Governance

Summary

RelyLoop is at v0.1 and single-vendor-stewarded — all maintainers are soundminds.ai employees today, stated openly so the bus factor is visible. The model is intentionally temporary. The authoritative document is GOVERNANCE.md.

Where the project is honestly

At v0.1 (MVP1, alpha), final merge authority on main rests with the project lead, and all maintainers work at soundminds.ai. We chose this because the foundation is still moving fast — schemas, adapter contracts, and APIs change between releases, and a small group with full context moves faster than a committee. We're stating it plainly so enterprise reviewers and prospective contributors can size the capture risk for themselves.

We want to broaden the maintainer team

Single-vendor stewardship is the starting point, not the destination. The project is actively looking for contributors — relevance engineers, search-platform folks — who want to grow into maintainership across more than one organization. The realistic bar:

1. A track record of merged PRs across at least two subsystems.
2. Demonstrated judgment in code review (catching design issues, not just style).
3. Willingness to take review and triage shifts, not just ship features.

A DM to Eric Starr (LinkedIn / X) is the fastest way to start that conversation.

Transition plan

The project intends to move toward a multi-organization maintainer model over 12–24 months from MVP1's first stable release, with public milestones: first external maintainer added, roster spanning ≥2 organizations before v1.0 GA, and the governance-amendment process delegated to maintainers at GA. Full detail and the decision-making rules (lazy consensus, the two-maintainer +1 requirement, the single-maintainer transitional rule) are in GOVERNANCE.md.