InterviewThread uses a maintainer-led, community-informed governance model.

• Participant — reports issues, joins discussions, or tests releases.
• Contributor — has an accepted documentation, design, test, or code contribution.
• Reviewer — consistently reviews changes in a defined area and applies project standards.
• Maintainer — can merge releases, manage security responses, and make final project decisions.

Role changes are based on sustained, constructive participation. Maintainers may remove elevated access when it is inactive or used against the Code of Conduct.

• Small fixes are decided through pull-request review.
• New user data flows, scoring changes, model-provider changes, and breaking changes require a public issue or discussion first.
• Maintainers seek rough consensus. When consensus is not possible, the lead maintainer makes the final call and records the reasoning.
• Security reports and incidents are handled privately until disclosure is safe.

1. Candidate evidence is the source of truth.
2. Keywords may be reformulated, never fabricated.
3. The project must not auto-submit applications or send outreach without human review.
4. Missing evidence must remain visible.
5. Privacy-sensitive processing must be disclosed before optional external model calls.
6. Scores must be explainable and must not be presented as a proprietary ATS prediction.

Maintainers use semantic versioning where practical. Breaking scoring or data-contract changes require release notes and a migration path.