# Release Candidate Contract

## Status: Retired

This document is a non-executable historical record of the removed Classic v3
release-candidate design. It is not a deployment requirement, workflow
contract, compatibility surface, or operator runbook.

The Classic Tag emitters and Classic multi-prod workflow have been deleted.
There is no supported command that publishes or deploys a v3 Candidate.
Classic `staging-release-*` Tags and retained Candidate artifacts cannot be
passed to the D3 Tag emitter or Prod D3 operator.

## Historical design boundary

The retired design bound an annotated v3 Tag to a successful Formal Staging
run, resolved source revisions, the final-pack hash, and a Staging-built
deployment bundle with acceptance evidence. Prod was intended to validate and
promote those exact bytes instead of rebuilding them.

Candidate identity, Business Acceptance, `prod_release_eligible`, release phase
ledgers, and per-Tag S3 release directories belonged only to that Classic lane.
They confer no current release authority. Detailed executable instructions are
intentionally omitted; repository history preserves them for forensic use.

## Current authority

The current release path is successful Formal Staging D3, followed by:

1. `.github/workflows/emit-staging-d3-release-tag.yml`;
2. `.github/workflows/deploy-multi-prod-d3-environment.yml`.

Those workflows promote one exact signed resolved BOM and its immutable Staging
evidence. The annotated D3 Tag targets the BOM-selected L2 commit. Prod verifies
that equality and independently re-downloads the recorded Staging artifact.

See the [Production D3 Release Runbook](../deployments/online/runbooks/prod.md)
and [ADR 0007](adr/0007-serviceified-d3-four-slot-prod-promotion.md) for the
live operator and architecture contracts.

## Historical decisions

The following ADRs remain historical design context only. They do not restore
the deleted Classic entrypoints:

- [Runtime-only Blue/Green Prod Promotion](adr/0003-runtime-only-blue-green-prod-promotion.md)
- [Build Once in Staging, Promote the Same Candidate Bytes](adr/0004-build-once-promote-same-candidate-bundle.md)
- [Unified Portable Deployment Bundle](adr/0005-unified-portable-deployment-bundle.md)