Release Pattern — Problem

Pattern: Release
Component: problem.md
Version: 1.2 | Updated: 2026-07-29

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Statement

Promotions skip eval gates, digests, and abort owners — big-bang ships until the rollback window is already gone.

Measurable symptoms

Symptom	How you detect it
No abort owner	Canary fails; nobody decides
Unpinned artifacts	“Latest” prompt/image drifts
Eval bypass	Model-facing change ships on vibe
Monitor lag	Errors noticed by users first

Root cause

Release pressure rewards green buttons. Progressive delivery and eval gates look slow until a bad promote is irreversible.

What breaks when this pattern is skipped

• Hotfix follows every release
• Cannot answer “what digest is live?”
• Eval failures ignored as flaky

Non-goals of this pattern

• Not a substitute for DoD
• Not automatic promote via MCP status text
• Not optional for AI-touched user-visible paths

Related

• Failures — recovery table
• Workflow — ordered steps
• Checklist — exit criteria

Changelog

• 1.2 (2026-07-29): Release problem page expanded with skip-impact and operator symptoms.