YAML All the Way Down
Two features landed on this branch, both chasing the same goal: a YAML-only tutorial path for casehub-work that requires zero Java.
The first — DeclarativeSlaBreachPolicy — replaces the CDI SlaBreachPolicy bean with a YAML-declared deployment-wide default. The interesting design constraint was the scope hierarchy. A WorkItem at scope casehubio/clinical/triage needs to inherit SLA config from casehubio/clinical if no triage-specific config exists, then fall back to deployment-wide defaults, then to a fallback CDI policy. We walk Path.parent() at breach time, matching the same resolution model the platform’s PreferenceProvider uses — one scope algorithm, not two.
The self-detection guard was the subtlest piece. When the declarative policy returns EscalateTo("senior-reviewers"), the WorkItem’s candidateGroups changes to senior-reviewers. On the next breach, the same scope matches, the same YAML rule fires, and the item re-escalates to the same group forever. The per-item escalation path in ExpiryLifecycleService already has a guard for this — currentGroups.equals(Set.of(target)) falls through to the policy. But the policy itself had no equivalent. We added one: if the resolved EscalateToAction’s target group is already in candidateGroups, skip it and continue walking the scope chain. Natural two-tier behaviour without a state machine.
The second feature — ProgressDefinitionYamlLoader — is more mechanical. Named progress definitions loaded from META-INF/work-progress-definitions.yaml, referenced by name in ProgressCreateRequest.definitionName. The format maps YAML stages to StepDefinition records and stores transitions as a sibling in the definition JSON. One wrinkle surfaced during implementation: StepShapeValidator.parseDefinition() expected a raw JSON array, but the YAML loader wraps steps in {"steps": [...], "transitions": {...}}. A three-line fix to handle both formats.
The declarative SLA policy is the more architecturally significant of the two. It sits in the breach resolution chain between per-item escalation fields (#362) and the CDI policy — a third layer that didn’t exist before. The Provider<StrategyResolver> for lazy fallback resolution is the same pattern RoundRobinAssignmentStrategy uses, dodging a circular CDI dependency that’s invisible at the API level: DefaultStrategyResolver eagerly iterates all NamedStrategy beans at construction, which triggers @PostConstruct on any bean it discovers, which can’t access StrategyResolver because it’s mid-construction.
Both features leave one integration test deferred — Flyway V42 (ALTER TABLE work_items) fails in H2 mode, a pre-existing issue from the #362 escalation fields branch. The unit test coverage (56 tests for SLA, 64 for progress) covers the logic paths. The IT waits for the migration fix.