST demonstrate that:

  • Kernel behavior is identical with Phase 7 disabled
  • Observability paths do not mutate state
  • Control-plane crashes do not affect kernel state

Any interference blocks readiness.

4. Testing Completion Criteria

Phase 7 testing is complete only if:

  • All tests defined in CONTROL_PLANE_TESTING_STRATEGY.md pass
  • All invariants have negative tests
  • No flaky or nondeterministic tests exist

Test coverage gaps block readiness.

5. Operational Readiness (Explicitly Limited)

Phase 7 operational readiness requires:

  • Deterministic startup
  • Deterministic shutdown
  • Safe restart with no state recovery

Operational convenience features are not required.

6. Explicit Non-Readiness Conditions

Phase 7 is not ready if:

  • Any automation exists
  • Any background control loop exists
  • Any retry logic mutates state
  • Any UI hint implies recommendation
  • Any confirmation can be bypassed

Presence of any above condition blocks readiness.

7. Readiness Review Process

Phase 7 readiness MUST be established by:

  1. Documentation review
  2. Test suite execution
  3. Adversarial failure review

Readiness may not be assumed.

8. Readiness Verdict

Phase 7 may be marked READY only if:

  • All requirements in this document are satisfied
  • No open issues remain
  • No TODOs or deferred correctness work exists

Otherwise, Phase 7 remains NOT READY.

9. Final Statement

Phase 7 readiness means the control plane is:

  • Powerful enough to be useful
  • Constrained enough to be safe
  • Transparent enough to be trusted

If Phase 7 is convenient but unsafe, it is not ready.

This readiness definition is authoritative.

END OF PHASE 7 READINESS