# Project Governance Standard

## Scope
This document defines project-level governance, decision rules, and release accountability.

## How To Use This File
1. Use this file for maintainers, reviewers, and release planning.
2. `Must` items are governance requirements.
3. `Should` items are expected governance practices.
4. `Could` items are optional process maturity upgrades.

## Roles
1. Maintainer: reviews architecture, accepts risk, approves merges.
2. Contributor: implements scoped changes and provides evidence.
3. Reviewer: validates security, behavior, and documentation alignment.

## Must (Governance Gate)
- [ ] Prefer simple, maintainable solutions over framework-heavy redesign.
- [ ] Prioritize correctness and security over visual polish.
- [ ] Document breaking changes before merge.
- [ ] Route or UX behavior changes include corresponding documentation updates.
- [ ] Dependency changes include security review notes.
- [ ] Testing notes are provided for behavior and error-handling changes.

## Should (Feature Review Practice)
- [ ] Keep suggestions coming during planning and review.
- [ ] Ask for explicit approval before implementing new features that were not requested.
- [ ] Capture inferred feature ideas as notes or tasks instead of shipping them silently.

## Should (Expected Governance Practices)
- [ ] Preserve backward compatibility for existing route keys where possible.
- [ ] Keep release notes concise and traceable to merged PRs.
- [ ] Keep decision rationale in PR descriptions for non-trivial changes.
- [ ] Track unresolved risks explicitly with owner and follow-up plan.

## Could (Process Maturity)
- [ ] Define service-level objectives for defect response times.
- [ ] Add periodic architecture and security review cadence.
- [ ] Add documentation freshness checks in CI.

## Documentation Minimum
1. Update at least one core product document:
   - [docs/REQUIREMENTS.md](REQUIREMENTS.md)
   - [docs/ARCHITECTURE.md](ARCHITECTURE.md)
   - [docs/USER_GUIDE.md](USER_GUIDE.md)
   - [docs/PROGRAMMER_GUIDE.md](PROGRAMMER_GUIDE.md)
2. Update rule sets when relevant:
   - [../SECURITY.md](../SECURITY.md)
   - [docs/TESTING_RULES.md](TESTING_RULES.md)

## Sign-Off Record
- [ ] Must items complete.
- [ ] Any Should exceptions documented and approved.
- [ ] Release risks reviewed and accepted.
- [ ] Maintainer sign-off completed.