Hey Scott,
It seems like there’s an appetite for conveying structured status options so we will take this on board. As mentioned above (and I can also see that you have already been engaging), we have this process set in motion to give partners explicit clarity on what will be delivered by Connect EOS, which should help inform and aid the status values.
On your point about the Forge manifest not being the right place for this data: we hear the concern about coupling management metadata with the deployment artefact. The manifest was our initial exploration because it gives us a standardised input, that’s reliable and scalable, and works for publicly available and in-house/bespoke apps. We’re still taking feedback like this on board as we evaluate the right mechanism so thank you for sharing!