Skip to content

GOVERNANCE.md

Latest commit

 

History

History
101 lines (76 loc) · 5.35 KB

GOVERNANCE.md

File metadata and controls

101 lines (76 loc) · 5.35 KB
Raw

Gaia Governance

This document outlines how the Gaia Skill Registry is managed, how decisions are made, and how disputes are resolved.

1. Maintainer Roles

1.1 Taxonomy Maintainers

Taxonomy Maintainers are responsible for:

  • Reviewing and merging skill submissions.
  • Ensuring graph integrity (DAG correctness, reference validity).
  • Verifying evidence quality against the Gaia Evidence Policy.
  • Managing reclassifications and deprecations.

1.2 Plugin Maintainers

Plugin Maintainers are responsible for:

  • Developing and maintaining the Gaia CLI and GitHub Action.
  • Ensuring compatibility with various agent frameworks and repos.
  • Optimizing scan performance and accuracy.

1.3 Core Maintainers

Core Maintainers have final approval authority and manage:

  • Project vision and roadmap.
  • Repository settings and branch protection.
  • Dispute resolution.
  • Ultimate skill validation (requires two Core Maintainer approvals). See META.md for the technical promotion criteria.

1.4 Verifiers

Verifiers are trusted members of the community who hold at least one 4★ (Hardened) skill implementation. They have the authority to:

  • Review evidence for new skill submissions.
  • Mark evidence as verified or disputed via the gaia dev verify command.
  • Verification from a Verifier reduces the requirement for Maintainer review for 3★ promotions.
  • 4★+ promotions still require final Maintainer sign-off, but Verifier confirmation is the primary weight in that decision.

2. Decision Making

Decisions are made through Pull Requests. Most PRs require one Maintainer approval.

  • Basic/Extra Skills: 1 Maintainer approval.
  • Ultimate Skills: 2 Core Maintainer approvals. (named-fusion criteria apply — see §2.2)
  • Schema Changes: 2 Core Maintainer approvals.
  • Named Skills: 1 Maintainer approval (standard intake process, then gaia propose promotion).

2.1 Named Skill Governance

Naming Rights

  • The origin contributor is the first to promote a skill in a bucket via gaia propose.
  • Origin status is permanent unless the contributor explicitly transfers it via a PR.
  • Additional contributors can add implementations to the same bucket without affecting origin status.

Promotion Process

  • A skill must first be accepted via the standard intake review process (lifecycle: "awakened").
  • Promotion from "awakened" to "named" requires a contributor to run gaia propose and open a PR.
  • Named skills inherit their generic parent's level floor (minimum 2★).
  • Canonical level remains the source of truth for promotion gates; effective level is a visibility signal used by runtime projections and advisor surfaces.
  • Demerits are valid only for 2★+ canonical skills. Each demerit lowers effective potential by one level, floored at 1★.

Named Skill Disputes

  • If two contributors claim origin status for the same bucket, priority goes to the earlier createdAt date.
  • Disputes follow the same 14-day resolution process as generic skill disputes (see § 3).

Unclaimed Ultimate Claiming

  • Unclaimed Ultimate skills appear as ◆ /skill-id [Unclaimed ✦] in the registry — no named implementation exists yet.
  • The first contributor to run gaia propose against an awakened intake record whose genericSkillRef points to an unclaimed Ultimate automatically becomes the origin contributor and the seed title stored in gaia.json becomes visible in projections.
  • Claiming priority follows the same rule as named skill origin status: the earlier createdAt date wins if two contributors submit simultaneously.
  • Once claimed, the display changes from [Unclaimed ✦] to Ultimate Skill: contributor/skill-name.

2.2 Ultimate Skill Promotion

Technical requirements for Ultimate and Apex skills (prerequisite counts, origin fusion, and evidence floors) are maintained in the central meta-strategy document.

Technical Specification: See META.md for promotion pathways and the Grandmaster path criteria.

Reclassification Notice

Existing Ultimate skills registered under the old 3-prerequisite rule that do not meet the current criteria will be reclassified to extra tier in a review/meta/ follow-up PR.

3. Dispute Resolution

If a skill's definition, level, or evidence is disputed:

  1. A GitHub Issue is opened with the label disputed.
  2. Both sides present evidence and rationale.
  3. The skill status is set to disputed in gaia.json.
  4. If no consensus is reached after 14 days, a Core Maintainer makes a final determination based on the Evidence Hierarchy (Evidence Tier A > B > C).

4. Audit Schedule

4.1 Quarterly Re-Audit

Every 90 days, the maintainers will conduct a full re-audit of the registry to:

  • Review provisional skills for potential validation.
  • Re-assess disputed skills.
  • Verify ultimate status requirements.
  • Identify stale skills (not updated or referenced in 180 days).

5. Release Cadence

5.1 Registry Snapshots

The registry is updated continuously as PRs are merged. Every month, a new version (e.g., v2.1.0) is tagged as a Frontier Release, including:

  • A summary of all new skills.
  • The Frontier Report (graph analytics and gaps).

6. Code of Conduct

All contributors and maintainers are expected to follow the project's Code of Conduct. We prioritize technical accuracy, evidence over opinion, and respectful debate.