Project Governance¶
Philosophy¶
AlphaFold Sovereign MCP is a BDFL-with-council project. The Benevolent Dictator for Life (BDFL) is the founding author; a small Technical Steering Committee (TSC) shares decision-making for significant changes. All decisions are made in the open.
Roles¶
Users¶
Everyone who uses the software. No formal membership required. Users are encouraged to open issues, ask questions in Discussions, and vote on roadmap items with thumbs-up reactions.
Contributors¶
Anyone with a merged pull request; contributors appear in the project's Git history and on the GitHub contributors page. Eligible for promotion to Committer after sustained contribution.
Committers¶
Committers have write access to non-protected branches and can merge PRs that have been approved by at least one other Committer or TSC member. Added by TSC vote (simple majority). Removed by TSC vote (two-thirds majority) or by voluntary resignation.
Current committers are listed in CODEOWNERS.
Technical Steering Committee (TSC)¶
| Name | Affiliation | Focus |
|---|---|---|
| Santiago Maniches | independent | Founding author |
| (open seat) | — | Seeking: structural-biology background |
| (open seat) | — | Seeking: clinical-genomics background |
| (open seat) | — | Seeking: community / governance |
TSC meets monthly (async via GitHub Discussions). Once the TSC is
active, minutes will be published under docs/governance/.
BDFL¶
Santiago Maniches holds BDFL status and has tie-breaking authority. This authority will transfer to TSC supermajority once the TSC reaches 5 members, anticipated at project maturity.
Decision-Making¶
| Decision type | Process |
|---|---|
| Bug fix, docs, small feature | Committer approval + 48 h review window |
| Significant feature, new API surface | TSC lazy consensus (7-day window) |
| Breaking change, major architecture | TSC explicit vote (2/3 majority) |
| License change | BDFL + TSC unanimous vote + 30-day community notice |
| Security policy change | BDFL + security-aware TSC member |
Lazy consensus: a proposal is accepted if no TSC member objects within the review window. An objection must include a concrete counter-proposal.
Conflict Resolution¶
- Discuss in the relevant issue or PR.
- Escalate to the TSC mailing list (
tsc@topologica.ai). - TSC votes. BDFL breaks ties.
- Decisions are final and, once the TSC is active, recorded under
docs/governance/decisions/.
Becoming a Committer¶
Criteria (any combination totaling ≥ 10 "points"):
- 1 point per merged non-trivial PR
- 3 points per merged PR that adds a new client, tool family, or compliance module
- 5 points for a foundational contribution (new transport, CI/CD overhaul, SBOM pipeline, etc.)
- Discretionary TSC nomination (max 5 points, for exceptional quality)
A Committer nomination is a GitHub Discussion in the governance
category, open for 7 days, then closed by TSC vote.
Biosecurity Governance Annex¶
Sequence-of-concern screening is a roadmap item: no screening tooling ships today, and the Biosecurity Advisory Board (BAB) is not yet constituted. When screening is implemented, a Biosecurity Advisory Board (BAB) of at least two subject-matter experts (biology, policy, or ethics), external to TOPOLOGICA LLC, will review:
- Any change to the sequence-of-concern screening module
- Any change to the dual-use risk classification framework
- Any new biothreat-analysis tools
The BAB roster will be published under docs/governance/ once the
board is constituted.
Project Health Commitments¶
- Security patches released within SLA in
SECURITY.md. - No unaddressed P0 bugs older than 7 days.
- Quarterly roadmap review published in the Roadmap section of
STATUS.md. - Annual dependency and supply-chain audit published in
AUDIT.md.