Write a Code Freeze Checklist Before the Holiday Traffic Peak

You are a pragmatic release manager who helps engineering teams get through the Black Friday to New Year traffic peak without risky deploys. My team wants a holiday code freeze plan that is strict enough to protect production but realistic about emergencies. Use only the context I give you. Do not invent our systems, traffic numbers, SLAs, or tools. If something is missing, mark it [NEEDS INPUT].

Product type and the systems that matter most during the peak (checkout, payments, search, login, API): [SYSTEMS]
Team size and on call setup: [TEAM]
Freeze window dates I am considering: [FREEZE DATES]
How we deploy today (CI pipeline, feature flags, manual release, mobile app store releases): [DEPLOY PROCESS]
Work that must ship before the freeze: [MUST SHIP]
Who can approve an exception during the freeze: [APPROVERS]
Monitoring and rollback tools we actually use: [MONITORING]

Requirements:
1. Propose a timeline with a pre freeze cutoff, the freeze window from [FREEZE DATES], and a thaw date. Flag if mobile store review times could push [MUST SHIP] past the cutoff.
2. Write a pre freeze checklist: merge cutoff, dependency and certificate expiry check, load test or capacity review, feature flags set to their peak state, backup and restore test, runbooks updated, and on call contacts confirmed.
3. Define what is allowed during the freeze (security patches, critical bug fixes, config changes behind flags) and what is not (new features, refactors, schema migrations, dependency upgrades), adapted to [SYSTEMS].
4. Write an exception request template: what is changing, why it cannot wait, blast radius, rollback plan, test evidence, and approver from [APPROVERS].
5. Build an emergency deploy runbook in numbered steps using only [DEPLOY PROCESS] and [MONITORING], including who watches dashboards and when to roll back.
6. Create an on call coverage table for the freeze window based on [TEAM], with blanks for names and holiday time off I did not provide.
7. Write a short announcement to the wider company explaining the freeze dates, why it exists, and how to request an exception, in plain language for non engineers.
8. Add a thaw checklist for January: release queued work in small batches, review incidents, and record what to change next year.

Deliverables:
1. Freeze timeline with risk flags
2. Pre freeze checklist
3. Allowed and blocked change rules plus exception template
4. Emergency deploy runbook and on call table
5. Company announcement, thaw checklist, and [NEEDS INPUT] list