foxhunt/PRODUCTION_READINESS_STRATEGIC_PLAN.md

Foxhunt HFT System - Production Readiness Strategic Plan

Date: 2025-10-23 Status: FINAL PLAN - Ready for Execution Planning Session: 8-step strategic analysis using gpt-5-pro

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

After 49 agents and multiple development waves, this document defines the FINAL path to production deployment. The plan uses a three-tier approach (Safety/Reliability/Quality) to avoid perfectionism traps while ensuring system correctness and financial safety.

Key Decision: Accept "good enough" with monitoring rather than pursuing perfect that never ships.

Timeline: 3-4 weeks to real capital deployment Strategy: Hybrid approach (Option B "Good Enough" + Option D "Code Freeze")

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1. PRODUCTION READINESS DEFINITION

TIER 1: Safety (100% Required - Non-Negotiable)

These MUST be achieved before ANY production deployment:

1. 100% test pass rate (2,086/2,086 tests passing)
2. Zero P0 clippy warnings (float_arithmetic, correctness, truncation in financial calculations)
3. Core trading logic peer-reviewed and audited
4. Data integrity tests passing (PnL invariants, position tracking)
5. Risk controls validated (circuit breakers, position limits, VaR)

Rationale: HFT system bugs = financial loss. Tier 1 ensures system correctness.

TIER 2: Reliability (90% Required, Monitor 10%)

These should be addressed with monitoring compensating for gaps:

1. 24-hour uptime test passed
2. Zero memory leaks (valgrind/heaptrack validated)
3. Zero race conditions (ThreadSanitizer validated)
4. Database failover tested (30s recovery time)
5. Stress testing passed (1M orders, <100ms P99 latency)

Rationale: Monitoring and circuit breakers can compensate for rare edge cases.

TIER 3: Quality (50% Required, Defer Rest)

These improve maintainability but don't block deployment:

1. Clippy warnings reduced to <1,000 (from 1,915 - 48% reduction acceptable)
2. Test coverage improved to 50% (from 47% - +3% minimum)
3. QAT deferred to post-production (use FP32 models for now)
4. Documentation complete for Phases 0-4

Rationale: Code quality can be improved iteratively in production.

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2. EXECUTION PHASES

PHASE 0           PHASE 1-2            PHASE 3              PHASE 4           PHASE 5
Investigation     Safety/Reliability   Paper Trading        Production        Quality
(Day 1)          (Week 1-2)           (Week 2-4)           (Week 5+)         (Parallel)

[Test Analysis] -> [Fix P0 Issues] -> [Infrastructure] -> [Real Capital] -> [Clippy Cleanup]
[Clippy Audit]     [Memory/Race]       [Circuit Breakers]   [$1K-$5K]         [Test Coverage]
[GPU Validation]   [Stress Testing]    [Monitoring Setup]   [Scale to $25K]   [QAT Implementation]
                                       [2-week validation]   [Gradual Growth]  [Documentation]

    ↓                   ↓                    ↓                    ↓                 ↓
GO/NO-GO          TIER 1 100%          TIER 2 90%           Production        TIER 3 50%
Decision          Complete             Complete             Operational       Complete

PHASE 0: Critical Investigation (4-8 hours, Day 1)

Objective: Determine if 2 test failures and clippy warnings are blocking issues.

Actions:

1. Test Stability Analysis (30 minutes)

   for i in {1..100}; do
     cargo test --workspace 2>&1 | tee test_run_$i.log
   done
   grep -r "test result: FAILED" test_run_*.log | sort | uniq -c
   

   • Decision Point:
     • If flaky (pass >=95/100 runs) -> Mark as known issue, proceed
     • If consistent (fail >=95/100 runs) -> Critical bug, MUST fix in Phase 1

2. Clippy P0 Audit (2 hours)

   cargo clippy --workspace 2>&1 | tee clippy_full.log
   grep -E "(float_arithmetic|correctness|cast_possible_truncation)" clippy_full.log > clippy_p0.log
   

   • Decision Point:
     • If <50 P0 issues -> Fix in Phase 1 (1-2 days)
     • If 50-200 P0 issues -> Extend Phase 1 to 1 week
     • If >200 P0 issues -> Re-evaluate strategy

3. Test Failure Deep Dive (2-4 hours)

   cargo test --workspace 2>&1 | grep -A 10 "test result: FAILED"
   # Identify which modules: trading_engine, trading_service, ml, etc.
   

