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policy/docs/development.md

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Developing Standard Repository Policies

This repository maintains reusable policy templates and reference materials. For adopting them into another project, use the adoption guide.

Orientation

Read the agent policy and inspect the working tree before editing. Preserve unrelated work. Follow explicit task instructions, including requests to leave changes uncommitted. This repository's policy files retain their template adoption sections because they are distributed as templates. Application-specific template examples do not require this repository to acquire application interfaces or infrastructure.

Task Read
Change a policy The affected policy, its related policies, and the documentation policy.
Change adoption or provenance guidance The adoption guide, OSS policy, and root COPYRIGHT.
Change licensing examples The OSS policy, COPYRIGHT, and affected examples.
Add or update reference license texts The reference collection README and the selected publisher or recorded upstream source.

Editing And Validation

Keep reusable instructions portable. Put adoption instructions in template sections and project-specific contributor procedures here. Original licensing examples belong under examples/licensing/; explanatory instructions belong in their guide or policy so they are not copied into notices.

Increment the affected template's Base Policy Version and update its date when changing its substantive rules or adoption instructions. Preserve the licensing scope defined in COPYRIGHT; reproduced license texts must remain verbatim.

Review the diff, run git diff --check for changed prose, and check affected links and examples. Example placeholders and destination-relative links should be validated against the documented downstream layout, not treated as published URLs or missing local dependencies. No application build or new test suite is needed for prose-only changes. Retain upstream formatting in verbatim license texts even where it would trigger whitespace warnings.

Pin upstream reference links to commits that contain the referenced files. New assets can use local links within this repository until a containing commit is available; do not invent a future hash or publish changes merely to obtain one. Before publication, confirm that public reference links are accessible. This is change validation, not a recurring downstream release gate.