Date: 2026-03-22 21:28 UTC
Status: Draft
Domain: Deployment operations, routing reliability, execution integrity
A git push is not deployment. When repo paths diverge from live server roots, systems silently route to fallback pages and create false completion signals.
A research landing artifact was committed and pushed, but public URL checks returned the default Department of Jazz fallback page.
Root cause: live Caddy served from /var/www/departmentofjazz, while updates were written in repo paths (web/departmentofjazz/...) without synchronized publish to server web root.
1. Artifact exists in git.
2. URL returns HTTP 200 (appears healthy).
3. Content served is fallback shell, not target artifact.
4. Operator receives false-positive completion signal.
/var/www/departmentofjazz/git-sent-research-landing-2026-03-22/index.html/var/www/departmentofjazz/git-sent-research-landing-2026-03-22.htmlBefore declaring deployment complete:
1. Verify server root that actually serves production traffic.
2. Verify route-level content fingerprint (not just status code).
3. Keep repo path and deploy path explicitly mapped in docs/scripts.
Operational parity is path parity. If live root and repo root drift, output appears shipped while users still see fallback.