# CIAgent Grill Report

## Run: 2026-07-27 19:30 (mode: interactive, focus: all)

### Verdict: Proceed with conditions  (confidence: 0.72)

Two escalations must be resolved before the leadership pitch:
- **G-005 (risks):** 6 cloud capabilities (CAP-017..022) are deploy-unverified.
- **G-008 (budget):** No cost documentation exists despite live AWS resources.

The project is reclassified as an **OSS reference implementation** (G-003),
not a sponsored product. The grill's sponsor/ROI/budget/timeline axes apply
in weakened form; the adoption, architecture, and risks axes apply in full.

### Axis 1 — Business Case
- **Q1**: What problem does this actually solve, and is that problem still the top priority?
  - Evidence: PROJECT.md:3-21 (vision + North Star); G-003 reframing (OSS reference)
  - Answer: ACDL is an OSS reference implementation showing the shape of an agentic cloud delivery platform. The problem (cognitive load of infra + operational work of safe change) is documented in docs/vision.md.
  - Confidence: 0.85
  - Decision: G-003 — reframe as OSS reference implementation; no sponsor/ROI required.
- **Q2**: Who is the named executive sponsor, and when did they last make a decision under pressure?
  - Evidence: MISSING (no named sponsor in any .ciagent/ file)
  - Answer: Not applicable for an OSS reference implementation (G-003). Senior leadership requesting the pitch is interest, not sponsorship.
  - Confidence: 0.85
  - Decision: G-003 (carries forward).
- **Q3**: What happens to the business if the project is cancelled?
  - Evidence: PROJECT.md:487 ("0 consumer adoption"); 10 milestones shipped with no consumers
  - Answer: If cancelled, no consumer loses a deployed system. The reference value (clonable shape) persists in the repo. Cancellation cost is low — consistent with OSS reference framing.
  - Confidence: 0.80
  - Decision: G-003 (carries forward).
- **Q4**: Is the ROI calculated against a counterfactual?
  - Evidence: MISSING (no ROI calculation anywhere)
  - Answer: Not applicable for an OSS reference implementation. The bar is "is it a credible, demonstrable reference?" not "is there a paying customer?"
  - Confidence: 0.85
  - Decision: G-003 (carries forward).

### Axis 2 — Scope and Requirements
- **Q1**: Is the scope expanding, contracting, or genuinely stable?
  - Evidence: ROADMAP.md (v1.0→v1.10, 55 phases); v1.7 added uptime-kuma + decommission + RDS; v1.9.x added decks; v1.10 added regression-class VERIFY + local emulators
  - Answer: Expanding. The Out-of-Scope table (REQUIREMENTS.md:61-72) is scoped to v1.1 only; later milestones added scope without boundary updates.
  - Confidence: 0.70
  - Decision: G-010 — OSS scope is contributor-bounded; no out-of-scope table needed.
- **Q2**: Who owns the requirements, and have they been frozen?
  - Evidence: REQUIREMENTS.md (115 REQs, REQ-01..REQ-115); config.json autonomy=full
  - Answer: The user owns requirements via CLARIFY auto-resolution under full autonomy. Not frozen — each milestone adds REQs.
  - Confidence: 0.70
  - Decision: G-010 (carries forward).
- **Q3**: What is explicitly out of scope?
  - Evidence: REQUIREMENTS.md:61-72 (v1.1 Out-of-Scope table only); PROJECT.md:42-51 (Domain Boundaries)
  - Answer: Domain Boundaries section (PROJECT.md:42-51) defines durable out-of-scope: application business logic, IDE workflows, product backlog, node/OS-level compute. No per-milestone out-of-scope updates since v1.1.
  - Confidence: 0.65
  - Decision: G-010 — contributor-bounded scope accepted for OSS reference.
- **Q4**: Are there hidden requirements only disclosed late in delivery?
  - Evidence: v1.10 milestone (decay disclosure, PROJECT.md:59-67) — 7 adapter defects undisclosed across 8 phases
  - Answer: Yes — the v1.10 decay incident is a late-disclosed hidden requirement (reproducibility). D-091 regression gate is the mitigation.
  - Confidence: 0.72
  - Decision: G-007 (carries forward — milestone-level regression gate catches late-disclosed decay).

