Process: the decision deadline is unenforced — four open QEPs, none decidable

[quantecon-services]

Summary

QEP-1 makes the decision deadline the trigger for the whole decision mechanism: step 3 requires the author to record it in the PR description, and step 4 says the Core Maintainers decide at the deadline by lazy consensus. Nothing enforces it, and as of 2026-09-08 none of the four open QEP PRs is decidable. This proposes enforcing a rule QEP-1 already has, plus three smaller repairs to the machinery around it.

Motivation

PR	Opened	Deadline recorded	State on 2026-09-08
#8 — QEP-4 Automation Registry	2026-07-23 (47 days)	"To be set by the author once the draft has had a round of review"	never set
#13 — QEP-5 Code of AI Use	2026-08-14 (25 days)	2026-08-28	11 days past; no activity since it was opened
#18 — QEP-6 Project Trackers	2026-08-26	none — deferred to late September, deliberately	unset by design
#23 — QEP-1 v3	2026-08-27	2026-09-03	5 days past

The last row is the sharpest: #23 is the amendment that shortens the default window to one week on the grounds that "the team is small enough that a fortnight is drift, not diligence", and it has drifted past its own deadline.

.github/scripts/check.mjs enforces version legality, the type and status enums, the README index row and its Type/Status/Version parity, and related: ↔ Related header-row consistency. It never reads the PR body. So the one field the decision depends on is required by the document and checked by nothing — which makes the process look enforced when it is not.

Two of those four rows have a cost attached that is already visible. #8 holds QEP-2's amendments (#9), so QEP-2 cannot reach v1 until QEP-4 decides — and QEP-4 has no date on which it will. #13 is policy rather than infrastructure and binds on acceptance with nothing to build, so it is the cheapest decision in the set and the most overdue.

Why does this need a QEP?

Changes how the whole team works (workflow, policy, conventions) — it amends QEP-1, presumably as v4 after #23 lands.

Proposed change

1. Enforce the deadline, or drop it. Either add a check that fails a non-draft QEP PR whose body carries no parseable decision deadline, or delete the requirement from QEP-1 and say decisions happen when the lead calls them. My preference is the check — roughly ten lines against the PR body in the existing qep-checks workflow, and it converts four stalled PRs into four dated decisions. A required field nobody supplies and nothing checks is worse than either alternative. Note the check must tolerate the deliberate case: #18's window is intentionally deferred pending evidence, so "deferred: <reason>" should satisfy it as explicitly as a date does.

2. Generate the README index from frontmatter in the post-merge stamp step. The index is a structural conflict magnet: four open QEP PRs contend for rows in one table, #18's mergeable_state is already dirty on one line from QEP-3's merge, and because check.mjs:82-85 requires the row, resolving in the merged version's favour fails CI. stamp-version.yml already syncs the Type and Version columns, so this is an extension rather than new machinery — and it retires the parity check's reason to exist.

3. Settle number allocation. QEP-1 says numbers are proposed at PR time and "confirmed (and adjusted if two proposals collide) at merge", but in practice they are treated as reserved — #24 reached for QEP-7 because 4, 5 and 6 are held by drafts, two of them open for weeks, and the published index reads 1, 2, 3. Either make the reservation explicit or assign only at merge. Free today; costs a rename the first time two drafts collide.

4. Cite sections by name, not number, stated in AGENTS.md — and add a check that ordered-list numbering is monotonic in source. Both come from live defects on #18: inserting §2 renumbered §2–§7 to §3–§8 and forced a correction onto the #24 ruling, and QEP-6's Adoption clauses are numbered 1., 2., 2., 3., 4. in source, so because Markdown renumbers on render every external "clause N" citation after the first is off by one. External consumers cite these — the qe skills, the projects dashboard's C2 contract, and three status-projects issues.

What this deliberately does not propose. No new roles, stages or ceremony. QEP-1's Roles section is deliberate — "the process is intended to stay as light as the decisions it records" — and the observed failure is not too little process but a required field with no enforcement.

