Jon Chery
97560e3c88
NORTH_STAR-CHANGE: reclassify 3 targets to Post-Pilot section (E-003);
move AI-Agent Intent Share to Future Horizons (E-004).
GRILL binding decisions applied:
- G-Q4: D-122 honesty sentence on slide 7 (Nova's AI = confidence-gated policy engine, not LLM)
- G-Q5/G-Q15: derived metrics annotated with N=0 caveat; ROI formula shown inline on slide 13
- G-Q6: NORTH_STAR targets reclassified (3 to Post-Pilot, honesty note added)
- G-Q8: stake line (18V+0 consumers) added to slide 1
- G-Q9: 4 filler benefit closes rewritten (slides 1, 4, 13, 16)
- G-Q10: slide 12 split into Zero-Touch Efficiency + Cost & ROI (deck now 18 slides)
- G-Q11: preempt added to slide 14 (deferrals are measurement infra, not autonomy)
- G-Q13: Act 3->4 transition rewritten ('how it works' is not 'proof it works')
- G-Q14: slide 9 benefit reframed from data plumbing to trust substrate
- G-Q16: slide 16 ask reframed as business decision (approve pilot + ledger build-out)
---ci---
project: acdl
phase: 0
milestone: v1.17
status: grill
---/ci---
211 lines
11 KiB
Markdown
211 lines
11 KiB
Markdown
# NORTH_STAR — Nova
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> **Status:** Draft (pending interactive GRILL → final)
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> **Milestone:** v1.17 — Strategic Direction, Leadership Metrics & Unified Story
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> **Owner:** Product Owner
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> **Purpose:** Durable strategic intent. Read by CIAgent in every future
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> `/ci-run` so the platform's direction survives across milestones. This
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> is NOT a status document (that's PROJECT.md) and NOT an engineering
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> architecture (that's the telemetry reference in RESEARCH.md/
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> ARCHITECTURE.md). It is the PO's committed direction: what we're
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> building toward, what we refuse to build, and how we'll know we won.
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---
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## Vision
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> **Infrastructure operations become invisible. Every environment
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> provisioned, every incident healed, every risk remediated — by an
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> autonomous system whose trustworthiness is provable, not promised.
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> Human attestation remains required at stage gates — QA signs off for
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> production, SRE greenlights based on operational readiness — but the
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> operator is never in the loop of normal operations.**
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Nova is the autonomous infrastructure layer that lets product teams ship
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without engaging an operator, and lets executives trust the AI not because
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it never fails but because every decision is captured, scored, and
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accountable.
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---
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## Strategic Objectives (4)
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**1. Demonstrate production-grade zero-touch operations.**
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Nova must run real customer estates with no human in the loop of normal
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operations — autonomy as the default, not the demo. Stage-gate
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attestation (QA for production, SRE for operational readiness) remains
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human by design; operational escalations (AI confidence too low to
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proceed) are the failure mode we drive toward zero. Everything else
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collapses if autonomy isn't real.
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**2. Establish provable trust in AI decisions.**
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Build the audit substrate — Decision Ledger, confidence scoring, circuit
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breakers, blast-radius controls — that turns "autonomous" from a
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marketing claim into a defensible one. Trust is the moat. Features can be
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copied; an immutable, queryable decision history cannot.
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**3. Deliver compounding, quantifiable ROI for customers.**
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Each quarter on Nova must reduce cloud spend, free engineering hours, and
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avoid downtime measurably. If the CFO can't point to a number that
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improves quarter-over-quarter, Nova fails its commercial test, regardless
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of how clever the AI is.
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**4. Become the default substrate for agentic infrastructure consumption.**
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AI agents are already becoming the largest consumers of cloud
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infrastructure. Nova must be the platform through which those agents
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declare, deploy, and verify infrastructure — not a vendor scrambling into
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that market two quarters late.
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---
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## Anti-Goals (5 — what Nova is fundamentally NOT)
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1. **Not a Terraform, Kubernetes, or hyperscaler competitor.** We
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orchestrate them. Replacing them is the most expensive possible
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distraction from the value we create.
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2. **Not a general-purpose AI agent platform.** We are purpose-built for
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infrastructure operations. Breadth here produces shallow tools; depth
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here wins the category.
