# AI Contract Platform V2 RC Freeze - 2026-07-20

## Decision

The current candidate is frozen for release review under tag `v2-rc-20260720.3`.
After the tag is created, only blocking bug fixes, tests, deployment configuration,
and release documentation may be added. New product features and schema changes are
outside this RC.

This freeze does not authorize production traffic. The candidate is approved for
smoke and production-candidate validation only.

## Candidate scope

- Branch: `codex/v2-rc-20260712`
- Pre-freeze parent: `57fc8d35`
- Contract API migration head: `20260713_0031`
- AI Platform migration head: `20260703_0021`
- Authoritative smoke host: `192.168.3.90`
- Compose project: `yuqei-contract-v2-smoke`
- Remote directory: `/opt/apps/ai-contract-platform-v2-smoke`

The final candidate includes the production identity-security controls, production
deployment/backup/health-check tooling, AI Provider acceptance tooling, authenticated
review-worker integration, ambient-proxy isolation for internal AI Platform calls,
and per-key single-flight protection for Contract API read-cache misses.

Tag `v2-rc-20260720.3` supersedes `v2-rc-20260720.2`, `v2-rc-20260720.1`, and
`v2-rc-20260720`. The earlier tags remain immutable. This follow-up keeps the
cross-platform UTF-8 source-scan fix and adds CI-only Contract API test resource
cleanup: SQLite test files use the runner's tmpfs and each test closes its client and
SQLAlchemy engine, preventing Docker overlay I/O from masking the quality gate.

## Verification evidence

| Gate | Result | Evidence |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Docker smoke | Pass | `project-docs/qa-artifacts/v2-smoke-docker-deploy/2026-07-20T17-47-25` |
| Contract API schema-check | Pass (`status=ok`) | `project-docs/qa-artifacts/v2-release-quality-gate/2026-07-20T18-20-08/contract_api-schema-check.json` |
| AI Platform schema-check | Pass; only the intentional smoke `provider_runtime` warning | `project-docs/qa-artifacts/v2-release-quality-gate/2026-07-20T18-20-08/ai_platform_api-schema-check.json` |
| Release quality gate | Pass | `project-docs/qa-artifacts/v2-release-quality-gate/2026-07-20T18-20-08` |
| Remote core user flow | Pass; browser console errors 0 | `project-docs/qa-artifacts/v2-core-regression/2026-07-20-smoke-pass2/core-user-flow-summary.json` |
| Source secret scan | Pass; 46 reviewed candidates, 0 new findings, 0 stale baseline entries | `project-docs/qa-artifacts/v2-source-secret-scan/2026-07-20T21-07-30/source-secret-scan-summary.json` |
| Security scan | Pass; npm 0, Bandit 0, pip-audit 0 | `project-docs/qa-artifacts/v2-security-scan/2026-07-20T18-45-00` |

Local verification also passed the complete Contract API suite, AI Platform API,
worker, Python SDK and production release-tool tests. Contract Web production build
and typecheck passed with 83 generated routes.

## Performance baseline

The release gate ran 60 requests per scenario at concurrency 6 with zero HTTP errors.

| Scenario | p95 | Target p95 |
| --- | ---: | ---: |
| Contract list | 35.35 ms | 500 ms |
| Contract detail | 33.36 ms | 500 ms |
| Approval todo | 39.58 ms | 500 ms |
| Unified search | 84.83 ms | 500 ms |
| AI Trace list | 222.83 ms | 1500 ms |
| Knowledge document search | 72.48 ms | 800 ms |
| Knowledge chunk hybrid search | 134.08 ms | 1500 ms |

## Functional regression

The post-deploy browser regression verified login, template drafting, Word download,
asynchronous review, 2 structured risks, 4 citations, PDF report delivery, file
preview/download/batch download, approval rejection/resubmission/approval, archive
evidence, archived filtering, and audit-chain integrity.

## Source hygiene

- The candidate contains no runtime database, logs, QA artifacts, local build output,
  or `.env.local` file.
- The ignored Contract Web `.env.local` contains local runtime credentials and was
  intentionally excluded from both Git and deployment archives.
- `git diff --cached --check` passed before the freeze commit.

## Production blockers

Production remains **No-Go** until all of the following have independent evidence:

1. Real AI Provider acceptance with fallback disabled, including 10 legal-QA and 8
   review samples, followed by named legal approval.
2. Production-only secrets, immutable image digests, backend production compose, and
   the Alibaba Cloud frontend HTTPS/domain release.
3. PostgreSQL and object/file storage off-host backup plus restore rehearsal.
4. Production monitoring and alert delivery for API, database, workers, files, AI
   calls, and backups.
5. CI execution for the immutable RC commit and explicit production Go/No-Go approval.

Trace-governance long-window observation remains a non-blocking pre-production check;
production enablement still requires separate approval.