Not a duplicate of

• Process idea: field testing a QEP while in Draft #14 (field testing in Draft) — that is the practice between Draft and Decide; this is the deadline that ends it. They compose: Process idea: field testing a QEP while in Draft #14's point 2 already asks whether a field-test amendment resets the window, which presumes a window exists.
• QEP-2 appendix implies version-hash pinning exists at v0 — clarify the prose, or amend QEP-1 to stamp from v0 #22 and QEP-1 v3: stamp from v0; drop the decision deadline; generate the index #23 — those settle version/version-hash stamping from v0. No overlap with the deadline, index, numbering or citation items.
• Process: downstream QEPs carry their amendments to upstream standards (QEP-1 amendment, deferred to second instance) #9 — the downstream-amendment convention. Named above only as a consequence of QEP-4: Automation Registry and Label Coordination (Draft) #8 having no deadline.

Evidence is in docs/reviews/2026-09-08-cross-project-dependencies.md §7 and §10 in QuantEcon/status-projects (private).

[quantecon-services]

Ruled 2026-09-08 — item 1 goes the other way, items 2–4 as proposed

Ruled by @mmcky in a decision session the same day this issue was filed. Item 1 was ruled against this issue's own recommendation, so recording it here rather than leaving the issue misstating the decision.

Item 1 — the deadline is struck, not enforced

This issue recommended a check. The ruling is to remove the requirement from QEP-1 instead: a required field nobody supplies is deleted rather than automated, on the grounds that it describes something the team does not do.

That is not just a field deletion, and the amendment has to carry the consequence. QEP-1 step 4 currently resolves lazy consensus "at the deadline", so striking step 3 leaves the acceptance trigger without a referent. Ruled: step 4 becomes lazy consensus with no clock —

"Decide. Any Core Maintainer may accept a QEP once it has been announced and no objection is outstanding. If there is no consensus, the lead decides or defers."

This keeps the low-ceremony default (a QEP nobody objects to still lands without needing the lead) and removes the date. "Quiet" is deliberately left unquantified.

One knock-on for #23. QEP-1 v3 carries two changes: stamping version/version-hash from v0, and a one-week default comment window replacing "normally one to two weeks". Under this ruling the second is moot — there is no window to shorten. #23 therefore becomes a v3 that only does the stamping, which is #22's subject and stands on its own. Noted there as well.

Items 2, 3 and 4 — ruled as proposed

• Item 2, the README index: generate it post-merge from each QEP's frontmatter, ordered by number, in stamp-version.yml (which already syncs the Type and Version columns). check.mjs:82-85's "README index has no row for QEP-N" is relaxed — a PR no longer carries its own row — and the parity check at :87-104 retires, since there is nothing left that could disagree. Worth landing before the QEP-6 repairs on QEP-6: Project Tracker Structure and Order (Draft) #18: it makes that PR's one-line dirty conflict disappear rather than needing a both-rows resolution.
• Item 3, numbering: make the reservation explicit. A number is reserved when the draft PR opens and released if that PR closes unmerged — which is what already happens. The index shows only merged QEPs, so gaps are normal while drafts are open. Currently reserved: 4 (QEP-4: Automation Registry and Label Coordination (Draft) #8), 5 (QEP-5: Code of AI Use #13), 6 (QEP-6: Project Tracker Structure and Order (Draft) #18); next free 7.
• Item 4, citations: convention plus a check. An AGENTS.md line that a section is cited by its heading name rather than its number, and a check.mjs condition that ordered-list markers are strictly ascending in source — which catches the 1., 2., 2., 3., 4. class mechanically. QEP-6's Adoption numbering is being fixed by hand in the same session.

Also ruled in the same session, and it belongs in the same amendment

#9's sentence folds into QEP-1 v4, widened to cover a superseded standard that is not itself a QEP — the Adoption section names the contract, the obligation, and a date by which the handover completes. That gives QEP-6's C2 precedence clause the deadline it currently lacks. Recorded on #9.

So QEP-1 v4 carries four things: step 3 struck and step 4 respecified; the numbering sentence; the index generation (as an Automation change plus the AGENTS.md and check.mjs edits); and #9's widened sentence. Items 2 and 4's tooling halves are code rather than QEP text and can land in the same PR or beside it.

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