Launch operations and reliability readiness

Problem

The context catalog serves metadata to multiple downstream surfaces — dashboards, the MCP server, the IDE extension — but has no observability into contract health. If schema resolution fails, profile data goes stale, or the AI context payload exceeds size limits, nothing detects or reports the degradation. There is no alerting on catalog staleness or contract-breaking changes, no defined support owner for metadata quality issues, and no incident playbook for diagnosing cross-surface context failures. At public launch scale, a silent catalog regression could cascade into broken dashboards, incorrect AI suggestions, and stale profiling data across every consumer.

Context

• Public launch for context schema/catalog contracts and Nimble enrichment flows across product surfaces needs more than feature completeness; it also needs clear ownership, monitoring, support routing, and a practiced response to failures.
• Without explicit launch operations, the team will discover gaps in alerts, escalation, rollback, or user communication during the most visible part of the release.
• Expected touchpoints include dataface/ai/, context-contract docs, eval wiring, and inspect-derived artifacts, runbooks, monitoring or review surfaces, and any launch-day coordination artifacts.

Possible Solutions

• A - Handle launch ops informally through the people closest to the code: workable for small releases, but too fragile for public launch.
• B - Recommended: define an explicit launch operations package: owners, dashboards/checks, escalation paths, rollback steps, and user/support communication rules.
• C - Delay launch until a broader platform-operations program exists: safest, but likely more process than this specific launch needs.

Plan

1. List the launch-day risks for context schema/catalog contracts and Nimble enrichment flows across product surfaces, including failure modes, ownership gaps, and dependencies on adjacent teams or systems.
2. Write the required runbooks and operating checklists covering monitoring, escalation, rollback, and communication.
3. Confirm the launch support model with named owners and the minimal dashboards, logs, or review artifacts they need to do the job.
4. Run a tabletop or rehearsal pass and update the plan anywhere the team still relies on tribal knowledge instead of written procedure.

Implementation Progress

Review Feedback

• [ ] Review cleared