tend/docs/DOGFOOD_EVIDENCE.md

Preview dogfood evidence

This is maintainer-run operational evidence, not an independent audit or a general reliability claim. It preserves each dated campaign and its limitations instead of rewriting earlier observations as though later fixes had already existed.

Final Preview 2 code-candidate campaign — August 18, 2026

The final v0.2 Preview 2 implementation candidate completed two explicit rollback-and-reactivation cycles for Gamertan, the Sandwich Hime website, and Gamertan Observatory on the production Linux/systemd/Caddy host. The candidate routed singleton traffic to the already-proven transient process while the fixed-address installed unit restarted, then restored the canonical upstream only after loopback and public-origin validation.

Assessed Tend candidate

• Private implementation source commit: 1fd3b9904c46e817c244196dd5d5a90921ca81a2.
• Version: v0.2.0-preview.2.
• Linux/amd64 binary SHA-256: adb4753d4e865775d50d618c999f10dfac9a0de945ccfd9d0b8f2e80d65f4597.
• Gitea release-candidate archive SHA-256: 2bdfee2168cb16883d524cf9703adfa6ed5bc2bf44fbbb896993acc5fe6969ec.
• Toolchain: Go 1.26.6, CGO_ENABLED=0, -trimpath.
• Trusted verification run 286 and release-candidate run 287 passed. The archive's checksums, SPDX SBOM, embedded version, commit, clean VCS state, target, and Go build information were independently rechecked before host installation.

Application maintenance artifacts

• Gamertan archive SHA-256: 4700b075640b8b2fb5c17e0e02cf8d96ee67ceee10fe76d108c8b411983a88aa.
• Sandwich Hime website archive SHA-256: 46b4da41cf6703fb8818e7d25e3a9c13e57cf700f5608b1888c4adb3352e4d38.
• Observatory preview 12 archive SHA-256: 9ef0ddd8ec25d8fb75d6a6887e3ba874df7ebba16d3254f6250fcc646f4fd7f4.

Every service ended with the intended current release active and the older release retained as the explicit rollback target. Gamertan returned to its green slot; both singleton services returned to their fixed addresses. Candidate ports and the shared lock were free afterward. Caddy and all five installed application units were active with zero restarts and no failed units.

Continuity and deployment evidence

A seven-minute workstation probe sampled the Gamertan origin, both Sandwich Hime origins, Observatory, and EQL health 1,606 times each throughout the campaign. It observed no HTTP failure status. One simultaneous client-side disconnect affected all five destinations during a reload. A controlled 90-second replay therefore observed the same validated no-content-change Caddy reload from both the workstation and an independent Linux host. The Linux host recorded 450 successful responses and zero failures for every origin; the workstation alone repeated one common-mode URL transport error across every destination. Caddy retained the same PID with zero restarts and continued serving unrelated requests. The common-mode workstation event is recorded as an observer-path limitation, not server downtime.

The authoritative deployment-event files finished at 18 Gamertan events, 14 Sandwich Hime events, and 16 Observatory events. Observatory's agent cursor for each stream exactly equalled the corresponding file size, proving complete consumption. The agent and applications reported no warning-or-higher journal entries during the campaign. Representative public routes returned HTTP 200, and the EQL origin remained healthy.

Findings closed before this campaign

Two earlier pre-activation artifacts exposed a mode-restoration defect under a hardened root umask. They failed before route or pointer mutation. Tend now reapplies validated archive modes explicitly and tests extraction under umask 0077.

The older singleton strategy briefly exposed an unavailable fixed upstream and produced transient Observatory-agent 502s. The final candidate's routed handoff removed that failure in repeated production activation and rollback.

This evidence update changes VCS build metadata but not deployment logic. The release policy therefore still requires one last maintenance pass with the exact evidence-bearing candidate before the signed public tag is created.

Restricted multi-service campaign — August 16, 2026

Tend's v0.2 implementation candidate completed the same maintenance contract through the restricted transport for two independently configured services on one Linux/systemd/Caddy host.

Assessed Tend implementation

• Implementation source commit: 840b77da708bbcd87a3203fb6a1f99b2984b8667.
• Linux/amd64 candidate binary SHA-256: b3961315288871fa6085bf3b75c784a825a88f2bc3dd0694ad5d6c590eddf895.
• Candidate archive SHA-256: 948bad5271dca08b9445c387c5aea7f58f22add6b47b9071e1801a756aa71259.
• Toolchain: Go 1.26.6, CGO_ENABLED=0, -trimpath.
• Trusted Gitea verification run 119 and release-candidate run 120 passed for the exact implementation commit. CI and an independent, network-disabled build each produced the same archive digest twice.
• The installed receiver accepted only a pinned Ed25519 host key, a dedicated forced-command deployment key, the exact tend-receive-v1 protocol, two allowlisted service names, and separately repeated artifact digests. An attempted arbitrary SSH command was refused.
• Production source, Go caches, repository credentials, secret values, remote paths, and shell commands did not cross the transport boundary.

Adding this evidence changes VCS build metadata but not executable logic. The signed preview tag and attached release evidence therefore identify the final evidence-bearing candidate and its required last maintenance pass.