### Axis 3 — Architecture and Technical Feasibility
- **Q1**: Has the proposed architecture been validated by the people who will build and operate it?
  - Evidence: PERSONAS.md (agent personas only); ARCHITECTURE.md (29KB); no human reviewer sign-off
  - Answer: Validated by the agent that built it, not by a downstream platform team. Acceptable for an OSS reference (G-002 — Platform Team joins post-clone).
  - Confidence: 0.72
  - Decision: G-002 (carries forward).
- **Q2**: What is the integration surface?
  - Evidence: ARCHITECTURE.md; adapters/ (terraform, wiz, kyverno, local emulators); contracts/ schema
  - Answer: Contract schema (upstream) + engine adapters (downstream). Integration is bounded by the IR + PolicyCheckResult schemas.
  - Confidence: 0.78
  - Decision: (resolved by existing architecture; no new binding decision)
- **Q3**: Is there an existing system being replaced?
  - Evidence: PROJECT.md:7-8 (vision: absorb cognitive load + operational work)
  - Answer: ACDL replaces manual platform engineering + ticket-driven delivery. No existing system in this repo; downstream teams replace their own.
  - Confidence: 0.75
  - Decision: (resolved by G-002 white-label framing)
- **Q4**: What is the technical debt being inherited, and is it budgeted for?
  - Evidence: v1.10 decay (7 adapter defects); D-091 regression gate at milestone completion (not per-phase)
  - Answer: Diff-scoped VERIFY debt was paid down in v1.10. Per-phase regression gap is accepted debt (G-007).
  - Confidence: 0.70
  - Decision: G-007 — milestone-level regression gate is correct; inter-milestone decay is an accepted trade-off.

### Axis 4 — People, Skills, and Organization
- **Q1**: Which 2-3 people, if they left, would the project fail?
  - Evidence: PERSONAS.md (agent personas); all binding decisions made by the user (D-034, D-090, G-001..G-012)
  - Answer: One person — the user. Bus factor is 1.
  - Confidence: 0.82
  - Decision: G-011 — single-maintainer is normal for OSS reference; no action.
- **Q2**: Are the assigned resources actually allocated at the percentages claimed?
  - Evidence: config.json (autonomy=full, max_concurrent_agents=5)
  - Answer: The agent is the resource; allocation is 100% when invoked, 0% otherwise. No BAU fire-fighting claim to verify.
  - Confidence: 0.78
  - Decision: G-011 (carries forward).
- **Q3**: Is there a product owner with actual authority to prioritize?
  - Evidence: config.json (autonomy=full, decision_confidence_threshold=0.6)
  - Answer: The user is the product owner with absolute authority (full autonomy within user-locked constraints).
  - Confidence: 0.80
  - Decision: G-011 (carries forward).
- **Q4**: Is the team building capability they don't have?
  - Evidence: RESEARCH.md (101KB); local emulating adapters (Phase 53) — capability was built and proven
  - Answer: No — the agent built and verified the capability. Not a prototype-hoping-to-learn scenario.
  - Confidence: 0.78
  - Decision: (resolved by existing evidence)

