Symptom

READY=False, REASON=AwaitingPromotion. The Message names the stage waiting to be promoted. status.stages[].promotionState shows phase: AwaitingManual.

Cause

This is not a failure — it is a promotion gate working as configured. The named stage applied cleanly and became Ready, and its spec.stages[].promotion.requireManualPromotion holds the rollout there until an operator promotes it. This is the “hold before prod” gate: a human confirms the stage is good (ideally after reviewing metrics) before the rollout advances.

The gate holds only advancement to the next stage. The awaiting stage stays applied and its drift keeps being corrected; earlier stages remain promoted. A manual promotion gate is distinct from a migration’s requireApproval, which gates a destructive version transition rather than a stage advance.

Diagnosis

kubectl --namespace <namespace> get stageset <name> --output jsonpath='{.status.stages}'

The stage whose promotionState.phase is AwaitingManual is the one waiting. Verify it is behaving as expected before promoting.

Remediation

Promote the stage when you are satisfied it is healthy:

stagesetctl promote <name> --namespace <namespace> --stage <stage>

This stamps a one-shot stages.metio.wtf/promote annotation that advances the named stage exactly once; the rollout then continues to the next stage. To promote without the CLI:

kubectl --namespace <namespace> annotate --overwrite stageset <name> \
  stages.metio.wtf/promote="<stage>@$(date +%s)"

A manual gate that is always rubber-stamped is theatre — it earns its keep when the operator actually checks the stage’s behavior (in a later release, paired with promotion analysis) before promoting.