diff --git a/.github/workflows/release-please.yml b/.github/workflows/release-please.yml
index 0aadf7d5d..bac76bf49 100644
--- a/.github/workflows/release-please.yml
+++ b/.github/workflows/release-please.yml
@@ -15,13 +15,8 @@ jobs:
   release-please:
     runs-on: ubuntu-latest
     outputs:
-      # In manifest mode, release-please-action exposes the unprefixed
-      # `release_created` boolean but only a PATH-SCOPED `.--tag_name` (the
-      # unprefixed `tag_name` comes through empty). Fall back to the path-scoped
-      # key so the tag reaches CD_production; without it the deploy job's
-      # `startsWith(inputs.tag_name, 'v')` gate silently skips the release.
-      release_created: ${{ steps.release.outputs.release_created || steps.release.outputs['.--release_created'] }}
-      tag_name: ${{ steps.release.outputs.tag_name || steps.release.outputs['.--tag_name'] }}
+      release_created: ${{ steps.release.outputs.release_created }}
+      tag_name: ${{ steps.resolve_tag.outputs.tag_name }}
     steps:
       # staging uses its own config/manifest pair: prerelease (rc) versioning,
       # separate changelog, and its own version state so the rc line never
@@ -33,6 +28,34 @@ jobs:
           manifest-file: ${{ github.ref_name == 'staging' && '.release-please-manifest.staging.json' || '.release-please-manifest.json' }}
           target-branch: ${{ github.ref_name }}
 
+      # release-please-action@v5 does not populate a usable `tag_name` output in
+      # this manifest setup: it emits `release_created` plus an EMPTY `tag_name`,
+      # and no path-scoped (`.--tag_name`) outputs exist. An empty tag makes
+      # CD_production's `startsWith(inputs.tag_name, 'v')` gate silently skip the
+      # deploy (and forward-merge get an empty tag). Resolve the tag ourselves
+      # from the released version in the branch-appropriate manifest. Both
+      # configs set include-v-in-tag: true, so the tag is `v<version>`. Prefer
+      # the action's own output if it is ever non-empty.
+      - if: ${{ steps.release.outputs.release_created == 'true' }}
+        uses: actions/checkout@v7.0.0
+      - id: resolve_tag
+        if: ${{ steps.release.outputs.release_created == 'true' }}
+        env:
+          ACTION_TAG: ${{ steps.release.outputs.tag_name }}
+          MANIFEST: ${{ github.ref_name == 'staging' && '.release-please-manifest.staging.json' || '.release-please-manifest.json' }}
+        run: |
+          tag="$ACTION_TAG"
+          if [ -z "$tag" ]; then
+            version="$(jq -r '.["."]' "$MANIFEST")"
+            if [ -z "$version" ] || [ "$version" = "null" ]; then
+              echo "Could not resolve released version from $MANIFEST" >&2
+              exit 1
+            fi
+            tag="v${version}"
+          fi
+          echo "Resolved release tag: $tag"
+          echo "tag_name=${tag}" >> "$GITHUB_OUTPUT"
+
   # When release-please cuts a stable or hotfix release, deploy it. RC releases
   # on staging never deploy production. The release is created with
   # GITHUB_TOKEN, whose events don't trigger other workflows, so we invoke the
diff --git a/docs/app-engine-request-starvation.md b/docs/app-engine-request-starvation.md
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..48bf42911
--- /dev/null
+++ b/docs/app-engine-request-starvation.md
@@ -0,0 +1,120 @@
+# App Engine Request Starvation — Outage and Fix
+
+## Summary
+
+On 2026-07-06 the production App Engine service `ocotillo-api` returned
+site-wide `500`/`503` errors for **every** endpoint, including `/` and
+`/health`. The application itself was healthy — requests were being killed in
+App Engine's pending queue before they ever reached the app, because the
+scheduler was not scaling out under burst load. The fix caps per-instance
+concurrency so App Engine scales out sooner, keeps one instance warm, and
+raises per-instance worker count.
+
+## Symptoms
+
+- `500`/`503` on all routes, including trivial ones (`/`, `/health`).
