Models and providers
Open-Weight Model Adoption Gate
Review model identity, license, provenance, artifacts, runtime, evaluation, security, operations, and rollback before adopting an open-weight model.
- Format
- Checklist
- Level
- Advanced
- Audience
- Developer, Operator, Leader
- Owner
- Project42 Editorial
- Review cadence
- Every 60 days
- Prerequisites
- An identified model repository and immutable revision; A target runtime and hardware profile; Security, legal, data, and operational owners
Verify what is being adopted
Open weight is not the same as open source, unrestricted use, safe serialization, reproducible training, or vendor support. Record publisher, repository, immutable revision, base and derivative lineage, license and acceptable-use terms, model card, intended uses, limitations, training and evaluation disclosures, file formats, hashes, runtime, and required remote code.
Prefer safer serialization formats where supported, inspect dependencies and custom code, isolate initial loading, scan artifacts, and prevent an unreviewed repository update from replacing the approved model.
Gate quality, security, and operational readiness
Evaluate the exact quantization, runtime, prompt format, safety controls, and hardware build that will be deployed. Test normal, boundary, adversarial, privacy, tool-use, load, timeout, crash, and recovery cases; a base-model benchmark does not validate a derivative deployment.
Assign owners for patch and model monitoring, vulnerability response, abuse handling, scaling, capacity, cost, backup, rollback, license change, and end-of-life.
Task: [ADOPTION OR RELEASE DECISION]
Scope: [MODEL, REVISION, DERIVATIVE, RUNTIME, HARDWARE, DATA, AND USERS]
Permissions: [DOWNLOAD, EXECUTE CODE, ACCESS DATA, DEPLOY, AND APPROVE LICENSE]
Provenance: [PUBLISHER, REPOSITORY, COMMIT, HASH, BASE MODEL, AND MODEL CARD]
Terms: [LICENSE, ACCEPTABLE USE, ATTRIBUTION, AND DISTRIBUTION]
Artifact controls: [FORMAT, SCAN, SIGNATURE/HASH, CUSTOM CODE, AND DEPENDENCIES]
Evaluation: [EXACT BUILD -> QUALITY, SAFETY, SECURITY, LOAD, AND COST]
Stop conditions: [UNKNOWN LINEAGE, UNACCEPTABLE TERMS, UNSAFE CODE, OR CRITICAL FAILURE]
Verification: [ISOLATED LOAD, REPRODUCIBLE BUILD, END-TO-END GATE, AND MONITORING]
Recovery: [DISABLE ROUTE, RESTORE VERIFIED ARTIFACT, REVOKE ACCESS, AND RECONCILE DATA]Expected evidence and verification
Expected evidence includes immutable provenance, hashes, terms review, model card, artifact and dependency scan, exact runtime and hardware manifest, evaluation results, deployment controls, owners, monitoring, fallback, and decision expiry. Verify a clean isolated load and reproducible deployment before production data is available.
Stop when lineage, license, artifact integrity, custom code, required safety performance, or operating ownership is unresolved. Recover by disabling the route, revoking model access, preserving hashes and logs, restoring the last verified artifact and configuration, reconciling affected data, and retesting the complete gate.