Maintainers Steward Track

Steward track

Status: IN PLACE as a working maintenance regime (since Milestone 2, 2026-09). This page is for whoever merges, releases, and answers for the repository.

The gates (all run locally and in CI)

Gate	Command	Authority
Strict typecheck	bun run typecheck (in frontend/)	0 errors, gated
Unit + integration tests	bun test	gated (DOM-less lane)
Benchmarks	bun run bench/	informational, no gate
Combined pre-push	bun run check	the everything lane
Licence headers	scripts/check-spdx.sh	gated
Formatting	scripts/check-format.sh	gated
Lint (tsc semantics + shell)	scripts/check-lint.sh	gated
Julia suite	just test recipes	gated
Everything CI runs	just ci	the proof lane

CI (.github/workflows/ci.yml) runs repo-hygiene first, then the pinned Julia and frontend jobs — the same commands as local, by design.

Review and merge conventions

• Commit convention is enforced (the commit gate grades every non-merge commit a PR proposes — merge commits themselves are exempt since #37/#45's fix, so GitHub's "Update branch" button no longer reds a conforming PR).
• Branch/PR shape: CONTRIBUTING.md; the PR template adapts the RSR one to the bun/frontend gates (ABI/FFI items dropped as not applicable).
• Dependabot (github-actions + bun/frontend ecosystems) auto-merges on green — a broken bump fails CI and stays open, never lands red. Do not add Dependabot as a ruleset bypass actor (that would skip required security checks — a documented anti-pattern in the estate records).
• Required status checks embed toolchain names; when bumping the Julia pin remember the known trap (issue #38): update the required-check names in the same change or every PR deadlocks.

Upstream relations (the fork discipline)

This repository is a fork of JoshuaJewell/MetaManifold-WebUI and the relationship is contractual in practice:

1. Base is always hyperpolymath for day-to-day work. Never push directly to joshuajewell.
2. The fork tracks application changes; it does not fork the science. Pipeline semantics (DADA2/swarm/vsearch behaviour) are upstream's domain; fixes there flow to upstream as patch series/PRs.
3. Upstream PRs are prepared as a reviewed series (the owner-review record in docs/owner-review-2026-09-25.md documents the PR flow and the four options offered to the origin owner). Upstream-facing commitments:
   • Issues #1 (statistics umbrella) and #2 (symbolic engine, BLOCKED) must never be closed prematurely.
   • Closed milestone issues mean the milestone closed — deferred designs are preserved in docs/milestones/02-deferred-issues.md and docs/issues/milestone3/, not discarded.
   • Nothing from the origin repository was ever rewritten; divergence is additive.
4. Licence asymmetry is deliberate (NOTICE): upstream-authored = AGPL-3.0-only, fork-authored = MPL-2.0 / CC-BY-SA-4.0. Do not "harmonise" headers.

Milestone and issue discipline

• Milestones document what the repository does (audit close-outs in docs/audit/), not what it wishes.
• The project board is maintained via GraphQL (the classic-projects deprecation is already absorbed — see docs/milestones/01-project-board-graphql.md).
• Scientific-value and difficulty labels on analysis issues are load-bearing for sequencing the deferred queue (Status and Roadmap "Near-term order of work").

Release mechanics (today)

Tags + CHANGELOG + source. The full release/distribution story is Releases and Distribution. v0.1.0 notes: docs/release-notes/v0.1.0.md.

Settings and repository surface

• Autolink references are fully specified (four tiers: lineage/estate, upstream tools, toolchain, registries) in docs/integration/autolink-references.md — paste-ready for Settings → Autolink references. Autolink application needs Administration permission; the specification file is the source of truth for whoever has it.
• Issue templates carry the fork/upstream scope split; CODEOWNERS routes to @hyperpolymath.
• The wiki (this documentation) is sourced from docs/wikis/ and published to MetaManifold-WebUI.wiki.git — review wiki content in PRs like any other change (docs/wikis/README.md).

Coming on this track

• COMING: coverage gate — lands against a recorded baseline (docs/testing/coverage.md), not an arbitrary number; OpenSSF Best Practices + Scorecard enrolment (badges only on the day); the DOM test-lane decision (playwright vs harness) before growing the e2e set; benchmark stability window → non-gating regression alert.