Governance

How artifacts are curated, reviewed, and maintained.

Governance

Keys is curated to keep artifacts practical, safe, and adaptable. Governance focuses on transparency, review discipline, and organizational control.

Curation philosophy

  • Start with reality. Artifacts reflect how teams actually work, including constraints and tradeoffs. No hidden assumptions.
  • Prefer clarity over completeness. A shorter, well-scoped artifact is better than a sprawling template.
  • Design for adaptation. Every artifact is easy to fork and modify. No hidden dependencies or lock-in.

Review process

All artifacts go through documented review before publication:

  1. Assumption verification. Maintainers verify documented assumptions, inputs, and expected outputs.
  2. Risk documentation. Safety, security, and privacy implications are explicitly documented.
  3. Scope tagging. Artifacts are tagged by type, scope, and change history for traceability.

Human oversight requirements

  • No artifacts are published with autonomous decision-making capability
  • All artifacts require human review before application
  • Organizations maintain full control over adaptations and customizations
  • Administrative changes require human approval gates

Artifact lifecycle

Publication: Artifacts are published with complete documentation including:

  • Assumptions and preconditions
  • Known limitations and edge cases
  • Recommended validation steps

Deprecation: When an artifact becomes outdated:

  • Marked as deprecated with documented reason
  • Replacement link provided where available
  • Original retained for auditability

Replacement: Updated artifacts include:

  • Migration guidance from previous versions
  • Breaking changes clearly documented
  • Deprecation timeline where applicable

Organizational control

Your organization retains:

  • Full ownership of adapted and forked versions
  • Control over which artifacts to adopt
  • Authority over validation and review processes
  • Portability—no lock-in to Keys infrastructure

Stewardship model

Governance is transparent and community-facing. Major changes are documented in the repository and open to review by any stakeholder.