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3. **Not a system that removes humans from accountability.** Only from
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operations. Every AI decision lands in an immutable ledger. Every
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stage-gate promotion (qa/prod/dr) requires a human attestation recorded
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with approver identity, separation-of-duties check, and the 8-concern
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evidence matrix. The absence of an operator is never the absence of a
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record.
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4. **Not for legacy, untagged, or freeform infrastructure.** Nova requires
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Terraform-managed, policy-aligned, fully-tagged inputs. We optimize for
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the disciplined 95%, not the chaotic 5%.
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5. **Not sold to operators.** Nova is sold to leadership on outcomes —
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cost, velocity, risk. Selling to operators inverts the incentive and
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breaks the autonomy thesis.
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---
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## Non-Goals (v1.17 milestone scope — deferred work, not permanent boundaries)
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> Anti-Goals are what Nova *fundamentally is not*. Non-Goals are what we
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> *will not do this milestone* — deferred work, not permanent boundaries.
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> Each Non-Goal cites the controlling decision ID.
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1. **Live AWS re-provisioning** (deferred — D-096). Metrics that require
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live infrastructure ship as placeholder PowerBI views with documented
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schemas.
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2. **Onboarding auto-grant** (deferred — D-113/D-114/D-119). Only the
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request-path metric is grounded; the requested→granted funnel is a
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placeholder.
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3. **ML anomaly-forecasting / predictive remediation** (no emitter today).
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The Predictive-vs-Reactive metric ships as a placeholder.
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4. **Drift detection scheduled job** (deferred — D-096 + no scheduler).
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Drift metrics ship as placeholders.
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5. **Live cost CUR reconciliation** (deferred — D-096). Pre-apply Infracost
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estimates are grounded; actual-spend reconciliation is a placeholder.
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6. **S3 Object Lock / JWS tamper-evident ledger** (deferred — D-083). The
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Decision Ledger uses a local SQLite hash-chain this milestone; the
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Object-Lock/JWS build-out is a future milestone.
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7. **Multi-cloud support** (Azure/GCP/K8s). Nova is AWS-only this milestone.
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---
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## 12–18 Month Targets
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Targets are committed, not aspirational. Each is a number a board member
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can repeat back to us. The grounding column records whether the metric is
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measurable this milestone, and if not, what blocks it.
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> **Honesty note (GRILL G-Q6 binding):** Nova has 0 consumer adoption
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> today (`PROJECT.md:495`). Three targets (Touchless Resolution, Human
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> Escalation, AI Decision Accuracy) are scoped "across production
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> estates" — the measurement *pipeline* is grounded this milestone, but
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> the *denominator* is zero until a pilot estate activates. These
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> targets are reclassified as **Post-Pilot** (the pipeline works; the
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> numbers fill when consumers exist). This is the same honesty model as
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> Cloud Spend Reduction (partial: pipeline grounded, actuals deferred).
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### Current-milestone targets (grounded or derived this milestone)
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| Domain | Target | Grounding (v1.17) | Note |
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|---|---|---|---|
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| **MTTR (p95)** | < 60 seconds | grounded (platform-run MTTR) | apply.failed → successful retry; infra-incident MTTR deferred (no incident detection) |
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| **Cloud Spend Reduction** | ≥ 25% on pilot estates vs. 12-month pre-Nova baseline | partial | pre-apply estimate grounded (Infracost); actual-spend deferred (D-096 CUR) |
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| **L1 / L2 Ops Hours Avoided** | ≥ 70% of pre-Nova FTE allocation | derived | formula over run count × manual baseline (computed on N internal runs; production-denominator activates post-pilot) |
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| **Platform ROI** | ≥ 250% measured annually | derived | formula (labor savings + cloud savings + avoided downtime) ÷ platform op cost (computed on N internal runs; production-denominator activates post-pilot) |
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| **Decision Ledger Coverage** | 100% of AI actions with backfilled outcome | grounded (this milestone builds it) | outbox_writer.py → SQLite hash-chain |
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| **Attestation Coverage** | 100% of prod/dr promotions attested by a human | grounded | hitl_gates.py + outbox approver_* attributes; separation-of-duties on prod |
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### Post-Pilot targets (pipeline grounded this milestone; denominator activates when a pilot estate runs)
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| Domain | Target | Grounding (v1.17) | Note |
