workflow-feature-flag — Gate → Rollout → Monitor → Promote or Rollback

Degree of freedom: MIXED. Who is in the cohort and when to promote [HIGH freedom]; default-off, kill switch, and cleanup [LOW freedom — run exactly].

How to reason

1. Observe — existing flag infra, default, targeting, metrics
2. Interpret — deploy vs enable; who can be hurt if this is wrong
3. Classify — dark launch / percent rollout / kill / promote / cleanup
4. Severity — a default-on flag in prod is a failed gate

Worked example

Observe: new checkout step; no flag library; 100% of traffic would hit it on deploy. Interpret: ship dark, enable 5%, watch payment errors. Classify: add default-off flag + kill switch; do not delete the old path yet. Monitor: error rate > baseline → kill; stable → promote and remove the flag.