[nicho1ab]

Pull Request Evidence

Governing issue and intended outcome

• Governing issue: Closes Fix hosted PostgreSQL connection leakage blocking deployment #673
• Intended outcome: Correct the hosted PostgreSQL connection lifecycle defect that exhausted PostgreSQL max_connections and blocked the required pre-activation pg_dump during Epic: Bring hosted Compare Facilities to stakeholder-review readiness #640 deployment.

Implementation scope

• Major files or components changed: src/ccld_complaints/hosted_app/app.py, tests/unit/test_hosted_postgres_connection_lifecycle.py, tests/unit/test_hosted_reviewer_ui.py, and TESTING_STRATEGY.md.
• Important behavior intentionally left unchanged or out of scope: No schema or migration change; no source-ingestion change; no production-data change; no max_connections adjustment; no backend-termination workaround; no QNAP, Cloudflare, deployment, or production runtime mutation.
• Reviewer UI regression contracts: RT-RC-001 affected - authorized reviewer destinations and supported context remain protected while PostgreSQL connection ownership becomes request-scoped and deterministic; lifecycle regressions prove cleanup without changing reviewer navigation or authorization outcomes.

Acceptance-criteria evidence

Acceptance criterion	Evidence and result
Root cause identified	PASS - health polling created short-lived SQLAlchemy engines whose pools retained physical sessions, while reviewer routes cached one live connection across threaded requests.
Deterministic cleanup	PASS - one process-owned engine is reused and request-owned connections are context-managed.
Failed transactions roll back	PASS - forced route failure proves the write is rolled back, connection closes, and no connection remains checked out.
Early-return cleanup	PASS - POST authorization early return rolls back and leaves zero checked-out connections.
Repeated calls remain bounded	PASS - 25 health polls and 25 hosted requests complete with connection checkout/checkin parity and zero outstanding checkouts.
Repository validation	PASS - Ruff, mypy, pytest, documentation check, and workflow-contract verification pass.
Deployment verification	Pending - #640 remains blocked until governed merge and human-operated QNAP deployment proves the required pre-activation pg_dump succeeds.

Validation and failure classification

Exact command	Result	Failure classification, if applicable
ruff check .	Pass	none
mypy src	Pass	none
pytest	Pass - 2034 passed, 9 skipped in GitHub CI	none
python scripts/check_docs.py	Pass	none
python scripts/check_independent_verification.py	Pass for required workflow contract	none
PR live evidence verification	Fail before this correction	PR-body formatting/evidence failure only; implementation validation passed

• Implementation-caused failures: None identified in application code, lint, typing, tests, or documentation validation.
• Pre-existing failures: None relied upon for passage.
• Environmental failures: Earlier local repository-scoped pytest basetemp conflicted with a portable-path test; unchanged full-suite validation subsequently passed.
• Tests intentionally not run and why: QNAP/production validation was not run by Codex because Issue Fix hosted PostgreSQL connection leakage blocking deployment #673 reserves those operations for the human operator.

UI and accessibility evidence (when applicable)

Not applicable - no UI or accessibility presentation change; reviewer-route changes are limited to database connection ownership and transaction lifecycle.

Reviewer-facing redesign artifact classification (when applicable)

Not applicable - no reviewer-facing removal, merge, rename, relocation, replacement, or redesign.

Documentation, assumptions, and remaining risks

• Documentation impact: TESTING_STRATEGY.md adds the hosted PostgreSQL connection-lifecycle regression requirement for engine reuse, request-owned cleanup, rollback, bounded repeated calls, and POST early-return behavior.
• Assumptions and limitations: Repository tests establish SQLAlchemy connection and transaction lifecycle behavior but do not replace required live QNAP verification. Existing leaked sessions belong to the currently deployed pre-fix application.
• Remaining risks or follow-up: After merge, Epic: Bring hosted Compare Facilities to stakeholder-review readiness #640 remains blocked until the human operator deploys the corrected merged SHA and proves the mandatory pre-activation pg_dump and subsequent hosted acceptance gates succeed.

Governed-boundary review

Governed boundary	Status	Specific explanation or evidence
Schemas and migrations	No change	No schema or Alembic migration changed.
Ingestion and source-connector contracts	No change	No connector, retrieval, import, or source contract changed.
Security and privacy	No change	No authentication, authorization, secret, or private-data handling change.
Production data and correction behavior	No change	No production data or correction behavior changed.
Deployment and infrastructure	No change	No Compose, QNAP, Cloudflare, deployment script, PostgreSQL configuration, or max_connections change.
Repository governance	Authorized change	TESTING_STRATEGY.md was narrowly updated for Issue #673 regression requirements.
Required GitHub workflows and checks	No change	No workflow or required check was changed.
Tests or checks weakened to obtain passage	Authorized change	Test files changed to add and update connection-lifecycle regression coverage; no existing test or check was disabled, relaxed, skipped, renamed, removed, or weakened.

Required GitHub checks

• validate - rerun required after PR-body correction
• docs-check
• fixtures
• security