Model Update Protocol: Controlled Upgrade Pipeline

Controlled upgrade pipeline from current production version to the next. Evaluation, merge, validation, security review, and approval gates.

ModelUpdateProtocol defines the controlled pipeline for upgrading an enterprise model from the current production version to the next. This page specifies the full flowchart, approval gates, required roles, and the criteria for promotion or archival.

Update Flowchart

The pipeline below shows every stage from the current production version to the next release.

Stage Definitions

Stage	Description	Output
New Candidate / Base	Identify the research candidate or base model for the update	Candidate ID, source lineage
Evaluation	Run EvaluationEngine on the Optimization Set and Validation Set	Candidate status: PASS, FAIL, or REGRESSION
Merge / Optimization	If the update involves merging, invoke MergeEngine with MergeStrategy	Merged artifact
Validation	Run ModelCompatibilityAnalyzer, tensor shape checks, and smoke inference	COMPATIBLE or INCOMPATIBLE
Security Review	Security Requirements audit, license check, SBOM review	Approved or Rejected
Compare with Production	Benchmark the candidate against current vN on the same split	Performance delta report

Approval Gates

Gate	Required Role	Criteria
Evaluation gate	Model Engineer	Candidate status is PASS
Validation gate	Model Engineer	Compatibility state is COMPATIBLE
Security gate	Security Lead	Security review signed, license compliant
Production comparison gate	Model Lead	No regression on any benchmark metric
Release gate	Release Manager	All prior gates passed, rollback plan documented

Any gate failure halts the pipeline. The candidate is archived with status FAIL or REGRESSION. There is no bypass mechanism.

Version Increment Rules

Change Type	Version Increment	Example
Architecture or tokenizer change	MAJOR	v1 to v2
New capability, non-breaking merge	MINOR	v1.1 to v1.2
Patch, quantization update, security fix	PATCH	v1.1.1 to v1.1.2

The version increment is determined by ModelCompatibilityAnalyzer and MergeEngine output, not by human discretion alone.

Rollback Plan

Every update request must include a rollback plan before release approval:

• Previous version artifact hash
• Estimated RPO and RTO (placeholders pending operational calibration)
• Verification script for hash and smoke test
• Contact for manual override

See Model Rollback for the full rollback execution protocol.

Integration

ModelUpdateProtocol is initiated by DeploymentManager and tracked in ExperimentTracker. It reads candidates from ModelRegistry and writes new enterprise versions back to the same registry with updated lineage.