   • Decision Point:
     • If core trading logic -> BLOCKER (fix immediately)
     • If peripherals (metrics, logging) -> Non-blocking (fix in Phase 5)

4. GPU Memory Validation (1 hour)

   cargo run --release --features cuda --example multi_model_inference
   nvidia-smi dmon -s mu -c 10
   

   • Decision Point:
     • If GPU memory OK -> Defer QAT to Phase 5
     • If GPU OOM -> QAT becomes P1 (required for production)

Deliverable: GO/NO-GO decision for Phase 1 based on:

• Test failure categorization (flaky vs real bug)
• Clippy P0 issue count + list
• GPU memory validation results

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PHASE 1: TIER 1 Safety Certification (1-2 days, Days 2-3)

Objective: Achieve 100% safety compliance - zero tolerance for financial bugs.

Tasks:

1.1 Fix Critical Test Failures (4-8 hours)

• Fix 2 failing tests based on Phase 0 analysis
• If flaky: Add retry logic or mark as #[flaky_test]
• If real bugs: Fix root cause + add regression test
• Validation: cargo test --workspace shows 2,086/2,086 pass (100%)

1.2 Fix P0 Clippy Issues (8-16 hours) Target: <50 P0 issues from Phase 0 audit

# Fix float_arithmetic in financial calculations
# Example: Replace f64 addition with checked operations
# Before: let pnl = sell_price - buy_price;
# After: let pnl = sell_price.checked_sub(buy_price)?;

cargo clippy --workspace --fix -- -W clippy::correctness

Validation: Zero P0 clippy warnings remain

1.3 Core Trading Logic Audit (4 hours) Manual review of critical paths:

• /home/jgrusewski/Work/foxhunt/services/trading_service/src/order_manager.rs
• /home/jgrusewski/Work/foxhunt/trading_engine/src/position_tracker.rs
• /home/jgrusewski/Work/foxhunt/trading_engine/src/pnl_calculator.rs
• /home/jgrusewski/Work/foxhunt/risk/src/circuit_breaker.rs

Validation: Peer review + unit test coverage >=90% for these modules

1.4 Data Integrity Tests (2 hours)

# Add property-based tests for critical invariants
# Example: PnL = Σ(realized_pnl) + Σ(unrealized_pnl)
cargo test --package trading_engine test_pnl_invariants
cargo test --package trading_service test_position_invariants

Validation: All invariant tests pass

PHASE 1 DELIVERABLE:

• 100% test pass rate (2,086/2,086)
• Zero P0 clippy warnings
• Core trading logic peer-reviewed
• Data integrity validated

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PHASE 2: TIER 2 Reliability Validation (3-5 days, Days 4-8)

Objective: Prove system stability under stress with monitoring for edge cases.

Tasks:

2.1 Stress Testing (1 day)

# 1M order stress test
cargo run --release --example stress_test_orders -- --count 1000000

# 24-hour uptime test
cargo run --release -p trading_service &
sleep 86400  # 24 hours
curl http://localhost:8081/health  # Should return OK

Validation: No crashes, memory stable, <100ms P99 latency

2.2 Memory Profiling (1 day)

# Run with memory profiler
cargo build --release
valgrind --leak-check=full --show-leak-kinds=all target/release/trading_service

# Or use heaptrack on Linux
heaptrack target/release/trading_service
heaptrack_print heaptrack.trading_service.*.gz

Validation: Zero memory leaks detected

2.3 Race Condition Analysis (1 day)

# Run with ThreadSanitizer (requires nightly Rust)
RUSTFLAGS="-Z sanitizer=thread" cargo +nightly test --workspace --target x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu

# Load test concurrent orders
cargo run --release --example concurrent_orders -- --threads 100 --orders 10000

Validation: Zero data races detected

2.4 Database Resilience (1 day)

• Test connection pool exhaustion recovery
• Simulate database failover (kill DB, restart, verify reconnection)
• Test transaction rollback on errors Validation: System auto-recovers from DB issues within 30s

PHASE 2 DELIVERABLE:

• 24-hour uptime achieved
• Zero memory leaks
• Zero race conditions
• Database failover tested
• Monitoring configured for remaining 10% gaps

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PHASE 3: Paper Trading Deployment (2-3 days setup + 1-2 weeks validation, Week 2-4)

Objective: Validate production infrastructure with zero real capital at risk.

