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+# Red Panda Approval™ — Django Addendum
+
+**Owner:** Robert Helewka <r@helu.ca>
+**Version:** 1.01
+**Last reviewed:** 2026-04-18
+**Parent document:** [Red_Panda_Standards_V1-00.md](Red_Panda_Standards_V1-00.md)
+
+This document extends the main Red Panda Standards with Django-specific conventions. Where the two documents overlap, the **main standard governs** — this addendum only adds Django-specific detail or explicitly-noted exceptions.
+
+## 🐾 Red Panda Approval™
+
+This project follows Red Panda Approval standards — our gold standard for Django application quality. Code must be elegant, reliable, and maintainable to earn the approval of our adorable red panda judges.
+
+### The 5 Sacred Django Criteria
+1. **Fresh Migration Test** — Clean migrations from empty database
+2. **Elegant Simplicity** — No unnecessary complexity
+3. **Observable & Debuggable** — Proper logging and error handling
+4. **Consistent Patterns** — Follow Django conventions
+5. **Actually Works** — Passes all checks and serves real user needs
+
+## Environment Standards
+- Virtual environment: ~/env/PROJECT/bin/activate
+- Use pyproject.toml for project configuration (no setup.py, no requirements.txt)
+- Python version: specified in pyproject.toml
+- Dependencies: floor-pinned with ceiling (e.g. `Django>=5.2,<6.0`)
+
+### Dependency Pinning
+
+```toml
+# Correct — floor pin with ceiling
+dependencies = [
+    "Django>=5.2,<6.0",
+    "djangorestframework>=3.14,<4.0",
+    "cryptography>=41.0,<45.0",
+]
+
+# Wrong — exact pins in library packages
+dependencies = [
+    "Django==5.2.7",  # too strict, breaks downstream
+]
+```
+
+Exact pins (`==`) are only appropriate in application-level lock files, not in reusable library packages.
+
+## Directory Structure
+myproject/                     # Git repository root
+├── .gitignore
+├── README.md
+├── pyproject.toml             # Project configuration (moved to repo root)
+├── docker-compose.yml
+├── .env                       # Docker Compose environment
+│                              #   ANGELIA_DB_ENGINE=postgresql
+│                              #   ANGELIA_DB_NAME=angelia2
+│                              #   ANGELIA_DB_USER=angelia
+│                              #   ANGELIA_DB_PASSWORD=changeme
+│                              #   ANGELIA_DB_HOST=db
+│                              #   ANGELIA_DB_PORT=5432
+├── .env.example
+│
+├── project/                   # Django project root (manage.py lives here)
+│   ├── manage.py
+│   ├── Dockerfile
+│   ├── .env                   # Local development environment
+│   │                          #   ANGELIA_DB_ENGINE=sqlite
+├── .env.example
+│
+├── config/                # Django configuration module
+│   │   ├── __init__.py
+│   │   ├── settings.py
+│   │   ├── urls.py
+│   │   ├── wsgi.py
+│   │   └── asgi.py
+│   │
+│   ├── accounts/              # Django app
+│   │   ├── __init__.py
+│   │   ├── models.py
+│   │   ├── views.py
+│   │   └── urls.py
+│   │
+│   ├── blog/                  # Django app
+│   │   ├── __init__.py
+│   │   ├── models.py
+│   │   ├── views.py
+│   │   └── urls.py
+│   │
+│   ├── static/
+│   │   ├── css/
+│   │   └── js/
+│   │
+│   └── templates/
+│       └── base.html
+│
+├── web/                       # Nginx configuration
+│   └── nginx.conf
+│
+├── db/                        # PostgreSQL configuration
+│   └── postgresql.conf
+│
+└── docs/                      # Project documentation
+    └── index.md
+
+## Settings Structure
+- Use a single settings.py file
+- Use django-environ or python-dotenv for environment variables
+- Never commit .env files to version control
+- Provide .env.example with all required variables documented
+- Create .gitignore file
+- Create a .dockerignore file
+
+## Environment Variables
+
+All env vars in `.env` MUST use the `SERVICENAME_` prefix (per main standard). The examples below use `ANGELIA_` — substitute the actual service name for your app.