### Axis 5 — Timeline and Estimates
- **Q1**: Was the deadline set before or after the scope was understood?
  - Evidence: ROADMAP.md (v1.0 07-21 → v1.10 07-27, 6 days); no deadline documented anywhere
  - Answer: No deadline. Milestones complete when the agent finishes committing.
  - Confidence: 0.78
  - Decision: G-006 — autonomous OSS build has no deadline; cadence is fine.
- **Q2**: What is the project's critical path?
  - Evidence: MISSING (no critical path analysis)
  - Answer: Not applicable — no deadline means no critical path to push.
  - Confidence: 0.75
  - Decision: G-006 (carries forward).
- **Q3**: Are the estimates evidence-based?
  - Evidence: MISSING (no estimates; phases complete in agent-time)
  - Answer: No estimates. The cadence is a function of agent speed, not engineering sizing.
  - Confidence: 0.72
  - Decision: G-006 (carries forward — acceptable for autonomous OSS reference).
- **Q4**: Is there a working definition of done?
  - Evidence: VERIFY.md; AUDIT.md; 4-layer verify gate (structural, behavioral, security, quality)
  - Answer: Yes — the 4-layer verify gate + regression gate (D-091) is the definition of done. "Done" is not "whatever the latest demo shows"; it is a gated, audited state.
  - Confidence: 0.80
  - Decision: (resolved by existing verify gate)

### Axis 6 — Budget and Financial Realism
- **Q1**: What percentage of the budget is already spent vs. remaining?
  - Evidence: MISSING (no budget file in .ciagent/)
  - Answer: Unresolved — no budget documented.
  - Confidence: 0.50
  - Decision: G-008 — ESCALATION.
- **Q2**: Are there predictable cost drivers not in the original budget?
  - Evidence: config.json escalation_hooks (deploy, delete_data); CAP-013..016 verified against live AWS account 581513795199
  - Answer: Yes — live AWS resources exist (S3 state, DynamoDB outbox, ECS, CloudFront). No cost driver documentation.
  - Confidence: 0.60
  - Decision: G-008 (carries forward — escalation).
- **Q3**: What's the burn rate, and how long until the money runs out?
  - Evidence: MISSING
  - Answer: Unresolved.
  - Confidence: 0.40
  - Decision: G-008 (carries forward — escalation).
- **Q4**: Is the budget contingent on something that hasn't happened yet?
  - Evidence: MISSING
  - Answer: Unresolved — likely contingent on the leadership pitch yielding a pilot platform team (G-001).
  - Confidence: 0.55
  - Decision: G-008 (carries forward — escalation).

### Axis 7 — Risks, Assumptions, and Dependencies
- **Q1**: What are the top 3 assumptions the plan rests on?
  - Evidence: PROJECT.md:79-88 (CAP-017..022 IAM-gated); D-039 (OIDC federation deferred, blocked on go-gitea/gitea#36988); D-090 (no cap on re-verification sweep)
  - Answer: (1) Terraform plan path proves deployability. (2) Local emulators prove runtime behavior. (3) Gitea OIDC will eventually merge.
  - Confidence: 0.72
  - Decision: (resolved by G-005 escalation)
- **Q2**: What are you dependent on outside the team?
  - Evidence: PROJECT.md:79-88 (admin principal needed for IAM re-bootstrap); go-gitea/gitea#36988 (OIDC blocker)
  - Answer: An admin AWS principal (for CAP-017..022) and the Gitea OIDC PR (for D-039 waiver closure).
  - Confidence: 0.78
  - Decision: G-005 (carries forward — escalation).
- **Q3**: What is the single risk that, if it materializes, kills the project?
  - Evidence: CAPABILITY_INVENTORY.md §"Cloud capabilities NOT re-verified" (6 of 22 capabilities, 27%)
  - Answer: The unverifiable deploy path for CAP-017..022. If the terraform plan path does not translate to a real deploy, 27% of advertised capability is fictional.
  - Confidence: 0.80
  - Decision: G-005 — ESCALATION.
- **Q4**: Have you done a pre-mortem?
  - Evidence: MISSING (no pre-mortem document)
  - Answer: No pre-mortem on file. The v1.10 decay incident is the closest thing to a post-mortem.
  - Confidence: 0.65
  - Decision: (flagged; no binding decision — user accepted autonomous governance in G-009)