3.1 Infrastructure Setup (2-3 days)

Day 1: Production Environment

docker-compose -f docker-compose.prod.yml up -d

# Verify all services healthy
grpc_health_probe -addr=localhost:50051  # API Gateway
grpc_health_probe -addr=localhost:50052  # Trading Service
grpc_health_probe -addr=localhost:50053  # Backtesting Service
grpc_health_probe -addr=localhost:50054  # ML Training Service
grpc_health_probe -addr=localhost:50055  # Trading Agent Service

# Enable production monitoring
curl http://localhost:3000  # Grafana
curl http://localhost:9090  # Prometheus

Day 2: Circuit Breakers & Risk Controls

# Configure max loss limits
psql -c "INSERT INTO risk_limits (symbol, max_daily_loss, max_position_size) 
         VALUES ('ES.FUT', 1000.0, 10);"

# Enable kill switch (manual emergency stop)
curl -X POST http://localhost:50052/admin/enable_kill_switch

# Set paper trading mode (zero real capital)
export TRADING_MODE=PAPER
export MAX_CAPITAL=0.0

Day 3: Monitoring & Alerts Configure Grafana dashboards:

• Real-time PnL tracking
• Order execution latency
• Regime detection transitions
• Risk limit utilization
• System health metrics

Set up Prometheus alerts:

• High latency (>100ms P99)
• Memory usage >80%
• Failed orders >5/min
• Database connection errors
• GPU memory errors (if applicable)

3.2 Paper Trading Validation (1-2 weeks)

Week 1: Functional Validation

• Day 1-2: Single symbol (ES.FUT) paper trading
• Day 3-4: Multi-symbol (ES.FUT, NQ.FUT, 6E.FUT, ZN.FUT)
• Day 5-7: Full regime detection + adaptive strategies

Metrics to Monitor:

Metric	Target	Alert Threshold
Uptime	99.9%	<99%
Order Latency P99	<100ms	>200ms
Memory Usage	<70%	>80%
Test Sharpe Ratio	>1.5	<1.0
Win Rate	>55%	<50%
Max Drawdown	<20%	>25%

Week 2: Stress Validation

• Simulate high-volatility events (2x normal volume)
• Test regime transition handling (5-10 transitions/day)
• Validate circuit breaker triggers
• Test database failover recovery
• Test service restart/recovery

GO/NO-GO Decision Criteria:

• Zero production incidents (crashes, data loss)
• All metrics within target ranges
• Regime detection operational (5-10 transitions/day)
• Risk controls validated (no limit breaches)
• 24/7 monitoring operational

PHASE 3 DELIVERABLE:

• Production infrastructure operational
• Paper trading stable for 1-2 weeks
• All monitoring/alerts configured
• Zero critical incidents
• GO decision for Phase 4 (real capital)

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PHASE 4: Production Deployment with Safeguards (Week 5+)

Objective: Deploy real capital with gradual scale-up based on performance.

4.1 Initial Capital Deployment (Week 1)

• Start with $1,000-$5,000 real capital
• Limit position sizes: 1-2 contracts per symbol
• Enable aggressive circuit breakers:
  • Max daily loss: $500 (50% of capital)
  • Max position size: 2 contracts
  • Stop trading after 3 consecutive losses

4.2 Gradual Scale-Up (Weeks 2-8)

Week	Capital	Max Position	Daily Loss Limit	Conditions
1	$1K-$5K	2 contracts	$500	Paper trading success
2-3	$10K	5 contracts	$1,000	Week 1 Sharpe >1.5
4-5	$25K	10 contracts	$2,500	Week 2-3 Sharpe >1.5
6-8	$50K	20 contracts	$5,000	Week 4-5 Sharpe >1.5

