# Delx Responsible Release Standard

> Release is a decision, not a green build.

The standard turns release intent into an inspectable packet with exact scope,
capabilities, excluded claims, evidence, risk, data and authority boundaries,
rollback, unresolved gaps and expiring exceptions. It is a first-party control,
not certification or independent assurance.

## Decision semantics

- **release:** All required controls are structurally complete, required gates passed, no blocking gap remains and any waiver is owned, evidenced and unexpired.
- **hold:** The packet is structurally complete, but a required gate is pending or unavailable. Missing evidence stays visible and the release does not advance.
- **block:** A required control is missing, a gate failed, a blocking gap remains, rollback is unverified or an exception is invalid, orphaned or expired.

Unavailable required evidence produces hold. A failed gate, blocking gap,
unverified rollback or invalid exception produces block.

## Required release packet

- **Identity and scope:** Name the release, owner, exact version, artifact boundary, decision owner and decision date.
- **Capabilities and excluded claims:** State what the artifact enables and what passing the release gate does not establish.
- **Evidence and gates:** Every required gate has a status and public evidence pointer; green build or transport success never stands in for the full packet.
- **Risk, mitigation and residual risk:** Each material risk retains a mitigation and the risk that remains after mitigation.
- **Data and authority boundaries:** Name the data that enters or stays out, plus the actions the release can never authorize by itself.
- **Rollback and stop conditions:** Name a verified rollback target, triggers, procedure and evidence before release.
- **Unresolved gaps and exceptions:** Classify open gaps as blocking or non-blocking. A waiver needs an owner, reason, accepted risk, evidence, expiry and a named waived gate.

## Executable evaluator

- Evaluation schema: delx/responsible-release-evaluation/v1
- Decisions: release, hold, block
- Gate states: passed, pending, unavailable, failed, waived
- Unavailable rule: An unavailable required gate produces hold, not pass, zero or inferred health.
- Exception rule: A waiver without an owned, evidenced and unexpired exception produces block; exceptions never exist as free-form footnotes.

## Reference release manifest

- Release ID: research-artifact-status-2026-08-26
- Title: Delx live research artifact status
- Owner: Delx Institutional
- Scope: Human, JSON and Markdown first-party reachability readbacks for the eight research artifacts present in catalog version 1.2 at release time.
- Version: https://delx-institutional-acxhtlkuf-davidmosiahs-projects.vercel.app
- Source commit: 7f63dbb2f3e934ddc7f6a4068ae0e637bcf414c2
- Deployment: dpl_GVEREaWtYxeQFpZVRxNxMzo8ot7m
- Decision owner: Founder / David Batista
- Declared decision: release
- Evaluated decision: release
- Declaration matches: true
- External review: false
- Independent validation: false

### Capabilities

- Probe one catalog-declared public source per research artifact with a bounded timeout.
- Publish operational, degraded, failed and unavailable as distinct states.
- Expose timestamp, observation window, HTTP conclusion, content type and latency without publishing raw network errors.

### Excluded claims

- Scientific validity or semantically correct output
- Independent monitoring or certification
- Historical or future uptime
- External adoption, demand or endorsement
- Authorization to use, pay for or test any linked system

### Gates

- **Lint, tests and production build** (passed): npm run verify passed lint, 58/58 tests and the Next.js production build. Evidence: https://delx-institutional-acxhtlkuf-davidmosiahs-projects.vercel.app/research/status
- **Immutable candidate machine contract** (passed): The exact candidate passed 252/252 contract surfaces. Evidence: https://delx-institutional-acxhtlkuf-davidmosiahs-projects.vercel.app/research/status.json
- **Candidate desktop and mobile review** (passed): The candidate rendered eight artifact cards and four FAQs without overflow, clipping or attributable browser warnings/errors at 1280x720 and 390x844. Evidence: https://delx-institutional-acxhtlkuf-davidmosiahs-projects.vercel.app/research/status
- **Exact deployment promotion** (passed): delx.ai resolved to deployment dpl_GVEREaWtYxeQFpZVRxNxMzo8ot7m, target production, status Ready. Evidence: https://delx-institutional-acxhtlkuf-davidmosiahs-projects.vercel.app
- **Production machine contract** (passed): The promoted production deployment passed 252/252 contract surfaces. Evidence: https://delx.ai/research/status.json
- **Production desktop and mobile review** (passed): Production retained the canonical URL, eight artifact cards, four FAQs, zero horizontal overflow and no attributable browser warnings/errors. Evidence: https://delx.ai/research/status

### Risks

- **A green HTTP read can be mistaken for scientific validity, permission, adoption or correct output.** Mitigation: The human, JSON and Markdown surfaces keep the claim boundary beside every read and publish explicit state semantics. Residual risk: A downstream consumer can still ignore the published limitation.
- **The same organization owns the probe and most sources, so correlated failure or bias can remain invisible.** Mitigation: Every surface identifies the monitor as first-party and independent monitoring as unavailable. Residual risk: The readback cannot establish independent availability or assurance.
- **External fetches can slow the page or end without a conclusive HTTP response.** Mitigation: Each probe has a 6,000 ms abort bound, no-store semantics and an explicit unavailable state. Residual risk: A transient network path can still degrade or make a single read unavailable.

### Rollback

- Target: dpl_7TkipcVKaXVfVuAv6UdjHUUu3kpR
- Verified: true
- Evidence: https://delx-institutional-isc639k7p-davidmosiahs-projects.vercel.app

Triggers:
- The status schema or no-store contract regresses.
- Unavailable and failed are silently collapsed.
- The promoted deployment no longer matches the verified candidate.

Procedure:
1. Promote the preceding Ready deployment without rebuilding it.
1. Run the complete machine-contract gate against https://delx.ai.
1. Verify the restored deployment identity and public research routes.

### Unresolved gaps

- **independent-monitoring** (non_blocking; unavailable): No independent monitor or external availability history exists for this surface. Owner: Delx Security. Next readback: 2026-09-02.
- **longitudinal-uptime** (non_blocking; unavailable): The release publishes point-in-time probes, not a longitudinal uptime series. Owner: Delx Institutional. Next readback: 2026-09-02.
- **external-use** (non_blocking; unavailable): No reconciled evidence of external use of the status contract has matured. Owner: Delx Research. Next readback: 2026-09-02.

### Exceptions

Count: 0. An empty list means no
exception was declared for this release; it is not a universal no-risk claim.

## Limitations

- The standard is a first-party governance control, not certification or independent assurance.
- A complete packet can still miss an unknown failure mode or contain incorrect first-party evidence.
- A release decision applies only to the named artifact and version; it does not authorize payment, credentials, external commitments or unrelated systems.

Human standard: https://delx.ai/research/responsible-release
JSON standard and reference manifest: https://delx.ai/research/responsible-release.json
Markdown standard: https://delx.ai/research/responsible-release.md