Pulse/docs/release-control/v6/internal/PRE_RELEASE_CHECKLIST.md

Pulse v6 Pre-Release Checklist

Use this as the final gate before cutting a Pulse v6 pre-release.

Execution Notes

• Run the commands from the repository root unless a step says otherwise.
• Treat every failed command or failed scenario as a release blocker until it is explained or fixed.
• If the mobile app is part of the release, run the mobile checks from /Volumes/Development/pulse/repos/pulse-mobile.
• Record pass/fail notes inline in this file or in the release ticket as each section is completed.
• Use HIGH_RISK_RELEASE_VERIFICATION_MATRIX.md for the trust-critical hosted, relay, mobile, entitlement, org-scope, and API-token checks that must be manually confirmed before release.
• Follow RELEASE_PROMOTION_POLICY.md for channel routing, prerelease soak, stable promotion, and rollback expectations.

Current Status

• Automated command-driven checks completed on 2026-03-06 are marked [x] below.
• status.json is no longer overclaiming threshold-unmet gates as passed.
• There are no remaining rc-ready high-risk release-gate blockers, and the explicit rc-publication-judgment was approved on 2026-04-09 for the first governed Pulse v6 RC.
• The latest RC publication judgment packet is docs/release-control/v6/internal/records/rc-publication-judgment-packet-2026-04-09.md. It now records approval, not a proof blocker.
• The active target is now v6-rc-stabilization, so the governed RC floor is complete and GA rehearsal remains intentionally out of scope until a real RC has actually shipped and promotion is resumed explicitly.
• The remaining release-ready blocker is rc-to-ga-promotion-readiness, which stays blocked until a later stable 6.0.0 candidate completes a matching Release Dry Run rehearsal with the canonical promotion artifact envelope: candidate stable tag, promotion channel, promoted prerelease tag, rollback target, exact rollback command, exact GA date, and exact v5 end-of-support inputs.
• Mobile is in scope for the release and now has targeted readiness coverage in pulse-mobile.
• High-risk release confidence now lives in docs/release-control/v6/internal/HIGH_RISK_RELEASE_VERIFICATION_MATRIX.md and should be cleared alongside this checklist.

Promotion Policy

• Record the previous stable tag and exact rollback pin command before publishing a new prerelease or stable release.
• For the GA/stable candidate, confirm the release pipeline has already been exercised on a real prerelease tag, not only linted or YAML-parsed.
• For stable promotion, confirm the candidate commit has already shipped on rc.
• For stable promotion, confirm the chosen promoted_from_tag is a prerelease that was actually published through the governed prerelease path, not an accidental git tag.
• For stable promotion, confirm the prerelease soak window is at least 72 hours or document the hotfix exception explicitly.
• For stable promotion, confirm paid production tenants are not being moved onto an unvalidated build.
• For GA/stable promotion, confirm V5_MAINTENANCE_SUPPORT_POLICY.md is still the intended policy and replace any placeholder GA notice dates with the exact v6 GA date and exact v5 end-of-support date that will ship with the announcement.
• For GA/stable promotion, confirm the pushed governed release-branch copy of .github/workflows/release-dry-run.yml already accepts the governed stable rehearsal metadata envelope (promoted_from_tag, rollback_version, ga_date, v5_eos_date) through workflow_dispatch, because GitHub executes the selected remote ref and does not see local-only governance state.
• For GA/stable promotion, confirm the local rehearsal branch exactly matches origin before dispatching Release Dry Run, so the run exercises the intended governed branch state instead of stale remote control-plane metadata.
• For GA/stable promotion, confirm the release rehearsal and publish workflows both derive the governed release branch from release-control metadata instead of hardcoding a branch name inline.
• For GA/stable promotion, attach a Release Dry Run run URL and rc-to-ga-rehearsal-summary artifact to the release ticket, and confirm that artifact records the canonical promotion metadata envelope for that candidate: candidate stable tag, promotion channel, promoted prerelease tag, rollback target, exact rollback command, planned GA date, and planned v5 end-of-support date.

Scope

• Confirm whether there is a separate mobile app codebase.
• If yes, do not call the whole product pre-release ready until that app is audited.
• If no, treat this checklist as the full product gate.

Worktree

• Run git status --porcelain.
• Confirm there are no tracked modified or staged files.
• Ignore only the known local untracked artifacts if they are expected:
  • .gocache/
  • .gotmp/
  • pulse-host-agent
  • unused_param_test.o

Run:

cd /Volumes/Development/pulse/repos/pulse
git status --porcelain

Canonical v6 Contract

• Verify the key canonical v6 hardening commits are present in the release target:
  • 26a88bf66512ec5cafaf6e597a5ba736d5ff279b internal/api/resources
  • c5eb7057a0b2a7e8dfbcd44470185a72d083feff internal/ai/tools
  • 3ab9d6c13 internal/servicediscovery
  • f89e4a56bcad9901edd6afc3212172845605d6e7 internal/api/state_provider / router_helpers
  • 7115143825647f5bfade7469fe20a324d3a76dbe internal/monitoring/monitor.go
• Verify the Patrol and frontend canonicalization commits required for the release target are included.
• Run the key backend/API/AI/frontend test slices that protect canonical v6 behavior.

