An environment contract names everything a clean runner needs to build and check the repository while keeping secret values and production authority outside the document.
Describe dependencies as reproducible inputs
Name the supported language and tool versions, package manager, system packages, local services, database engine, fixture source, and commands for installation and validation. Pin versions where the repository depends on them. If a hosted service is required, state whether a local substitute exists and which behavior cannot be reproduced without the hosted dependency. Record operating-system and CPU-architecture assumptions when native modules, containers, or platform-specific scripts can change installation behavior, so the next builder can distinguish an unsupported environment from a broken repository.
Environment variables should appear as names, purpose, expected format, source of authority, and the roles allowed to provision them. The contract must never include secret values. A new builder should know that PAYMENT_WEBHOOK_SECRET comes from the payment account owner and is unavailable in local tests without learning the value itself.
Separate development access from production authority
List the development, test, staging, and production targets separately. For each target, record the account, region, deployment mechanism, approval role, observable success check, rollback path, and logs available to the next operator. GitHub documents environment rules that can require approval, restrict branches, and delay access to secrets until a deployment job is authorized.
The contract should also state which actions the handoff does not authorize. Cloning source, running local tests, or viewing a staging deployment does not imply permission to rotate credentials, change billing, read production data, or deploy. These boundaries belong near the commands because the new builder encounters them at the moment of action.
Verify the contract and its deletion terms
A clean setup should follow the contract without private messages. Record every missing dependency and every instruction that describes a state no longer present. Temporary access used during the transfer should have an owner, an expiry or revocation step, and written deletion terms for any local copy or diagnostic export.
Cold Start Ledger verifies the environment contract through Reality Contact, LLC and does not retain credentials as project documentation. The customer provisions and revokes access, approves production actions, and remains the authority for secret management.
Where the service stops
Reality Contact, LLC prepares and verifies the handoff, but does not maintain or operate production, retain credentials, decide undocumented intent, or present guesses as historical decisions. The buyer reviews the pack, confirms the recorded decisions and access boundary, gives it to a fresh agent or developer, and authorizes that person to complete one bounded task from the verified state. This is technical documentation and verification support; it does not replace legal, security, employment, intellectual-property, or production-operations review. We do not promise that a repository is defect-free, that every historical decision can be recovered, or that a new builder can work without questions.
Sources: GitHub documentation for deployment environments; Git FAQ on safe repository transfer and integrity checks.