+- In Cloud Logging, the failing `RequestLog` entries had:
+  - status `500`/`503`,
+  - latency ~`0.002s`,
+  - a **blank `instanceId`**.
+
+  A blank `instanceId` means App Engine never assigned the request to an
+  instance — it died in the pending queue, not in application code.
+- Over one ~54-minute window: **279 of 300** requests were `500` with a blank
+  `instanceId`. The **21** requests that did reach an instance all returned
+  `200` in ~0.1s.
+- Only **one** instance was ever serving, despite `max_instances: 10`.
+- No `Exceeded soft memory limit` lines (not OOM) and no application
+  tracebacks on the failing requests (not a code crash).
+
+## Root cause
+
+The service runs under Gunicorn with Uvicorn workers:
+
+```
+gunicorn -w 4 -k uvicorn.workers.UvicornWorker main:app
+```
+
+Real per-instance concurrency is therefore **4** (four worker processes).
+
+App Engine's `automatic_scaling` block did **not** set
+`max_concurrent_requests`. Without it, the scheduler assumes an instance can
+absorb far more concurrent requests than the four workers can actually serve.
+Under a burst — the map UI fires many
+`?f=json&limit=10000` collection requests at once, each a multi-second,
+10,000-feature GeoJSON serialization — the scheduler kept routing to the one
+saturated instance instead of spinning up more (toward the max of 10).
+
+The sequence:
+
+1. `min_instances: 0` let the service scale to zero when idle, so the next hit
+   paid a cold start (observed: a 16.8s request plus "new process started").
+2. A burst arrived. All four workers on the single instance were busy.
+3. App Engine, unaware that concurrency was already exhausted, kept queuing
+   requests to that instance rather than scaling out.
+4. Queued requests exceeded the pending deadline and were aborted →
+   `500`/`503` for everything, including `/`.
+5. The instance cycled and the pattern repeated.
+
+This was a **scale-out failure**, not resource exhaustion or an application
+bug. The one healthy instance served every request it actually received.
+
+## Fix
+
+Three changes, all deployment configuration (no application code):
+
+### 1. Cap per-instance concurrency (`.github/app.template.yaml`)
+
+```yaml
+automatic_scaling:
+  min_instances: ${MIN_INSTANCES}
+  max_instances: ${MAX_INSTANCES}
+  max_concurrent_requests: 6
+```
+
+`max_concurrent_requests: 6` gives the scheduler an explicit ceiling, so it
+scales out **before** an instance saturates. It is set intentionally *below*
+the worker count (see change 3) so that ~2 workers of headroom absorb short
+bursts while additional instances spin up, rather than packing an instance to
+its limit before reacting.
+
+### 2. Keep one instance warm (`.github/workflows/CD_production.yml`)
+
+```
+MIN_INSTANCES = 1   # was 0
+```
+
+A minimum of one always-on instance eliminates the cold-start pile-ups that
+compounded the outage.
+
+### 3. More concurrency per instance (`.github/workflows/CD_production.yml`)
+
+```
+gunicorn -w 8 -k uvicorn.workers.UvicornWorker main:app   # was -w 4
+```
+
+The F4 instance class (1 GB) comfortably runs eight workers, doubling the
+throughput of each instance.
+
+## Verification
+
+After deploying, the live App Engine version reported:
+
+- `maxConcurrentRequests: 6`
+- `standardSchedulerSettings: { minInstances: 1, maxInstances: 10 }`
+
+and request logs showed only `200`/`307` responses with **zero** blank-`instanceId`
+`500`s (down from 279/300 in the failing window).
+
+## Tuning notes
+
+- `max_concurrent_requests` (6) is deliberately below the Gunicorn worker
+  count (8). Raising it toward 8 packs each instance denser before scaling out
+  (cheaper, less headroom); lowering it scales out more aggressively (more
+  headroom, more instances). Keep it at or below the worker count — setting it
+  above means requests queue on a busy instance instead of triggering
+  scale-out, which is the exact failure this fixes.
+- If heavy endpoints (large `limit` GeoJSON serializations) remain a load
+  concern, consider capping `max_items` on those collections or paginating,
+  independent of the scaling settings above.
+```