+
+### PostgreSQL settings (only if `SERVICENAME_DB_ENGINE=postgresql`)
+```
+ANGELIA_DB_NAME=angelia2
+ANGELIA_DB_USER=angelia
+ANGELIA_DB_PASSWORD=changeme
+ANGELIA_DB_HOST=db
+ANGELIA_DB_PORT=5432
+```
+
+### Rules
+- Never use `DATABASE_URL` or `dj-database-url` — always individual vars
+- Never use unprefixed `DB_HOST` / `APP_DB_NAME` — always service-prefixed
+- The Django `Settings` class declares each prefixed var explicitly so the full config is documented in one place
+- `.env` is gitignored; `.env.example` with placeholder values is committed
+
+## Code Organization
+- Imports: PEP 8 ordering (stdlib, third-party, local)
+- Type hints on function parameters
+- CSS: External .css files only (no inline styles, no embedded `<style>` tags)
+- JS: External .js files only (no inline handlers, no embedded `<script>` blocks)
+- Maximum file length: 1000 lines
+- If a file exceeds 500 lines, consider splitting by domain concept
+
+## Database Conventions
+- Migrations run cleanly from empty database
+- Never edit deployed migrations
+- Use meaningful migration names: --name add_email_to_profile
+- One logical change per migration when possible
+- Test migrations both forward and backward
+
+### Development vs Production
+- Development: SQLite
+- Production: PostgreSQL
+
+## Caching
+- Expensive queries are cached
+- Cache keys follow naming convention
+- TTLs are appropriate (not infinite)
+- Invalidation is documented
+- Key Naming Pattern: {app}:{model}:{identifier}:{field}
+
+## Model Naming
+- Model names: singular PascalCase (User, BlogPost, OrderItem)
+- Correct English pluralization on related names
+- All models have created_at and updated_at
+- All models define __str__ and get_absolute_url
+- TextChoices used for status fields
+- related_name defined on ForeignKey fields
+- Related names: plural snake_case with proper English pluralization
+
+## Forms
+- Use ModelForm with explicit fields list (never __all__)
+
+## Field Naming
+- Foreign keys: singular without _id suffix (author, category, parent)
+- Boolean fields: use prefixes (is_active, has_permission, can_edit)
+- Date fields: use suffixes (created_at, updated_at, published_on)
+- Avoid abbreviations (use description, not desc)
+
+## Required Model Fields
+- All models should include:
+  - created_at = models.DateTimeField(auto_now_add=True)
+  - updated_at = models.DateTimeField(auto_now=True)
+- Consider adding:
+  - id = models.UUIDField(primary_key=True) for public-facing models
+  - is_active = models.BooleanField(default=True) for soft deletes
+
+## Indexing
+- Add db_index=True to frequently queried fields
+- Use Meta.indexes for composite indexes
+- Document why each index exists
+
+## Queries
+- Use select_related() for foreign keys
+- Use prefetch_related() for reverse relations and M2M
+- Avoid queries in loops (N+1 problem)
+- Use .only() and .defer() for large models
+- Add comments explaining complex querysets
+
+## Docstrings
+- Use Sphinx style docstrings
+- Document all public functions, classes, and modules
+- Skip docstrings for obvious one-liners and standard Django overrides
+
+## Views
+- Use Function-Based Views (FBVs) exclusively
+- Explicit logic is preferred over implicit inheritance
+- Extract shared logic into utility functions
+
+## URLs & Identifiers
+
+- Public URLs use short UUIDs (12 characters) via `shortuuid`
+- Never expose sequential IDs in URLs (security/enumeration risk)
+- Internal references may use standard UUIDs or PKs
+
+## URL Patterns
+- Resource-based URLs (RESTful style)
+- Namespaced URL names per app
+- Trailing slashes (Django default)
+- Flat structure preferred over deep nesting
+
+## Background Tasks
+- All tasks are run synchronously unless the design specifies background tasks are needed for long operations
+- Long operations use Celery tasks
+- Use Memcached, task progress pattern: {app}:task:{task_id}:progress
+- Tasks are idempotent
+- Tasks include retry logic
+- Tasks live in app/tasks.py
+- RabbitMQ is the Message Broker
+- Flower Monitoring: Use for debugging failed tasks
+
+## Testing
+- Framework: Django TestCase (not pytest)
+- Separate test files per module: test_models.py, test_views.py, test_forms.py
