SAI-200 knowledge check

How to use this assessment

Complete the questions without referring to the chapter text. Then review the guidance and update your supply-chain design where your answer exposes a gap.

This public knowledge check supports learning. It does not certify a production supply chain.

Scenario questions

1. Air gap and trust

A team argues that because their runtime has no internet access, every artifact inside it can be trusted. Explain why this claim is incomplete.

2. Mutable name versus identity

Two container images both carry the tag model-runtime:latest. Explain why a tag is not a sufficient basis for approval, promotion, or revocation decisions.

3. Separation of duties

A single engineer can currently acquire a new model file, approve it, and place it into the production repository. Identify the risk and the decisions that should be separated.

4. Promotion versus rebuild

A pipeline rebuilds an artifact from source at the moment of promotion instead of transferring the exact object that was reviewed. Explain why this weakens the approval.

5. Model store context

A model store contains only the raw weight files for approved models, with no other metadata. Explain what is missing and why it matters.

6. Proving dependency closure

A team claims their build is "fully offline" but has not tested it under those conditions. Describe how to actually prove dependency closure.

7. Revocation reach

An artifact is marked revoked in the internal registry's catalog listing. Explain what else must happen for that revocation to be effective.

8. Backup versus recovery evidence

A nightly backup job has reported success every night for a year. Explain why this alone is not recovery evidence.

Answer guidance

1. Disconnection removes live external dependency, but it does not verify that packages, images, models, or configuration already inside the boundary are trustworthy — each artifact still needs immutable identity, provenance, and inspection before it is treated as approved.
2. A tag is a mutable discovery aid that can be repointed to a different object at any time; approval, promotion, and revocation must apply to an immutable identity computed at acquisition and re-verified at the destination, not to a name.
3. No single unreviewed actor should be able to acquire, approve, and place a high-risk artifact into production. Acquisition, verification and approval, transfer, and production administration should be handled by separated roles or identities.
4. Rebuilding at promotion time can silently produce a different object than the one that was actually reviewed. Promotion should transfer the exact evaluated bytes with a manifest and receipt, then re-verify identity at the destination.
5. The store is missing license, provenance, evaluation results, runtime and hardware compatibility, serving configuration, approval scope, and known limitations — without this context, later use of the weights becomes guesswork.
6. Run a clean-room build with external name resolution and network routes unavailable, and confirm every required input resolves from internal repositories with no hidden external fallback; a claim untested under those conditions is not proven.
7. Revocation must make the object unavailable for new deployments or selections and must be visible in the response plan for any deployment that already consumed it — updating a catalog entry alone does not reach existing consumers.
8. A successful backup job proves data was copied, not that it can be restored into a working, authorized environment. Recovery evidence requires a tested restore that rebuilds and runs an authorized workload from the recovered inputs.

Completion rubric

Mark the supply-chain design complete only when:

• All deployed dependencies have immutable identities and provenance records.
• Lifecycle states, owners, and approval and bypass paths are explicit.
• Internal repositories are the sole authoritative source for builds.
• Builds fail closed when a required internal dependency is missing.
• Update, rollback, revocation, rebuild, and restore have each been tested, not just designed.
• Evidence identifies the exact artifacts and decisions involved in every promotion.

Completion outcome

SAI-200 is complete when the learner can explain why disconnection alone does not establish artifact trust, and can produce the supply-chain design from the Artifact supply-chain workshop.