Earned authority
Permissions follow demonstrated responsibility, judgement, and sustained participation—not job title or employer.
Operating principles
Public by default
Promotions, policy changes, and project-wide decisions are recorded in issues or pull requests whenever possible.
Active stewardship
Elevated access belongs to people familiar with the current project; emeritus status preserves credit without implying active responsibility.
Technical role ladder
Committer and Maintainer form the repository responsibility ladder. Steering Committee membership is separate and does not automatically grant code authority.
Contributor
Participates through code, docs, research, issues, and community work.
No standing repository authority.Committer
A trusted, active contributor with sustained ownership and review duties.
Scoped review, triage, and merge responsibility.Maintainer
A project-wide technical and operational steward.
Release, access, architecture, and final technical responsibility.| Role | Core duties | Expected response | Standing authority |
|---|---|---|---|
| Committer | Review correctness, triage issues, own accepted changes, mentor contributors. | Respond to assigned reviews and issues; communicate periods of absence. | Review and merge within trusted areas when required checks and approvals pass. |
| Maintainer | Set engineering direction, approve releases, steward access, resolve escalations. | Maintain project-wide review coverage and incident/release continuity. | Final technical approval, repository administration, release and security coordination. |
Promotion
- Sustained participation for at least three months.
- At least ten substantial merged PRs, or equivalent research, documentation, or community work.
- At least ten meaningful reviews or issue-triage actions that demonstrate sound judgement.
- A Maintainer sponsor and a public nomination PR with a seven-day review window.
Decision: Approved by a majority of active Maintainers with no unresolved technical or conduct objection.
- Active Committer for at least three months.
- Demonstrated ownership of a subsystem, release function, or cross-project responsibility.
- Primary reviewer for at least ten substantial PRs and reviewer or author of at least twenty substantial changes.
- A record of mentoring, reliable judgement, and handling difficult project-wide tradeoffs.
Decision: Nominated by a Maintainer and approved by at least two-thirds of active Maintainers, with the decision recorded publicly.
Numeric thresholds are minimum evidence, not an automatic grant. Quality, breadth, collaboration, and conduct remain decisive.
Steering Committee
Purpose
The Steering Committee owns long-range project direction, governance policy, cross-track alignment, and final non-technical escalation. It delegates day-to-day engineering to Maintainers.
Composition
One committee is organized into Industry and Academic tracks. Track membership expresses the perspective represented; it is not a separate hierarchy.
Selection
Candidates must demonstrate sustained leadership and cross-track collaboration. A current member nominates the candidate, conflicts are disclosed, and a majority of the committee approves the appointment in a recorded decision.
Duties
Maintain project mission and values, evaluate research and industry alignment, review governance health, and resolve questions that cannot be delegated cleanly.
Emeritus policy
Rolling window3 months
An active Committer with no qualifying activity across a rolling three-calendar-month window is automatically listed as an Emeritus Committer on the next roster refresh.
Measure
Count authored PRs, submitted GitHub reviews, and issues either authored or commented on in the semantic-router repository.
Reclassify
When all three counts are zero, the generated roster moves the person to Emeritus while preserving their profile and credit.
Confirm access
Maintainers review non-code exceptions and separately reconcile repository permissions; the website does not mutate GitHub access.
Return
An Emeritus Committer may return after renewed qualifying work and Maintainer confirmation that they are current with the project.
Current audit window: — . Non-code contributions may be documented for a Maintainer-reviewed exception.