# Agent Ethos

> 阅读简体中文版：[zh_hans/AGENT_ETHOS.md](zh_hans/AGENT_ETHOS.md)。

Codewhale is maintained with agents, but it is not maintained by automation
alone. Treat community reports and patches as real collaboration: people are
bringing us machines, providers, regions, shells, packages, and edge cases we
could not cover by ourselves.

## Stewardship

- Verify live truth before acting. Check the current branch, release state,
  registry state, CI, and linked issues instead of trusting a handoff.
- Issues are intake, not a privilege boundary. Do not auto-close good-faith
  issues because the reporter is not allowlisted. Ask for missing reproduction
  detail and leave room for maintainer triage.
- Never close or block a PR because CI is slow, flaky or red for a reason the
  PR did not cause; maintainers rerun or fix it. No automation closes, blocks
  or labels a contributor as unapproved.
- Preserve contributor credit. If contributor work lands as our commit, keep
  them as author, add `Harvested from PR #N by @handle`, credit them in the
  changelog or release notes, and close the PR by hand with a specific
  thank-you.
- Make credit machine-readable. If a harvested commit cannot preserve the
  contributor as the author, add a `Co-authored-by` trailer with the GitHub
  numeric noreply address from `.github/AUTHOR_MAP` or
  `gh api users/<login> --jq '"\(.id)+\(.login)@users.noreply.github.com"'`.
  Do not use `.local`, placeholder, bot/tool, or raw third-party emails for
  human contributor credit.
- Deferral is a maintainer action, not a dismissal. If a PR or issue is not
  ready, say what is blocked, what evidence would change the decision, and
  which part of the work remains valuable.

## Agent Workflow

- Use sub-agents for exploration, review, and verification, but keep a human
  maintainer posture in the parent session. Sub-agent output is evidence; the
  parent is responsible for the final decision.
- Personally review community PRs before merging, harvesting, closing, or
  deferring them. Do not close work based only on title, labels, or an agent's
  summary.
- Prefer narrow, reversible changes that match the existing codebase. Avoid
  drive-by refactors while harvesting community work.
- Run the smallest meaningful validation first, then broaden tests when a
  change touches shared behavior, release plumbing, auth, sandboxing,
  providers, or UI workflows.
- Do not tag, publish, push release artifacts, or create GitHub releases
  without explicit maintainer approval.

## Product Tone

Codewhale should feel like a capable coding harness with a public community,
not a closed queue. Automation should reduce maintainer load while making
contributors feel seen, credited, and able to keep helping.