# RACI — Who Owns What

> D-139). This page is the citizen-developer-facing copy.

Nova's delivery lifecycle has three roles. This page clarifies who owns
what — so the citizen developer knows what they bring, what the platform
provides, and what is co-owned.

## The Three Roles

### Citizen Developer (CD)

That's you — the consumer (technical developer L3A or non-technical L3B).
You are **Responsible** for all **Functional Requirements (FRs)** and
**User Acceptance Testing (UAT)**. You produce the FRs + UAT via your AI
coding agent, an upstream agentic SDLC platform, or any upstream
development platform. **The source does not matter** — all are subject
to the same compliance standards (the submission-readiness gate, the
contract schema, the policy envelope, the immutable audit stream). Nova
validates the submission, not the author.

### Platform (Nova)

Nova is **Responsible** for all **Non-Functional Requirements (NFRs)**,
**Infrastructure** (cloud resource lifecycle, state, IAM), **QA** (the
platform-side quality checks: policy enforcement, confidence scoring,
schema validation), and **Production deployments to cloud** (the apply
path, the pipeline, the release mechanics).

### Release Management (RM) — co-owned

The release is **co-owned**. The platform performs the QA + SRE
attestations agentically (it runs the confidence signal, the policy
checks, the separation-of-duties). The citizen developer **oversees and
triggers** the actual release — the human attestation at the stage gate
is your authorization. The platform runs the checks; you authorize the
promotion. This is the "autonomy in operations, human at stage gates"
model.

## The Matrix

| Work Category | Citizen Developer | Platform | Release Management |
|---|---|---|---|
| **Functional Requirements (FRs)** | **R/A** | C | I |
| **User Acceptance Testing (UAT)** | **R/A** | C | I |
| **Non-Functional Requirements (NFRs)** | I | **R/A** | C |
| **Infrastructure (cloud, state, IAM)** | I | **R/A** | C |
| **QA (policy, confidence, schema checks)** | C | **R/A** | I |
| **Production deployment to cloud** | I | **R/A** | C |
| **Release attestation (QA + SRE sign-off)** | **A** | R | **R** |

**Key:** **R** = Responsible (does the work) · **A** = Accountable (owns
the outcome, sign-off) · **C** = Consulted · **I** = Informed.

## What This Means in Practice

**You (Citizen Developer) bring:**
- Your application code + a contract that declares intent.
- Your FRs (what the application does).
- Your UAT (you accept the deployment when it meets your FRs).

**Nova (Platform) provides:**
- The NFRs (security, observability, compliance — baked into the
  pipeline, not your concern).
- The infrastructure (cloud resources, state management, IAM scoping).
- The QA (policy enforcement, confidence scoring, schema validation).
- The production deployment (the apply path, the pipeline, the release).

**You co-own the release:**
- Nova runs the attestations (QA confidence, SRE operational readiness).
- You authorize the promotion at the stage gate. No promotion happens
  without your recorded attestation.

## Compliance Standards Apply Equally

Your FRs + UAT may come from any source — an AI coding agent, an
agentic SDLC platform, or a traditional IDE. Nova does not
differentiate. All submissions pass through the same gate
(`schemas/submission-readiness.schema.json`): tags, environment
metadata, policy preconditions, profile markers. The compliance
standards are the same regardless of how the code was authored. This
is by design: the audit trail is the same, the policy envelope is the
same, the evidence stream is the same. The source does not matter; the
submission does.