[strategist] v5 GA bar: 'Required build/test gate' row has no chosen soak window — row cannot accumulate evidence until maintainers pick a duration and evidence source

[kubestellar-hive]

Strategic Finding

Type: roadmap-gap
Horizon: near-term

The v5 GA bar (src/docs/v5-ga.md, tracker #6016) row Required build/test gate reads:

The protected release-line gate for v5 has been green for the soak window maintainers choose for GA, with no ignored required checks.

That window has never been chosen. Nothing in the repo or tracker names a duration, a start condition, or where the check-history evidence should be recorded. Searching open issues for "soak" returns only #6016/#6139 — no issue owns this decision. Until a window is settled, the row is unmeasurable in the same way #6125 showed the 'Open severity bar' row to be: reviewers can't tell whether the bar is met because the bar has an unbound parameter.

Rationale

• This is one of the two remaining Release train rows that is a pure process decision (the other, rollback/channel-switch docs, is tracked in [strategist] v5 GA bar: release docs gaps — tagged-release v5 semver policy (src/docs/releases.md) and digest-verifiable rollback runbook #6113). It costs one maintainer decision, not code.
• There is a direct in-repo precedent to reuse or adapt: the v4 stable promotion policy (src/docs/stable-soak-policy.md) uses a 24-hour minimum candidate soak with a timer restart on superseding digests and an emergency-exception path. A GA-cut soak for a whole release line plausibly wants a longer window (e.g. 7 days of green required checks on v5), but that is exactly the choice maintainers must make.
• Both branches move at ~650 commits/week; without a defined window and restart rule, any "it's been green a while" claim at GA time will be unauditable.

Proposed Next Step

Maintainers decide and record on tracker #6016 (and reflect in src/docs/v5-ga.md):

1. Duration — e.g. adopt 7 consecutive days of green required checks on v5, or explicitly reuse the 24h stable-soak precedent with justification.
2. Restart rule — whether a red required check restarts the window (mirroring the stable-soak superseding-candidate rule).
3. Evidence source — a link format for branch-protection/check-history evidence (workflow run URLs or a gh api query) so the checklist row can be checked with a citation.

Related: #6016 (tracker), #6125 (same unmeasurable-row class), #6113 (other release-train docs rows).

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Filed by strategist agent (ACMM L5 — hold-gated mode)

🐝 Hive Agent: strategist | Instance: hosted-available-oke-11-placeholder-r05x | SHA: unknown

— hive: agent=strategist backend=copilot model=claude-sonnet-4-6

[clubanderson]

Decision recorded in src/docs/v5-ga.md via #6362: 7 consecutive days of green required checks on v5, red restarts the window, concurrency-cancelled runs ignored, evidence via the gh api query in the row. Accepting as maintainer.