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ES-0001: Bluefly Engineering Standard

Field Value
Status Active
Date 2026-09-09
Author Thomas Scola
Scope Platform-wide — all Bluefly code, docs, and ops

Purpose

This document codifies the architectural decisions and terminology rules into a single, enforceable engineering standard. All Bluefly engineering work — code, documentation, automation, runbooks, and operational procedures — must conform to this standard.


1. Runtime Architecture

Authority: Bluefly Deployment Architecture

1.1 Layering

The Bluefly runtime stack is strictly layered. Every layer depends only on the layer below it.

Bluefly Governance Plane (Business Intent)  →  Release Bundle (Desired State)  →  Gas City Execution Plane (Reconciliation)  →  Oracle Runtime Plane (Immutable)

Gas Town is upstream's predecessor project. It may exist as an imported Pack. It is not a peer orchestration platform, not an intermediary, and not a layer in this stack.

1.2 Domain Compilation

Bluefly overlay terms compile onto Gas City primitives. They do not add primitives. Source: How Gas City Works.

Bluefly Concept Maps onto
Mission Pack
Factory Gas City + Pack-configured Agents + Orders
Capability Formula
Deployment Bluefly Operations / GitLab release — not a Session, not a primitive
Worker Agent

1.3 Immutable Deployment Rule

Deployment across the platform relies on immutable, artifact-first deployments. - No manual runtime mutations. - No SSH deployments or manual docker-compose. - All environments are managed via Governance Plane approvals releasing versioned Release Bundles.


2. Repository Authority Model

2.1 The Four Authorities

Every repository defines four distinct authorities. They must never be conflated.

Authority Definition Default
Development Authority Where active development occurs Mac
Source Authority Single source of truth for version history; CI/CD reads here GitLab
Deployment Authority Where production workloads run Oracle
Recovery Authority Disaster recovery clone; not authoritative for dev/source/deploy NAS

3. Terminology Standard

3.1 Required Terminology

Use This Instead Of
Source Authority (GitLab) "canonical" (unqualified)
Recovery Authority (NAS) "NAS canonical," "NAS source"
Development Authority (Mac) "Mac canonical," "local canonical"
Deployment Authority (Oracle) "production copy"
Release Bundle "Deployment package"

4. Prohibited Patterns

The following patterns are explicitly prohibited in all Bluefly engineering artifacts:

Pattern Why
git pull on production Runtime plane is immutable
Manual SSH deployments Deployments flow through Gas City reconciliation
"NAS is canonical" NAS is Recovery Authority, not Source Authority
Mutable production config Violates IaC and Desired State principles
Archive without proving all 9 points Violates the Execution Rule

5. Open Source Integration

When integrating Open Source Software, engineers SHALL first determine whether the requested capability already exists as native functionality, configuration, plugin, provider, middleware, extension point, or officially supported integration. Bluefly code may only implement domain-specific behavior after all upstream ownership has been exhausted and documented with evidence.

Binding factory placement: Bluefly Factory Operating Contract (Preferred extension order; Decision gate).


References