Back in early 2021, then ADA Chief, Dr Girish Deodhare (himself one of the pioneers of the LCA Tejas' FBW FCS) had said that AMCA design was frozen and it's PDRs (Prelim Design Reviews) had been cleared.
He talked about high level of commonality between Tejas Mk2 and AMCA LRUs which will help a great deal in speeding up AMCA development.
He also mentioned that the IAF had finally frozen all it's Preliminary Staff Qualitative Requirements (PSQRs). This happened in 2021.
So now look at it logically in steps as he narrates it:
1- IAF froze it's PSQRs for the AMCA in conjunction with ADA and HAL
2- AMCA Design was frozen after almost a decade of Project Design Studies
3- PDR level reviews were completed, including Aircraft level PDR (in 2021)
4- Wing design was progressing at HAL
5- Full scale model for measuring stealth characteristics was being built
6- He estimated that AMCA roll-out would happen in 2024. But that was wildly optimistic because CDRs had not yet been completed and there would be no CCS sanction till all CDRs had been completed and the file submitted to the MoD.
7- Many labs including NAL (which does a lot of design and aerodynamics work for ADA and HAL) were involved in the stealth related technologies for AMCA
So that brings me back to another point. To those fools who talk about copying a Chinese design whose internet images with a newer configuration appeared a year ago, how the hell was ADA/HAL able to freeze the current AMCA design in 2021 after doing all the required studies when the J-31 or J-35 or whatever design itself wasn't clear back then?
It's obvious that the AMCA and J-31/J-35 programs have nothing in common except for 5th gen requirements. Two totally unrelated programs with every reason to hide what they were doing from each other, arrived at somewhat similar looking designs, to solve common problems.
Both clearly were inspired by the F-35 which also faced similar requirements and had to do the hard job of finding the solutions first.
In fact, the Indian Navy wanted an AMCA based 5th gen stealthy carrier fighter but ADA/HAL did several studies that indicated that it would be better to go with a different design that wasn't so stealth optimized. I have heard it was something to do with pressure recovery issues for an IWB equipped fighter versus a 4.5 gen TEDBF design that didn't feature IWB.
That is how TEDBF was born. If all they were doing was copying a design that they didn't even have access to, they'd have an Indian Navy variant of AMCA as well, just as there is a PLAN variant of the J-31.