Docs Council Project Manager Review

Canonical source: docs/council/PROJECT-MANAGER-REVIEW.md · Snapshot commit: 0694e7ad548d

Life in Days — Project Manager Council Review

• Council seat: Expert Project Manager
• Review date: 2026-08-14
• Plan owner: Project Manager
• Planning timezone: Asia/Kolkata
• Canonical task source: Phase 1 Roadmap Manifest
• Evidence boundary: This review establishes a delivery-control system. It does not claim that application behavior, integrations, recovery, shared-host fit, deployment, or production use has been implemented or verified.

1. Delivery recommendation

Approve P0 and R0–R10 as the planning baseline, with these controls:

1. Keep one canonical set of 58 work packages across the Markdown plan, Excel workbook, repository issues, and live GitHub Project.
2. Treat all Start and Target dates as proposed planning estimates. Evidence gates, not calendar pressure, control release entry and exit.
3. Keep R0 synthetic-only. R1 is the first milestone allowed to process an owner-approved authentic-memory fixture.
4. Require independent rollback and an executed restore for every new persistent data shape before each release-acceptance task closes.
5. Keep R10 date-free until measured capacity watermarks trigger a separately approved transition.
6. Use exactly four status values: Backlog, Next, In progress, and Done.
7. Allow a planning task to be Done when its named artifact exists, while explicitly stating that this does not complete its implementation or release.
8. Do not automate issue close, merge, or deployment into Done; the named evidence and required approvals must be reconciled first.

2. Scope and source control

The global PRD remains the product contract. The UX Specification remains the interaction contract. Prototype v5 is design evidence only. Release PRDs/PID, the implementation plan, and the shared-host spike decompose those sources without silently changing them.

The plan accounts for all 78 stable requirement IDs:

• 71 active requirements map to release, implementation, and regression tasks;
• LID-UP-004 and the six LID-DEF-* requirements are explicitly deferred;
• deferred rows remain in traceability so their absence from delivery cannot be mistaken for accidental omission; and
• R9 adds no feature scope: it is the integrated owner-acceptance and stabilization gate.

3. Milestone baseline

Milestone	Proposed window	Management purpose	Exit decision
P0	2026-08-14 to 2026-08-16	Council baseline, traceability, workbook, and roadmap	Planning sources reconcile
R0	2026-08-17 to 2026-08-28	Synthetic-only shared-host/private foundation	Coexistence, restore, rollback, and non-regression pass
R1	2026-08-31 to 2026-09-18	First authentic manual journal archive	Owner fixture survives all recovery gates
R2	2026-09-21 to 2026-10-09	Telegram photo capture and media lifecycle	Media privacy, durability, and restore pass
R3	2026-10-12 to 2026-10-30	Retrieval and date integrity	Query privacy and atomic redating pass
R4	2026-11-02 to 2026-11-20	Source history and lifecycle safety	Conflict, Trash, suppression, export/import pass
R5	2026-11-23 to 2026-12-11	Prospective VoiceNotes sync	Synthetic contract and replay/recovery pass
R6	2026-12-14 to 2027-01-08	Generated text reflection	Evaluation, privacy, fidelity, cost, and restore pass
R7	2027-01-11 to 2027-01-29	Generated artwork	Evaluation, safety, cover, lifecycle, cost, and restore pass
R8	2027-02-01 to 2027-02-19	Integrated scale and resilience	Fault, capacity, security, accessibility, and recovery pass
R9	2027-02-22 to 2027-03-12	Owner acceptance and stabilization	Explicit go/no-go after Recovery Ceremony and observation
R10	No date — trigger only	Conditional object-store transition	Trigger, reversible cutover, restore, observation, rollback pass

The detailed release plan is authoritative for individual dates and dependencies.

4. Work-package structure

The 58 items are intentionally release-sized work packages rather than an undifferentiated feature list.

Work type	Management expectation
Audit / planning	Establish a source-grounded decision or traceable plan; never counts as implementation evidence
Product definition	State the release outcome, exact requirement IDs, exclusions, entry/exit criteria, owner scenario, and no-go conditions
Design	Cover complete flows and states, responsive/accessibility behavior, privacy cues, and implementation handoff
Architecture / spike	Retire a named uncertainty and define trust, data, deployment, capacity, recovery, migration, and rollback contracts
Implementation	Produce merged behavior plus tests, migration evidence, deployment record, and no-regression proof
Evaluation	Use approved synthetic/blind fixtures and publish exact model/configuration and hard-gate results
Quality	Execute the declared functional, fault, privacy/security, browser, accessibility, and recovery matrix
Release acceptance	Reconcile owner evidence, restores, rollback, defects, observation, and explicit go/no-go

Every GitHub item must contain ID, milestone, dates, description, exact LID-* IDs, dependencies, PRD/PID, design artifact, architecture reference, acceptance evidence, and rollback/restore impact.

