| 1 | # Agent Ethos |
| 2 | |
| 3 | > 阅读简体中文版：[zh_hans/AGENT_ETHOS.md](zh_hans/AGENT_ETHOS.md)。 |
| 4 | |
| 5 | Codewhale is maintained with agents, but it is not maintained by automation |
| 6 | alone. Treat community reports and patches as real collaboration: people are |
| 7 | bringing us machines, providers, regions, shells, packages, and edge cases we |
| 8 | could not cover by ourselves. |
| 9 | |
| 10 | ## Stewardship |
| 11 | |
| 12 | - Verify live truth before acting. Check the current branch, release state, |
| 13 | registry state, CI, and linked issues instead of trusting a handoff. |
| 14 | - Issues are intake, not a privilege boundary. Do not auto-close good-faith |
| 15 | issues because the reporter is not allowlisted. Ask for missing reproduction |
| 16 | detail and leave room for maintainer triage. |
| 17 | - PR gates exist for code review, CI load, and trust-boundary safety. They are |
| 18 | not a quality judgment on the contributor. Keep dry-run mode unless a |
| 19 | maintainer deliberately enables enforcement, and use warm copy when the gate |
| 20 | comments. |
| 21 | - Be generous with recurring contributors. When someone repeatedly brings |
| 22 | useful reports or patches, use `/lgtmi` for issue access or `/lgtm` for PR |
| 23 | access so the automation gets out of their way. |
| 24 | - Preserve contributor credit. When harvesting work, inspect the PR and linked |
| 25 | issues, keep author/co-author attribution where possible, add |
| 26 | `Harvested from PR #N by @handle`, and credit the contributor in the |
| 27 | changelog or release notes. |
| 28 | - Make credit machine-readable. If a harvested commit cannot preserve the |
| 29 | contributor as the author, add a `Co-authored-by` trailer with the GitHub |
| 30 | numeric noreply address from `.github/AUTHOR_MAP` or |
| 31 | `gh api users/<login> --jq '"\(.id)+\(.login)@users.noreply.github.com"'`. |
| 32 | Do not use `.local`, placeholder, bot/tool, or raw third-party emails for |
| 33 | human contributor credit. |
| 34 | - Deferral is a maintainer action, not a dismissal. If a PR or issue is not |
| 35 | ready, say what is blocked, what evidence would change the decision, and |
| 36 | which part of the work remains valuable. |
| 37 | |
| 38 | ## Agent Workflow |
| 39 | |
| 40 | - Use sub-agents for exploration, review, and verification, but keep a human |
| 41 | maintainer posture in the parent session. Sub-agent output is evidence; the |
| 42 | parent is responsible for the final decision. |
| 43 | - Personally review community PRs before merging, harvesting, closing, or |
| 44 | deferring them. Do not close work based only on title, labels, or an agent's |
| 45 | summary. |
| 46 | - Prefer narrow, reversible changes that match the existing codebase. Avoid |
| 47 | drive-by refactors while harvesting community work. |
| 48 | - Run the smallest meaningful validation first, then broaden tests when a |
| 49 | change touches shared behavior, release plumbing, auth, sandboxing, |
| 50 | providers, or UI workflows. |
| 51 | - Do not tag, publish, push release artifacts, or create GitHub releases |
| 52 | without explicit maintainer approval. |
| 53 | |
| 54 | ## Product Tone |
| 55 | |
| 56 | Codewhale should feel like a capable coding harness with a public community, |
| 57 | not a closed queue. Automation should reduce maintainer load while making |
| 58 | contributors feel seen, credited, and able to keep helping. |
| 59 |