chore(quality): velocity phase — loosen every numeric baseline by 20% until v4.0, monitor headroom nightly

[diegosouzapw]

Why

Owner decision (2026-08-30): until the v4.0 LTS modularization, speed matters more than holding the debt line. Today the base went red on every merge batch and each baseline red cost a sweep (#12087, #12094, #12114, #12118, #12123 in one day).

What

Relaxation — one auditable pass (scripts/quality/relax-baselines.mjs --pct 20 --note velocity_2026_08_30):

baseline	before → after
quality-baseline.json metrics	lower-is-better ×1.2, higher-is-better ÷1.2 — e.g. deadExports 416→500, cognitive 1197→1437, coverage 80.8→67.33 (floor 60 kept), typeCoverage 92.17→76.81, eslintWarnings 0→1050 (20% of the 5,247 frozen suppressions), eslintErrors stays 0
complexity-baseline.json	count 2681 → 3218
duplication-baseline.json	5.72% → 6.86%
file-size-baseline.json	cap/testCap 1000 → 1200, all 127 frozen caps ×1.2
api/dashboard/open-sse-typecheck-baseline.json	per-file counts ×1.2 (289→455, 229→324, 5→9)
check-openapi-coverage.mjs	THRESHOLD 36 → 30

The phase is declared in quality-baseline.json → _policy {phase: velocity, until: 4.0.0, relaxPct: 20, requireTighten: false}; check-quality-ratchet turns --require-tighten into an advisory while it exists (2 new tests), and the nightly bank-ratchet-shrinks job pauses (it would bank the measured shrink and silently undo the headroom every night). Allowlists and pass/fail gates are untouched.

Monitoring — scripts/quality/baseline-headroom.mjs (npm run quality:headroom) measures every numeric gate the way CI does and prints live / baseline / headroom (ok ≥10%, warn <10%, critical <0). New nightly job baseline-headroom posts the table to the living issue 📈 Baseline headroom (velocity phase) and toggles the headroom-alert label — the early warning that a budget is being eaten by a few PRs. 6 unit tests on the pure helpers.

Red tests on the tip aligned to merged contracts (not baselines): #11775 (FREE lease-capable connections are ordinary capacity — gate inventory 48/97/99, sse-auth-exclusive-leases, warmupScheduler), #11794 (dual-loopback readiness probe), the 8 vi strings #11775 left as __MISSING__.

Docs: QUALITY_GATES.md → "Velocity phase" (tooling + how to close the phase at 4.0 and tighten beyond the measured values), AGENTS.md quick reference. Plan + 2026 research (Sonar Clean-as-You-Code new-code period, ESLint bulk suppressions, quality ratchets) in _tasks/superpowers/plans/2026-08-30-velocity-phase-baselines-to-v4.md.

Validation

• check:file-size, check-api-typecheck, check-openapi-coverage, check:env-doc-sync, check:docs-sync, check:doc-links, check:fabricated-docs → all green locally
• quality-ratchet.test.ts 20/20, baseline-headroom.test.ts 6/6, the 6 aligned test files 49/49
• actionlint clean; npm run quality:headroom -- --only fileSize,rtlPhysicalClasses smoke OK