+
+## Frontend Standards
+
+### New Projects (DaisyUI + Tailwind)
+- DaisyUI 4 via CDN for component classes
+- Tailwind CSS via CDN for utility classes
+- Theme management via Themis (DaisyUI `data-theme` attribute)
+- All apps extend `themis/base.html` for consistent navigation
+- No inline styles or scripts
+
+### Existing Projects (Bootstrap 5)
+- Bootstrap 5 via CDN
+- Bootstrap Icons via CDN
+- Bootswatch for theme variants (if applicable)
+- django-bootstrap5 and crispy-bootstrap5 for form rendering
+
+## Preferred Packages
+
+### Core Django
+- django>=5.2,<6.0
+- django-environ — Environment variables
+
+### Authentication & Security
+- django-allauth — User management
+- django-allauth-2fa — Two-factor authentication
+
+### API Development
+- djangorestframework>=3.14,<4.0 — REST APIs
+- drf-spectacular — OpenAPI/Swagger documentation
+
+### Encryption
+- cryptography — Fernet encryption for secrets/API keys
+
+### Background Tasks
+- celery — Async task queue
+- django-celery-progress — Progress bars
+- flower — Celery monitoring
+
+### Caching
+- pymemcache — Memcached backend
+
+### Database
+- psycopg[binary] — PostgreSQL adapter
+- shortuuid — Short UUIDs for public URLs
+
+### Production
+- gunicorn — WSGI server
+
+### Shared Apps
+- django-heluca-themis — User preferences, themes, key management, navigation
+
+### Deprecated / Removed
+- ~~pytz~~ — Use stdlib `zoneinfo` (Python 3.9+, Django 4+)
+- ~~Pillow~~ — Only add if your app needs ImageField
+- ~~django-heluca-core~~ — Replaced by Themis
+- ~~dj-database-url~~ — Use individual Django DB env vars instead
+
+## Anti-Patterns to Avoid
+
+### Models
+- Don't use `Model.objects.get()` without handling `DoesNotExist`
+- Don't use `null=True` on `CharField` or `TextField` (use `blank=True, default=""`)
+- Don't use `related_name='+'` unless you have a specific reason
+- Don't override `save()` for business logic (use signals or service functions)
+- Don't use `auto_now=True` on fields you might need to manually set
+- Don't use `ForeignKey` without specifying `on_delete` explicitly
+- Don't use `Meta.ordering` on large tables (specify ordering in queries)
+
+### Queries
+- Don't query inside loops (N+1 problem)
+- Don't use `.all()` when you need a subset
+- Don't use raw SQL unless absolutely necessary
+- Don't forget `select_related()` and `prefetch_related()`
+
+### Views
+- Don't put business logic in views
+- Don't use `request.POST.get()` without validation (use forms)
+- Don't return sensitive data in error messages
+- Don't forget `login_required` decorator on protected views
+
+### Forms
+- Don't use `fields = '__all__'` in ModelForm
+- Don't trust client-side validation alone
+- Don't use `exclude` in ModelForm (use explicit `fields`)
+
+### Templates
+- Don't use `{{ variable }}` for URLs (use `{% url %}` tag)
+- Don't put logic in templates
+- Don't use inline CSS or JavaScript (external files only)
+- Don't forget `{% csrf_token %}` in forms
+
+### Security
+- Don't store secrets in `settings.py` (use environment variables)
+- Don't commit `.env` files to version control
+- Don't use `DEBUG=True` in production
+- Don't expose sequential IDs in public URLs
+- Don't use `mark_safe()` on user-supplied content
+- Don't disable CSRF protection
+
+### Imports & Code Style
+- Don't use `from module import *`
+- Don't use mutable default arguments
+- Don't use bare `except:` clauses
+- Don't ignore linter warnings without documented reason
+
+### Migrations
+- Don't edit migrations that have been deployed
+- Don't use `RunPython` without a reverse function
+- Don't add non-nullable fields without a default value
+
+### Celery Tasks
+- Don't pass model instances to tasks (pass IDs and re-fetch)
+- Don't assume tasks run immediately
+- Don't forget retry logic for external service calls
diff --git a/docs/Red_Panda_Standards_V1-00.md b/docs/Red_Panda_Standards_V1-00.md
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+# Red Panda Approval™ Standards
+
+Quality and observability standards for the Ouranos Lab. All infrastructure code, application code, and LLM-generated code deployed into this environment must meet these standards.
