Cutdown Change Publication Policy

Decision

Language changes follow a staged RFC lifecycle before becoming effective.

Lifecycle states:

  • Draft
  • Accepted
  • Effective

State Requirements

Draft

Must include:

  • problem statement and proposed behavior,
  • grammar/AST impact,
  • version target (patch/minor/major),
  • initial conformance plan.

Accepted

Must include:

  • final decision rationale,
  • migration/fallback notes,
  • conformance updates prepared,
  • planned effective date.

Effective

May be marked only when:

  • spec text is merged,
  • conformance corpus updates are merged,
  • required governance records are updated,
  • effective date has been reached.

Publication Rules

  • No behavior is normative as "effective" while in Draft or Accepted state.
  • Each accepted change must publish a unique change ID and target version.
  • Effective changes must be listed in release notes/changelog.

Governance-policy amendments additionally follow ./governance-review-policy.md cadence and emergency routing rules.