Environment-independent contract tests (cache headers + source, CORS, OPTIONS
preflight, negative figure/badge tables, concurrency burst) run in both the
deploy gate and the cross-browser job.
CMS-only /imaging assertions (webp/avif transcode, animated-APNG passthrough,
s-maxage edge caching) live in cms-imaging.spec.ts and are skipped behind the
edge proxy; the public topology has its own public-routing.spec.ts smoke that
fails if the edge ever stops fronting the imager or starts shadowing the CMS
endpoints. A committed per-engine visual baseline pins the static render.
The cross-browser imaging job is now blocking (IMAGING_EDGE=1), so avatar
imaging on chromium/firefox/webkit is a required signal.