Exceptions

There are two categories of exceptions to these standards, to avoid confusion and eliminate duplicated explanations:

1. Shipped Products (Out of INFRA Scope)

Projects that are delivered as end-user software — such as Home Assistant, Music Assistant, or Z-Wave JS — are not required to follow the INFRA technology stack. These projects maintain their own architectures and development practices.

However, any infrastructure-operated components related to these products (e.g., websites, hosted APIs, cloud services) must follow the standards.

2. Technical Exceptions (Within INFRA Scope)

A project may request an exception when a requirement cannot reasonably be met using the mandated stack. These exceptions must be justified and formally approved.

Minimum Requirements That Always Apply

Regardless of exceptions, all INFRA-supported components must follow standards for:

• Observability (logging and metrics)
• Security (containerization, secrets/configuration management)
• Deployment (GitHub Actions CI/CD)
• Cloud Providers

These ensure the INFRA team can operate and support the services reliably.