Run:

cd /Volumes/Development/pulse/repos/pulse
git merge-base --is-ancestor 26a88bf66512ec5cafaf6e597a5ba736d5ff279b HEAD
git merge-base --is-ancestor c5eb7057a0b2a7e8dfbcd44470185a72d083feff HEAD
git merge-base --is-ancestor 3ab9d6c13 HEAD
git merge-base --is-ancestor f89e4a56bcad9901edd6afc3212172845605d6e7 HEAD
git merge-base --is-ancestor 7115143825647f5bfade7469fe20a324d3a76dbe HEAD
go test ./internal/api -run 'Test(FrontendResourceType|ApplyFrontendTypes|ComputeFrontendByType|ParseResourceTypesNodeAlias|UnsupportedResourceTypeFilterTokensRejectsLegacyAliases|ResourceListIncludesKubernetesPods|ResourceListFiltersCanonicalKubernetesNamespace|BuildDiscoveryTargetKubernetesPrefersAgentID|ResourceListRejectsLegacyKubernetesTypeAlias|ResourceListReturnsCanonicalKubernetesMetricsTargets|ResourceListProxmoxNodeReturnsFrontendNodeType|ResourceGetProxmoxNodeReturnsFrontendNodeType|ResourceListRejectsLegacyHostTypeFilter|ResourceListMergesLinkedHost|ResourceListUsesUnifiedSeedProvider|ResourceListDoesNotMergeOneSidedLinkedHost|ResourceGetResource|ResourceLinkMergesResources|ResourceReportMergeCreatesExclusions)$'
go test ./internal/ai/tools
go test ./internal/servicediscovery
go test ./internal/monitoring -run 'TestMonitor(GetUnifiedReadStateOrSnapshot|UnifiedResourceSnapshot)'
cd /Volumes/Development/pulse/repos/pulse/frontend-modern
npx vitest run src/utils/__tests__/frontendResourceTypeBoundaries.test.ts

Hosted / Cloud

• Run hosted signup and billing lifecycle tests.
• Verify hosted paid checkout fails closed when org linkage is missing.
• Verify replay succeeds once the linked org exists.
• Verify the normal hosted provisioning path still succeeds.
• Confirm commit 8b3a5d30246a86005d363b405126b0e9bfdda8d3 is present.
• Clear gate hosted-signup-billing-replay in HIGH_RISK_RELEASE_VERIFICATION_MATRIX.md.

Run:

cd /Volumes/Development/pulse/repos/pulse
git merge-base --is-ancestor 8b3a5d30246a86005d363b405126b0e9bfdda8d3 HEAD
go test ./internal/api -run 'TestStripeWebhook_'
go test ./internal/cloudcp/... -count=1
go test ./internal/hosted/... -count=1

Manual scenario:

• Complete a hosted signup or replay a recorded checkout flow.
• Verify webhook handling does not return success when org linkage is unresolved.
• Verify a replay succeeds once the org exists.

Relay

• Run Relay tests end to end.
• Verify fresh register works.
• Verify reconnect works.
• Verify stale cached session resume recovers by fresh registration.
• Verify abrupt disconnect and inflight drain behavior still work.
• Confirm commit ee78cb33dd35b891d84e61bfce2098b4548bbb56 is present.
• Clear gate relay-registration-reconnect-drain in HIGH_RISK_RELEASE_VERIFICATION_MATRIX.md.

Run:

cd /Volumes/Development/pulse/repos/pulse
git merge-base --is-ancestor ee78cb33dd35b891d84e61bfce2098b4548bbb56 HEAD
go test ./internal/relay -count=1 -timeout=120s

Manual scenario:

• Connect a Relay client normally.
• Force a stale cached session or server-side session eviction.
• Verify the client retries with fresh registration instead of hanging in resume/backoff loops.

Multi-Tenant / MSP

• Run multi-tenant tests.
• Verify unknown non-default orgs fail closed.
• Verify explicitly provisioned orgs initialize correctly.
• Verify there is no default-org fallback for non-default tenant requests.
• Confirm commit f090a77ae is present.
• Clear gate organization-user-scope-and-rbac in HIGH_RISK_RELEASE_VERIFICATION_MATRIX.md.

Run:

cd /Volumes/Development/pulse/repos/pulse
git merge-base --is-ancestor f090a77ae HEAD
go test ./internal/monitoring -run 'TestMultiTenantMonitor'
go test ./internal/api -run 'TestMultiTenantStateProvider_|TestSetMultiTenantMonitor_WiresHandlers|TestResourceHandlers_NonDefaultOrg|TestMultiTenant_ConcurrentAPIStress'

Manual scenario:

• Use a non-default org header/cookie/token that does not correspond to a provisioned tenant.
• Verify monitor/API access fails closed.
• Provision the tenant explicitly and verify access succeeds afterwards.

