Governance Policy Packs

Issue: #1830

This reference defines three governance packs that route changes by risk tier.

Policy pack matrix

Pack	Intended use	Low risk	Medium risk	High risk	Critical risk
solo-dev	True single-maintainer repos with reliable automated checks	0 approvals	0 approvals	0 approvals	0 approvals + maintainer acknowledgement
team-dev	Team repos with routine collaboration and shared ownership	0 approvals	1 approval	1 approval	1 approval
regulated-team	Security-sensitive or regulated delivery streams	1 approval	1 approval	2 approvals	2 approvals

Required checks per pack are defined in .github/governance/policy-packs.json. The portable solo-dev ruleset requires zero approving reviews. The trusted executor preserves human intent for critical changes through a durable maintainer acknowledgement, while team-dev and regulated-team continue to require independent write, maintain, or admin reviewers.

The solo-dev pack also requires an automated review from copilot-pull-request-reviewer[bot] for the current PR head. A review of an earlier commit does not satisfy the executor.

For critical solo-dev PRs, post /acknowledge-critical <full-head-sha> after the executor observes the latest push. The PR author may acknowledge because this is an accountable-maintainer decision, not a fabricated GitHub review. A linked issue labeled approved with an exact qualified maintainer /approve comment is also accepted. Bots, stale SHA comments, users without write, maintain, or admin permission never count, and deleting or editing the acknowledgement revokes it. Changes to a linked issue's exact /approve comment or approved label set linked PR eligibility to pending and dispatch reevaluation.

Risk-tier routing

Routing is path-based and evaluated from changed files:

• low: docs/templates metadata paths
• medium: agents, skills, instructions, prompts, scripts, tests
• high: workflows and governance control references
• critical: IaC and production deployment workflow surfaces

The effective tier is the highest tier matched by any changed file.

production_release_paths separately identifies production workflows that always retain the protected GitHub environment boundary, even when their path risk tier is high rather than critical. The PR executor validates the production_environment and production_environment_contract settings plus the live environment's reviewer and branch protections. It does not convert environment approval into an independent PR approval. The actual deployment remains paused on the production environment.

Cloud-agent guardrails by pack

Pack	Auto-approve pending workflow runs for app/copilot-swe-agent	Cloud-agent required checks
solo-dev	Enabled	Agent merge guardrails
team-dev	Enabled	Agent merge guardrails
regulated-team	Disabled	Agent merge guardrails, prd-spec-gate

Selection and override path

Set the active pack with repository variable BASECOAT_POLICY_PACK.

• Default when unset: the policy file's default_profile (solo-dev in the shipped v4.2 policy pack)
• Supported values: solo-dev, team-dev, regulated-team

Set the variable explicitly in consumer repositories. Bootstrap defaults to team-dev when no onboarding profile or contract is supplied, while governance workflows fall back to the policy file. An explicit contract and repository variable keep those surfaces aligned.

Override policy is time-boxed:

1. Open a governance issue with risk, owner, expiry, and rollback plan.
2. Link the issue in the PR.
3. Restore default pack controls before exception expiry.

See profile-specific override_path text in .github/governance/policy-packs.json. For implementation guidance, see docs/guides/solo-dev-profile.md.