GEN-11: Friends & family beta channel - runbook, invite path, feedback loop, activation metrics

[Chris0Jeky]

Wave: GENERALIST expansion (ADR-0046, Proposed — ratification tracked on GEN-00) — docs/REVIVAL_PLAN.md Phase 4. Review tier: LIGHT (docs + runbook; no code beyond tiny glue). Lane G-C. Depends on REVIVAL-01 (#1297, registration gating) and REVIVAL-07 (#1303, v0.1.0 release artifacts); friends-family value multiplies after GEN-06 (screenshot intake).

Context

The maintainer's stated dogfooding path is friends and family — non-technical users who will never clone a repo or read a README. They are the generalist acceptance test: if a family member can capture a screenshot of a school schedule and approve the extracted tasks, the thesis holds. The revival plan's beta machinery (InviteOnly registration, desktop exe, hosted demo, activation milestones §8) provides every ingredient; nobody has assembled them into a "hand this to a non-engineer" path.

Acceptance criteria

1. docs/ops/FRIENDS_FAMILY_BETA.md runbook: (a) maintainer-hosted InviteOnly instance path (Docker deploy + Auth:Registration=InviteOnly + invite flow) and (b) per-device desktop-exe path — with an explicit recommendation of which to start with and why; screenshot-level setup guide for the invitee.
2. Privacy note written for the host, not lawyers: whose data lives where; what a shared instance means (maintainer can see the DB); BYO LLM key implications on a family instance (maintainer's key = maintainer pays + content egresses under maintainer's provider account — say it plainly and echo the egress-disclosure surface).
3. Feedback path that does not require GitHub: decide + document (prefilled email link, shared note, or the in-app feedback link retargeted per instance — zero new backend; REVIVAL-12's in-app link is a prefilled GitHub issue URL, which non-technical users won't use — record the divergence).
4. Success metrics reusing REVIVAL_PLAN §8 local activation milestones (first capture, first approved proposal, first board apply) + a weekly 5-minute check-in template (what did you capture, what did you skip, where did you get stuck).
5. Findings route into the dogfooding lane: friends-family findings are exempt from the intake severity bar exactly like ARCHIVE-03: Dogfooding sprint - 10+ days of real personal use as the pivot's acceptance test #1271 dogfooding findings — record that in the runbook.

Traps

• Do not build invite-code UI beyond what REVIVAL-01 ships — if InviteOnly needs more UX, seed it as a finding, don't gold-plate here.
• Keep the runbook honest about v0.x risk (the UPGRADING.md / auto-backup guarantees from REVIVAL-07 are prerequisites for inviting anyone's real data).

Verification

Runbook walked end-to-end once by the maintainer (or an agent simulating the invitee path in a clean container/VM for the hosted variant); links/commands verified; doc-governance Last-Updated stamp correct.

[Chris0Jeky]

Realignment 2026-08-23: not started — and the readiness precondition has moved. Verified against main a43df082c.

Not started: docs/ops/FRIENDS_FAMILY_BETA.md does not exist (only docs/product/BETA_INTAKE_WORKFLOW.md), and no PR references this issue.

Dependencies are discharged:

• REVIVAL-01 REVIVAL-01: Registration gating - Auth:Registration Mode (Open/InviteOnly/Closed) with first-user bootstrap #1297 (registration gating, Auth:Registration Open/InviteOnly/Closed) closed 2026-07-13.
• REVIVAL-07 REVIVAL-07: Ship v0.1.0 - exercise the release pipeline, GHCR image, fix render.yaml, UPGRADING.md + pre-migration auto-backup #1303 closed; v0.1.0 tagged 2026-08-19 with four platform archives, v0.1.1 on 2026-08-21.
• The body's own trap — "the UPGRADING.md / auto-backup guarantees from REVIVAL-07 are prerequisites for inviting anyone's real data" — is satisfied by Data-trust pack: pre-migration SQLite auto-backup + UPGRADING.md (spun out of #1303 AC4) #1803 (pre-migration SQLite auto-backup + UPGRADING.md), closed.

But the build is not handable yet, and that is the real gate. On 2026-08-22 an ordinary-profile Windows startup incident on v0.1.1: an inherited retired user-scoped Gemini env config made the packaged app exit before it ever listened, behind a misleading error. #1876 was reopened for it, and q-3 (2026-08-23) scoped v0.1.2 as that correction plus the open Priority I tranche, PR-only, with maintainer deck acceptance before any tag. An invitee hitting that failure has no recovery path and no support channel — precisely the scenario this runbook exists to prevent.

q-2/q-8 also put maintainer dogfooding first (started 2026-08-22, checkpoint floor ≥ 2026-09-01). Inviting non-technical users before that produces beta signal about install friction, not about the product.

Blocked on #1876 / v0.1.2 — not on any GEN work. Two body edits worth making when it is next touched: mark the #1297 / #1303 / #1803 dependencies discharged, and add the #1876 gate. Note for #1326: GEN-12's criteria 1 and 3 both require signal from this channel, so this issue is that gate's rate limiter.

Header correction: ADR-0046 is Accepted (2026-07-13), not Proposed.

[Chris0Jeky]

[Codex lane claim v2]

Lane: G-C / beta-channel-ops
Scope: #1325 — reconcile current prerequisites and add the friends-and-family beta operating runbook; no invite UI or runtime change.
Paths: docs/ops/FRIENDS_FAMILY_BETA.md
Claimed-at: 2026-09-15T00:02:20Z
Lease: 120 minutes
Base: main @ 2cdc452

No overlap found with the current open-PR file ownership. I will keep the issue open unless the required clean-container/VM or maintainer walkthrough is actually completed; the PR will deliver the runbook and executable checklist only.

[Chris0Jeky]

Estate ops eng hygiene (2026-09-23) — bottleneck flag, not a product rewrite.

External friends-and-family activation remains the open bottleneck while eng ships honesty/CI flood. Eng will not pretend CI greens on #3269/#337x authorize cutover execution.

• Product merge-next starts at fix(frontend): resolve late-loaded input-assist matches #3269 (eng CI noted).
• Park fix(triage): preserve distinct overlap actions #3270 until argument-identity completeness.
• Serve GitHub Pages demo without localhost:5000 #3130 Pages fidelity already merged — historical only.
• UXQA owns usability depth on Pages/Review; eng cross-links only: [v0.4 QA] Qualification programme, feature contracts and release outcome ledger #2898 · [v0.4 QA-03] Compare Classic, Studio, Companion and Unified through task-based UX sessions #2901.

No cohort runbook execution from this bot.