Production checklist

Brain

• Z4J_SECRET and Z4J_SESSION_SECRET each independently set to 64 hex chars of entropy.
• Z4J_AUDIT_CHAIN_SECRET set to a further independent key of at least 32 bytes. Outside development this is required and has no fallback, so the brain will refuse to start without it. Store it where whoever administers the database cannot read it, otherwise the audit chain proves less than it appears to.
• Z4J_PUBLIC_URL set to the public HTTPS URL (used in emails, cookies, cors).
• TLS terminated in front of the brain; X-Forwarded-Proto honored.
• Postgres 17+ with backups (pg_dump schedule or managed service snapshots).
• At least two admin accounts (avoids lockout if one is lost).
• Email notification channel configured per project if you use invitations / password reset.
• Z4J_METRICS_AUTH_TOKEN set (or auto-minted) and /metrics scraped by Prometheus.
• Container resource limits set (not unlimited).
• Container healthcheck configured.
• Log aggregation sinks z4j’s JSON stdout.
• z4j audit verify scheduled via cron / Kubernetes CronJob (the CLI is the verification entry point; there is no in-process auto-verify loop).

Agents

• One agent token per agent, stored in the app’s secret manager.
• Token rotation plan documented (mint new → deploy → revoke old).
• Z4J_BRAIN_URL uses wss:// in prod.
• agent_name distinguishes web / worker / beat / cron processes.
• Egress firewall allows WebSocket to brain.

Security posture

• Redaction rules reviewed for your domain-specific secrets (see redaction).
• Rate limits verified on /auth/*, /setup, /invite/*.
• No Z4J_BOOTSTRAP_ADMIN_* left in env after first boot.
• Password policy appropriate for your org (length, complexity, denylist - all enforced by default).
• Audit retention policy documented (z4j doesn’t auto-delete; you decide).

Operations

• Runbook for “brain down” (restart, check Postgres, check disk).
• Runbook for “agent offline” (check token, network, app logs).
• Runbook for “stuck tasks” (reconciliation worker status, manual retry).
• Disaster recovery tested - can you restore Postgres + re-mint agent tokens?

Compliance notes

z4j is not certified against SOC 2, HIPAA, or ISO 27001. If you need compliance, the audit log export + Postgres backups provide most of the raw evidence, but you own the policies, controls, and external audit.