[Blind-Striker]

Summary

• Reduce response-helper managed allocations without changing existing HTTP/cache/validator behavior.
• Avoid eagerly discovering unused application-version metadata during production-shaped startup; preserve version override/default/caching values.
• Give contract tests their own OTLP receiver while keeping telemetry and Lambda flushing enabled, rather than increasing timeouts or skipping tests.
• Preserve bounded production observations and local measurement evidence. Include the existing canonical documentation-layout history carried by this branch.

Scope

The full branch includes six commits: three existing documentation/canonical-layout commits and three reviewed packaging commits. There are two changed production C# files (ResponseHelper.cs, Settings.cs); no workflow, package/build/analyzer or CDK implementation changes are introduced by this range.

Local validation

The accepted source-byte snapshot passed:

• API Release: 579 passed, 0 failed, 0 skipped.
• CDK in-process tests: 4 passed, 0 failed, 0 skipped.
• Node delivery fixtures: 104 passed.
• Performance-project Release build: 0 warnings / 0 errors.
• Slopwatch: 0 issues.

An independent packaging gate verified that all committed source/test/data bytes match the accepted review snapshot, apart from the approved living-ROADMAP status refresh. These receipts are local source-byte validation, not fresh hosted results or a commit-bound production artifact certificate.

Measured improvements and limits

• Response managed allocations: 704→584 B without a validator; 1,696→584 B for the weak-tag-list fixture; 352→264 B for redirects.
• Focused instrumented Native AOT diagnostic: unused version lookup 78,272→0 B; this is not live heap or CloudWatch memory.
• Both local uninstrumented x64 A/B studies passed their bounded response/revalidation checks. Small correlated samples do not establish general latency/RSS improvement.
• The telemetry regression verifies aggregate successful receiver activity, not uniquely attributed per-invocation flushes or semantic OTLP payload correctness.
• Prior production observations remain a page-capped, source-unattributed prefix—not a complete revision-qualified baseline for this candidate.

Fresh hosted ARM64 package size, AOT/trim diagnostics and provenance are required before promotion. Production INIT/RSS/AL2023 claims remain separate from a green PR build.

Evidence

• Response allocation
• Contract telemetry fixture
• Startup version lookup
• Bounded production observation

Delivery

PR CI validates the candidate and builds its ARM64 artifact; it does not deploy. Any production promotion must use a newly successful merged-master run/artifact through the existing deploy.yml provenance and bounded smoke gates, without bypassing protections or widening IAM.