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Contributing to Genesis

Status: Repository governance process Date: February 13, 2026

1) Purpose

This file defines how changes are proposed, reviewed, and accepted so project governance in the repository matches project governance in the specification.

2) Scope of changes

All changes fall into one of three classes:

  1. Constitutional changes:
  • Changes to trust rules, voting rules, governance thresholds, or constitutional authority boundaries.
  1. Operational changes:
  • Changes to workflows, review topology, evidence schema, incident handling, or system controls.
  1. Documentation changes:
  • Clarifications, examples, and non-constitutional wording updates.

3) Required contents for every pull request

Every pull request must include:

  1. Change summary in plain language.
  2. Risk impact statement:
  • what new risk is introduced,
  • what risk is reduced,
  • what remains unresolved.
  1. Invariant impact statement:
  • list affected invariants from tools/check_invariants.py.
  1. Test/evidence statement:
  • what was validated,
  • what was not validated,
  • why.
  1. Validation command output:
  • python3 tools/check_invariants.py
  • python3 tools/verify_examples.py

4) Additional requirements by change class

  1. Constitutional changes:
  • Must update TRUST_CONSTITUTION.md directly.
  • Must update the parameter matrix and design tests where relevant.
  • Must include explicit migration/rollback logic.
  • Must include calibration impact summary for affected thresholds.
  1. Operational changes:
  • Must update docs/TECHNICAL_OVERVIEW.md if behavior changes.
  • Must include fail-closed behavior notes.
  • Must update config/runtime_policy.json when risk-tier mapping behavior changes.
  1. Documentation changes:
  • Must not contradict constitutional and technical documents.
  • Must avoid absolute claims ("bulletproof", "impossible", "guaranteed truth").

5) Style and claim discipline

  1. Use measured language.
  2. Distinguish evidence from inference.
  3. Do not present mitigations as guarantees.
  4. Keep human constitutional authority explicit where relevant.

6) Fast rejection conditions

A contribution must be rejected if it:

  1. enables machine constitutional voting directly or indirectly,
  2. allows trust minting without quality-gated proof-of-trust evidence,
  3. weakens or bypasses quarantine/re-certification/decommission controls,
  4. introduces governance changes without constitutional traceability,
  5. adds hype claims not backed by enforceable controls.