+
+**Owner:** Robert Helewka &lt;r@helu.ca&gt;
+**Version:** 1.00
+**Last reviewed:** 2026-04-18
+
+---
+
+## 🐾 Red Panda Approval™
+
+All implementations must meet the 5 Sacred Criteria:
+
+1. **Fresh Environment Test** — Clean runs on new systems without drift. No leftover state, no manual steps.
+2. **Elegant Simplicity** — Modular, reusable, no copy-paste sprawl. One playbook per concern.
+3. **Observable & Auditable** — Clear task names, proper logging, check mode compatible. You can see what happened.
+4. **Idempotent Patterns** — Run multiple times with consistent results. No side effects on re-runs.
+5. **Actually Provisions & Configures** — Resources work, dependencies resolve, services integrate. It does the thing.
+
+---
+
+## Vault Security
+
+All sensitive information is encrypted using Ansible Vault with AES256 encryption.
+
+**Encrypted secrets:**
+- Database passwords (PostgreSQL, Neo4j)
+- API keys (OpenAI, Anthropic, Mistral, Groq)
+- Application secrets (Grafana, SearXNG, Arke)
+- Monitoring alerts (AlertManager email integration)
+
+**Security rules:**
+- AES256 encryption with `ansible-vault`
+- Password file for automation — never pass `--vault-password-file` inline in scripts
+- Vault variables use the `vault_` prefix; map to friendly names in `group_vars/all/vars.yml`
+- No secrets in plain text files, ever
+
+---
+
+## Log Level Standards
+
+All services in the Ouranos Lab MUST follow these log level conventions. These rules apply to application code, infrastructure services, and any LLM-generated code deployed into this environment. Log output flows through Alloy → Loki → Grafana, so disciplined leveling is not cosmetic — it directly determines alert quality, dashboard usefulness, and on-call signal-to-noise ratio.
+
+### Level Definitions
+
+| Level | When to Use | What MUST Be Included | Loki / Grafana Role |
+|-------|-------------|----------------------|---------------------|
+| **ERROR** | Something is broken and requires human intervention. The service cannot fulfil the current request or operation. | Exception class, message, stack trace, and relevant context (request ID, user, resource identifier). Never a bare `"something failed"`. | AlertManager rules fire on `level=~"error\|fatal\|critical"`. These trigger email notifications. |
+| **WARNING** | Degraded but self-recovering: retries succeeding, fallback paths taken, thresholds approaching, deprecated features invoked. | What degraded, what recovery action was taken, current metric value vs. threshold. | Grafana dashboard panels. Rate-based alerting (e.g., >N warnings/min). |
+| **INFO** | Significant lifecycle and business events: service start/stop, configuration loaded, deployment markers, user authentication, job completion, schema migrations. | The event and its outcome. This level tells the *story* of what the system did. | Default production visibility. The go-to level for post-incident timelines. |
+| **DEBUG** | Diagnostic detail for active troubleshooting: request/response payloads, SQL queries, internal state, variable values. | **Actionable context is mandatory.** A DEBUG line with no detail is worse than no line at all. Include variable values, object states, or decision paths. | Never enabled in production by default. Used on-demand via per-service level override. |
+
+### Anti-Patterns
+
+These are explicit violations of Ouranos logging standards:
+
+| ❌ Anti-Pattern | Why It's Wrong | ✅ Correct Approach |
+|----------------|---------------|-------------------|
