Promotable Lineage

Definition

Promotable lineage is an operational lineage record that has passed Yanzi’s certification and convergence validation process. When lineage is promotable, the release candidate associated with it is eligible for promotion — meaning a human governance approver can proceed with releasing it.

Lineage does not become promotable automatically. It must be certified. Certification is the governance gate that transforms working lineage into promotable lineage.

The Promotion Gate

In a Yanzi-governed release process, promotion is not triggered by a passing CI pipeline. It is triggered by a human engineer reviewing the certification result and making a governed decision to promote.

Promotable lineage gives the approver the information they need to make that decision:

• The corpus hash at certification time
• Convergence validation results
• Rule and Role compliance status
• Checkpoint coverage for the release
• Any divergences found and their resolution status

The approver makes a governance decision, not just a button click.

Promotable vs. Canonical

Promotable lineage is lineage that may be promoted. Canonical lineage is lineage that has been promoted and is now the authoritative record for a specific release.

The distinction matters for audit purposes. A system may have multiple certified (promotable) candidates at once — only one becomes the canonical lineage for a given release version.

What Prevents Promotion

Not all lineage becomes promotable. Common reasons certification fails to produce promotable lineage:

• Convergence validation found unresolved divergences
• Required governance checkpoints are missing from the lineage record
• Active Rule constraints were violated and not explicitly overridden with documented rationale
• Role authority boundaries were exceeded without approval

Any of these conditions produces a certification report identifying the specific gaps — but not promotable lineage.