Frontend Smoke

• Verify dashboard/workloads.
• Verify infrastructure/discovery.
• Verify alerts/investigate.
• Verify reporting/settings.
• Verify metrics history / charts.
• Confirm canonical routes and page state still behave correctly.

Run:

cd /Volumes/Development/pulse/repos/pulse/frontend-modern
npx vitest run src/routing/__tests__/resourceLinks.test.ts src/routing/__tests__/navigation.test.ts src/utils/__tests__/frontendResourceTypeBoundaries.test.ts src/api/__tests__/chartsApi.test.ts src/hooks/__tests__/useDashboardTrends.test.ts

Manual scenario:

• Open workloads, infrastructure/discovery, alerts, reporting, and metrics screens.
• Verify workload URLs use canonical types.
• Verify Kubernetes/pod pages and investigation paths still behave correctly.

AI / Tools Smoke

• Verify pulse_query works.
• Verify Kubernetes tools work through unified read-state.
• Verify PMG tools still work.
• Verify Patrol scoped runs still behave correctly.
• Clear gate paid-feature-entitlement-gating in HIGH_RISK_RELEASE_VERIFICATION_MATRIX.md.

Run:

cd /Volumes/Development/pulse/repos/pulse
go test ./internal/ai/tools -count=1
go test ./internal/ai -count=1

Manual scenario:

• Run representative pulse_query, Kubernetes, PMG, and Patrol flows.
• Verify scoped Patrol runs only see and mutate in-scope resources.

Release-Facing Scenarios

• Agent registration / install journey.
• /api/resources filtering and resource detail retrieval.
• Relay pairing flow.
• Hosted signup / org creation / billing webhook replay.
• Commercial cancellation / reactivation journey.
• Multi-tenant org switching / tenant-bound API calls.
• AI investigate / execute / query on canonical resource types.

Run:

cd /Volumes/Development/pulse/repos/pulse/tests/integration
npx tsc --noEmit

Manual scenario:

• Walk the user-visible flows end to end in a staging-like environment.
• Confirm the canonical resource model holds up in real UI/API usage, not only in unit tests.

Final Verification

• Run the final targeted Go test slices required for release confidence.
• Run the relevant frontend tests/build checks for canonicalized surfaces.
• Document any known unrelated failures explicitly before release.
• Confirm there are no new high-severity regressions in hosted, relay, tenant isolation, or canonical v6 boundaries.

Run:

cd /Volumes/Development/pulse/repos/pulse
go test ./internal/api/... -count=1
go test ./internal/relay/... -count=1
go test ./internal/cloudcp/... -count=1
go test ./internal/hosted/... -count=1
go test ./internal/monitoring/... -count=1
go test ./internal/ai/... -count=1
cd /Volumes/Development/pulse/repos/pulse/frontend-modern
npx vitest run

If mobile is in scope, also run:

cd /Volumes/Development/pulse/repos/pulse-mobile
git status --porcelain
npm test -- --runTestsByPath src/utils/__tests__/secureStorage.test.ts src/stores/__tests__/instanceStore.test.ts src/stores/__tests__/authStore.test.ts
npx jest --runInBand --runTestsByPath src/relay/__tests__/client.test.ts src/relay/__tests__/client-hardening.test.ts
npm test -- --runTestsByPath src/stores/__tests__/approvalStore.test.ts

Mobile automated checks completed:

• Secure storage / auth / instance persistence
• Relay reconnect and hardening tests
• Approval store state consistency
• Clear gate mobile-relay-auth-approvals in HIGH_RISK_RELEASE_VERIFICATION_MATRIX.md.

High-Risk Trust Gates

• Clear gate commercial-cancellation-reactivation.
• Clear gate hosted-signup-billing-replay.
• Clear gate paid-feature-entitlement-gating.
• Clear gate rc-to-ga-promotion-readiness.
• Clear gate relay-registration-reconnect-drain.
• Clear gate mobile-relay-auth-approvals.
• Clear gate organization-user-scope-and-rbac.
• Clear gate api-token-scope-and-assignment.
• Clear gate cloud-hosted-tier-runtime-readiness.
• Clear gate msp-provider-tenant-management.

Release Decision

Mark Pulse v6 pre-release ready only if all of the following are true:

• The smoke checks above pass.
• There is no separate unaudited mobile app.
• There is no tracked dirty state.
• No new high-severity regressions appear.

Stable Promotion Decision

Mark a Pulse v6 build stable-promotion ready only if all of the following are true:

• The candidate commit has already been exercised on rc.
• The Promotion Policy section above is complete.
• Applicable items in HIGH_RISK_RELEASE_VERIFICATION_MATRIX.md are cleared.
• The rollback target and exact reinstall command are recorded.
• The release pipeline has already been exercised on the candidate prerelease path in a real run, not only statically validated.
• The v5 maintenance-only support policy, exact GA/EOS dates, and release-note notice are written and ready to publish.
• The prerelease-to-GA rehearsal record and dry-run artifact are linked from the release ticket.