+| Health/metrics checks logged at INFO (`GET /live → 200 OK`, `GET /metrics → 200 OK`) | Routine HAProxy/Prometheus probes flood syslog with thousands of identical lines per hour, burying real events. | Suppress successful probes to `/live`, `/ready`, `/metrics`, `/health*`, `/ping` from access logs entirely. Non-2xx responses MUST still log. |
+| DEBUG with no context (`logger.debug("error occurred")`) | Provides zero diagnostic value. If DEBUG is noisy *and* useless, nobody will ever enable it. | `logger.debug("PaymentService.process failed: order_id=%s, provider=%s, response=%r", oid, provider, resp)` |
+| ERROR without exception details (`logger.error("task failed")`) | Cannot be triaged without reproduction steps. Wastes on-call time. | `logger.error("Celery task invoice_gen failed: order_id=%s", oid, exc_info=True)` |
+| Logging sensitive data at any level | Passwords, tokens, API keys, and PII in Loki are a security incident. | Mask or redact: `api_key=sk-...a3f2`, `password=*****`. |
+| Inconsistent level casing | Breaks LogQL filters and Grafana label selectors. | **Python / Django**: UPPERCASE (`INFO`, `WARNING`, `ERROR`, `DEBUG`). **Go / infrastructure** (HAProxy, Alloy, Gitea): lowercase (`info`, `warn`, `error`, `debug`). |
+| Logging expected conditions as ERROR | A user entering a wrong password is not an error — it is normal business logic. | Use WARNING or INFO for expected-but-notable conditions. Reserve ERROR for things that are actually broken. |
+
+### Health Check & Monitoring Endpoint Rule
+
+> All services MUST suppress successful (2xx/3xx) access log entries for health and monitoring endpoints: `/live`, `/ready`, `/health`, `/healthz`, `/api/health`, `/metrics`, `/ping`. Health check success is the *absence* of errors, not the presence of 200s. If your syslog shows a successful probe of one of these endpoints, your log level is wrong.
+>
+> Non-2xx responses to these paths MUST still be logged — a failing `/ready` is a real signal.
+
+**Implementation guidance:**
+- **Django / Gunicorn**: Filter health paths in the access log handler or use middleware that skips logging for probe user-agents.
+- **FastAPI / Uvicorn**: Add a `logging.Filter` on the `uvicorn.access` logger that matches health paths in the access log message. Uvicorn's access log format includes the full request line in quotes (e.g., `"GET /live HTTP/1.1"`), so filter regexes must account for that. See also the structured logging notes below.
+- **nginx containers**: nginx does not log through Python loggers, so app-level filters do not apply. Suppress probe access lines at the nginx config level using `map` on `$request_uri` or `$status`:
+  ```nginx
+  map $request_uri $loggable {
+      ~^/(live|ready|metrics|health|healthz|ping)(/|$|\?) 0;
+      default 1;
+  }
+  server {
+      access_log /var/log/nginx/access.log combined if=$loggable;
+      # errors (4xx/5xx) still logged via error_log regardless
+  }
+  ```
+  Applies to every nginx-based container (static frontends, reverse proxies, sidecars).
+- **Docker services**: Configure the application's internal logging to exclude health routes — the syslog driver forwards everything it receives.
+- **HAProxy**: HAProxy's own health check logs (`option httpchk`) should remain at the HAProxy level for connection debugging, but backend application responses to those probes must not surface at INFO.
+
+### Background Worker & Queue Monitoring
+
+> **The most dangerous failure is the one that produces no logs.**
+
+When a background worker (Celery task consumer, RabbitMQ subscriber, Gitea Runner, cron job) fails to start or crashes on startup, it generates no ongoing log output. Error-rate dashboards stay green because there is no process running to produce errors. Meanwhile, queues grow unbounded and work silently stops being processed.
