Platform & DevOps

This page gives the direct path to HELM deployment, operations, and runtime lifecycle references. The goal is to answer what to change first: source docs, ops procedures, or boundary routing before touching production behavior.

Audience

• SRE and platform engineers operating HELM environments
• Developers planning deployment targets and CI/CD topology
• Release engineers maintaining release gates and rollout controls
• Product operators handling incidents and verification workflows
• Security reviewers checking observable evidence in production

Outcome

After using this page you should be able to:

• find the correct operational playbooks for day-1 and day-2 activities,
• map deployment and observability guidance to source-owned docs,
• distinguish OSS deployment guidance from Commercial deployment and operational guidance,
• and resolve documentation gaps without guessing platform ownership.

Mermaid

flowchart TD
    subgraph Ingestion["1. Ingestion & Context Plane"]
        Source["HELM Source Materials"]
        Build["Validation + CI/CD"]
        Deploy["Deployment Surfaces"]
        Incident["Incident Response"]
        OSS["HELM AI Kernel"]
        Commercial["HELM AI Enterprise"]
        Operator["Operator Guide"]
    end

    subgraph Execution["3. Execution & Verdict Plane"]
        Run["Runtime / Operations"]
    end

    subgraph Ledger["4. Tamper-Evident Ledger Plane"]
        Observe["Observability + Evidence"]
    end

    %% Operational Flow Edges
    Source --> Build
    Build --> Deploy
    Deploy --> Run
    Run --> Observe
    Observe --> Incident
    OSS --> Build
    OSS --> Deploy
    Commercial --> Deploy
    Commercial --> Operator

    %% Premium Styling Rules
    style Run fill:#3182ce,stroke:#2b6cb0,stroke-width:2px,color:#fff
    style Observe fill:#2f855a,stroke:#276749,stroke-width:2px,color:#fff

flowchart TD
    subgraph Ingestion["1. Ingestion & Context Plane"]
        Source["HELM Source Materials"]
        Build["Validation + CI/CD"]
        Deploy["Deployment Surfaces"]
        Incident["Incident Response"]
        OSS["HELM AI Kernel"]
        Commercial["HELM AI Enterprise"]
        Operator["Operator Guide"]
    end

    subgraph Execution["3. Execution & Verdict Plane"]
        Run["Runtime / Operations"]
    end

    subgraph Ledger["4. Tamper-Evident Ledger Plane"]
        Observe["Observability + Evidence"]
    end

    %% Operational Flow Edges
    Source --> Build
    Build --> Deploy
    Deploy --> Run
    Run --> Observe
    Observe --> Incident
    OSS --> Build
    OSS --> Deploy
    Commercial --> Deploy
    Commercial --> Operator

    %% Premium Styling Rules
    style Run fill:#3182ce,stroke:#2b6cb0,stroke-width:2px,color:#fff
    style Observe fill:#2f855a,stroke:#276749,stroke-width:2px,color:#fff

Source Truth

• docs/08_DEPLOYMENT.md
• docs/operations/**
• deploy/**
• infra/**
• docs/platform/**
• docs/release/**

Update these source paths before changing route mapping in this landing page.

Deployment and environment guidance

• Deployment guide source: docs/08_DEPLOYMENT.md — recommended deployment patterns and environment considerations.
• Commercial deployment source: docs/COMMERCIAL_DEPLOY.md — production deployment guidance for HELM AI Enterprise environments.
• Helm chart source: deploy/helm-chart/ — Helm chart usage and chart-level configuration.
• Kubernetes Deployment — Kernel Kubernetes manifests and topology.
• Deployment inventory source: docs/operations/DEPLOYMENT_INVENTORY.md — deployed service and port inventory.

Operations and runtime operations

• Operations runbook source: docs/operations/DEPLOY_RUNBOOK.md — day-2 operations, health checks, and maintenance.
• Operator runbook source: docs/operations/OPERATOR_RUNBOOK.md — operator procedures and escalation paths.
• Operator Guide — enterprise operator-facing operational manual.
• Observability — logs, metrics, tracing, and alerts.
• Tracing — trace setup and operational interpretation.

Configuration, CI/CD, and release

• Configuration source: docs/operations/CONFIGURATION.md — runtime environment variables and feature flags.
• CI/CD pipeline source: .github/workflows/ — continuous integration and deployment pipeline.
• Quality gates source: Makefile and scripts/ — checks required before release.
• Release process source: RELEASE_NOTES.md and release workflow files — versioning, release coordination, and rollout practices.

Kernel vs HELM AI Enterprise boundaries (explicit)

• Kernel documentation should carry canonical deployment semantics that remain portable across contexts and are used as base expectations for environment setup and validation.
• HELM AI Enterprise documentation should capture production packaging, entitlement-sensitive operations, and enterprise-level support flows.
• Use this rule when splitting a topic:
  • if a topic describes protocol-neutral deployment mechanics, keep it OSS,
  • if a topic encodes commercial operational policy or customer-specific process, classify it Commercial.
• Deployment target pages can still link to each other, but ownership should remain explicit and stable.

Troubleshooting

• If a deployment question has no answer in OSS docs, check the corresponding Commercial deployment page before adding new behavior.
• If a CI/CD change is not reflected in release docs, align it first with RELEASE_NOTES.md, Makefile, and the relevant workflow.
• If an on-call issue appears in runtime but not in operators materials, start with docs/operations/DEPLOY_RUNBOOK.md, then docs/operations/OPERATOR_RUNBOOK.md.
• If source coverage checks report missing public mapping for deployment files, update the source mapping references used by this page before merging.
• If observability dashboards are inconsistent across environments, compare /observability and /tracing with the deployment topology for the exact environment.

Adoption flow for production changes

1. Identify whether the change is OSS infrastructure semantics or Commercial operational policy.
2. Update the owning source file (deploy/**, infra/**, docs/operations/**, or docs/08_DEPLOYMENT.md) first.
3. Update this landing page routes to match the source classification immediately after review.
4. Confirm that troubleshooting paths still lead to the correct operator route and add missing cross-links if needed.