acdl/.ciagent/GRILL.md

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).