+
+**Required practices:**
+
+1. **Heartbeat logging** — Every long-running background worker MUST emit a periodic INFO-level heartbeat (e.g., `"worker alive, processed N jobs in last 5m, queue depth: M"`). **Cadence: every 60 seconds.** The staleness alert fires after 10 minutes of silence (= 10 consecutive missed heartbeats), which gives enough margin to absorb transient Loki ingestion lag without flapping. The *absence* of this heartbeat is the alertable condition.
+
+2. **Startup and shutdown at INFO** — Worker start, ready, graceful shutdown, and crash-exit are significant lifecycle events. These MUST log at INFO.
+
+3. **Queue depth as a metric** — RabbitMQ queue depths and any application-level task queues MUST be exposed as Prometheus metrics. A growing queue with zero consumer activity is an **ERROR**-level alert, not a warning.
+
+4. **Grafana "last seen" alerts** — For every background worker, configure a Grafana alert using `absent_over_time()` or equivalent staleness detection: *"Worker X has not logged a heartbeat in >10 minutes"* → ERROR severity → email notification via AlertManager.
+
+5. **Crash-on-start is ERROR** — If a worker exits within seconds of starting (missing config, failed DB connection, import error), the exit MUST be captured at ERROR level by the service manager (`systemd OnFailure=`, Docker restart policy logs). Do not rely on the crashing application to log its own death — it may never get the chance.
+
+### Production Defaults
+
+| Service Category | Default Level | Rationale |
+|-----------------|---------------|-----------|
+| Django apps (Angelia, Athena, Kairos, Icarlos, Spelunker, Peitho, MCP Switchboard) | `WARNING` | Business logic — only degraded or broken conditions surface. Lifecycle events (start/stop/deploy) still log at INFO via Gunicorn and systemd. |
+| FastAPI apps (Periplus) | `WARNING` | Same rationale as Django. Uvicorn lifecycle events (start/stop) are pinned to INFO via the `uvicorn.error` logger regardless of app log level. |
+| Gunicorn / Uvicorn / nginx access logs | Suppress successful probes to `/live`, `/ready`, `/metrics`, `/health*`, `/ping` | Routine request logging deferred to HAProxy access logs in Loki. |
+| Infrastructure agents (Alloy, Prometheus, Node Exporter) | `warn` | Stable — do not change without cause. |
+| HAProxy (Titania) | `warning` | Connection-level logging handled by HAProxy's own log format → Alloy → Loki. |
+| Databases (PostgreSQL, Neo4j) | `warning` | Query-level logging only enabled for active troubleshooting. |
+| Docker services (Gitea, LobeChat, Nextcloud, AnythingLLM, SearXNG) | `warn` / `warning` | Per-service default. Tune individually if needed. |
+| LLM Proxy (Arke) | `info` | Token usage tracking and provider routing decisions justify INFO. Review periodically for noise. |
+| Observability stack (Grafana, Loki, AlertManager) | `warn` | Should be quiet unless something is wrong with observability itself. |
+
+### Structured Logging — FastAPI / Uvicorn
+
+FastAPI apps using uvicorn require special handling to achieve JSON-structured log output for the Alloy → Loki pipeline. Uvicorn manages its own loggers aggressively, and naive approaches will fail silently.
+
+**Required practices:**
+
+1. **Override uvicorn's handlers, don't just add to root** — Uvicorn's `config.load()` creates its own `StreamHandler` instances on `uvicorn`, `uvicorn.error`, and `uvicorn.access`. You must remove these handlers and set `propagate = True` so log records flow to the root logger where your JSON formatter lives.
+
+2. **Re-apply logging config in the lifespan** — Configuring logging at module import time is not sufficient. Uvicorn's `config.load()` runs *after* your module is imported but *before* the ASGI lifespan starts. Call your logging configuration function again inside the FastAPI `lifespan` context manager to recapture control.
+
+3. **Remap uvicorn logger names** — Uvicorn uses `uvicorn.error` for all lifecycle messages (startup, shutdown, errors) despite the misleading name. Remap it to `uvicorn` in your JSON formatter's output for clarity in Loki queries.
