Governance

MARGINAL begins as a SignalLayer Labs-led open-source project.

Decision process

• routine fixes and documentation changes use normal pull-request review;
• public API changes require rationale, compatibility notes, and tests;
• policy, ledger, protocol, schema, or privacy-profile changes require a design discussion before implementation;
• benchmark claims require reproducible evidence and independent review when practical;
• security-sensitive fixes may be developed privately before coordinated disclosure;
• shareable telemetry changes require an explicit field-classification and quasi-identifier review.

Compatibility

Semantic Versioning applies to the Python public API. Trace records include explicit event names and are designed for additive evolution. Breaking trace or API changes require a major release after 1.0.0.

Maintainer responsibilities

Maintainers protect technical integrity, transparent claims, contributor safety, and a small dependency-free core. Project influence follows sustained, reviewed contribution rather than employer or commercial status.

Privacy governance

The operational Decision Ledger and shareable telemetry are separate products with separate contracts. LOCAL_FULL may retain caller-controlled local evidence; SAFE_TELEMETRY is a strict allowlist with keyed pseudonyms; AGGREGATE_EXPORT contains generalized grouped rows only. Unknown fields are treated as potentially sensitive.

A change may not weaken a privacy profile silently. Any newly retained field requires tests, documentation, schema updates where applicable, and a migration or compatibility note. Pseudonymized data must never be described as anonymous.