HRPAY — Maintenance Developer Runtime Gate Guide
Audience: Internal maintenance developers / IT support
Build: v0.39.4-dev Consolidated
Scope: Environment setup and evidence collection only. Do not redesign application code during this gate.

Stack
- Python 3.13
- Django 5.2 LTS family
- PostgreSQL
- psycopg 3
- Pillow
- ReportLab

Rules
1. Use a fresh TEST database named hrpay_uat; do not point this build to a production or legacy HRPAY database.
2. Do not manually edit generated migration files unless a migration error is first reported for review.
3. Do not run ad-hoc makemigrations outside 00-FREEZE-MIGRATIONS-WINDOWS.bat.
4. Do not switch the project to SQL Server. PostgreSQL is the authoritative database target.
5. Do not commit or share backend/.env.local; it contains secrets.
6. Keep the entire extracted project path free of unusual permission restrictions. C:\HRPAY-UAT is recommended.
7. If endpoint security blocks PowerShell, allow the signed/local project scripts for this test or run the BAT launcher from an approved test environment.

Required order
A. Preflight
B. Migration freeze
C. Fresh PostgreSQL DB/user
D. Setup
E. Runtime check
F. Automated smoke tests
G. Start server and capture login/dashboard screenshots
H. Collect result ZIP

What to return
Run 05-COLLECT-RUNTIME-RESULTS-WINDOWS.bat and return HRPAY-RUNTIME-RESULTS.zip.
Also return screenshots separately. Never send PostgreSQL password or .env.local.

If a command fails, preserve the console output and stop at that step. Do not improvise schema changes. The failure is useful engineering evidence for the next correction cycle.