The 2026-06-11 merge-whitelist fix (GRO-2348) added a required_approvals
gate on uat→main merges. That gate is only satisfied by a Gitea Approve
click — the issue-thread QA/UAT-deploy/UAT-regression/security
approvals do not clear it. As a result the CTO is the human-in-the-loop
on every routine release-train PR (GRO-2358, GRO-2359 both hit it).
This change introduces an explicit "uat→main merge-gate policy" in
coding-standards: once the four pre-gates (QA, UAT deploy, UAT
regression, security) are green, the engineer self-merges. A CTO
Gitea Approve click is required only for three categories:
1. Novel auth / session paths (login, OIDC, OOBE, session
middleware, token issuance, MFA, new auth provider integrations).
2. Infra / prod-affecting merges (deploys, manifests, secrets,
GitOps overlays, CI/CD, main branch protection, prod-affecting
routing/ingress). All Phase 5 infra overlay PRs in
groombook/infra still require CTO Gitea Approve without
exception.
3. Risk-flagged merges (risk:cto-approve label, or explicit
CTO/CEO sign-off request in the PR or issue thread).
Phase 4 in sdlc is updated to reflect the new flow: engineer
classifies the PR; CTO Approve happens only for the three categories
above; otherwise the engineer merges once the four pre-gates are
green. The pre-gates themselves do not change.
Refs: GRO-2377
Triggers: GRO-2358, GRO-2359
Source rule: GRO-2348 (merge-whitelist fix)
Phase 5 is an infra PR against groombook/infra, which means it is governed
by the devops pipeline. Spelling out a separate (QA-only) review flow here
both duplicates devops and contradicted its QA+CTO requirement. Replaced
the step list with a one-paragraph hand-off.
Resolves the policy ambiguity flagged in the PR description.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
devops/SKILL.md is now the canonical home for infrastructure lifecycle
(groombook/infra, single-branch main, Flux + OpenTofu controller, cluster
topology). sdlc/SKILL.md is scoped to application code (3-branch dev/uat/main,
Phases 1-5, Stage 1 CI image build, app-tool policy). Each skill cross-refs
the other and defers to coding-standards/safety for cross-cutting rules
rather than restating them.
Fixes in devops/SKILL.md:
- Rewrote frontmatter description (was a copy of sdlc, referenced phases
and dev/uat/prod that do not apply).
- Hoisted "applies to groombook/infra" to a top-level scope statement.
- Renumbered the pipeline (was 1,2,3,4,4,5,4,5,5) and fixed --base dev
-> --base main in the tea example.
- Closed an unterminated bold marker.
- Removed Authentication framework, Stage 1 image build, and the
"never tofu / never kubectl apply" lines (now cited from sdlc / safety).
- Trimmed the tools list to infra-only operators and controllers.
Trims in sdlc/SKILL.md:
- Removed Infrastructure topology, IaC, Stage 2 GitOps detail, the Flux
Image Automation DENIED policy, the "never tofu / never kubectl apply"
lines, and the External communication section (cited from devops /
safety / coding-standards instead).
- Trimmed the tools list to application-level dependency choices.
- Added a pointer from Phase 5 into the devops pipeline.
cc @cpfarhood
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
GroomBook images live on the Gitea registry, not GitHub. Update SDLC,
coding-standards, and CLAUDE.md to match.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Set modelProfile cheap only for mechanical, bounded tasks. Leave unset
(judgment/reasoning/QA) for standard tier. When in doubt, leave unset.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 <noreply@anthropic.com>
- safety: drop tools section (moved to sdlc), add explicit kubectl-prod
ban, add no-tofu-direct rule, drop the merge-gate cross-reference into
a separate bullet
- sdlc: add Phase 0 product-analysis intake (CMPO Pawla as gate); add
scheduled penetration testing program (Barkley owns); standardize
authentication to Better-Auth + Google + Apple + Authentik; add
canonical tools section (moved from safety) including ghcr.io/groombook
registry standard; reorganize PR review sections to match the cross-org
pattern (named SDLC pipeline phases)
Mirrors the privilegedescalation/org pattern: extract company-wide
policy that was previously inlined in each agent's AGENTS.md into three
shared skills. Agents will reference these via one-line invocation
reminders in their Wake additions section.
Flea Flicker
Chris Farhood