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|---|---|---|---|
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| **Touchless Resolution Rate** | ≥ 99% across production estates | partial (pipeline grounded; denominator = 0 today) | runs completing without *operational* HITL block ÷ total runs (attestation gates excluded); activates post-pilot |
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| **Human Escalation Frequency** | < 0.1% of platform actions | partial (pipeline grounded; denominator = 0 today) | *operational* HITL blocks only (confidence-driven); attestation sign-offs excluded; activates post-pilot |
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| **AI Decision Accuracy** | ≥ 99.5% (no rollback, no follow-up incident within 5 min of action) | partial (pipeline grounded; denominator = 0 today) | decisions not followed by apply.failed/incident within 5min; activates post-pilot |
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### Deferred targets (measurement requires future systems)
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| Domain | Target | Grounding (v1.17) | Note |
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| **Predictive vs. Reactive Ratio** | ≥ 3 : 1 (prevention dominates reaction) | deferred | requires ML forecasting service (future emitter) |
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| **Drift Auto-Reversal Rate** | ≥ 95% within one detection cycle | deferred | requires drift detection (D-096 + scheduler) |
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> Committed targets whose measurement is deferred remain committed — the
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> target is the destination; the metric is the odometer, and some
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> odometers aren't built yet. Each deferred metric ships as a placeholder
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> PowerBI view + a definition-of-success doc recording the dependency.
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> Post-Pilot targets are committed targets whose measurement pipeline is
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> grounded this milestone; the numbers activate when a pilot estate runs.
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### Future Horizons (strategic direction, not committed targets)
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| Domain | Aspiration | Note |
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| **AI-Agent Intent Share** | ≥ 40% of total intent volume originated by non-human consumers | Strategic Objective #4 direction. No backing requirement, no placeholder view, no emitter today. Moves to a committed target when agentic consumption is real. |
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---
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## Success Criteria (v1.17 — what constitutes success for THIS milestone)
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> Distinct from the 12–18mo targets: those are the destination. These are
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> the milestone's exit criteria.
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v1.17 is a success if:
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1. **Decision Ledger emits `ai.decision.made` for 100% of platform runs**
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with outcome backfill, AND **`attestation.recorded` events for 100%
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of qa/prod/dr promotions** (event completeness — all 3 gates captured;
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grounded in `outbox_writer.py` → SQLite hash-chain; honors D-083).
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The **Attestation Coverage metric** (target 100%) measures prod/dr
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promotions specifically — see REQ-194.
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2. **`docs/METRICS.md` catalogs every executive KPI** with a `grounded` /
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`derived` / `deferred` status, a source file or decision ID, and a
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per-KPI definition-of-success doc in `docs/metrics/`.
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3. **The PowerBI export produces all fact/dimension views** + 8 empty
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placeholder views for deferred metrics (with documented schemas ready
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to fill when their blocking decisions lift).
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4. **The unified narrative deck ships** with the x3 arc
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(Problem→Vision→How→Proof→Roadmap) at deck + slide level, per-slide
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benefit callouts, and fluid transitions; both old decks retired.
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5. **`NORTH_STAR.md` is wired into CIAgent context-loading** so every
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future `/ci-run` reads it.
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6. **CAP-023 (metrics collector) + CAP-024 (deck structure) pass** in the
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regression gate.
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---
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## What "won" looks like
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By month 18, Nova is the layer enterprise leadership points to when they
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say *"we don't have an infrastructure ops team anymore, and the audit
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trail is stronger than it ever was"* — and it is the default substrate
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their AI engineering teams reach for first when an agent needs to deploy.
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---
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## Relationship to v1.17 engineering
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- **Pillar A (this file):** strategic direction — durable, PO-authored.
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- **Pillar B (engineering):** the telemetry reference architecture
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(adapted from the PO's technical-direction input) lives in
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RESEARCH.md/ARCHITECTURE.md. It is the *how*; this file is the *why*.
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- **Pillar C (story):** the unified narrative deck proves Pillars A+B to
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leadership. The deck's Proof section cites grounded metrics; its
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Roadmap section cites deferred targets honestly. |