You seem to call the right functions... based on their names.

Draft, so high-level only.

Direction is solid. Four discrete commits, each one is independently legible, each one fixes a real concern. Reading top to bottom:

validate() on PostgresCdcReaderConfig. Right move — the etl crate silently ignores client-cert options today and disabling hostname verification isn't honored either; rejecting both at config time with explicit error messages is much better than the alternative of "we accepted your config, here's a confusingly insecure connection." Empty-after-trim checks on publication and source_table are cheap and catch a real footgun. One small thing: consider also asserting that at least one of the TLS fields makes sense when ssl_ca_pem/ssl_ca_location are absent but verify_hostname == Some(true) — currently "no CA, verify hostname" produces a runtime failure rather than a config-time one. Not blocking; just a thought.

Replay panic. Agree with the intent — a connector that genuinely cannot replay should fail loudly rather than silently producing wrong output. But panic!() inside request() is the wrong shape: the controller traps panics, but the error path through consumer.error(true, …) is the documented way to surface a fatal connector misconfiguration. Look at how delta_table_input or kafka_input reject unsupported commands — they call consumer.error(true, anyhow!("...")) and return. That keeps the failure inside the connector-health and toast machinery rather than as a generic backtrace in the logs. Either way, this should also be visible in PostgresCdcReaderConfig::fault_tolerance() (or wherever the framework asks "does this connector support replay?") — if the answer is "no" then the controller shouldn't be sending Replay in the first place, and panic-on-receipt is defense in depth, not the main barrier.

TLS reshuffle and make_etl_tls_config. The resolve_ca_pem refactor is a clear win — one place for the precedence rule (inline PEM > file path), one place for the warning, and the file-read error now carries the actual path that failed. The new make_etl_tls_config is small and the unit tests pin both the disabled and enabled paths. The validate() change already rejects client-cert TLS up front, so the cdc connector never reaches a state where it would need to handle them — good layering. _endpoint_name is unused; either drop the parameter or wire it into a tracing::warn! for the precedence message so the user knows which connector logged it.

debezium/postgres:15 CI image plus un-#[ignore]ing test_cdc_basic_insert. Big quality-of-life improvement, and the right call — the upstream image's default wal_level=replica is exactly what makes the CDC tests pointless in CI. Two things to flag for full review:

• Removing the #[ignore] from test_cdc_basic_insert means every PR now needs the debezium image. The header comment block above cdc_tests still says "they are gated behind #[ignore] so they don't run in normal CI" for the others — worth updating that comment to say "the basic insert test runs in CI; the rest still require manual setup," or just removing the obsolete sentence entirely. Inconsistency between code and comment is the kind of thing that bites in six months.
• test_cdc_basic_insert_tls stays #[ignore] because it needs POSTGRES_SSL_URL / POSTGRES_SSL_CA_*. Reasonable. Worth a one-line note in the docstring on how to run it locally — the existing test_cdc_* tests do this and it's helped me before.

Architecturally — and the bit I'd want resolved before ready-for-review — the validation lives in feldera-types but the constraints it encodes ("etl crate doesn't support client certs," "etl crate doesn't honor verify_hostname=false") are properties of the etl crate, not the config schema. If etl gains support for those tomorrow, the validation in feldera-types will silently keep rejecting valid configs until someone remembers. Three options:

1. Move validate() to the adapters crate, gated on #[cfg(feature = "with-postgres-cdc")]. The downside is the validation only fires when the connector actually instantiates, but make_etl_tls_config already validates the same shape — collapsing them removes the duplication.
2. Express the etl crate's capabilities as an explicit PostgresEtlCapabilities const in the adapters crate and reference it from validate(). Verbose but the dependency is explicit.
3. Leave it where it is, but add a // XXX(etl-tls): if etl crate gains client-cert support, drop this rejection. comment so the next maintainer knows why it's there.

Option 3 is fine if 1 is too invasive. Don't ship without one of them — silent overspecification is the kind of bug that lives forever.

Smaller things, save for full review:

• validate() returns Result<(), String>. Most of the codebase uses anyhow::Error or a typed error here; matching the surrounding convention costs nothing.
• controller_error::invalid_transport_configuration(endpoint_name, &e.to_string()) — the String -> String round-trip through .to_string() is a smell. If validate returned &str references this would be cleaner; alternatively make invalid_transport_configuration take impl Display.
• The TLS test fixture postgres_cdc_ssl_config() mirrors postgres_ssl_config() minus the client-cert fields. A with_supported_cdc_options(self) -> Self builder on PostgresTlsConfig would let both call sites share the "drop unsupported fields" logic and make the relationship between them obvious.
• cdc_simple_test_circuit_with_tls uses serde_json::to_value(tls).unwrap() plus .as_object_mut().unwrap().extend(...) to flatten TLS fields into the parent config. That's fine for tests but the unwraps assume PostgresTlsConfig serializes to an object; a future #[serde(untagged)] variant would silently panic. A typed TestConnectorConfig struct that derives Serialize and inlines the TLS fields directly would be safer.

Not blocking anything since it's a draft. The replay-panic-vs-consumer-error question and the "where does validation live" question are the two I'd want answered before ready-for-review.

Prior draft concerns addressed — bytea now uses ByteArray with a derived Deserialize, TLS is cleanly refactored through resolve_ca_pem, and schema handling uses ReplicatedTableSchema directly. New tests for pause/unpause, TLS, compatible schema changes, and PK-column-drop rejection are solid. Docs page is good. See inline nits.

LGTM, plz address Mihai & mythical-fred's comments before merging, and cleanup commit history ( if required )