APRF-RFC-0006: Demote reliability-continuity REL-M7 to recommended (REL-R5)

Field	Value
Status	accepted
Author(s)	StackRail (working-draft publisher)
Created	2026-08-01
SemVer impact	MINOR
Index summary	Demotes REL-M7→REL-R5 (AI-dependency chaos); removes from Regulated mandatories; pre-release ID-removal exception.
Related	APRF-RFC-0005, APRF-RFC-0002 (pre-release M→R pattern)

Problem

REL-M7 required at least one AI-dependency chaos exercise in the last 180 days with retained actions as a Regulated mandatory (must, minCriticality: 3, requiredFromLevel: 5). That over-weights proactive chaos experimentation relative to production-blocking reliability gates:

Stronger / adjacent control	What it already proves
REL-M1 / REL-M2 / REL-M3	Timeouts/retries, journey degraded mode, partial-failure outcome evidence
REL-M4	AI control-plane backup inventory + restore test
REL-M6	Business-critical service RTO/RPO linked to tested restore/failover
REL-M8	Contractual/technical multi-provider options for Level-5 continuity
REL-R4	Periodic continuity drills including provider loss (recommended)
INC-M1 / INC-M2	Incident playbooks and containment drills

Chaos covering AI provider/tool failure modes is valuable Level-5 maturity, but failing Regulated for missing a dated chaos after-action when degraded mode, RTO/RPO, backups, and containment already hold creates false fails for teams still building chaos programs.

Proposal

Demote REL-M7 → REL-R5 (recommended should language; hybrid detection via repo-chaos-tests / ai-chaos-dependency collector).
Remove REL-M7 from Regulated mandatoryCheckIds (Regulated 54→53; tier3-only −1). Core unchanged (38).
Remove REL-M7 from reliability-continuity mandatoryChecks in aprf-spec.json; add REL-R5 under recommendedChecks.
Pass condition unchanged in substance: ≥1 AI-dependency chaos exercise completed in the last 180 days with retained actions; attest measuredAt ≤90d.
Keep REL-M1–M4, REL-M6, REL-M8 as the reliability-continuity mandatory spine (timeouts, degraded mode, partial-failure, backups, RTO/RPO, multi-provider Level-5 options as applicable).

Alternatives considered

Soften passCondition but keep Regulated mandatory — rejected; still blocks Tier-3 for chaos-program maturity.
Demote in place (gate: recommended on REL-M7) — rejected; recommended Checks use the *-R* namespace.
Merge into REL-R4 — rejected; REL-R4 is provider-loss continuity drills with RTO/RPO results; REL-R5 is chaos covering AI dependency failure modes with retained actions.
Merge into INC-R4 — rejected; incident tabletops are not dependency chaos experiments.

Compatibility

Change	Impact
REL-M7 removed; REL-R5 added	Catalog mandatory −1; recommended +1; total Checks unchanged (178)
Core	Unchanged (38)
Regulated	54→53 (REL-M7 removed)
Crosswalk / relatedRules	Remapped REL-M7 → REL-R5
Collector / plugin	`ai-chaos-dependency` maps to REL-R5

SemVer: MINOR — profile gate set and Check ID remapping while still on working-draft 0.10.x.

Pre-release exception: no tagged release yet — REL-M7 YAML removed rather than deprecated stub. Recorded in `id-gaps.md`. After first tagged release, future demotions must use deprecated + replacedBy.

Security considerations

No weakening of timeouts, degraded mode, partial-failure handling, backups, RTO/RPO, or multi-provider Level-5 options. Residual risk is less proactive discovery of AI-dependency failure modes; mitigated by high-severity REL-R5 plus REL-R4 continuity drills and INC containment mandatories.

Open questions

Should Regulated later re-include AI-dependency chaos as additional mandatory once Level-5 ops maturity is ratified?
Should the chaos window stay at 180 days, or align to 90 days with other continuity drills (REL-R4)?

Checklist

Problem and affected parties
Proposed change stated
SemVer impact justified
Compatibility / deprecation plan
Checks remain measurable
Crosswalk impact noted
Security / safety considered
Open questions listed

Comment window: 14 days from Created (working-draft quorum applies). Interim contact: see /aprf/rfc/.