Dedicated Declassified RSS feed — Storyflo Declassified — The Untold Cases. See _build_declassified_podcast_rss + the module docstring above for the architecture rationale.

Registered BEFORE the wildcard /v1/podcasts/storyflo-{vertical}.xml route so this specific path wins FastAPI's route-matching pass; routing through the wildcard would 404 because declassified isn't (and shouldn't be) a registered vertical in PODCAST_VERTICAL_META.

HEAD is registered alongside GET because Apple Podcasts Connect HEAD-probes feeds before queueing ingest; absent HEAD support, the probe sees 405 and rejects the show submission.

No Depends(get_db_replica) — the builder routes its single read through run_replica_read_with_retry (fresh replica session per attempt) so a hot-standby recovery conflict is retried instead of 500-ing (2026-07-10 Sentry). On any build failure we mirror the per-vertical feed's degrade ladder: serve the last-cached body even past TTL, else a clean 503 + Retry-After — directories can auto-pause feeds that 500 repeatedly.