Safety surfaces

Guardrails (practical)

• Immutable snapshots: deploy “this exact version” instead of “latest”
• Progressive rollouts: canary first, then expand with health gates
• Clear rollback path: return to a known-good snapshot quickly
• Operational visibility: prove the system is behaving after change

Design constraints

• Safety comes from guardrails: snapshots, staged rollouts, and audit trails
• Blast radius shrinks when rollback is always available
• Operational visibility is part of safety, not optional tooling

Architecture at a glance

• Define a stable artifact boundary (what you deploy) and a stable signal boundary (what you observe)
• Treat changes as versioned, testable, rollbackable units
• Use health + telemetry gates to scale safely

Typical workflow

• Define scope and success criteria (what should change, what must stay stable)
• Create or update a snapshot, then validate against a canary environment/site
• Deploy progressively with health/telemetry gates and explicit rollback criteria
• Confirm acceptance tests and operational dashboards before expanding

System boundary

Treat Safety surfaces as a repeatable interface between engineering intent (design) and runtime reality (deployments + signals). Keep site-specific details configurable so the same design scales across sites.

Example artifact

topic: Safety surfaces
plan: define -> snapshot -> canary -> expand
signals: health + telemetry + events tied to version
rollback: select known-good snapshot

Engineering outcomes

• Safety comes from guardrails: snapshots, staged rollouts, and audit trails
• Blast radius shrinks when rollback is always available
• Operational visibility is part of safety, not optional tooling

Quick acceptance checks

• Require approvals or gates for production snapshot promotion
• Roll out progressively with clear acceptance criteria

Common failure modes

• Drift between desired and actual running configuration
• Changes without clear rollback criteria
• Insufficient monitoring for acceptance after rollout

Acceptance tests

• Verify the deployed snapshot/version matches intent (no drift)
• Run a canary validation: behavior, health, and telemetry align with expectations
• Verify rollback works and restores known-good behavior

Common safety failures

• Configuration drift between sites causing inconsistent behavior
• Lack of write ownership leading to conflicting actuations
• Silent degradations (telemetry gaps, partial adapter failures)

Implementation checklist

• Require approvals or gates for production snapshot promotion
• Roll out progressively with clear acceptance criteria
• Define rollback triggers and keep previous snapshots available
• Ensure audit trails for who changed/deployed what and when

Rollout guidance

• Start with a canary site that matches real conditions
• Use health + telemetry gates; stop expansion on regressions
• Keep rollback to a known-good snapshot fast and rehearsed

Acceptance tests

• Verify the deployed snapshot/version matches intent (no drift)
• Run a canary validation: behavior, health, and telemetry align with expectations
• Verify rollback works and restores known-good behavior