### Axis 8 — Governance, Decision-Making, and Communication
- **Q1**: Who is the decision-maker when two executives disagree?
  - Evidence: config.json (autonomy=full); no human governance body documented
  - Answer: The user is the single decision-maker. No executive disagreement is possible because there is no executive body.
  - Confidence: 0.78
  - Decision: G-009 — autonomous CI is the governance.
- **Q2**: How often does governance meet, and what's the escalation pattern?
  - Evidence: config.json (escalation_hooks: deploy, delete_data, merge_to_main; escalation_timeout_ms: 300000)
  - Answer: Governance is event-driven (escalation hooks), not cadence-driven. 5-minute timeout.
  - Confidence: 0.72
  - Decision: G-009 (carries forward).
- **Q3**: What is being omitted from the status reports?
  - Evidence: v1.10 decay disclosure (PROJECT.md:59-67) — 8 phases omitted the decay from status
  - Answer: The v1.10 incident is direct evidence that status reports (decks) omitted material decay. D-094 (rewrite to verified reality) is the correction.
  - Confidence: 0.75
  - Decision: (resolved by D-094 + G-007 regression gate)
- **Q4**: Is there a "stop the project" trigger?
  - Evidence: MISSING (no stop-trigger documented)
  - Answer: No formal stop-trigger. The user is the single point of cancellation authority.
  - Confidence: 0.68
  - Decision: G-009 — autonomous CI is the governance; no human stop-trigger needed.

### Axis 9 — Change, Adoption, and Operational Readiness
- **Q1**: Who will use this, and what is in it for them?
  - Evidence: PROJECT.md:487 ("0 consumer adoption"); G-001 (MVP for leadership pitch + pilot consumers)
  - Answer: Pilot platform teams (post-pitch) will clone, customize, and deploy for their internal consumers. The value to them is a working reference shape.
  - Confidence: 0.65
  - Decision: G-001 — feature-complete MVP for pitch + pilot consumers in parallel.
- **Q2**: Is the operations/support team involved now or being handed a finished product?
  - Evidence: MISSING (no Platform Team involvement in 55 phases); G-002 (white-label, out-of-repo)
  - Answer: Intentionally out-of-scope — ACDL is white-label; Platform Team customization happens outside this repo.
  - Confidence: 0.78
  - Decision: G-002 — white-label; Platform Team customization is out-of-repo.
- **Q3**: What is the rollback plan if it goes wrong?
  - Evidence: D-070 (decommission mode, 2-step pipeline with HITL SRE gates)
  - Answer: Decommission mode exists for deployed stacks. For the reference repo itself, rollback = git revert (no production state to roll back).
  - Confidence: 0.75
  - Decision: (resolved by existing D-070 decommission mode)
- **Q4**: Has anyone validated the success criteria with the people who will judge success?
  - Evidence: PROJECT.md (leadership pitch requested); no documented success-criteria validation with leadership
  - Answer: The leadership pitch IS the validation moment. Success criteria for an OSS reference = "leadership says this is a credible shape."
  - Confidence: 0.68
  - Decision: G-001 (carries forward — pitch is the validation).

### Meta — Closing Review
- **Q1**: If you were the auditor, what would you flag?
  - Evidence: This grill run
  - Answer: (1) 6 unverifiable cloud capabilities (G-005). (2) No cost documentation (G-008). (3) Vision doc vs. OSS-reference framing tension (G-004 — resolved by keeping vision as target-state description).
  - Confidence: 0.78
  - Decision: (aggregated; G-005 + G-008 are the actionable flags)
- **Q2**: What is the project not doing that it should?
  - Evidence: MISSING (no pre-mortem, no cost doc, no Platform Team engagement, no stop-trigger)
  - Answer: Documenting the operating model (cost, deploy verification, governance) for a downstream team. The grill surfaced this across G-005, G-008, G-009.
  - Confidence: 0.75
  - Decision: (aggregated; G-005 + G-008 are the actionable items)
- **Q3**: What is the simplest possible version that could deliver 80% of the value?
  - Evidence: ROADMAP.md (v1.1 spike, Phase 10, REQ-27 — core E2E proven); v1.2-v1.10 (45 phases of expansion)
  - Answer: The v1.1 spike (contract → IR → terraform plan → Checkov → confidence → outbox) is the 80%-value version. The full 115-requirement build is accepted as the reference value (G-012).
  - Confidence: 0.68
  - Decision: G-012 — full catalog is the value; no minimal release needed.
- **Q4**: What would have to be true for this to succeed in the next 90 days, and is it true today?
  - Evidence: G-001 (pitch + pilot); G-005 (IAM re-bootstrap); G-008 (cost doc)
  - Answer: (1) Leadership pitch yields a pilot platform team — NOT TRUE today (pitch not yet delivered). (2) CAP-017..022 deploy path is verifiable — NOT TRUE today (G-005 escalation). (3) Cost operating model is documented — NOT TRUE today (G-008 escalation).
  - Confidence: 0.72
  - Decision: (aggregated; G-005 + G-008 + G-001 pitch are the 90-day conditions)