+
+4. **Use `pydantic-settings` with `extra = "ignore"`** — When loading config from `.env` files that contain variables for other services (e.g., oauth2-proxy), pydantic-settings will reject unknown fields by default. Always set `extra = "ignore"` in the model config.
+
+### Loki & Grafana Alignment
+
+**Label normalization**: Alloy pipelines (syslog listeners and journal relabeling) MUST extract and forward a `level` label on every log line. Without a `level` label, the log entry is invisible to level-based dashboard filters and alert rules.
+
+**LogQL conventions for dashboards:**
+```logql
+# Production error monitoring (default dashboard view)
+{job="syslog", hostname="puck"} | json | level=~"error|fatal|critical"
+
+# Warning-and-above for a specific service
+{service_name="haproxy"} | logfmt | level=~"warn|error|fatal"
+
+# Debug-level troubleshooting (temporary, never permanent dashboards)
+{container="angelia"} | json | level="debug"
+```
+
+**Alerting rules** — Grafana alert rules MUST key off the normalized `level` label:
+- `level=~"error|fatal|critical"` → Immediate email notification via AlertManager
+- `absent_over_time({service_name="celery_worker"}[10m])` → Worker heartbeat staleness → ERROR severity
+- Rate-based: `rate({service_name="arke"} | json | level="error" [5m]) > 0.1` → Sustained error rate
+
+**Retention alignment**: Loki retention policies MUST preserve higher-severity logs longer than lower-severity ones. Target retention:
+
+| Level | Retention | Rationale |
+|-------|-----------|-----------|
+| DEBUG | 7 days | Troubleshooting context only — stale debug data is noise. |
+| INFO | 30 days | Post-incident timelines and lifecycle review. |
+| WARNING | 90 days | Degradation trend analysis across release cycles. |
+| ERROR / FATAL / CRITICAL | 90 days | Incident review, root-cause investigation, compliance. |
+
+DEBUG-level logs generated during troubleshooting sessions should be explicitly cleaned up if they would blow past the 7-day budget.
+
+---
+
+## Health Check Endpoints
+
+All services MUST expose Kubernetes-style health endpoints at these paths:
+
+| Endpoint | Purpose | Auth |
+|----------|---------|------|
+| `GET /live` | **Liveness** — process is running and accepting connections | None |
+| `GET /ready` | **Readiness** — process is running AND all dependencies (DB, cache, upstream APIs) are healthy | None |
+| `GET /metrics` | Prometheus metrics | IP-restricted (no JWT) |
+
+- HAProxy uses `health_path: /ready/` (trailing slash) for backend health checks — return HTTP 200 when ready
+- Health endpoints MUST NOT require authentication
+- Third-party services use their native paths (`/api/health`, `/api/healthz`, `/-/healthy`, etc.)
+
+**Trailing slash**: The standard path is `/ready/` with a trailing slash. Django's `APPEND_SLASH` handling, FastAPI route declarations, and nginx `location` blocks all differ in how they treat the slash. Services that cannot comply (framework redirects, third-party apps) MUST be recorded in the Exceptions section below. Access-log suppression filters MUST match both `/ready` and `/ready/` forms.
+
+### Docker Compose Healthchecks
+
+Use `curl -f` (install curl in images if needed). Do not use `wget --spider`.
+
+```yaml
+healthcheck:
+  test: ["CMD", "curl", "-f", "http://localhost:8000/live"]
+  interval: 30s
+  timeout: 10s
+  retries: 3
+  start_period: 40s
+```
+
+---
+
+## Endpoint Protection
+
+| Protected (require valid JWT) | Unprotected |
+|-------------------------------|-------------|
+| All `/api/v1/*` routes | `GET /live` |
+| | `GET /ready` |
+| | `GET /metrics` (IP-restricted to internal networks) |
+| | `GET /api/auth/login-url` |
+| | `POST /api/auth/token` |
+| | `POST /api/v1/telemetry` (sendBeacon cannot set headers) |
+
+> **Why `/api/v1/telemetry` is unprotected**: The browser `sendBeacon` API cannot set `Authorization` headers. The telemetry endpoint must be open to receive client-side error reports and performance data, or browser errors will be silently lost.
