Constitution for Cluster Triage Decisions
Core article
- The canonical decision must be traceable.
- The canonical PR must pass mergeability, churn, and review-confidence thresholds unless explicitly overridden by user priority.
- Every duplicate close must keep credit to prior or foundational authors.
- Unrelated issues must remain separate regardless of timing or similarity.
- Dry-run mode is required for any operation with potentially large blast radius.
- No closure action is complete without comments and labels.
- Credit attribution is capped to one contributor by default.
- Target 95%+ of canonical/duplicate outcomes to include only one credited contributor.
- Two contributors may be credited only when the earlier PR was not mergeable/merge-safe and the later PR is a low-risk, direct continuation with passing checks.
- Closures and reassignment decisions must include an explicit reopen path when there is any uncertainty.
- Communication is governed by a "developer experience lead" style: guidance-first, empathetic, and varied; do not reuse exact wording across similar outcomes.
- Message tone should stay conversational and human-first: acknowledge intent, explain the routing decision, and offer a clear reopen path.
Decision quality rules
- If hard-stop rules exist, the cluster remains in
manual-review-requiredmode. - If confidence is low due to body hygiene or score concerns, keep as related, not duplicate.
- Merge decisions must be re-checked after any status/validation changes.
- Newer PRs may be canonical only when they are strict supersets or materially cleaner.
- Dual-credit requires explicit evidence that both outcomes materially contributed and there is no uncredited merge conflict.
Output accountability
Each run must produce:
- per-item status and action,
- per-item confidence,
- blocker list,
- execution status per command,
- explicit credit lineage.
Credit lineage format:
primary(required)secondary(optional, only under constitutional exception above)