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Line: Operate

Enterprise analog: Platform engineering / SRE.
Covers: Shared runtime health for self-hosted and related infra.
Tracking: Notion Workstreams database — view: Operate Work. Gatekeeper: Platform Engineer. See agent setup.

Editorial Publish is line-specific production; Operate owns shared host health. Writing deploy uses Editorial.Publisher with Operate standards (secrets, host).


Operate knowledge (hosts & tools)

Doc Purpose
Host inventory host.konstant, host.vps-legacy (ai-sandbox), access aliases
Konstant operations Dual-run, bootstrap, runbook map, tunnel
VPS legacy ai-sandbox inventory, no-new-apps, migrate
Cutover and retire Hostname flips, rollback, decommission
Operate tooling secret-gate, DNS/tunnel CLIs, platform-control, pipeline scripts
Heritage infrastructure Incubator / infrastructure-management decisions (non-binding)

Secrets: always secret-gate → Bitwarden. See secrets standard.


Operate vs Software

Concern Owner
Application features, most product bugs, promote, app-repository deploy wiring Engineering Lead (Software workstream)
Shared hosts, sockets, nginx/certs patterns, observability, incidents, retire Platform Engineer (Operate workstream)
First-deploy shared platform and cert wiring Platform Engineer
First-deploy app-repository deploy wiring Engineering Lead

First deploy may run concurrent Software and Operate workstreams on the same Initiative. Collaboration is allowed; accountability is not shared. Do not label ownership Joint.

New product features belong in a Software workstream. An observation may move the Operate workstream to Change or Incident, or add a Software workstream for an application defect. Do not absorb Software responsibilities into Operate.


Workflow

                ┌─ Change ──┐
Run → Observe ──┤           ├──→ Run
                └─ Incident ┘
         │
         └──→ Retire
Stage Inventories
Run ops-profile (pairs with Software host×shape)
Observe observability depth
Change change-style.hotfix \| normal \| migrate-host
Incident severity → runbook depth
Retire archive / migrate / delete

Change and Incident are branches from an active runtime (Run/Observe), not steps in a mandatory sequential ladder. After Change or Incident work completes, the workstream returns to Run unless Retire is the exit. The exact entry criteria, exit evidence, and return-to-Run conditions must be defined before Conductor may authorize those transitions deterministically.

Host migration (VPS → konstant) uses Change with migrate-host then Retire on the legacy host — see cutover.


Roles

role.platform-engineer, role.on-call


Cross-line coordination

  • In: Software deployment adds or activates an Operate workstream at Run.
  • Out to Software: If Observe or Incident finds an application defect, add or activate a Software workstream on the same Initiative.
  • Evidence: Major Change, Incident, and Retire outcomes are recorded on the Operate workstream and Initiative decision log.

Tools

Canonical catalog: Operate tooling.
Summary: konstant/VPS runbooks (in Conductor), systemd/nginx, MCP SSH, deploy workflows, secret-gate, cloudflare-tunnel-cli, hetzner-dns-cli, platform-control.

Tooling: Runtime artifacts and state live in runbooks, hosts, observability, and SSH-accessed systems. Notion owns the Initiative and Operate workstream state and links to operational evidence. Repository-local GitHub issues are optional for application defects. See tooling-map.md.