+
+---
+
+## Prometheus Metrics
+
+All services MUST expose `GET /metrics` in Prometheus exposition format, scraped by Prospero's Prometheus at 15s intervals.
+
+- **IP-restricted** to internal networks: `10.10.0.0/24`, `172.16.0.0/12`, `127.0.0.0/8`
+- No JWT required — HAProxy and Prometheus scrapers cannot authenticate
+- Useful metrics to expose: request totals and durations, error rates, active connections, queue depths, dependency health
+
+---
+
+## Browser Telemetry
+
+Frontend/browser code MUST report errors and performance data back to the server.
+
+- Send to `POST /api/v1/telemetry` — unprotected endpoint
+- Capture: JavaScript exceptions, promise rejections, resource load failures, performance metrics
+- The server MUST log client-side exceptions at **WARNING** level (they indicate user-facing problems but are not server failures)
+- Include enough context to reproduce: URL, user agent, error message, stack trace (if available)
+
+---
+
+## Environment Variable Naming
+
+All environment variables for an application MUST use a consistent prefix matching the service name (e.g., `PERIPLUS_`, `ARKE_`, `ANGELIA_`). This applies to every variable in the `.env` file, including those consumed by sidecar services like oauth2-proxy.
+
+**Rules:**
+- All vars in `.env` use the `SERVICENAME_` prefix — no exceptions
+- `compose.yaml` maps prefixed vars to the sidecar's expected names (e.g., `OAUTH2_PROXY_CLIENT_ID: ${PERIPLUS_CASDOOR_CLIENT_ID}`)
+- The application's Settings model SHOULD declare all prefixed vars, even those only consumed by sidecars, so the full configuration is documented in one place
+- Every repo MUST include a `.env.example` with placeholder values for all required variables. Add `!.env.example` to `.gitignore` if a broad `.env.*` pattern would otherwise exclude it
+- `.env` files with real secrets are ALWAYS gitignored — no exceptions
+
+---
+
+## Docker Networking
+
+- Use the **default Docker bridge network** for simple deployments
+- Add additional named networks only when required (e.g., isolating database traffic) or explicitly requested
+- Do not define custom networks for single-service Docker Compose stacks
+
+---
+
+## Documentation Standards
+
+Place documentation in the `/docs/` directory of the repository.
+
+### HTML Documents
+
+HTML documents must follow [docs/documentation_style_guide.html](documentation_style_guide.html).
+
+- Include a dark mode that follows the system automatically and include a toggle button in the navbar
+- avoid custom CSS
+- Use **Mermaid** for diagrams
+
+---
+
+## Exceptions
+
+Third-party services and vendor containers frequently cannot comply with every standard in this document (health endpoint paths, access-log filtering, log level semantics, env var prefixes). Rather than force non-compliance into a binary pass/fail, record deviations here so the gap is visible and intentional.
+
+**Rules for exceptions:**
+- Every exception MUST name the service, the standard being waived, and the reason (vendor constraint, upstream bug, deliberate trade-off).
+- Exceptions MUST be reviewed on the doc's `Last reviewed` date. If the underlying reason has gone away (vendor fixed it, we forked, we replaced the service), remove the exception.
+- A missing exception for a known-non-compliant service is itself a Red Panda violation — the point is transparency.
+
+| Service | Standard waived | Reason | Reviewed |
+|---------|-----------------|--------|----------|
+| _(example)_ Gitea | `/live`, `/ready` paths — uses `/api/healthz` | Upstream does not expose K8s-style endpoints | 2026-04-18 |
+| _(example)_ Nextcloud | Env var prefix `NEXTCLOUD_` — uses vendor-defined `NC_*` and unprefixed vars | Vendor container ignores renamed vars | 2026-04-18 |
+| _(add real exceptions as they are discovered)_ | | | |
+
+**Health path trailing-slash exceptions** — services that serve `/ready` without the trailing slash (framework default, cannot be reconfigured without breaking routing):
+
+| Service | Actual path | Reason |
+|---------|-------------|--------|
+| _(add as discovered)_ | | |