Alpha Readiness

Use this checklist before inviting external design partners into Emban.

Goal: a new org should be able to move from sample data to a published live embed without manual rescue work, and any issue should be easy to diagnose from logs, audit history, and the runbook.

Release map

Use these four surfaces together when deciding whether Emban is ready for an external design-partner round.

Flow Quickstart Confirms the happy path still works from first event to published tenant-scoped embed. Reference API Reference Check that payloads, scopes, runtime commands, and returned shapes match the current server. Proof Live demo Validate that the public signed-session path, runtime events, and host commands still behave correctly. Ops Runbook Use the current migration order, restart steps, and smoke checks instead of relying on tribal memory.

Release Run Order

Apply the full migration chain on a fresh environment, then restart the API with production secrets and real CORS allowlists.
Run bash scripts/prelaunch_smoke.sh against the live base URL and treat any failure as a release blocker.
Replay the docs happy path in Quickstart How It Works and verify that the resulting signed session matches the behavior described in API Reference.
Open Live demo and confirm tenant switching, runtime events, host commands, and render height all still behave correctly.
Only then invite external design partners and collect issues under the stop-ship / onboarding-friction / later labels below.

Launch Gate

Sign up → sample dashboard → quickstart → first real event → production draft → publish → live embed works end-to-end.
Fresh deploy plus migrations works from zero.
Tenant isolation, publish semantics, export, drill-through, and permissions are verified on a running server.
The docs happy path matches the real API and builder behavior.

Must-Have Checks

Operational

Production secrets are set and defaults are rejected at startup.
CORS is restricted to real app origins.
Health checks, restart steps, and backup notes are documented in the Runbook.
Run bash scripts/prelaunch_smoke.sh against a live server before external demos or launch.
Postgres and ClickHouse backup and restore have been dry-run once.
Migrations are reproducible on a fresh environment.

Product

Audit log covers auth, API keys, org settings, member changes, publish, and embed-sensitive actions.
Draft dashboards never render through live embed routes.
Template gallery, auto-create, and quickstart all create usable first drafts.
Builder can safely edit, restore published, duplicate, and publish without forced hard refreshes.
Sample data and real-data activation are clearly separated in the UI.

Docs

Quickstart is reproducible in 10 to 15 minutes.
API reference reflects the actual payloads and publish flow.
Runbook is reachable from the docs navigation.
The prelaunch smoke script covers Go build, app/demo/embed-sdk builds, and the full E2E happy path.

Stop-Ship Issues

Any cross-tenant leak in embed, export, detail, or query routes.
Viewer, editor, or ingest-scoped keys can reach admin-only actions.
Unpublished dashboards render through any live embed endpoint.
Fresh setup fails because migrations or schema drift are incomplete.
Quickstart or docs point to dead routes, stale payloads, or broken steps.
Real events are silently dropped or reported as accepted when they are not queryable.

First 2 Weeks Metrics

Metric	Why it matters
Signup → sample dashboard view	Confirms the default seeded path is healthy.
Signup → first real event	Measures time-to-value and onboarding friction.
First real event → first production draft	Shows whether templates and auto-create are useful.
First production draft → first publish	Measures builder clarity and confidence.
First publish → first live embed	Confirms the real customer-facing outcome.
Support touches per org	Shows whether alpha is founder-assisted or truly usable.

Design Partner Scorecard

Strong fit: B2B SaaS with existing event data, a customer portal, and a clear customer-facing analytics use case.
Warning sign: they really want a general BI tool, arbitrary SQL workbench, or enterprise SSO first.
Good alpha signal: they send real events, publish a dashboard, and ship a live embed into a real product surface.
Bad alpha signal: every onboard stalls in schema cleanup, manual query work, or hand-built dashboards.

Operating Rhythm

Keep one shared issue list tagged stop-ship, onboarding-friction, or later.
Review signup, real-event, publish, and embed metrics daily during the first two weeks.
After each design partner onboarding, decide whether manual help belongs in product, docs, or the runbook.

Related Docs

Quickstart How It Works — canonical happy path
API Reference — request and response shapes
Runbook — restart, health, backup, and incident basics