# Deferred ideas / future enhancements (orchestrator-tracked)

Post-DONE or "revisit later" ideas that are intentionally **out of scope** for the current build
(§2 Definition of Done). Not active work — parked here so they aren't lost. The loops may pull an
item into the project `BACKLOG.md` as `[idea]` if/when it becomes relevant.

- [ ] **ALT infra-app model: deploy traefik / warm-keycloak / drone the normal Co-op Cloud way,
  updated outside Nix via abra by maintainers.** *(operator-flagged 2026-05-29, alternative to the
  current Phase-2w design — return to later)*
  The **current** design Nix-*reconciles* the infra/warm apps: NixOS systemd oneshots run `abra` to
  deploy traefik/keycloak/drone, and a nightly `nixos-rebuild` auto-updates them to latest with a
  pre-deploy major/manual-migration gate (WC1.2) + post-deploy health-gated rollback (WC1.1).
  **The alternative:** treat the CI server like a normal Co-op Cloud host — traefik, the warm
  keycloak, and drone are **plain abra deployments managed by maintainers**, deployed once and
  **upgraded by a human via `abra app upgrade`** (using abra's own release-notes / major-bump
  caution), with **no Nix reconciler and no nightly auto-update** for them. Nix would provide only
  the host substrate (OS, docker/swarm, the harness, secrets), not the infra-app lifecycle.
  - *Pros:* simpler — no reconciler/rollback/nightly machinery; idiomatic Co-op Cloud ops (maintainers
    manage these exactly like any other coop-cloud app); updates are normal human abra actions; lower
    cognitive load (no "infra is special / Nix-driven" layer).
  - *Cons:* the infra apps are **no longer reproducible-from-git** — a VM recreate (the D8 throwaway
    rebuild) would NOT re-establish traefik/keycloak/drone; they'd need manual redeploy after a
    rebuild (D8 then covers only the host + harness, not the infra apps). Loses the automated
    nightly-latest + health-gated auto-rollback; infra updates + rollback become manual/operator
    discipline. Drifts from the project's "declarative, rebuildable from scratch" ethos.
  - *Note:* it's essentially one-or-the-other for the **update path** — a hybrid where Nix bootstraps
    them but maintainers also `abra app upgrade` them creates the dual-ownership conflict (the Nix
    reconciler would fight/redeploy over the maintainer's version on the next activation).
  - *When to revisit:* if the reconciler + rollback + nightly machinery proves high-maintenance or
    brittle, or if maintainers strongly prefer normal coop-cloud workflow over the Nix layer — weigh
    that against how much we value full reproducibility (D8) + hands-off auto-updates. *Added:* 2026-05-29.

- [ ] **Optional `--extra-tests` flag for heavy / operational tests (opt-in heavy suite).**
  Some recipe tests are "more than needed" for the default CI signal — state-management /
  long-running-instance / load / helper-script operational tests that don't fit the ephemeral
  per-run-deploy model cheaply but are useful occasionally. Today they're deferred to
  `cc-ci/machine-docs/DEFERRED.md` (e.g. matrix-synapse `compress_state.sh`,
  `test_complexity_limit.sh`, `test_purge.sh`) and don't run.
  *Idea:* add an **opt-in `--extra-tests` flag** (e.g. `!testme --extra-tests` on a PR comment, or
  a `STAGES=extra` / `EXTRA_TESTS=1` Drone build parameter) that the orchestrator passes through;
  recipes declare an `extra/` test dir or mark tests with `@pytest.mark.extra`; on opt-in the
  orchestrator runs them **alongside** the default tiers (still one deploy, still teardown). Default
  off so default CI stays fast; the operator can ask for the heavy suite when reviewing a PR that
  touches an extra-covered area (e.g. matrix-synapse's abra helpers). When implemented, each
  matching DEFERRED entry can be CLOSED by porting its test into the recipe's `extra/` and noting
  the commit in DEFERRED.md. *Why deferred for now:* default coverage is sufficient; this is a
  later breadth/depth knob, not a critical-path feature. *Added:* 2026-05-28.

- [ ] **Optional webhook self-registration (admin-access environments).**
  We deliberately made **polling the primary trigger** and require the CI server/bot to run on
  **read-level** access only — so the server does **not** auto-register Gitea webhooks (that needs
  repo-admin), and webhook setup is a documented manual admin task (§4.1, `docs/enroll-recipe.md`).
  *Later*, for environments where the CI server **does** hold admin on the recipe repos (or an
  org-level admin token is available), consider adding an **opt-in, off-by-default** feature
  (e.g. `WEBHOOK_AUTOREGISTER=1`) that auto-registers and **idempotently reconciles** the
  `issue_comment` webhook (URL, events, HMAC secret) on enrolled repos — matching our
  declarative-reconcile pattern (§9) — giving low-latency push triggering with zero manual setup.
  Must stay off by default and fall back to manual-doc + polling when admin isn't available, so the
  least-privilege (read-only) default is preserved. *Why deferred:* polling already satisfies D1 and
  the read-only posture is the goal; this is a convenience optimization for a different deployment
  profile. *Added:* 2026-05-27.