title: How project decisions are made description: Who decides, how routine work differs from architectural and scope decisions, and where the meeting record lives. url: https://legalquants.github.io/lq-ai/trust/governance/ checked-against: 224044cc (2026-10-09) status: draft kind: reference sources: GOVERNANCE.md, docs/adr/0022-committee-governance-and-meeting-records.md > **Status:** Adopted. This document codifies how the LQ.AI project is governed > during its current phase. It was drafted by houfu (Ang Hou Fu) following the > committee call of 2026-07-19 and was adopted alongside > [ADR 0022](https://github.com/LegalQuants/lq-ai/blob/224044cc/docs/adr/0022-committee-governance-and-meeting-records.md), which the > committee accepted at the 2026-07-26 weekly call (merged as PR #311). ## Background LQ.AI began as a founder-led project. It has grown into a community effort carried by a committee of practicing lawyers and legal engineers. This document records how that committee makes decisions, so that contributors can see not just *what* was decided (the ADRs, the PRD) but *how* decisions get made and by whom. Transparency is the project's founding principle, and it applies to governance the same way it applies to skills: the process that shapes the project is visible work product. ## Roles - **Founder.** Kevin Keller authored the project's guiding principles, initial architecture, and roadmap. The founder's documents remain canonical unless amended through the process below. The founder is welcome at any committee call. - **Committee.** The group that steers the project between releases: sets priorities, decides scope questions, and appoints maintainers and review-committee members. Membership is currently by invitation of the existing committee. - **Maintainers.** Hold write access to the repository; ack claims, triage issues, review and merge PRs, and keep CI healthy. - **Review committee.** Maintainers and appointed members responsible for PR merge decisions, established at the committee call of 2026-06-28. [CONTRIBUTING.md](/lq-ai/contribute/engineers/) sets the merge threshold (one maintainer approval; two preferred for multi-subsystem changes). Volunteers apply through an existing member. - **Trusted reviewers.** Contributors granted **review authority without merge authority**, appointed by the committee on a maintainer's nomination from demonstrated review contributions. The rung exists so that review capacity can grow before write access is granted, and it is **advertised openly** rather than filled by invitation. Adopted by [ADR 0034](https://github.com/LegalQuants/lq-ai/blob/224044cc/docs/adr/0034-review-capacity-and-reviewer-roles.md). - **Contributors.** Anyone who opens an issue or PR. The contribution path is in [CONTRIBUTING.md](/lq-ai/contribute/engineers/); the skill-specific path (including practicing-attorney attestation) is in [skills/CONTRIBUTING.md](/lq-ai/skills/attestation/). ## Becoming a maintainer Review capacity — not authorship — is the project's binding constraint, and the path to merge authority is published so that it can be walked deliberately. The committee promotes a trusted reviewer to maintainer on three criteria: 1. **Sustained review quality over at least one quarter** — reviews that catch real defects, not approvals. 2. **Security-path familiarity** — demonstrated competence on `gateway/`, authentication, authorization, audit logging or cryptographic changes, because merge authority without it cannot discharge the routing in [.github/CODEOWNERS](https://github.com/LegalQuants/lq-ai/blob/224044cc/.github/CODEOWNERS). 3. **A committee vote**, recorded in the minutes under the async-ratification rule above. Openings at both rungs are advertised; interest is welcome from anyone already reviewing. See [ADR 0034](https://github.com/LegalQuants/lq-ai/blob/224044cc/docs/adr/0034-review-capacity-and-reviewer-roles.md) for the reasoning, and [ADR 0030](https://github.com/LegalQuants/lq-ai/blob/224044cc/docs/adr/0030-pacing-1.0-preconditions-and-named-trains.md) for why the second maintainer is a precondition for dating 1.0. ## How decisions are made 1. **Architectural and product decisions are ADR-first.** Before a significant issue or PR is accepted, the underlying architectural question is settled in a proposed ADR in [docs/adr/](https://github.com/LegalQuants/lq-ai/tree/224044cc/docs/adr), opened as a PR for community comment. PRs that implement an undecided architectural choice wait for their anchor ADR. (Agreed at the committee call of 2026-07-19.) 2. **Routine maintenance uses lazy consensus.** Dependency bumps, bug fixes with regression tests, and small self-explanatory hardening PRs need a maintainer review, not a committee decision. 3. **Scope, governance, and roadmap decisions belong to the committee**, discussed at the weekly call or asynchronously in a tracking issue, and recorded in the meeting minutes and — when structural — an ADR or PRD amendment. 4. **Security-sensitive paths** follow the stricter routing in [CLAUDE.md](https://github.com/LegalQuants/lq-ai/blob/224044cc/CLAUDE.md#security-sensitive-paths) and [.github/CODEOWNERS](https://github.com/LegalQuants/lq-ai/blob/224044cc/.github/CODEOWNERS); vulnerabilities follow [SECURITY.md](/lq-ai/trust/security-disclosure/), never public PRs. ## Meetings - The committee holds a **weekly call on Sundays** (currently 2pm GMT, on Zoom). - **Minutes are public.** Decisions, action items, and attendee lists are published as meeting records (see ADR 0022 for where they live). Raw transcripts and recordings are not published; the minutes are the record. - **Async ratification:** committee members who miss a call may register agreement or objection on the posted minutes within 7 days. Silence after 7 days is assent to the recorded decisions. ## Claiming work Roadmap items and deferred enhancements are claimed by opening a GitHub issue titled with the item ID (e.g. "DE-202") and commenting "I'd like to take this". A maintainer acts within about 7 days. Claims live as GitHub issues — not chat messages or screenshots — so they are visible to anyone reading the repo. For anything XL or architectural, open a discussion first so the boundary is agreed before anyone spends a weekend. ## Amending this document Governance changes are proposed as a PR to this file, announced at the weekly call, and merged after committee approval under the async-ratification rule above. ## Next - [Keep the app running if circumstances change](/lq-ai/trust/continuity/) - [Known limitations](/lq-ai/trust/published-gaps/)