Reflection: Current projections must exclude fixtures

Trigger

Real daily uploads and automatic monthly publication were enabled while the database acceptance fixture remained in finance.current_daily_versions, causing correct aggregation of non-business test data.

Expected Behavior

The transition from schema acceptance to business-facing use should retire all fixture pins and verify that every current Finance source has operational provenance.

Actual Behavior

The fixture's immutable version and current pointer were both retained. Later features validated formulas, lineage, downloads and max-ARRIVAL consistency against a structurally valid but contaminated snapshot.

Root Cause

Weak gate
Unclear ownership

The handoff documented synthetic-data cleanup as a production gate, but no executable readiness check owned it.

Evidence

Current version 2: run mvp-v1-fixture-20260727, synthetic.xml, provider local_fixture.
Channel BI contamination evidence
DATABASE_ARCHITECTURE_REASSESSMENT_V2.md already required synthetic cleanup before production.

Lesson

Structural reconciliation proves that downstream outputs match current facts; it does not prove those facts are operational. Before business-facing acceptance, assert provenance as well as counts, hashes and formulas.

Action

Add check/eval
Update gate

Future deployment/readiness work should fail when a current Finance version uses local_fixture or another explicitly non-operational source. Cleanup must preserve immutable history while removing the fixture from the current projection.

Promotion

Promote this to a deployment/data-readiness gate and automated acceptance check when remediation is implemented.

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