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.

---

### 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.

---

### 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.