4.3 Continuous Monitoring

• Daily Reviews: PnL, win rate, drawdown, regime transitions
• Weekly Reviews: Model performance, risk utilization, incident postmortems
• Monthly Reviews: Strategic adjustments, model retraining, infrastructure upgrades

4.4 Rollback Triggers Immediate rollback to paper trading if:

• Daily loss exceeds limit (2x in 1 week)
• Sharpe ratio <1.0 for 2 consecutive weeks
• Critical bug discovered (data corruption, incorrect PnL)
• Memory/GPU issues causing system instability

PHASE 4 DELIVERABLE:

• Real capital trading operational
• Gradual scale-up plan followed
• Continuous monitoring operational
• Rollback procedures validated

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PHASE 5: TIER 3 Quality Improvements (Parallel with Phase 4, 15+ weeks)

Objective: Improve code quality and maintainability without blocking production.

5.1 Clippy Warning Cleanup (Weeks 1-15) Target: Reduce 1,915 warnings to <500

Strategy: 100 warnings/week

• Week 1-2: Fix all remaining P1 issues (style, complexity, idiom)
• Week 3-6: Fix P2 issues in core modules (trading_engine, ml, risk)
• Week 7-10: Fix P2 issues in services
• Week 11-15: Fix P3 issues (pedantic warnings)

Weekly Process:

# Monday: Generate weekly report
cargo clippy --workspace 2>&1 | tee clippy_week_N.log

# Tuesday-Thursday: Fix 100 warnings
cargo clippy --workspace --fix

# Friday: Validate
cargo test --workspace
cargo build --release

5.2 Test Coverage Improvement (Weeks 1-8) Target: 47% -> 60% coverage

Strategy: Add 150+ tests over 8 weeks

• Add 20 new unit tests per week
• Add 2 integration tests per week
• Focus on low-coverage modules (<40%)

5.3 QAT Implementation (Weeks 4-6) Goal: Enable INT8 training for TFT model

Tasks:

1. Week 4: Fix device mismatch bug (CPU vs CUDA tensors)
2. Week 5: Implement gradient checkpointing (reduce 4GB -> 2GB memory)
3. Week 6: Implement auto batch size tuning (dynamic OOM handling)

Validation:

cargo run -p ml --example train_tft_parquet --release --features cuda -- \
  --parquet-file test_data/ES_FUT_180d.parquet \
  --epochs 50 \
  --use-qat

5.4 Documentation Updates (Ongoing)

• Weekly CLAUDE.md updates (production status, metrics)
• Monthly architecture reviews (lessons learned)
• Quarterly security audits (dependency updates, vulnerability scans)

PHASE 5 DELIVERABLE:

• Clippy warnings <500 (74% reduction)
• Test coverage >60% (+13%)
• QAT operational for TFT model
• Documentation up-to-date
• Risk management validated

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3. DECISION MATRIX: FIX, DEFER, ACCEPT

FIX IMMEDIATELY (P0 - Blocks Production)

Timeline: 1-2 weeks (Phases 0-2)

1. 2 failing tests (if real bugs, not flaky)
2. P0 clippy warnings in financial calculations (float_arithmetic, correctness, truncation)
3. Memory leaks
4. Race conditions in critical paths
5. Risk control bugs

Rationale: These directly impact system correctness and financial safety.

DEFER TO POST-PRODUCTION (P1 - Monitor)

Timeline: 15+ weeks (Phase 5, parallel with production)

1. QAT optimization (use FP32 for now, 4GB GPU sufficient)
2. 1,915 clippy warnings -> reduce to <1,000 (defer rest to Phase 5)
3. Test coverage 47% -> 50% (defer 60% target to Phase 5)
4. ML model retraining with 225 features (wait for Phase 4 stability)

Rationale: These improve quality but don't impact correctness. Can be addressed iteratively.

ACCEPT AS-IS (P2 - Non-Blocking)

Timeline: Indefinite (or never)

1. ~900-1,000 clippy warnings (mostly style, idiom - not correctness)
2. Test coverage 50-60% (industry standard for HFT systems)
3. Documentation gaps (can improve iteratively)
4. Minor performance optimizations (<10% impact)

Rationale: Diminishing returns. These don't impact system correctness or safety.

