ADR: Beta Readiness Follows Email Key Delivery

Date: 2026-07-03 Status: Accepted

Context

Scout's beta onboarding path changed several times while production readiness was being built. The current public contract is email-first beta registration: testers submit name and email, Scout records the signup, generates an API key, and emails the key when hosted SMTP delivery is configured.

Stripe remains part of the longer-term commercial path, including paid credit packages and possible card-backed beta verification, but Stripe Checkout is not the readiness gate for email-first beta key delivery.

Decision

scripts/scout-hosted-admin readiness --require-beta-signup and the underlying readiness checker must use ready_for_beta_key_delivery as the beta signup gate.

ready_for_beta_checkout remains a separate signal for card-backed Stripe setup readiness. Paid launch readiness continues to use ready_for_paid_key_delivery.

Consequences

• SMTP/key-delivery configuration is the immediate blocker for public beta key registration.
• Stripe Checkout, webhook, and paid price IDs remain blockers for paid packages and card-backed checkout verification.
• Operator reports should say "hosted beta key delivery not ready" instead of "card-backed beta checkout not ready" when SMTP delivery is missing.
• Docs must describe beta registration as email-first and must not imply that Stripe Checkout is required before beta key delivery can be considered ready.

Verification

• Added a regression test proving beta readiness passes when ready_for_beta_key_delivery=true even if ready_for_beta_checkout=false.
• Added documentation tests so docs/distribution.md preserves the email-first beta contract.
• Focused verification reported 54 passed, 2 warnings.
• Pyright reported 0 errors; Ruff check and format check were clean.