Release verification matrix

CFS release candidates are checked at three levels. The offline suite is the required merge gate; anonymous and credentialed live probes are release gates because upstream availability and credentials are intentionally not assumed in pull-request CI.

Tier	Protocol families represented	Command	Required evidence
Offline	registry/catalog, harmonization, regular and projected grids, GRIB indexes, CDS/Earthdata request construction, SYMFLUENCE handoff	pytest -m 'not network'	all tests pass on Python 3.11–3.13
Anonymous live	GCS Zarr (ERA5 ARCO), HTTP byte-range NetCDF (CHIRPS), 2-D OPeNDAP/Zarr (RDRS/CONUS404), NOAA GRIB .idx, ECMWF JSON index	pytest -m network tests/test_era5_arco_network.py tests/test_chirps_network.py tests/test_grid2d_network.py tests/test_gfs_network.py tests/test_ecmwf_opendata_network.py (omit a file if absent and record why)	canonical names/units, non-empty bbox/time subset, range QC clean
Credentialed live	CDS and Earthdata	pytest -m network tests/test_auth_network.py	each configured service passes; missing credentials are recorded as skipped

For a release, record the date, commit, Python version, passed/skipped/failed counts, and any upstream outage in the changelog release entry. A failure caused by an upstream outage may be waived only when a second independent protocol probe passes and the outage is documented.

The representative set is deliberately protocol-based rather than one test per provider: connector-specific conversions remain covered by hermetic offline tests, while the live matrix detects transport, authentication, index-format, and grid-subsetting drift.