Governance

Français · Type: explanation · Audience: contributor · Context: engine repository · Status: ready · Applies from: 4.4.0

Who decides in quest'n'click, how a decision is recorded, and what a person must do that no assistant or test can do for them. The project has one maintainer, @wanoo; most of its code is written by AI assistants and reviewed by gates, by a second reading and by that maintainer.

Why it works this way

One person decides, in writing. The maintainer arbitrates every disagreement (D3). A decision is a dated line in docs/dev/DECISIONS.md, written by the assistant who received it and never without a human decision, with the maintainer's own words quoted, often in French with the English beside them. The exchange that leads to it lives in docs/dev/LOG.md, committed, in English (D3). A decision that would look surprising without its context also gets an architecture decision record in docs/dev/adr/ (Decisions and ADRs). Everything in docs/dev/ is public development documentation: nothing private is written there.

Evidence beats opinion. When two readings disagree, the one with a measurement, a failing test or a reproduction wins by default; the maintainer can still overrule. A review that ran no command is an opinion and says so. An assistant that could not run a check (no browser, no Python) says so rather than skipping it silently.

A second context reads before merging. A change of any weight is read again by a second, independent context (in practice another AI session or sub-agent that did not write it), which reproduces before it judges, then by the maintainer. The LOG records each "second reading" and what it found.

People check what machines cannot, and say it. Seven, then more, checks need a person or a real device: a screen reader, Safari offline, a real phone, playtesters, recorded voices, listening, a signed tag. They are reported, not blocking (D12): a release ships on its automated gates and its notes list each pass not done. Each pass a person makes is an open GitHub issue labelled field-pass; the maintainer closes it once the test is made and its report checks (Field passes). A surface is called stable only with its machine proof and its pass passed (D18, applied by D38 to 4.2.0's reduced stable scope).

A signature needs a yes each time. Release tags are signed with the maintainer's SSH key since 4.2 (D30 put it off until then). The trust root, .github/allowed_signers, names the maintainer's software key id_ed25519, which lives on the machine the assistant works on: a signature proves the key was used, not that the maintainer approved (D37). So approval is procedural: each signed tag needs the maintainer's own explicit yes, recorded where it was given, and an assistant never writes an approved carry attestation on its own. « tu peux signer la 4.5 » ("you may sign 4.5") is the yes for v4.5.0 only (D50). See Releasing.

Who reviews what

The charter of v3

docs/dev/CHARTER.md set the rules when v3 was co-developed by two AI assistants, Claude and Codex, with the maintainer arbitrating. Its rules, in short:

1. Roles: two assistants, same rules; the human arbitrates, every disagreement ends as a line in DECISIONS.md.
2. One ball: the last LOG entry ends with → next: Claude|Codex|human; the side without the ball does not touch the tree.
3. Branches: main is the release branch since v3.0.0 (D7); since 3.7.1 a branch is named by its kind (feature/, fix/, docs/, test/, refactor/, release/).
4. A proposal states its goal, what changed, what it breaks and the migration, its measures, the commands run with their output, and what it does not do.
5. A review reproduces before it judges, then ranks its findings blocker / should / nit, each with evidence.
6. Evidence beats opinion.
7. Truth commands (validate, solve, test, build, the e2e on a production build…) are recorded in the entry.
8. Identity in git: a trailer naming the agent; commit messages say what changed for the player or the author.
9. Public repository: no private names, no private content; npm run audit before every commit.
10. Scope of v3: a break ships with its migration; no Phaser, no second dialogue format, no real-time scripting.
11. Docs are part of the change.
12. Silence rule: a check that could not be run is said.

Limit · charter-dated The charter's wording is dated: it describes the v3 period with two assistants and a "one ball" exchange. Since D9 (4 October 2026) one assistant implements one branch at a time and merges it on green CI, and recent commits carry a Co-Authored-By line rather than the charter's Agent: trailer. Its principles (D3, evidence, the silence rule, public content) still hold; the maintainer has not rewritten it.

Alternatives set aside

• Blocking human gates. Rejected by D12: a release would wait on a tester's calendar. Instead every pass not done is said in the release notes, and an open field-pass issue is a pass not made.
• A hardware key as trust root. Preferred, but not at hand when 4.1.20 shipped; the software key was accepted with its limit said (D37). A rotation to id_ed25519_sk is its own pull request touching only allowed_signers.

Decisions and ADRs

• D3 (arbitration, the exchange in English), D9 (cadence), D12 (passes reported), D18 and D38 (what "stable" needs), D30 and D37 (signatures), D50 (the documentation): docs/dev/DECISIONS.md.
• ADR 0024: a pass is bound to its surface, and carried only by a signed attestation.

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