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4. RISK MANAGEMENT FRAMEWORK

Risk Tier 1: Financial Risks (P0)

Risk	Likelihood	Impact	Mitigation
Incorrect PnL calculation	Low	Critical	Phase 1 audit + property tests
Order execution bug	Low	Critical	Phase 1 audit + integration tests
Risk limit bypass	Low	Critical	Circuit breaker validation in Phase 3

Risk Tier 2: Operational Risks (P1)

Risk	Likelihood	Impact	Mitigation
Memory leak crashes	Medium	High	Phase 2 memory profiling
Race condition data corruption	Low	High	Phase 2 ThreadSanitizer
Database connection loss	Medium	Medium	Phase 2 failover testing

Risk Tier 3: Quality Risks (P2)

Risk	Likelihood	Impact	Mitigation
Clippy warnings cause bugs	Low	Low	Phase 5 gradual cleanup
Low test coverage	Medium	Low	Phase 5 test improvements
QAT GPU memory issues	Medium	Low	Phase 5 optimization

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5. ROLLBACK PROCEDURES

Level 1: Feature Rollback (5 minutes)

# Disable regime detection
export ENABLE_REGIME_DETECTION=false
systemctl restart trading_service

Level 2: Database Rollback (15 minutes)

# Revert to previous migration
cargo sqlx migrate revert
systemctl restart all-services

Level 3: Full System Rollback (30 minutes)

# Rollback to previous Docker image
docker-compose down
git checkout <previous-stable-tag>
docker-compose up -d

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6. TIMELINE SUMMARY

CRITICAL PATH: 3-4 weeks to real capital deployment

Week 1 (Days 1-7):
  Day 1: Phase 0 (Investigation) -> GO/NO-GO Decision
  Days 2-3: Phase 1 (Safety Certification)
  Days 4-7: Phase 2 (Reliability Validation)
  End of Week: Ready for Paper Trading

Week 2-4 (Days 8-28):
  Days 8-10: Phase 3 Setup (Infrastructure + Circuit Breakers + Monitoring)
  Days 11-21: Phase 3 Week 1 (Functional Validation)
  Days 22-28: Phase 3 Week 2 (Stress Validation)
  End of Week 4: GO Decision for Real Capital

Week 5+ (Production):
  Week 5: Deploy $1K-$5K real capital
  Week 6-7: Scale to $10K (if Sharpe >1.5)
  Week 8: Scale to $25K (if Sharpe >1.5)
  Week 9+: Continue gradual scale-up

Phase 5 (Parallel):
  Weeks 1-15: Clippy cleanup (100/week)
  Weeks 1-8: Test coverage improvement
  Weeks 4-6: QAT implementation
  Ongoing: Documentation updates

Key Milestones:

• Day 1: Phase 0 complete, GO/NO-GO decision
• End of Week 1: Phases 1-2 complete, ready for paper trading
• End of Week 4: Paper trading validated, ready for real capital
• Week 5: Real capital deployment ($1K-$5K)
• Week 8: Scale to $25K (if Sharpe >1.5)

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7. SUCCESS CRITERIA CHECKLIST

UNCONDITIONAL GO: Phase 0-3 Complete

Phase 0-1 (Week 1):

• 100% test pass rate achieved (2,086/2,086)
• Zero P0 clippy warnings (float_arithmetic, correctness, truncation)
• Core trading logic audited (order_manager, position_tracker, pnl_calculator, circuit_breaker)

Phase 2 (Week 2):

• 24-hour uptime validated
• Zero memory leaks confirmed (valgrind/heaptrack)
• Zero race conditions confirmed (ThreadSanitizer)

Phase 3 (Week 3-4):

• Paper trading stable for 1-2 weeks
• All monitoring/alerts operational (Grafana, Prometheus)
• Zero critical incidents (crashes, data loss, incorrect PnL)

Phase 4 GO Decision:

• Sharpe ratio >1.5 in paper trading
• Win rate >55%
• Max drawdown <20%
• All circuit breakers validated (daily loss limits, position limits, kill switch)

UNCONDITIONAL GO: When all Phase 0-3 checkboxes are complete.

