[Story] Validate demand — collect 6+ external use cases (BLOCKING GATE)

[shreyanshjain7174]

Parent

Part of #146 (Cross-Cluster Agent Identity Federation epic).

Goal

Collect concrete demand signal before any engineering work starts on SPIFFE/SPIRE federation. This issue gates all other stories in the epic.

Validation criteria (HARD)

Implementation is unblocked only when either is true:

• 6+ distinct external use cases in the linked GitHub Discussion (each comment names a concrete deployment scenario)
• 1 paying customer explicitly requests this in writing (email or design partner agreement)

Why

The RFC was triggered by a single tweet (@JacobSobolev, 19 May 2026). One signal is not validation. We refuse to build for one tweet.

Tasks

• Discussion opened in Ideas category
• Discussion linked from RFC, ROADMAP, epic, README
• Crosspost to: r/kubernetes, CNCF Slack #wg-ai, HN if appropriate
• Comment on Jacob's X thread linking the Discussion
• Weekly check on Discussion comments (until gate clears or 90 days pass)

Decision rule

• 0–2 external comments after 90 days → close as not-validated, keep RFC as historical reference, do not build
• 3–5 external comments → leave open, prototype in feature branch only (no main commits)
• 6+ external comments OR paying customer → close as validated, unblock all downstream stories

Acceptance

• Either validation criterion met (close as completed)
• Or 90 days elapsed with insufficient signal (close as not_planned)