### Binding Decisions
| ID | Axis | Decision | Confidence |
|----|------|----------|-----------|
| G-001 | adoption | Feature-complete MVP for leadership pitch + pilot consumers in parallel; CIAgent builds, Platform Team deploys | 0.65 |
| G-002 | adoption | ACDL is white-label; Platform Team customization is out-of-repo; resolves ops-handoff concern | 0.78 |
| G-003 | business | Reframe as OSS reference implementation; no sponsor/ROI required | 0.85 |
| G-004 | business | Keep production-deployment vision; reference describes target state | 0.75 |
| G-005 | risks | ESCALATION — re-bootstrap IAM or mark CAP-017..022 deploy-unverified in decks | 0.80 |
| G-006 | timeline | Autonomous OSS build has no deadline; cadence acceptable | 0.72 |
| G-007 | architecture | Milestone-level regression gate is correct; system worked as designed | 0.70 |
| G-008 | budget | ESCALATION — add COST.md or document zero-cloud-cost operating model | 0.74 |
| G-009 | governance | Autonomous CI is the governance; no human stop-trigger needed | 0.68 |
| G-010 | scope | OSS scope is contributor-bounded; no out-of-scope table needed | 0.65 |
| G-011 | people | Single-maintainer is normal for OSS reference; no action | 0.70 |
| G-012 | meta | Full catalog is the value; no minimal release needed | 0.68 |

### Escalations
- **[G-005] risks** — 6 cloud capabilities (CAP-017..022: DynamoDB contracts table, Lambda contract-ingestor, ECS service live, CloudFront production stack, uptime-kuma, OIDC role) are deploy-unverified. The `acdl-spike-runner` IAM user cannot fix its own IAM (chicken-and-egg). Either re-bootstrap IAM with an admin principal to re-verify, or explicitly mark these 6 as "design-verified, deploy-unverified" in every leadership deck before the pitch. Resolves: project-killing risk (Axis 7 Q3).
- **[G-008] budget** — No cost documentation exists in `.ciagent/` despite live AWS resources (account 581513795199, CAP-013..016 verified). Either add a `COST.md` documenting monthly AWS spend, or explicitly document that ACDL runs at zero cloud cost (local emulators are the primary tier; live-AWS is a one-off spike per milestone). Resolves: financial-control gap (Axis 6 Q1-Q4).

---

## Run: 2026-07-29 20:25 (mode: adversarial, focus: v1.14 NFR plan)

### Verdict: FEASIBLE WITH BINDING DECISIONS (confidence: 0.72)

The v1.14 milestone is a sound, well-evidenced NFR sweep with a genuine,
traceable backlog. Not fundamentally infeasible. Four binding decisions
close plan defects + unverified assumptions that would otherwise re-expose
the v1.11 4-VPC failure mode. One escalation (E-001) auto-resolved at full
autonomy with assumption logging.