5. Status policy

Status	Entry rule	Exit rule
Backlog	Scoped with an owner and milestone, but not selected for immediate execution	Entry dependency and evidence plan are ready, then Project Manager selects it as Next
Next	Dependencies are understood and the item is expected after the current active gate	Named owner starts real work with linked evidence, then moves it In progress
In progress	Work is active and the latest update identifies evidence, risk, and next gate	All task-specific evidence exists, or a blocker moves it back to Backlog with rationale
Done	Named evidence exists and required reviewers accept the task's scope	Reopened if evidence is invalidated; downstream completion is never inferred

At publication, the canonical manifest intentionally separates completed planning artifacts from delivery:

• Done: the v5 audit, integrated council package, ten release PRDs, and the R10 PID;
• In progress: the R0 shared-host coexistence/rollback spike, because the research/runbook exists but sanitized live-host evidence does not;
• Next: R0 UX, architecture, synthetic-shell implementation, and release acceptance; and
• Backlog: later design, architecture, implementation, evaluation, QA, and release work.

No product release or implementation task is represented as Done by the planning package.

6. Critical path and dependency rules

flowchart LR
  P0["P0: Council baseline"] --> R0["R0: Synthetic private foundation"]
  R0 --> R1["R1: Manual archive"]
  R1 --> R2["R2: Telegram photos"]
  R2 --> R3["R3: Retrieval and dates"]
  R3 --> R4["R4: Lifecycle safety"]
  R4 --> S5["R5: VoiceNotes spike"]
  S5 --> R5["R5: Prospective sync"]
  R5 --> E6["R6: Text evaluation"]
  E6 --> R6["R6: Generated text"]
  R6 --> E7["R7: Artwork evaluation"]
  E7 --> R7["R7: Generated artwork"]
  R7 --> R8["R8: Resilience"]
  R8 --> R9["R9: Launch acceptance"]
  R9 -. "measured trigger only" .-> R10["R10: Object-store transition"]

Loading

Rules:

1. A future PRD may be drafted early, but delivery cannot bypass the preceding release-acceptance gate.
2. Task links permit progressive handoff: definition, design, architecture, and implementation preparation may overlap, but the dependent task cannot close or cross its evidence gate before the prerequisite is satisfied.
3. The R5 engineering item cannot start from assumptions; the synthetic VoiceNotes spike must pass.
4. R6 and R7 implementation cannot start until their evaluation item identifies an exact passing configuration.
5. R8 validates the integrated product and cannot be used to postpone feature-specific restore evidence from earlier releases.
6. R9 adds defects, retests, recovery, and observation only; new feature scope returns to Backlog.
7. R10 has neither Start nor Target date until entry evidence is approved.

7. Definition of Ready

An implementation, evaluation, QA, or acceptance item is Ready only when:

• the exact requirement IDs and release PRD/PID are linked;
• the independently meaningful user outcome and non-goals are explicit;
• all normal, empty, loading, failure, interruption, destructive, compact, and accessibility states are designed where applicable;
• input/output contracts, data classification, source/derived boundary, and trust boundary are explicit;
• dependencies and unresolved assumptions have an owner and stop condition;
• migrations, backup/restore, rollback, monitoring, and capacity impact are stated;
• test fixtures avoid personal content and secrets;
• acceptance evidence and reviewers are named; and
• the release entry gate is satisfied.

8. Definition of Done

A delivery item is Done only when the named behavior works in the named environment and:

1. risk-appropriate automated and manual tests pass;
2. privacy/security and accessibility checks pass where applicable;
3. migrations and rollback are exercised, not merely described;
4. every new persistent shape is included in an executed restore;
5. System Health, runbook, traceability, and issue evidence are updated;
6. personal content, prompts, credentials, tokens, and private infrastructure identifiers are absent from public evidence;
7. no unresolved critical/high release-blocking finding remains; and
8. required Product, Design, Architecture, QA/Security, Project, and owner approvals are recorded.

Documented, coded, CI passed, deployed, and backup uploaded are narrower evidence states and do not individually satisfy delivery Done.

