Tags are generally considered deprecated. But are there any plans to delete them? I am building workflow where I promote artifacts (docker images) to specific environments. I use commit id for pact version (as recommended) but I do not have an easy way to get commit id from docker tag (semver). I planned to tag contracts and verifications with semver version and use api to get version from tag and then run can I deploy against it. But if I lose tags in near future it will all fall apart. Is there any reasonable way to do it any other way instead of having external system tracking matching between semver and pact version?

no plans to deprecate tags

Yeah, that's a good distinction. You can still use them for other freeform metadata purposes.