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Ownerless Governance

This document is the canonical ownerless governance contract for this repository. It defines how repo-tracked governance works without relying on a standing human owner, maintainer team, or org membership to interpret or repair routine failures.

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Core Rule

Every governed surface must have:

1. one canonical source
2. one deterministic validator
3. one exact repair path
4. one primary gate layer

If any of those are missing, the surface is not ownerless-ready and must remain advisory.

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Vocabulary

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Gate Ownership Rules

Each governed surface must declare exactly one primary gate layer in operations/governance/config/ownerless-governance-surfaces.json. Allowed gate layers:

• pre-commit
• pr-changed
• scheduled
• manual

Secondary checks may exist, but the manifest must name only one primary layer.

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Repair Path Rules

• Every blocking failure must print:
  • why it failed
  • the re-check command
  • the repair command
• Repair commands must be repo-backed commands that an OSS contributor or AI agent can run directly.
• If repair is not deterministic, the surface stays advisory until deterministic repair exists.
• Historical review-map files may remain archived for context, but they cannot act as an active routing or approval contract.

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Rollout State Rules

Promotion to blocking requires:

1. one clean baseline run on the full governed surface
2. changed-file PR simulation proving the scope is bounded
3. exact repair output for every blocking failure mode

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Production Approval Gate

Governance-sensitive PRs are controlled by the canonical approval policy at:

• operations/governance/config/governance-approval-policy.json

The required PR body section is:

• ## Governance Approval

The CI approval labels are:

• approval:governance-schema
• approval:governance-gate
• approval:workflow-governance
• approval:governance-retirement

Those labels are GitHub-native approval evidence for governance-sensitive PRs. They do not replace the existing human-only commit trailers required for .allowlist edits or tracked deletions.

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Surface Registry

The machine-readable surface registry lives at:

• operations/governance/config/ownerless-governance-surfaces.json

That manifest is the canonical index for:

• governed globs
• canonical sources
• derived outputs
• validators
• repair commands
• gate layer
• rollout state
• network dependence
• ownerless readiness

Legacy runtime mirrors are retired. Active governance reads must target operations/governance/config/** only.

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OSS Contributor Loop

The ownerless contributor path is:

1. change canonical source or governed surface
2. run or trigger the bounded validator
3. read exact repair output
4. run the repair command
5. re-run the validator
6. merge once the surface is green in its declared gate layer

No repo-tracked governance surface should require private staff-only context for those steps.

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Current Policy Connections

• docs-guide/policies/source-of-truth-policy.mdx defines canonical boundaries.
• docs-guide/policies/infrastructure-principles.mdx defines the gate-layer model.
• operations/tests/unit/ownerless-governance.test.js validates the manifest and ownerless language rules.
• operations/tests/unit/ai-tools-registry.test.js validates the AI-tools registry surface declared in the ownerless manifest.
• operations/tests/unit/governance-approval-policy.test.js validates the production governance approval contract and PR evidence rules.