Gamertan blue-green campaign

• Application source commit: a7e54047d3dc11671824b6ecc8ed698a9dd04421.
• Preview 27 artifact SHA-256: edadef3a97c089771e2b6bb7dadd58928762284878f76f23b112c61ae282f17f.
• The artifact was built twice, byte-identically, in the pinned Go 1.26.6 image with networking disabled and the audited cached module graph.
• The inactive slot passed health, readiness, page-marker, Caddy validation, public-origin, Sandwich Hime mount, and EQL continuity checks before traffic moved.
• Explicit rollback restored preview 26; its readiness and public boundary passed; preview 27 was then reactivated through the recorded state.
• Sandwich Hime's release pointer and service remained unchanged throughout.

Sandwich Hime singleton campaign

• Application source commit: 435880c6751b773b6c5ee3ae6833d26e8eb7c0df.
• Preview 30 artifact SHA-256: bee8d5bcde2c3c2e8bb96d5909a19889fc7f0be9390046c243fe20c9ff2ca44b.
• The artifact was built twice, byte-identically, in the same pinned, network-disabled Go 1.26.6 environment.
• A transient DynamicUser candidate passed health, readiness, tutorial marker, canonical-origin, and Gamertan-mounted checks before the singleton pointer and installed service changed. The candidate port was released afterward.
• Explicit rollback restored preview 28; its readiness and public boundary passed; preview 30 was then reactivated through the recorded state.
• Both Gamertan slots, its selected Caddy upstream, and EQL remained healthy.

Findings resolved by dogfood

The first restricted transfer stopped before artifact validation because sudo removed SSH_ORIGINAL_COMMAND. The forced account still refused the request; no service state changed. The 0BSD sudoers template now preserves only that one server-supplied variable, while the receiver requires its exact protocol value and rejects every other command.

The first singleton candidate stopped before pointer mutation because the shared environment file's live listen value overrode the candidate address. The site remained on its former release and retained the same process. Tend now rejects singleton shared environment files containing the configured listen key; installed units own the non-secret live address and Tend supplies only the transient candidate address.

Final verification found both service states valid, every installed unit and Caddy active with zero restart failures, the candidate port closed, no warning or error entries after the successful campaign, and representative Gamertan, Sandwich Hime, mounted, and EQL routes returning HTTP 200.

Assessed candidate

• Source commit: 306d085e518cb4fe7b20a66d1e2ceb171e54ebdc.
• Linux/amd64 candidate binary SHA-256: a9d53e286317d5acad9c0c321dc8d6240efee1e992714a892aba5be7c190dffc.
• Candidate archive SHA-256: 52639d16cd55b1dfe7c4ce63d4523676a6e8fe7cf57ef25787938c4070f49bd3.
• Toolchain: Go 1.26.6, CGO_ENABLED=0, -trimpath.
• Two fresh packages from the clean pushed commit were byte-identical.
• Tests, race tests, vet, license checks, public-snapshot isolation, and govulncheck v1.1.4 passed. The vulnerability scan reported no known reachable vulnerabilities with the August 14, 2026 database.
• Trusted Gitea verification completed successfully for the exact commit.

The release tag and attached assets must still identify their own exact source commit and digests. Any code change after this campaign requires the dogfood sequence to be repeated.

A fresh-install check after the first immutable source tag found that the CLI reported its development identity instead of the tagged module version. No deployment logic or artifact content was ambiguous, but the distribution identity was not acceptable. Preview 1 remains immutable and withdrawn; Preview 2 adds Go build-information version selection and repeats the release gates rather than retagging old content.

Sandwich Hime website

The singleton-candidate strategy packaged and activated website preview 25:

• application source commit: 0429e3f0160aa4fd4d262bc5857bc232c2149cb8;
• artifact SHA-256: 25025a05bb1aa6689f5f0779064b24a7c8193ff93c1395a2b3bd342588c3926a;
• application toolchain: Go 1.26.6;
• isolated transient candidate passed health, readiness, and application smoke checks before the singleton pointer changed;
• explicit rollback returned to preview 24, and the exact approved preview 25 artifact was then reactivated;
• canonical, documentation, news, llms.txt, and Gamertan-mounted routes returned HTTP 200 after reactivation.

Gamertan

The blue-green strategy packaged and activated Gamertan preview 8:

• application source commit: 3acfa6a8e66ca3827c840d1fe9bc0b51c69c0a45;
• artifact SHA-256: 76db7a9a6c496c204f653dc5e42c935272159320cc344b6a4db6374535c696ad;
• application toolchain: Go 1.26.6;
• the inactive slot passed health, readiness, and page-marker checks before a validated atomic Caddy handler replacement;
• the handler retained root:caddy ownership, mode 0640, and Sandwich Hime routing precedence;
• explicit rollback restored preview 7, and the exact approved preview 8 artifact was then reactivated;
• homepage, project pages, news, feed, discovery files, the Sandwich Hime mount, and EQL Helper continuity returned HTTP 200 after reactivation.

Finding resolved during the campaign

An earlier rollback attempt stopped safely before changing traffic because it applied the new release's content markers to an older release whose route set was different. Tend now uses the full configured smoke suite for new deployments and health/readiness checks for an already-recorded rollback target. A regression test requires that separation. The fixed candidate then completed both live rollback sequences.

Boundaries

The campaign covered one Linux/systemd/Caddy host and two small Go services. It did not cover databases, migrations, containers, Kubernetes, hostile root, or EQL Helper's application-specific catalog activation. Artifact transport remains an application-owned, host-key-verified step outside Tend v0.1.