9. Review cadence

Cadence	Participants	Agenda	Required output
Twice weekly during R0–R2	Project, Product, Design, Architecture, active implementer	Entry gates, active evidence, blockers, privacy/recovery risks, date forecast	Updated Project fields and issue note
Weekly after R2	Product Council	Release progress, critical path, RAID, capacity, spend, defect trend	Status/forecast and decision record
Before each implementation start	Product, Design, Architecture, implementer	Definition of Ready	Ready decision or explicit gaps
Before each release	Full council plus owner	Acceptance, restores, rollback, defects, observation plan	Go/no-go/rollback record
Monthly	Project Manager and owner	Workbook/roadmap reconciliation, schedule assumptions, conditional triggers	Baseline update if approved

10. RAID register

ID	Type	Risk / assumption / dependency	Owner	Trigger or due point	Response
RAID-001	Risk	Shared-host contention or namespace/routing collision harms an existing service	Technical Architect	R0 entry/exit	Synthetic-only live preflight, limits, non-regression, and rollback; block R1 on failure
RAID-002	Assumption	SQLCipher/SQLite works in the target image with FTS5, WAL concurrency, backup, migration, and crash recovery	Technical Architect	R0	Execute target-runtime proof; use PostgreSQL only if documented gates fail
RAID-003	Dependency	Human and callback routing require approved Cloudflare configuration	Technical Architect / owner authority	R0 deploy	Prepare sanitized plan; do not mutate provider state without the scoped execution step
RAID-004	Risk	Recovery is inferred from successful backup uploads	Project Manager	Every release	Require executed sampled restore for new shapes and full ceremony at R9
RAID-005	Dependency	VoiceNotes identity/auth/reconciliation behavior is partly unknown	Product Manager / Technical Architect	R5 entry	Synthetic contract spike; reopen product/architecture decision on material failure
RAID-006	Risk	Real photos or derived photo data reach AI	Architecture / QA	R2, R6, R7	Typed allowlists, no-photo contract tests, sanitized evidence, release block on any leakage
RAID-007	Risk	Proposed dates become promises and gates are weakened	Project Manager	Weekly	Move dates before weakening privacy, recovery, accessibility, or evidence gates
RAID-008	Risk	Small-host image work exhausts memory/disk	Technical Architect	R2 and R8	Bounded staging/decoder, one heavy job, watermarks, backpressure, fault tests
RAID-009	Risk	AI output is mistaken for authentic source	Product / Design / QA	R6 and R7	Source/derived separation, persistent labels, provenance, protection, owner acceptance
RAID-010	Risk	Object-store migration is scheduled without need or recovery proof	Project Manager	R10	Keep dates blank; require measured trigger, inventory, dual-write, restore, observation, rollback

11. Schedule and estimate control

The workbook and GitHub dates are schedule fields, not actual-start/actual-finish claims. A date change is controlled when:

• the issue records the changed assumption or gate;
• the Project Start/Target dates and workbook source manifest update together;
• dependent tasks are re-forecast;
• R10 remains blank unless its trigger is approved; and
• the council decision record captures any change to release sequence, privacy boundary, persistent data model, provider contract, or acceptance standard.

No buffer is hidden inside Done. Stabilization is explicit in R9, and defect work remains visible.

12. GitHub operating model

1. Repository issues are the durable task records and belong to exactly one P0/R0–R10 milestone.
2. The live Project is the visualization/control layer, not a substitute for requirements or evidence documents.
3. Issue titles begin with the stable task ID; descriptions contain repository links rather than local filesystem paths.
4. Project Start date, Target date, and Status mirror the manifest. PRD/PID, Design artifact, Requirements, Evidence, Owner role, and Priority are visible fields when supported.
5. Views include a Status board/table and an actual date-driven Roadmap. R10 appears in Backlog/table but has no timeline bar.
6. Closing a planning issue is allowed only for that planning artifact. Closing an implementation issue requires its Definition of Done.
7. Weekly reconciliation checks 58 manifest IDs, issue count, Project item count, status, milestone, dates, and links.

13. Immediate execution sequence

1. Complete P0 artifacts and publish the reviewed planning baseline.
2. Keep SPK-R0-001 In progress until sanitized live-host measurements and coexistence evidence exist.
3. Finalize R0 UX/architecture artifacts and move only truly ready items into active work.
4. Build the synthetic private shell without admitting personal content.
5. Execute R0 access, non-regression, encrypted restore, restart, and rollback acceptance.
6. Re-plan R1 dates if any R0 gate fails; do not admit an authentic owner fixture early.

14. Project Manager conclusion

The plan is executable as a gated roadmap and preserves the private-product constraints. The main delivery risk is not missing feature scope; it is converting planning or backup evidence into a stronger readiness claim than the evidence supports. The four-lane status policy, exact task IDs, per-release restore/rollback items, synthetic R0, spike-gated integrations, and date-free R10 address that risk.

Approve this as the Project Management baseline subject to Product Council reconciliation in the Council Decision Record. Owner approval of each release remains future evidence.