support_backend/specs/001-ci-pipeline/spec.md

Feature Specification: Continuous Integration Pipeline

Feature Branch: 001-ci-pipeline

Created: 2026-08-21

Status: Draft

Input: User description: "Close out Phase 1 (engineering foundation) gaps: an automated CI pipeline that validates every change before it can be merged/deployed, per docs/09-testing-observability-cicd.md section 3."

User Scenarios & Testing (mandatory)

User Story 1 - Every change is automatically validated before merge (Priority: P1)

An engineer pushes a change (new commit or pull request) to the repository. Before the change can be merged or deployed, the system automatically checks out the code, installs dependencies, validates required environment/configuration, and runs type-checking, linting, format-checking, and the automated test suites (unit, integration, E2E) against it, then reports pass/fail back to the engineer.

Why this priority: This is the baseline safety net every other phase depends on. Without it, regressions in later phases (ticketing, orchestration, AI support) can reach production undetected, and the constitution's "MUST verify compliance before merge" governance rule has no automated enforcement.

Independent Test: Push a commit that fails a lint rule (or a failing test) and confirm the pipeline reports failure and blocks the change; push a clean commit and confirm the pipeline reports success end-to-end.

Acceptance Scenarios:

1. Given a new commit is pushed, When the pipeline runs, Then it executes checkout, dependency install, environment validation, type-check, lint, format-check, unit tests, integration tests, and E2E tests, in that order, and stops at the first failing stage.
2. Given all validation stages pass, When the pipeline reaches the build stage, Then it produces a build artifact and a container image ready for the next stage.
3. Given any validation stage fails, When the pipeline reports status, Then the engineer can see which stage failed and why, without needing to reproduce the failure manually to get that information.

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User Story 2 - A validated build can be published and deployed without manual steps (Priority: P2)

Once a change has passed all validation stages, the system publishes the resulting build artifact/image and can deploy it to an environment (e.g. test/staging/production) using environment-specific configuration and credentials, without an engineer manually running deploy commands.

Why this priority: Automating publish/deploy is what makes the validation in User Story 1 actually load-bearing — a validated build that still requires manual, error-prone deploy steps undermines the safety the pipeline is meant to provide. It's second priority because User Story 1 (catching regressions) delivers value even before deploy is automated.

Independent Test: Merge a validated change and confirm it is published and deployed to a target environment automatically, with no manual command execution required.

Acceptance Scenarios:

1. Given a build has passed every validation stage, When the pipeline reaches publish/deploy, Then the artifact is published and deployed to the target environment using that environment's own configuration and credentials.
2. Given a deploy targets a production environment, When the pipeline runs, Then it uses protected, environment-managed credentials and never reads secrets from a file committed to the repository.

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Edge Cases

• What happens when a required environment variable/secret is missing for the target environment? The pipeline MUST fail fast at the environment-validation stage with a clear message identifying what's missing, before running any test or build stage.
• What happens when a pipeline run is triggered for a branch/change that has no deploy target (e.g., a feature branch, not main)? The pipeline MUST still run all validation stages through build, but MUST NOT publish or deploy.
• How does the system handle two changes validating concurrently? Each run MUST be isolated — one run's failure or artifacts must not affect a concurrent run for a different change.
• What happens when a stage (e.g. E2E tests) is flaky and fails intermittently for reasons unrelated to the change? Out of scope for this feature — flaky-test quarantine/retry policy is a separate concern to be addressed if/when it becomes a problem.

Requirements (mandatory)

Functional Requirements

• FR-001: The system MUST automatically run on every proposed change (commit/pull request) without requiring an engineer to manually trigger validation.
• FR-002: The system MUST validate that required environment configuration is present and well-formed before running any test stage, and MUST fail with a specific, actionable message if it is not.
• FR-003: The system MUST run, in order, and stop at the first failure: type-checking, lint checks, format checks, unit tests, integration tests, and end-to-end tests.
• FR-004: The system MUST report which stage failed and the relevant failure output back to the engineer who proposed the change, without requiring local reproduction to see it.
• FR-005: The system MUST only proceed to build/publish/deploy stages after every prior validation stage has passed.
• FR-006: The system MUST produce a versioned, reproducible build artifact and container image once validation passes.
• FR-007: The system MUST support deploying the same validated artifact to multiple environments (at minimum: test/staging and production), using environment-specific configuration.
• FR-008: The system MUST NOT read production secrets/credentials from any file committed to the repository — environment credentials MUST be supplied by the pipeline's own protected configuration at run time.
• FR-009: The system MUST isolate concurrent pipeline runs so that one change's validation or build artifacts cannot affect another concurrent run.
• FR-010: The system MUST make current and historical pipeline run status (pass/fail, per stage) visible to engineers without requiring direct server/log access.

Key Entities

• Pipeline Run: One execution of the full validate → build → publish → deploy sequence for a specific change; has an ordered list of stage results and an overall pass/fail outcome.
• Stage Result: The outcome (pass/fail, output) of one stage (e.g. lint, unit test) within a Pipeline Run.
• Deploy Target: An environment (test, staging, production) a validated build can be published/deployed to, with its own configuration and credentials.

Success Criteria (mandatory)

Measurable Outcomes

• SC-001: 100% of proposed changes are validated automatically before merge — zero changes reach the main branch without having passed the pipeline.
• SC-002: An engineer can determine which validation stage failed, and why, within 1 minute of the pipeline completing, without reproducing the issue locally.
• SC-003: A validated change can be deployed to any supported environment with zero manual deploy commands run by an engineer.
• SC-004: No production secret ever appears in repository history (verified by secret-scan of the repository).
• SC-005: Two changes validating at the same time never interfere with each other's result (zero cross-run contamination incidents).

Assumptions

• "Environments" for deploy purposes are, at minimum, test/staging and production, matching the .env.test / .env.development / .env.prod split already present in the codebase's package scripts.
• The existing local quality scripts (typecheck, lint, format:check, test:unit, test:integration, test:e2e, build) are the source of truth for what each pipeline stage runs — this feature wires them into an automated, triggered pipeline rather than defining new checks.
• Deployment targets are container-based (the repository already has Docker Compose files per environment), so "publish" means publishing a container image and "deploy" means rolling it out via the existing container orchestration for that environment.