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8. LESSONS LEARNED

What Worked

• Three-tier approach: Separating Safety/Reliability/Quality prevents perfectionism trap
• Clear GO/NO-GO gates: Each phase has concrete deliverables, no moving goalposts
• Paper trading: Zero-risk validation of production infrastructure
• Gradual capital scale-up: Limits financial exposure during early production

What Didn't Work

• Chasing 100% metrics: Perfectionism trap delays production indefinitely
• Fixing all 1,915 clippy warnings: Diminishing returns, only ~200 are critical
• Moving goalposts after each wave: Scope creep prevents closure
• Treating P2 as P0 blockers: Quality improvements don't block deployment

Key Insight

"Good enough" with monitoring is better than "perfect" that never ships.

For HFT systems:

• TIER 1 (Safety) requires 100% - no compromise
• TIER 2 (Reliability) requires 90% with monitoring
• TIER 3 (Quality) requires 50% with iterative improvement

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9. NEXT IMMEDIATE ACTION

START PHASE 0 NOW (4-8 hours)

# Step 1: Test stability analysis (30 min)
cd /home/jgrusewski/Work/foxhunt
for i in {1..100}; do 
  echo "Run $i/100"
  cargo test --workspace 2>&1 | tee test_run_$i.log
done
grep -r "test result: FAILED" test_run_*.log | sort | uniq -c

# Step 2: Clippy P0 audit (2 hours)
cargo clippy --workspace 2>&1 | tee clippy_full.log
grep -E "(float_arithmetic|correctness|cast_possible_truncation|lossy_float_literal)" clippy_full.log > clippy_p0.log
echo "=== P0 Critical Clippy Issues ==="
grep -c "float_arithmetic" clippy_p0.log
grep -c "correctness" clippy_p0.log
grep -c "cast_possible_truncation" clippy_p0.log

# Step 3: Test failure deep dive (2-4 hours)
cargo test --workspace 2>&1 | grep -A 10 "test result: FAILED"

# Step 4: GPU memory validation (1 hour)
cargo run --release --features cuda --example multi_model_inference
nvidia-smi dmon -s mu -c 10

After Phase 0: Review results and make GO/NO-GO decision for Phase 1.

---

10. CONSENSUS RECOMMENDATION

This plan has been strategically designed to balance:

• Safety: Zero tolerance for financial bugs (TIER 1)
• Pragmatism: Accept monitoring for rare edge cases (TIER 2)
• Reality: Code quality can improve iteratively (TIER 3)

Recommendation: Execute this plan as written. No more planning, no more agents, no more moving goalposts.

This plan is FINAL. Execution starts now.

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APPENDIX: File Paths for Phase 1 Audit

Core Trading Logic (requires peer review):

• /home/jgrusewski/Work/foxhunt/services/trading_service/src/order_manager.rs
• /home/jgrusewski/Work/foxhunt/trading_engine/src/position_tracker.rs
• /home/jgrusewski/Work/foxhunt/trading_engine/src/pnl_calculator.rs
• /home/jgrusewski/Work/foxhunt/risk/src/circuit_breaker.rs

Risk Management:

• /home/jgrusewski/Work/foxhunt/risk/src/var_calculator.rs
• /home/jgrusewski/Work/foxhunt/risk/src/compliance.rs

Regime Detection (Wave D):

• /home/jgrusewski/Work/foxhunt/ml/src/regime/structural_break.rs
• /home/jgrusewski/Work/foxhunt/ml/src/regime/regime_classifier.rs
• /home/jgrusewski/Work/foxhunt/ml/src/regime/transition_matrix.rs

ML Models:

• /home/jgrusewski/Work/foxhunt/ml/src/trainers/dqn.rs
• /home/jgrusewski/Work/foxhunt/ml/src/trainers/ppo.rs
• /home/jgrusewski/Work/foxhunt/ml/src/trainers/mamba2.rs
• /home/jgrusewski/Work/foxhunt/ml/src/trainers/tft.rs

Database Migrations:

• /home/jgrusewski/Work/foxhunt/migrations/045_regime_detection.sql

Docker Compose:

• /home/jgrusewski/Work/foxhunt/docker-compose.yml
• /home/jgrusewski/Work/foxhunt/docker-compose.prod.yml (create if needed)

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End of Strategic Plan