### 9-Axis scores

| Axis | Confidence | Forcing question (short) |
|------|-----------|---------------------------|
| 1 Business | 0.80 | Real backlog (5 P1 + 4 P2 + 6 swallowed errors + 15+ hardcoded IDs); cancellation survivable but inherits decay risk |
| 2 Scope | 0.70 | User-directed + frozen; P13 has a hidden feature door (implement vs remove); P2 conditional-child edges past wiring |
| 3 Architecture | 0.62 | P8 grep unsatisfiable for backend blocks; P8 state-bucket continuity unguarded; P9 IAM naming unverified; P4/P8 file overlap |
| 4 People | 0.85 | Agentic single-operator; runtime availability is the key-person risk |
| 5 Timeline | 0.68 | No deadline; 20-phase unverified span is the longest since G-007; P8 is the latent multi-phase-rework risk |
| 6 Budget | 0.85 | NFR-only, no new AWS resources; P8 re-creation is a one-shot accident not structural cost |
| 7 Risks | 0.60 | A1 (acdl-* naming unverified), A2 (fallback constant unbound), A3 (P4 gate hardening); kill-risk = P8 orphans state |
| 8 Governance | 0.72 | Full autonomy; no mid-milestone stop trigger; per-phase "green" ≠ "capabilities Verified" |
| 9 Adoption | 0.70 | No external users; rollback is git-level for code, AWS-state rollback unaddressed if P8 misfires pre-detection |

### Binding Decisions

| ID | Axis | Decision | Confidence |
|----|------|----------|-----------|
| G-101 | architecture | P8 grep scope amended to exclude terraform `backend "s3"` blocks (bucket arg is static-config-only, evaluated pre-init; cannot reference `data.aws_caller_identity`). Resource ARNs in policy/code ARE externalized; backend blocks stay literal or move to `-backend-config` (separate change). | 0.80 |
| G-102 | risks | P8 must bind `ACDL_AWS_ACCOUNT_ID` fallback to the live account ID (not a placeholder) AND the lifecycle workflow (full-mode jobs) must set `ACDL_AWS_ACCOUNT_ID` from `aws sts get-caller-identity` before any lifecycle invocation. No full-mode run proceeds with the env unset. | 0.78 |
| G-103 | scope | P13 must take the removal+documentation path (remove `--kube-version` + document deferral to GitOps reconciler roadmap), NOT the implementation path. Implementing version-aware policy selection is a new feature, violating D-095. | 0.85 |
| G-104 | architecture | P9 must verify (grep/audit of `modules/l1/*/terraform/main.tf` + `modules/l2/*/composition.json`) that every IAM role + KMS key created by the lifecycle pipeline matches `acdl-*` prefix before merge. CloudFront + WAFv2 (CloudFront scope) remain `Resource: "*"` with a documented global-ARN constraint. | 0.70 |
| G-105 | governance | P4's regression-gate hardening must be validated by running the full regression gate immediately after P4 lands (not deferred to P21). Gate must pass clean post-P4 before W2 begins. | 0.70 |
| G-106 | governance | A mid-milestone regression-gate checkpoint is added after W2 (P12), before W3 begins. Gate runs offline (D-091); a non-Verified result halts W3 until fixed. Not a re-litigation of G-007 (per-phase stays deferred) — a single checkpoint at the natural seam after the security wave. | 0.65 |

### Escalations

- **[E-001] risks** — P8 state-bucket continuity re-exposes the v1.11 4-VPC
  root cause. G-102 proposes a binding mitigation (bind fallback + wire env
  into workflow), but the residual risk (a future full-mode lifecycle run
  with a misconfigured env orphans live state and re-creates resources)
  cannot be reduced below 0.20 by plan-level decisions alone. **Auto-
  resolved at full autonomy (D-101):** accept the residual risk; G-102's
  binding mitigation (fallback bound to live account ID + workflow env
  wiring) is the control. The lifecycle pipeline defaults to plan-only
  (REQ-134) — full-mode runs are workflow_dispatch only, reducing the
  accident surface. If the user prefers zero residual risk, direct that
  P8 exclude the state-bucket name from externalization entirely
  (externalize only resource ARNs, leave the backend `bucket` literal).
  Confidence 0.55; auto-resolved per `config.autonomy.level=full`.